2026 is won in Q1 #102

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this live recording of The Company Doctor. Wow. After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. Now, as you may have gathered from that raucous applause, we're coming to you live from the fantastic Bike Shed in London's Shoreditch. Where Gary and I are joined by a brilliant panel of guests and a lively live studio audience to discuss whether or not 2026 is won in Q1, and can organizations set themselves up for a stronger year by focusing on the right priorities early? Stick around for some fabulous insights from Gary and the panel, some top quality questions from the audience, and as always, a whole lot of fun.

Say the analogy of the painter.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Put your hand up if you either know about or have listened to the Company Doctor podcast. Ooh, nice.

That's everyone. That's everyone in the room, Gary.

Not bad.

That's pretty much everybody.

That's impressive, right? Yeah, I'm happy. Well, okay, we can go home then. That's it. We're done. So just to explain to you what we're doing tonight. Has anyone been in this situation where you finish work on the 18th of December, you went and spent time and reacquainted yourself with your family. And then you didn't go back to work until the 5th, the 12th, or the 19th of January. Put your hand up if you agree with that. All your customers. Yeah, absolutely. And what happens is that Christmas gets in the way. It's hard to get started again. And now you can't get on the train. By the way, George and I, we did a walk and talk podcast on Amityville Island in Martha's Vineyard. There was no sharks, but it was really windy and no one could hear what we said.

Remember that? Yeah, it was great though. Everyone loved it.

Thank you. Yeah, good, good point. Um, yeah, so basically what we want to do today is there's an opportunity to share experience. We've got an esteemed panel who we're going to introduce in a second. We want to get some ideas about— we think that 26 is won in the first quarter and we want to share some ideas about— and if we can't do it this year, we'll certainly do it next year— what can we do to get our feet out the mud and accelerate business so that we doesn't get to Valentine's Day before we get where we want as a business for all of us. Is that okay? You like the sound of that? Oh, this is yes? Okay, good.

Thank you.

So before we introduce the panel, I want to introduce my co-host, young George. Can you see George? George, raise your hand. So George is the main attraction of the podcast. Most people go, oh, George is so amazing. And he is. And George, he's got a new fancy title. He works at The Independent. And he's head of creative growth and innovation at The Independent. How cool is that? So round of applause for George in his new role. Thanks, Gary.

It is cool and it sounds great.

And he is the main voice of the podcast. And, you know, sometimes I try to catch up, but I can't do it. Before we introduce the panel, I just want to give you some housekeeping. So we're going to take probably 30, maximum 40 minutes because we're going to ask the panel some questions. And there's a section, George, has anyone got a George grill? A home.

George Foreman grill.

A George Foreman grill. Thank you. We're gonna do George Clothe grill, uh, as part of the session. So watch out panel, it is coming. Let's get started. Yes. Are you excited? I'm not sure. A little bit. Okay. Not bad. George, uh, should we intro the panel?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Gary. And thanks everybody for coming. Very kind of you to announce my new role there. No one cares and it doesn't mean anything to anyone, but it means a lot to me.

Is it internal yet?

Um, it's not actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that doesn't matter. Listen, The presses aren't going to stop because I have a new role, but we are very lucky to be joined by an incredibly esteemed panel. As Gary said, I'm going to start from over upon yonder over there with Mark, who I haven't met yet, but we're going to get to know each other over the course of this episode. Mark Pestridge is the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Telly House Europe. To his right, Fiona Richards is Group COO of Aphelia Group. Next, we have Rich Best, who is Fractional CRO for Syntellik and founder and sales transformation expert at RW Best Co. And finally, you've already heard from him this evening. He is the CEO of Smart Tasking, Neil Anderson. Please put your hands together for our lovely panel this evening.

Nice. So here's the first question, and I'm gonna pick on Mark. Busiest year you've ever had in business. Doesn't matter how far back you wanna go. What did you deliberately do differently in Q1 And what made it take off?

