Interview with Natalie Ruiz

You're listening to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what Matters Most with outfluencer Dr. Wayne Purnell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what matters Most. I'm your host, Dr. Wayne Purnell. I am your host, guide and coach on this journey. Today. I have Natalie Ruiz with me. She is the CEO of Answer Connect. I almost lost that. The CEO of Answer Connect, it's a 24. 7 answering service international. And it's unique in that there are humans answering the phone. It's. Why on One Sharp Sword, why would I bring someone who runs an answering call center here? Because her leadership journey is amazing. Because it doesn't matter what the industry is. Because what you can learn along the way is going to be phenomenal. I had the pleasure of talking with Natalie just a couple weeks ago prior to this recording. An amazing woman without saying much more than that. Welcome, Natalie Ruiz. Welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for having me. And what an intro. Like, wow. I'd have you just follow me around and intro me before I walked into every room.

If I could, I'd be happy to do that. It's Natalie. Awesome. So you didn't start out by running a company. You woke up one day and you went, you know what? I'm gonna. No.

Yeah, that's exactly how it went, Wayne. You got it right there. All part of the plan.

Right? So you're. I mean, the company you've built is pretty phenomenal, and you built it over the past couple of decades. Talk a little bit about where you started and, you know, the nature of this program is to highlight some of leadership challenges, some of the leadership lessons along the way, because they're so human.

Yeah, I think.

I think people forget that leadership is really a human endeavor. So. And your story is. I just. I love it so much. You're. Well, you're. You're. You. So here you go.

Well, thank you. So wouldn't it be nice if everything in life went exactly according to our plan? Maybe, maybe not. It might be pretty boring, actually. So I would say almost. Almost nothing has gone exactly according to plan. And I found myself about 20 years ago at a crossroads where I was really burnt out from what I had been doing. And I decided I wanted to get an easy job. And I just wanted to stick with the easy job until I figured out my next thing. And so I remember I went to a staffing agency. I didn't listen very intently. There was this customer service job, call center. I was just hearing I to sit down, I have a flexible schedule. I'll just do this very easy thing and that's going to be it for a while for me. I'm going to defrost, decompress after being totally burnt out. And I found myself at Answer Connect, I also found myself in the midst of what was very much a startup. I didn't know that of course from the onset, but there were a lot of things that seemed a bit chaotic to me, even though I didn't have a ton of work experience and certainly didn't have experience leading or running a company. So we talk about leadership lessons. So here's one. Very early on I thought this isn't for me, it's chaotic. I don't get the warm fuzzies. I don't really understand this business. I don't see any future here. And I happened to run into the co founder and then CEO in the hallway. Just chance meeting. We passed each other and he asked me how it was going. Something you may or may not know about me from our couple of chats, Wayne, is that if you ask me a question, I'm going you an answer. And so before I knew it, I told him everything. Yeah, all of my thoughts. And to my surprise, he received it really well. He thanked me for my feedback and he actually asked me if I'd be willing to help improve any of the things that I'd highlighted as bumps. So I've been outspoken for my whole life. So it wasn't my first rodeo of speaking up, but it was definitely one of my first experiences having somebody who had the privilege, the power, the influence, the ability to do something with it, to invite me in.

I. I want to pause for a second. Yeah, I wanna, first of all, I wanna recap. Yes, first of all, actually I want to celebrate that because. Because this has been a long journey. You were at a point of burnout. You wanted a easiest job, didn't really have to think about much. You entered a startup on the front lines and you dared to be bold enough to actually say what you were thinking. And maybe that's your style. I'm encouraging our audience members to do the same, which is if you don't say it, no one else is going to know it. Right. And so you have to be able to. You have to be able to convey what matters to you, to the people that have the ability to do something with that. And you were lucky, Natalie, and that the CEO at that time was willing to listen and wanted your input. So sometimes, you know, I do, I Do an exercise in some of the events that I run where I make people walk in, walk around the room and say, hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? How, hi, how are you? And, and the connection is non existent. And a lot of leaders do that. A lot of leaders feel like, oh, I've made connection because I spoke to 60 people. You made it deliberate. And I think those are some of the leadership lessons, is that they, they are, have an opinion, be bold enough to share it. Right. And, and then if you're bold enough to share it, you might be invited to do something about it. Be bold enough to take action. Twenty years ago, you started on the front line. This is foreshadowing, obviously, because now you're the CEO. So along the way, something happened. Let's bring you back to conversation with the CEO. Then what happened?