I think for me, the most important thing is to your point about all pitching up on the 5th of January, right? When everybody's like, oh, I've had a great time. Can't really be bothered to get there. You as a leadership team, you have to galvanize the troops from day one. And the way to do that, in my opinion, or the way that we did that was by, you have to change your behavior because nothing changes unless behavior changes. I know that's a massive cliché, but changing the momentum from day one and getting everybody energized. From day one, making the messaging really simple, making people understand what they've got to do to focus on, for me, very simple things from a sales perspective. What can we win? What do we want to win? And then getting a plan around that as quickly as possible. And then making sure that everybody fully understands they've got management support to drive that. So if it means daily standups to get unblocking done, getting rid of those barriers, making sure that people are focusing on the right things. Every day when they come into the office. I think that's a really important thing. So, so that was all about changing the dynamic from day one. There is a little bit about Q1 doesn't really start in Q1. It starts before Christmas, doesn't it? And making sure that you're using that period where everybody is out every night socializing to actually get some stuff done so that when you come in on January 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th, whenever it is, people are ready to go and they know the methods.

But That's a good, thank you for that, Mark. I think it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because Mark just said Q1 doesn't start, Q1 starts before Christmas. But here's the question, does it? Because if you think about what happens in your company, although ideally it would be nice if it started before Christmas, does it? Rich, what's your thoughts? What do we do? What makes a difference?

I'm going to come at this with very much a sales lens on it. And for sales teams, Q1, the hard graph really starts Q3, Q4. It depends on sales cycles. But, you know, when I look back on lived experience, it was strategic planning, the right amount of planning, making sure that we had alignment right across the business, pipelines scrubbed, there was no noise, we were focusing on the right things, and so that we could hit the ground running from, you know, as soon as we got back from Christmas. That's what made the difference. Everyone in the business knowing exactly what they're doing, how to do it, and why they're doing it. Purpose is a really big part there.

I think that's massive, isn't it? Making sure you're focusing what you can win, what you want to win, but also So making sure you've got the people in the business lined up to support you when you need the things unblocked and need to make things happen as quickly as possible.

Yeah, exactly. Unblocking, huge.

I'm worried from a COO's point of view, how do we really get action before we're in the sludge of Valentine's?

My answer ties in very precisely to what both Mark and Richard have said. It is all about the planning. You're going through this cycle of planning, execution, planning, execution. I'm doing the planning with the guys who are involved from the planning, and then the execution team is delivering. So it's a handover that usually happens towards the tail end of the year to make sure that the guys who are doing the execution in the first quarter are lined up with what they need to do. What's interesting though, so I come at it from a delivery perspective rather than a sales perspective. And when I think about, you know, what makes you successful and what years have been more successful than others. It's understanding what, again, blockers are to success in the first quarter. You know, in big banks, the first quarter is the budget setting cycle. So if you're a consultant and you're delivering into it, you need to be having the early conversations through the first quarter with those banks, understanding when the budget is going to be delivered, usually sort of mid-February, late February, early March, so that you're in a good position to be able to capture that. The lens that you put on the first quarter definitely depends on what angle you're coming at it from.

Okay.

Thanks, Fiona. Look, I'm going to switch gears because I want to talk to Mr. Anderson because Neil is, for those of you who know Neil, he really understands people very well and behaviors. And so I'm starting to wonder from this conversation if we should be talking about behaviors. So my second question is, Neil, when you look across people that have been successful in Q1, and lots of people have, and the ones that you've experienced, what patterns of behaviors consistently show up?

So I think for me, um, I agree with what my colleagues here have said. I grew up in a world where in the quarter ends and half years, ends of years were very focused. I started my life in a distribution business. For those words, a distribution business, all about is that door the last day of the month. But I think the behaviors we now bring into our corporate life, into our business life, is to make sure people understand what's expected, all the behaviors we need to do. And that communication starts much earlier. So even when both in our company, Smart Tasking, and in my corporate career, I always want to have a clear messaging session somewhere towards the end of the previous year. So people go away, clear to recharge, spend time with their families and reenergize themselves. But all while knowing what's the ask for the following year. What's the strategy?

Great answer.

You're looking for 3. Yeah, I am. So maybe someone else can give me another one.

Rich? Um, I would say, um, customers. We've talked about planning. Planning is important. Planning is strategy and purpose, I think, are really key. But customers, and I think with customers, it's about really deeply understanding wants, needs, challenges, and not just at business level, but also at an individual level. The deals where you can strike a nerve with what the business needs and what an individual who's in control of decision cycle needs. And I think that's often neglected. So I think those things are really important.

Makes sense. One more, quickie. Yeah, I'll go one. Go on, you go.

I think keep the messaging simple, right? Be really clear on the messaging.

I think that's good advice because things just get overly complicated, don't they? And then people can't see the wood from the trees. We've had the same situation for us. It's like big strategy, but what are the 5 things I need to do to get moving? Does that make sense?

And are teams receptive to that, do you find? You know, that's the sort of early planning. The teams tend to sort of take that well. Are they a bit like, you know, we're demob happy, it's coming towards the end of the year, we don't really want to be thinking about next year at the moment.

Yeah, I think to Neil's point, you need to do it before you go away. You need to do it again as soon as they get back because people will be in cruise mode when they come back in. But if you can energize them on day one, pointing that messaging, I think is really important. But I think Fiona's point is really well made. You know, it's all about the people. What's in it for me? What do you need me to do? And keep it really simple. So I know what I'm going to do. Don't give me 20 things to do. Give me 3 things. I'll be really clear.

Okay, cool.

Our mantra is clarity, choice, and control. So I've seen it time and time again, where in the boardroom, there's masses and masses of detail that just doesn't cascade down to where the rubber hits the road. And this is a mistake that lots of businesses make. You can hire great people, give them that North Star, give them the clarity and the guardrails, and let them build their own plans within that. That's when momentum really fires up. Empowerment.

Yeah.

Power.

Okay, good.

This is great. Thank you guys. Now I just want to kind of shift gear a little bit because I wanted to get to the grill. This has been nagging me a little bit. So again, I'll open it up. I can only take one answer really because of time. Looking specifically at 26 What must leaders get right in the first quarter that didn't matter 5 years ago? Because the world is changing so fast. Quickie. Yeah, I'll go.

Go on, Gary.

5 years ago, I think we were too reliant on assumed revenue. You know, we cruise a lot of Q1 would be about internally facing activity because we just knew that there's an assumption that revenue would happen. I think nowadays we have to be a lot more deliberate about revenue. You know, the economic climate demands it. And getting the full quarter as opposed to losing a month on the front end of it, looking inside the business. And it just puts more emphasis on doing the work beforehand.

So, well, I think you've earned the right to be grilled. Are you ready for it? Are you excited? Everyone excited for the grill? The George Club? Oh yeah. Okay. Little round of applause for the grill. Please, George, be kind.

We're making this out to be far more scary than it is. These are just some direct questions based on your own experience. And you'll answer them beautifully as you have done already.

So we'll go to you.

And then we'll, uh, yeah, move out to the audience. Starting with Mark, your business is sort of literally never sleeps. The lights have to stay on 24/7. Telehouse Europe is famous for that. So how do you speed up in the new year without risking the stability of what you've already built? By which I mean, what does getting ahead look like when you're already at full capacity?

Keeping the lights on is what we do every day, right? People buy from us. Systems that stay awake, stay online while they're asleep, right? So we constantly have to focus on making sure we're investing back in to make sure everything is running smoothly, which means a huge amount of investment in the backend while at the same time our shareholders or stakeholders are pushing us to drive that revenue growth up. So you've got to almost embrace technology to make sure that you're using technology as much as you can to make sure that things are happening and you've got that sleep at night kind of network going whilst using those tools as well to drive that revenue growth up and up and up. And I think that's something that we're constantly challenged with us. We haven't talked about it yet. And I guess it's an elephant in the room, but AI is the great opportunity for us, but a great threat as well. And we need to embrace that on both sides. I mean, we didn't talk about it before, but AI is something you can get people to embrace to speed up, right? They can do things quicker rather than taking 2 days to write a proposal or write a procurement paper. You can do it in an hour, right? So embrace that.

Great answer. Tough question. And the first time that we've had AI mentioned this whole conversation. Sorry. Sorry. No, no, no. It's great.

I was— did you notice he brought his beard down? He was really taking it seriously.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going to take your glasses off as well, just to really sort of hammer home.

It's the eddy thing.

Thank you for that.

That's a great answer.

Fiona, moving on to you. In the fast-moving world of fintech and asset management, Q1 often brings new regulatory pressures and market shifts. So how do you engineer an operations floor that is elastic enough to handle a fast start, but strong enough not to snap under the pressure?

Crazy director. Prioritization. It has to be, I mean, the regulatory pressures are no surprise unless you're being audited by the FCA, usually surprise. So it's really just, if there are too many balls in the air at the same time, you work out which one needs to either stay in the air and which one needs to drop. And focus on those. You know, if we're saying like there's an inelastic team and an elastic demand, you can't beat the team to get more out of them. It won't work over the long term. It's just a matter of working out where the best time is spent and focusing on that. And that could be regulatory, it could be commercial, it could be, you know.