So there's a multitude of things that helped lead me, shape me, and give me the opportunity to grow into the role that I'm in now. But the very first thing from this first conversation, so I spoke up, gave him probably more than he bargained for when he passed me in the hallway, and to his credit, so he received it well. And then I want to say later that day, if not later that week, I was invited to a meeting where they were talking about how to improve some of these things.

You have to change your voice when you say it. And then, and then done later that day.

That's, that's your job, Wayne. You can be the. Yeah. So I get invited to this meeting and it's not super formal, you know, it's very much a startup. It's a semicircle of chairs. There's some folks I don't know, but they're talking about things. And some of the things they're talking about are items I'd mentioned to Michael. So I am at this point having maybe an out of body experience. Right. Like, what is happening? This is not normal. I'm still not head over heels in love with the company. I'm still thinking I'm, I've got at least one foot out. But this was intriguing. Intriguing. And I started to see that change was possible. I started to see that it, it felt like there was a collective conversation that was basically asking the question every day, all day, how could we do it better? And everybody was invited into that conversation. It didn't matter.

Let me ask you a question really fast. This is.

Yeah.

So this is really also key. I, I warned you that part of your story. I was going to interrupt you here. It is collective Conversation is such a. Just to be alliterative. It's such a crucial concept. Collective conversation is such a crucial concept in any organization. And I don't think that that's a reality for most organizations. I think the reality is siloed conversation versus collective. Then it's the willingness to focus on or actually do something. To ask that question, how can we be better today in personal and professional development? That is such a crucial, essential question to be asking. How am I better today than I was yesterday? How is my organization better today than it was yesterday, given the rapidly evolving environment that we're in? You know, there's so many technological changes, there's so many changes and interactive styles and rules for different generations. How are we better today at making our customers feel like they're the winners? Mm, great. Great that you were in that environment.

And I think a call out to this is. It's part of culture. So I agree with you that this collective conversation is uncommon, but it's really key to having a strong company culture. And before it was a buzzword. I will say that answer. Connect has had a really strong culture. And it's a culture rooted in humility. Imagine the CEO being told a thing or two by a temp in the hallway and actually taking the threads of truth and doing something with it. That's rooted in humility. It's also rooted in a culture of learning, lifelong learning, believing that things are learnable, that things are teachable, and that is represented in pouring into other folks. How did I go from this entry level employee who wanted to leave as soon as possible to now being here almost 20 years with a fancy title, a lot of responsibility. It's been because people have poured into me. I've had so many mentors, so many advocates, so many people who extended a hand and showed me the way, gave me advice, walked alongside me when I was doing something that was different. And I would also say that when I was doing something different, something new, something that I didn't have a map for, I made definitely my share, maybe more than my share of mistakes. And the way that mistakes were treated was different. I can remember my first big belly flop. I don't know if you want to go into it.

I think so, because here's the thing is that is that, you know, in consulting and having come through the ranks of multiple organizations, I've seen organizational leaders who are of the gotcha mentality, right? Oh, there, there. That person doesn't go, goes again. There they go again. That person got him, you know, and. And I even worked with somebody who he was mentoring me, and he would walk around with a red file folder. Folder. He called it his fifo. And. And he showed me. He goes, there's nothing in it, but they just need to think there's something in it. And it was a very. It was like. Right. It was very power based.

Yeah.

Not based in how do I catch people doing things. Right. How to support them when they're struggling. The job as a leader is to reduce friction so that they can do their jobs efficiently and be acknowledged for doing that.

Yeah.

To show meaning. And so the whole idea of. Of a mistake is not a punishable offense unless it's done twice or three times. Right. Can you learn from it?