Yeah, I think I really agree. It's also about focusing on doing a few things really well rather than trying to do many things and doing them really badly. So what are the key priorities and doing a really good job on them?

Good stuff.

Thanks.

Sort of tag teaming that answer there, so I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Rich, as fractional CRO and transformation expert, you're often brought in specifically because a company isn't moving fast enough. If a leader spots that trend and realizes come February 1st that they're already behind, what are some of the emergency levers or the emergency lever that they can and should pull to save that quarter?

You've been grilled.

Yeah, I echo something Fiona said, you know, thin out distractions. There's a temptation, especially in Q1, because you certainly plan ahead. There's a lot to do in the year and you want to try and kick it all off in Q1. Actually, you know, that's problematic. So thin out to what's really, really important and just dial down on faux urgency. You know, and actually a symptom we've got at the moment is the scrutiny around decision-making. And what that leads to is a lot of internal, extra internal meetings because there's a sense that consensus will protect people from that. And actually consensus, you know, pace beats perfection and consensus doesn't swerve scrutiny. So I really question the need on a lot of the time that goes into the internal cadences. High performers are ruthless about protecting their time. And that distraction often grows where there is a lack of accountability.

Yeah, no, that's very interesting. Yeah, there are some of these I wish I could follow up, but that's just not the nature of the grill. So unfortunately, I have to move on. Uh, but thank you for your answer there. Um, Neil, finally coming to you. You help organizations bridge the gap between strategy and delivery. Most Q1 plans fail because they are all strategy and no delivery, and we've touched on that already. What is the one thing that leaders get wrong about resource allocation in January that kills their momentum by March?

Boom.

That's definitely a real question. So I think resource allocation, you know, we touched on it with both Fiona, Mark, and Richard about prioritization, but I think really understanding what have you got on the bench to do the things you've got to do, whether it's delivery, finance, sales, understand the capacity you've got and find a way to have the ability to predict the future a little bit. So, you know, not to do a sales pitch, but in Smart Tasker, we have the ability to view our utilization pretty clearly. Which means we can predict surprises 3, 4 months out. So we start to plan for them. So it's really important to do that. There's nothing worse than a strategic plan that gets implemented, gets launched to the business, and everyone's just too busy to do it. So we get the pleasure of spending a lot of time with our clients. One of the trends we definitely see is we're not time poor, but it's prioritizable. We can't really figure out what are the things we need done before we know it, we're into February, March, and we'll retrace it for the rest of the year. So I really think about what are you trying to achieve? Do you have the right resource? Is it in the right place with the right availability to deliver the outcome you're looking for? If it can't do that, then you've got to think of other ways to do it, or it's just not important enough and refocus and reprioritize what you're doing.

Nice.

And I had a bonus question where you could sort of look at that through a smart asking lens, but you've already answered that through a smart asking lens. So thanks. Thank you all. You survived the grill.

Congratulations.

Well done, George. Round of applause for George and his grill. Thank you, George. So in a minute, we're going to you, but before we do, I want to thank the panel. They're going to stay here because you're going to ask them questions, spicy ones, hopefully. So a round of applause for our esteemed panel. Okay, so this is the next bit. This is how it's going to work. Now, I don't want to spend loads of time, so I am going to hold the microphone and not let you hold it. I'm going to come to you. Anyone that asks a question, make sure you want to come on the podcast because you're going to be on it. But we'd really like to hear from you. You can see our esteemed panel. You can also ask George and I. There's no point asking me, but you know, and any questions you like, obviously relevant to the topic. So we probably got time for maybe 3 really good questions. So who wants to go first? BD Dalton and Rockfine Group. The question is, we've been talking about all the stuff that people should do, or you're advising your teams to do. What's one word or thing that you should tell your teams not to do to make Q1 be better?

Nice. Over-engineer processes.

There it is.

Seems to be an applause in the room for that, Fiona. And such a short answer as well. So that's an efficient answer.

And if you're allowed to drop the mic, that was a great question.

Gentleman asks for one more, Dan.

Does anyone else want to comment?

Yeah, just swerve perfection. Embrace imperfection, but still, yeah, exactly. And evolve.

Well, Mark's coming on. He's got his beer down again.

Go on. No, yeah. To Richard's point from a few minutes ago, make decisions.