Yeah.

Right.

I. So I've had really great leaders. And so it's been. It's made that possible for me to emulate some of the really great leadership lessons that were learned by me doing things the hard way. So one of the first big, like, really big, really expensive mistakes that I can remember making was this great idea. I had a brilliant idea. I was going to overhaul the way an entire department did their jobs. I was going to do everything from changing their title to changing their compensation structures to changing the KPIs, because I was going to drive. I mean, really brilliant idea. And I launched it with. I mean, if I could have thrown a parade, I would have. I was so sure that it was going to be good. And then, of course, it wasn't. And it didn't.

Not, of course. Wait, wait, wait. Okay, so here's the thing. And play with me for a second. So, Natalie.

Yes.

Feel like to be wrong.

Oh, being wrong, it's terrible.

No, finding out you're wrong is terrible. You don't know that it's a mistake until you get results. So that's the whole thing is that feel free to feel good. Oh, and then knowing you, you use the feedback of, wow, that didn't go the way I thought.

I totally did. And I learned. And the reason I say of course is because what I also learned is you're going to make mistakes, but make smaller ones. Make smaller ones. So now I still have a lot of great ideas that I want to launch with fanfare. Launch it with one team or one department or one segment. Don't. So we started, you know, iteratively experimenting.

Right. Go big.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, the whole idea of a sunk cost fallacy, too. Cause I was like, if we just wait longer, we just wait. So it just got to be more expensive and More painful. So when I finally, because my boss wasn't confronting me with how terrible this was going, I'm getting the numbers. I'm thinking, I'm going to get fired, I'm going to get demoted, I'm going to get yelled at something. And I'm an impatient person as well. So I wasn't going to wait around anymore for somebody to. So I went marching into my boss's office and I said, I'm sure you've seen the numbers, and it looks like it's going terrible. This was a bad idea. I don't know exactly what I said, but I ran it all down. And I remember he's so calm, which is also a treat, right, to have in a leader and a boss. And I remember he just looked at me, said, well, you're probably going to learn a lot unwinding this. And I.

That is worth the celebration. That's the parade, right?

Yeah.

That's great mentorship, truly. And, you know, again, I pause every so often for leadership lessons. That is great mentorship. You're going to learn a lot unwinding. This is one of the best lines I've ever heard. Because. Because it puts the responsibility back on you without blame.

Right, Right. Yeah.

There's no shame in doing what you did. You believed in it. Okay, good. And, right.

And, and, and, and, and, and, and I learned so much, and we survived. And the other, you know, all the other brilliant ideas I launch, maybe smaller, with slightly less fanfare, with some safeguards, with some early indicators of whether I'm on the right track or not. I think the way that failure is treated is really key to anybody's growth. It's very key to wanting to try the big ideas, to putting yourself out there. And so, as you might infer through this story, I kept having ideas, I kept having curiosities, I kept speaking up, and it kind of led me organically through the organization. I didn't have an overarching plan for, you know, ascent to a certain role. I was just curious about how things worked, how it could work, how it might be better. And that led me to work in almost every department in the company for about nine years. And after nine years, I was offered the position of CEO.

From what, from what level had you worked your way through?

Yeah, I. I had worked my way through management. So I had worked, you know, I had gotten kind of on the ground floor. I worked in the contact center in sales and CL Services. Then I worked in leadership of those departments. Then I got to work with people and Culture on how we recruited and trained and retained folks. I got to work with our development team, not because I'm a great coder, because I can break things. And I was working in. We have never been great at titles, but effectively a director level position, you know, leading leaders, leading departments. And so then this conversation started happening about me becoming CEO. And at first I wasn't sure that they were serious. I had this flood of feelings, like I couldn't be real or it wasn't for me. I think imposter syndrome is the term and I struggled with that. And I decided just to ignore it and say, you know, if you're offered a ride on a rocket ship, you just get on. You just say yes. And I did.

That's awesome. That's awesome. I. I want to repeat something that I wrote down. It's a quote. The way failure is treated is key to anyone's growth. And I think that that is massive. And if that's part of your company culture, you know, the. That you treat failure of others the way you were given opportunities, I think that's amazing. Imposter syndrome, by the way, only comes to higher achievers, right? So those, you know, the. For example, you don't. If you're stocking shelves at a big box store, you're probably not going to have imposter symbol instance syndrome. That's easy for me to say, right? So if you're stocking shelves at a big box store, you're probably not going to have imposter syndrome. You're probably going to live your life doing what you do. You're on a climb. And then the imposter syndrome piece is, do they know what they're doing? Like, do they know what they're doing putting me in this position because I don't know what I'm doing. If they found out that I don't know what I'm doing, they'd never even consider this. And it's really a great place of growth, right? It forces you to step into this place of, well, I better figure it out.

I think it's in the book Think Again by Adam Grant. There's a section where he talks about this and how and when I read it, because I have had imposter syndrome for so much of my professional life. There's a whole chapter that talks about how imposter syndrome can actually be your advantage because it makes you keep working harder. It makes you not feel like you've, you know, check mark, done made it. I know everything. Still striving. And so I Think reframing it in that, in that way can be helpful.

Agreed.

It means you care. It means you're still going to be learning and growing and pushing hard.

Greed. Yeah, it pushes you hard.

Yeah.

It does. Any of us that have, and I'm certain that most of my audience has, has experienced it, that it's, it's the sense of first it's, it's withdrawal and almost like shame. And then you shake it off and you go, no, I like, I have this responsibility. I must show up. And it does. It forces you.

So key. That was a big pivot for me, realizing this was self focused, this was internal focus, to be feeling this way. But I had been put into a position that had a lot of potential for influence and for positive impacts. And so no matter how I was feeling about it, I felt like I had a responsibility to get over myself and to do what I could to make those positive impacts happen. And I think, you know, too much self focus, too much looking inward, you know, it could keep you from moving forward sometimes.

I agree. And, and it's a delicate balance because I've also worked with leaders who don't look inward at all, and they're not great leaders.

It is a delicate balance. I say that. And I have a commitment to a learning habit. I've, you know, I'm continually trying to improve. I'm continually seeking and receiving feedback so that I can be better. But it has to come, at least for me. It has to come from the place of wanting to serve.

Yes. So it's, it's back to some of the earlier things we talked about. For me, the idea of imposter syndrome, taking responsibility. To move past it, you have to move past the voice of shame, which is, as I teach others, the voice of shame is someone else's voice. You were taught that you were taught to internalize shame by some authority figure somewhere. Because the voice of growth and your heart is actually the voice of inspiration. What's next for you? And so how do I get better and how do I serve more greatly? Those are two super important questions. And again, I think they're leadership questions, personal and professional development questions. How do I get better and how do I serve more greatly? This is awesome. So these days you're running. Talk to me about the size of this thing. I mean, the organization isn't. It's not just a call center that's offshore somewhere. It's.

No, it's. It's us. So when I started, we had maybe 30 employees. Really, really small, really true startup and we have close to 2,000 folks that get to work for us. And we have expanded to the uk, We've expanded to Canada. We have contractors and employees in Eastern Europe and various places. I mean the, the scale, it's still small by a lot of people's measuring sticks. But my goodness, for us, we're, we're big and we're robust and we're global and it is so cool to know and care about and get to work with people all over the world.

That's amazing. That's really, it's so good. That's so good. You know, you've, you've told your story, you've offered some insights. Was there anything that you were hoping I would ask you that we haven't covered? This has been a fast one, but

sometimes I know, my goodness. Well, I would love to talk a little bit more about this answer Connect. You alluded to it. Why would you have somebody who runs a contact center, an answering service on this program? And I think there's a lot of reasons. We could talk about that if we have a couple minutes.

We do, please. Yeah.