Yeah, make decisions. Nice. Okay. Thanks, BD. That was a great question.

Okay.

Who wants to go next?

My name is Julian March.

I'm a consultant in positive momentum. Neil made a great point about being able to control things you can control, but not worrying less about things you can't control.

But you sometimes can't control the speed at which your clients want to move. So how do you mitigate that? We, as providers of any kind of service, whether it's internal or external, we try and create false energy and false urgency. Do we really understand the consequences of a project or a transition or a transaction or a transformation? And usually we can't, right? Because we can't calculate the cost of either not happening or the consequences of doing something. So I see most projects and most sales cycles fail, it's just not important enough and we can't create enough energy. So things, but to the last question, just make sure we have clear line of sight of what either the client or the internal function is missing out on, create that energy around there's some consequences on this. You can choose not to do it, but be clear what you're missing out on. Often it gets missed, and I think half the time we're just trying to force urgency when it's just the wrong thing to do. They get pushed out. You get a birthday card and nothing really happens.

That's a great answer. Richard, twitching, you want to kind of say something?

Yeah.

There's a symptom at the moment, and again, sales lens heavily, there's a symptom at the moment of deals disappearing at 60%, and there's a great book called Jolt, and I can't remember the author now. But one of the problems we've got with customers at the moment is the amount of scrutiny on decision-making. And what we're not doing enough of is de-risking deals. So to the point about we can't control customers, we can't, but we can kind of trim the sails to the wind. So, you know, I'm constantly advising people to think about the sales process and how you can take that element of risk out of it so that you can drive safe decision-making on the customer side.

Great.

Thank you both.

Anyone else want to ask? We've got time for maybe two or three. I've got you, Matt.

Anyone else?

Matt Stocker of IPC Information Systems, uh, hold an EVP role for global operations. Uh, my question is, I would respectfully question whether Q1 is actually the start of something or if it's actually Q5 or Q9 of a 2 or 3-year plan. So in terms of taking the momentum from the previous year's performance into the next year, how do you build continuation of existing achievements and successes and decisions versus treating it as a brand new start?

Thanks, Matt.

Great.

Oh, you got a round of applause for that one, mate. Wow. Something to live up to.

Really great question, right? So if you think about I appreciate if you work for a company that's listed on the market, has quarter ends, half year, and the year end things to report on. If you don't, we create a false break in our cycle. My world is when I had a large corporate job, I used to drive finance people around the bend. So I apologize to our finance team in the room is I didn't want to have a year end. I just said next quarter was bigger than last quarter. And I implemented a rolling 18-month plan and let the finance guys try and figure out how they could report on it. I didn't want to have that breaking momentum. I think it applies now more so is we give people a chance to kind of just to create a force energy, try and get things to happen when they don't really need to, rather than just thinking about, well, is next quarter better than the last quarter, but whatever measure, delivery, operations, sales, finance, and keep the momentum going and take away that from people going, oh, it's end of year, I better change my behavior. That's the behavior you should have every day, every week, every month. So I realized that's a great point. Run an 8, 9, 12-month, 12-quarter business. And I think you'll get better continuity and better stability in your business.

Hi, Alastair Forsyth. So I'm from a company called Oryx Align. We provide managed services and professional services. Just let me frame the question because it kind of leads on from the last question. And just to challenge the panel, we use the term strategy quite a lot this evening. And I just wonder whether there's a conflation between strategy in its purest sense and operational planning, which is actually what I think you're referring to, and operational execution, and how we blame operational execution because the senior, senior leadership team doesn't really understand strategy. And therefore, you know, how you build in operational patience, how you build in all the right checks and balances. But ultimately, if the strategy is wrong, then your operational planning and your operational execution is going to be poor. And we tend to blame our teams for not getting things right when actually the strategy is wrong.

Great, great question. So I use the most, I've got a business partner in the room who's going to be wetting himself at this.

We use guiding star and your guiding principle. And then, you know, strategy is something that you're doing. I do think, per the question originally, is a massively overused term, especially at the moment. There's a great adage that says that anybody who's got strategy in their title generally doesn't deliver strategy. And you're just, it plays out day in, day out.

Brilliant. Alison, would you mind? I'm not picking on you, but I think you might have some ideas you can share with us and I think it'd be useful.