So from the very beginning, we've worked with small businesses and I think there's still a place for small business in our, in our world, in our cultures. And I get to talk to so many clients who, it's, they're a one man band or it's a, you know, a married couple or it's under 10 people. And we come in and we're able to help them make sure that they don't miss out on any opportunities. We come in and we also make sure that they don't sacrifice their reputation by answering the phone when they shouldn't. And over the years we've built software and tools and services that can help supplement their business and we help them do this from anywhere. So much of the time these business owners are out on the road or they're on a job site or they're with a client and our service is coming in like a partner. We're real people, we're human. That's a differentiator in this day and age.

It's a big differentiator. So much move toward technology. So much, you know, AI is continues. You know, it's been doing it for a while and it's taking over more and more and, and we're growing with it and it's a part of our lives and there's no substitute for the human connection.

It's true. We love technology. Don't get me wrong, we're built on really robust tech platforms. But we talk to people sometimes on the best day of their life or the worst day of their life.

Right.

You know, and if you're calling in over, I mean, you name it, right? Most people aren't calling their attorney on the best day of their life. Most people aren't calling a restoration company on the best day of their life. Most people aren't calling to set up hospice for a family member on the best day of their life. Right. These are real hard hitting moments. And we've got humans there who are trained, who know how to empathize, who know how to be the voice of that business. And I just, I don't dream of a world even outside of the business that I get to lead where you're talking to a bot in those instances. I just, I think we lose something really important when we take the human connection out of that.

A lot of people would say that AI based virtual receptionists are, it's the wave of the future, we're all going to get used to it. And I have to say, I'm with you. There's absolutely no substitute for what we would call the soft skills. How do you, how can you talk a little bit about your training process? How do you ensure service reliability? How do you ensure that the scripting matches the business you're working with?

Yeah, great questions. So I'll start with recruiting and training. So one of the great things about being distributed across the US we'll just stick with that. But we've also got business in Canada and UK is that we can cast a wide net for talent. Not the closest, but the best. We're selective about the folks that we hire and we've got a pretty intensive training curriculum. We do it virtually. We've got learning and development coordinators and we go over not just the functions of how to do things, but our company culture, how to stay connected, who our clients are, why they matter. We build scripting and we do a one on one setup with every single client so that we get to learn about their business. We learn where they're located and what they do and who might be calling. And we build all of that into the software so that when a call comes in, our associates know immediately that it's this type of business and they've got all of the information there and we get confused for in house staff all the time and we can schedule appointments, we can triage, we can dispatch a call out or connect it live to the business owner. But we're here 24, 7, 365. So they don't have to worry about answering every single call. It's based on their business rules. They get to decide when they want us to reach out to them. Those things are really key. It's, it's that level of specialization and expertise. Those two things play together really well.

I think that's really smart. The and, and a good blend also. Specialization and expertise. Are you vertical specific or do you go. We could handle any company.

So we are vertical specific in that we have verticals and agent specifications within those verticals under the umbrella of Answer Connect. So we work with a multitude of verticals. Certainly legal and healthcare and trade and service are a few of the big ones. And so we have teams of associates who are first priority routed for those types of calls. So they get more and more familiar. Our clients get more more familiar. They get specialized training. But within our umbrella, if your phone might ring or if someone might go to your website and chat, if it's a customer service based or some sort of person wanting to do business with you, we can help.

That's phenomenal. Does I don't know enter into your training?

Does I don't know enter into your training?

As in, as in you've got somebody on the phone. Right. You've got one of your agents is answering the call for a business that's out there.

Yeah.

And a customer says what's blah blah blah. Does your agent ever say I don't know with or without the parentheses? Let me find out.

Probably. And I think, you know, I think it would be silly for me to say and never. Absolutely not.

We're allowed to. That's.

Sure, sure.

That's what I'm saying. Like that's what I'm leading to is I don't know. Let me find out as a group.

Yeah, I don't know. Let me find out. And here's. And they'll reiterate what they do know. Right. We, we are located at 123 Main street and it looks like Wayne should be in today. Let me find out if he is. Can you hold real quick? Something, something, something. So we won't know maybe you know, how long will it take for my bankruptcy to be finalized? I don't know. But you know who might know? Your attorney. Let me see if I can get them on the line for you.

That's the answer. That's. Yeah, that's great. So it's, it's, you know, in, in tennis you're taught bounce hit. Like that's all you should be thinking really like bounce, hit, bounce, hit. So, so with this, it's. You were just lob the ball. Now what are you going to do with it? Well, I'm going to bounce it, see where it goes, and then I'm going to send it back over, which is great. So I love the idea of you're there, you're there in partnership. You're there as an extension of what's been your, your biggest success. Like, wow, you took on this business, you weren't sure you could serve them the way you wanted to or right. What's, what's. It's kind of like what's been your biggest challenge beyond that? Like, how did you turn it around? What, what became your biggest success on

the organizational scale or person organizational scale?

Oh, gosh, wherever you want to go with it. Well, Natalie, I mean, you're a good human who's running an amazing organization.

Well, I'll talk organizationally. I think that. So over the time that I've been with the company, so we weathered the kind of 0809 recession that was when I was really early in my career here. And what I will say quickly is that I fell in love more with the company to realize that you could weather something like that. And while it was really fun to be servicing businesses because everything was booming, it was really important to be servicing businesses who were needing to scale back but still wanted to provide a human on the phones for their business. And I saw so much value in that. We weathered moving to a remote model like in 2007. We started this so far earlier than many, many organizations. And because we were so early, we had to develop a lot of our own tech and policies. And we were often at the forefront of trying to figure out how to do it and why to do it and all of the details that came along with that.

We weather 100% remote or is it hybrid for you?

It's. It's really. It's 100% remote. And we have a couple of office locations in a couple of our hubs that folks will rotate into at some cadence, but it's not core to their job. It's like in addition to their job, they're going to have an in office day and we're going to meet about these other things. But I get a lot more done when I work from home on those office days. It's lovely to see who got new sneakers or who's changed their hair and connect with them shoulder to shoulder. But it's not my day to day makes sense.

I love that I Love that. Personally, I believe that's a beautiful model.

Yeah, it's both. I love seeing people in person. I think it's super important, but not every day, not all the time. And it's not scalable when you're spread out and also when you're really busy.

I'm laughing because I was gonna say something very personal, which is now you sound like my wife. I love seeing people, but not every day.

I can relate to your wife.

Yeah, She's. She's in hr,

and we love her for that. I. My HR team is near and dear to my heart. We cannot. We could not function without them.

She's. Yeah. Chief hro. So. So how do you navigate the culture if you're mostly remote? That's key.

Yeah. I think you have to be very intentional about it. So culture can happen kind of through osmosis when you're in an office, and culture ends up being like, what's okay here and what's not okay here? In a lot of cases. How do we do things here? And if you're in an office, there's a prevailing momentum or tied to that when you work in a distributed fashion, and especially when you start crossing into, you know, other states, other time zones, other countries, it's not just a simple math equation of this plus that equals our company culture. So you have to decide, who are we and who do we want to be? What's okay and what's not okay? What are we going to focus on? And how are we going to keep talking about this? And I'll bring it back to this collective conversation, because I think you have to embed it. You have to make it really easily understandable, and it has to be at every touch point. And I'm vigilant about culture because you can say things all day long, but if you let the wrong thing slide, or if you let the wrong thing happen, or if you don't do the right thing in a situation, it doesn't matter what you've said.

What's amazing about that is it's easy to stop at.

At.

It's at saying the right things. Most organizations stop at, yeah, our vision or our mission is on the wall. Our purpose statements over there. We've written our purpose on the back of our business card, our missions on the wall. Do you talk about it? Well, I mean, everybody should know because it's on the wall. I mean, it's on our website. I mean, it's right. And it's. It's easy to just assume that people know what the Culture is or what you care about or what you believe in. And the good news is you're not only talking about it, you're modeling it. The actions you take highlight the vision and the culture. And I think the key is pointing that out also. You know, this reflects our vision, which reflects our culture that we're trying to build. Congratulations. That behavior, we want more of that.