So for me, strategy is absolutely about balancing ends, ways, and means. And our responsibility as leaders is to set our teams up for success. And we've spoken to it in terms of supercharging business plans, where you could do 20 things poorly, or you could do 5 things right. Those 5 things have to be absolutely nail down, and that is the North Star. That's the main effort. You know, you concentrate on that in a way that actually you allow your teams to operate in a way that you're not having to necessarily second-guess decisions that have been made at the lower level that allow you to achieve that tempo. But for me, strategy absolutely sits at the top and everything else flows from that. And if you don't have that strategy, you're right. Then you're just making gravy.

Thank you, Alistair. Okay, I'm going to take one more. David, did you still want to ask, or Mark? Thanks, Gary.

Mark Petty, portfolio director, a number of companies. I understand the premise behind winning in Q1, but I actually think it's won in the previous financial year. You should be always looking to exit a year with a bigger pipeline than you went into it.

But if you're in an organization and you find yourself without that pipeline as you enter into Q1, What emergency measures do you then enact to try and catch up? If you're in emergency measures, you've got to focus on not throwing enough at the wall that some of it sticks. So you've got to make sure that you're focusing. I said it before, but you focus on the deals that you know that you can win. You've got competitive advantage and that you want to win as well because they make sense for your business. So focusing on those and then getting the right resource behind those. So if you haven't got enough pipeline, the one thing you've got to do is you've got to improve your metrics, right? So you've got to improve your conversion ratios.. But at the same time, you still want to make sure that people are going back to making sure you don't have the same problem when you go into Q2. So it's a cyclical thing, right? So you've got to make sure people are making the right amount of calls, doing the right campaigns, making sure they're going out and have enough face-to-face meetings, all that kind of good sales 101 stuff. But in the short term, you've got to close your ratios. So you've got to throw everything at it. That means exec engagement at their exec, making sure you've got the right people talking to the right people and closing stuff out and back into Neil's point from a few minutes ago, you know, there's stuff that's out of your control. You've got to have enough in there to cover that. So there will always be unexpected things that customers sometimes tell you what you want to hear. You've got to make sure you've got enough coverage in there, but going into the year with not enough pipeline is a really scary place to be. You've got to really knuckle down and just concentrate on closing those metrics.

Absolutely. Thank you guys. Well, we've got time for one more question. David's been putting his hand up and I've been ignoring him for— in an ideal world, Q1, always goes well, but in reality, it doesn't always happen. So what do you do when it goes wrong? You know, how do you make that difference in Q2, 3, 4, and so on?

I think it really depends what sort of business you're in. If you're in a very transactional business, there might be some things that you can do in that quarter. If you're not, then I think you've got to switch the focus to how you can make up in the first half. And that might be looking outside the business. And again, from a sales perspective, it might be looking at, you know, lead development agencies or putting more money into marketing or doubling up on events or, you know, to get the top of the funnel really rocking so that you can double up in Q2 and try and claw it back.

I think you also have to recognize that there's nothing you can do about a disastrous first quarter other than looking at quarters 2, 3, and 4 and seeing if you can address what happened in quarter 1 and not repeat it. It's almost that's done, move on, let's focus on quarter 2 and get it right. And, you know, the narrative then becomes you had a bad first quarter, but the rest of the year went as planned rather than beautifully bad year.

That's a really good point because the narrative does, and scrutiny follows swiftly after it. And there is nothing more demotivating to a team that actually you're really highly dependent on now. So I think, you know, language is everything. And actually these are the moments where leadership shine, right?

Or step up. Exactly, exactly right. That's where as a leadership, you've got to say, park it. You can't change it. We can only affect the future. You've got to create more energy, more positivity about what they're going to do to pull things back because the negative environment just spirals very quickly.

I'd just like to thank our panel for their expert advice. It's been really amazing. Round of applause. Fantastic stuff. I, I would absolutely like to thank you for the people that ask questions, but also as an audience bearing with. Hope you enjoyed it. So round of applause for you. And it's 10 years for Smart Tasking and it's 5 years for the Company Doctor podcast. We'd love you to interact with the podcast, listen to it, get something out of it. But also, if you want to be a guest, then reach out to me because we're always looking for guests and you're a really interesting bunch of people. We can discuss the topics together and find something that you could be on. So the door's open to all of you.

Thanks for listening. And of course, a massive thanks to the panel and the audience for braving the winter weather and joining us at the Bike Shed. Keep an eye on our socials for details of more upcoming live events and tune in for the next episode where Gary and I will be discussing all things coaching. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.