Yep, absolutely. It. It has to be intentional. It has to be called out. It has to be modeled. And one of you asked for a big success. So I talked about moving through all of these things. Right. Moving through these transitions. We're having, hopefully, a big success in staying human in the age of automation and AI But I got to tell you, the kinds of successes that make me want to run downstairs and, like, stick something to the refrigerator. You know, when you're a little kid and you want to put your report card up there or something, it is the times when I'm talking to a new employee or I'm talking to an employee who I don't really know very well, and they're relaying back how something was handled or how something happened. And I wasn't in the room, and I wasn't in the conversation, and nobody consulted me, and nobody consulted anybody. But it was in line with our company culture, who we want to be. Those are the biggest wins. Because I can't be in every conversation. I'm not going to be, and neither will most leaders. But when you have a strong company culture, when you have a strong set of values, and here's how we do things here, and by the way we care about people, that's gonna guide us. And then you hear about that happening, and you didn't even know about it. Somebody just made the call. They just made the decision. That is what is a huge success in my book.

That is a huge success. That is a huge success. You know, when it's. It's kind of like seeing your kids do the right thing when they're little. Oh, I taught them.

Yeah. They're.

They're doing it. Yes. So good. What about challenge that you're facing? You know, the biggest? Like, it could be staying human during technology. It could be like, what. What do you see now as. As the CEO? You're overseeing people, and you're overseeing process. You've got your eye strategically on the wave of the future, and you're holding on to. Anchored by the values of the past. That's an amazing blend. What is the challenge that you're facing right now?

Well, I think the one that we're thinking about and learning about every day. Is this staying human, leveraging tech for good, not losing our humanity? It's a big one. Learning about it every day, working to do a great job and provide value for our clients while staying true to who we are and what we believe. I also think that we're doing this all while having, what is it, four, maybe almost five generations in a workforce.

Isn't that amazing?

It is, it is. And so talk about staying humble and staying in the learner's beginner's mindset. Yeah, There's. There's so much new. There's so much to keep learning. There's so many different ways to connect and motivate and inspire and grow and drive in this age where tech and consumer sentiment and employee sentiment are changing rapidly.

Use some amazing words. Connect, grow, inspire. Huge. You know, and that speaks to your belief about your role as the CEO. I love that. So almost 20 minutes ago, I said, wow, do you have anything else to add? And that's awesome. This is. This is really good. I'll ask that question now. Is there anything that you had hoped we'd touch on that we haven't yet?

We covered a lot, I think, Wayne, I think we could talk for three days running probably about all of these things that we're passionate about. But no, I'm excited that we got to cover what we did.

I am as well. How do you feel about people reaching out to you on LinkedIn?

I love it. It's so much better than emailing me. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn. Please don't email me.

That's.

My inbox is a scary, scary place. And at some point I'll just archive everything and start fresh.

So fabulous. I. I understand that I get well over 300 emails a day, mostly batch delete. And I tell myself, well, at some point, I'll spend the time to go through and unsubscribe. It's easier to batch delete.

I'm with you.

I'm with you. And if you need to reach me, yeah, obviously I have a couple of emails where people reach me. Where people reach you? LinkedIn.

LinkedIn. It's Natalie S. Ruiz on LinkedIn.

Okay. R U Y Z. R U, I Z. Very good. Amazing. I'm so, so glad you joined me here. This is. It's fabulous. I. I just appreciate you as a human. I appreciate your leadership insights. And thank you. Thanks for being here.

Well, thank you so much for having me, for having a program like this. It's great. I love the episodes I've listened to, and I really appreciate the time.

Yay. All right. Natalie Ruiz, CEO of I almost. I almost blew it. Almost said call Cat. It's Answer Connect Chief Executive Officer. I'm going to say it again. Natalie Ruiz, Chief Executive Officer at Answer Connect. Natalie s. Ruiz on LinkedIn. She's been my amazing guest for the past 45 minutes. Appreciate that. And you, as my listening audience, have been with me on One Sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. I'm your host, guide and coach on this journey. Thank you for joining me. We'll see you here again next time. Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword cutting through to what Matters Most with out Flenser, Dr. Wayne Purnell. For more information, please go to onesharpsword.com.