Becoming Optional at Your Agency, Leadership Training, and Building Personal Warmth with Karl Sakas

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray Mackenzie from Zenpilot. And today I've got the special, special privilege of bringing on our first fourth time podcast guest, agency consultant, well known agency expert, and my friend, Carl Sakis. Carl, welcome to the podcast.

Great. Great to be back.

It is great to have you here again. Let's just set the stage real quickly for anyone who has not heard you on a previous appearance here of Agency Journey. What do you do, who do you serve and how do you help them?

As an agency advisor, I help agency owners find ways to work less and earn more, whether that's preparing for an exit or to continue running a lifestyle business. And amidst that, also helping agency employees find new professional growth opportunities. Because if the owner is working less and earning more, the team will be stepping up and they can get promoted and compensated accordingly.

Yeah, that's awesome. So you nicely brought up the working title here of your most recent book, not your last book. I'm sure there's plenty more in you and some in the works, but work less, earn more. When did this come out?

Earlier in 2023 for the paperback, Kindle and hardcover. And this fall, the Audible version just came out that I narrated, available on audiobook worldwide.

How was the narration experience?

I thought it would be relatively straightforward from doing public speaking and things like that, and that part helped. The challenge was that you have to deliver everything perfectly. And you're also, I didn't realize this. You know, you've got the pop filter right in front of your face, so you're trying to kind of look past that around it to see, to see the, the pages. So if anyone's looking to, you know, record a book, be ready for that. Also, Audible says you don't need to record the front matter or the back matter, which they didn't share until later. So if you're looking to an audiobook, plan ahead.

That's amazing. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, everyone says eat the mic and then you've got the pop filter. Yeah. Reading would be more challenging in that setup, especially if you're. How are you reading it? Were you reading it off a digital version like the Kindle version, or were you reading an actual paper copier?

I decided to do the print version. So the studio engineer was looking at PDF, I was using the print version and that. That seemed to work well. Yeah, all is considered. But yeah, that. So it's. People don't. I've had some clients say to me they don't like reading, but they like listening. So that is why I did the audio version.

That's great. Well, let's talk about what's in the book and let's talk about how we can step up as leaders kind of in our agency. So work less, earn more. I was going back through it again today and there's so much. In fact this is going to be terrible because I'm. Most people are going to listen, but a few people will watch this and so I just want to pull up a couple pages. You do such a good job in here. Of. There's some illustrations in the, in the book. You do a really nice job of using bold directly in it, like just, just taking the basic text and then just formatting it differently. There's a lot more bold in here than in most books, but it's not like here's a whole paragraph that's bolded. It's like here's a phrase or whatever. And then there's all these like worksheet style stuff throughout the book. Oh, I'm holding it up and I've got my camera that's probably blurring out half of it. But anyways, it's really nicely formatted in that way to be like a very actionable, practical book. So it's helpful for me reading through it and it's been helpful to be able to recommend to other folks and say, hey, it's not like you're reading 600 pages and then, you know, you go do your own stuff out of it. It's like, no, read, you know, four or five pages and then do the exercise off of that. Where did that. But that's not what all of your. I don't think you've written any 600 page books. But not all of your past work has looked like. Has looked like this. How did you think about or what. What were you trying to accomplish with the book?

My goal was that people could, on a do it yourself basis, find ways to work less and earn more. It came from my Work Lesser and More Boot camp, which I developed as an eight week program cohort of other agency owners and CEOs kind of thing. Going through your individual journey on work Lesser and more but supporting each other. I was like, I can't offer that all the time. Right? So what about people who need help in the meantime? And that was how the book came about. And a lot of the exercises in the book, including place to write in if you've got the print version kind of thing, came from the bootcamp program. And I actually created a 40 plus page workbook to support the book. It's available free of charge at work lessearnmorebook.com you can sign up to get the free workbook kind of thing. You know, basically my goal was it should be strong enough to potentially cannibalize people paying for the boot camp or my consulting services figuring of course some people will want more help and then I'm glad to help so that that the idea of the different exercises key part of building from my operations background. I want people to make progress and that's one way to do it.

Right. I thought we could start here as part of this as well. And we want to go through chapter by chapter in the book. But we can't desire what we don't imagine or we don't desire what we can't imagine either way. And so you say work less, earn more. And to somebody who's working away in an agency that they've been at for eight years and they're making $120,000 a year and they're working 55 hour weeks, that imagination often looks like, boy, I bet it could work. Like maybe if I read this book I could work 45 hours a week and I could make $150,000 when like way more, way, way greater stuff is possible. What are some examples of folks? And you give a whole bunch in the book here, but maybe you could share some examples of folks who found ways to work less and earn more. Sure.

One of the key things here is that you want to start by getting clear on where you want to go. What does success look like for you? Do you want an exit? If so, what's your target timeline? What are your target terms? Because that has a big impact. Do you want to sell for 5 million or 3 million or 100 million? Those are all very different. And also, do you want to do that in two years, 10 years to be determined? Like those all make impact. So it helps to become clear on where you want to go. If you're seeking to run a lifestyle agency, don't pay attention to those SaaS startup articles saying you should grow this mega scaled business and have enormous exit if that's what you don't want. Some of my clients who lean toward lifestyle have said things like why would I sell? I would just go off and start a new agency kind of thing. And yeah, I mean that's fine. One of the example clients that I share in the book is Chris Hyler of Landscape Leadership. His agency focuses on marketing and sales for companies in the green industry, lawn, landscaping, Things like that. And one of his priorities was to, well, work less and earn more. I wasn't calling it that at the time when we started working together. And part of that has included building succession, planning and support for his team. And as I share in the Work Lesser and More book, he reported back that he had ultimately cut his hours in half and doubled his income thanks to the techniques that we've described in the book and for sure, hard work along the way and good team members. The. It's not a magical solution. You're going to have to do some work to get there. But it, but it's an investment. I saw a description of, you know what, what is the meaning of an investment? It's about committing resources, time, money, emotional energy, what, what have you today for an expected payoff in the future.

Right.

So you can't keep doing what you've been doing and expect things to magically change, but you can make some relatively small changes if you make the right choices to have a big payoff in the future.

Yeah. I'm going to ask you the obvious question of how do I work less and earn more? But before we get there, do you think there's some magic in work less, earn more? Because you've got a whole bunch of people. I think the majority of people say, that'd be great. I'd love to work less and earn more. But you've got some folks who would fall into the category. And we've worked with some of these folks who are like, I don't need to earn anymore. I'm pretty happy where I am and I just want to work less.

Yeah.

I wouldn't turn it down. Right.

If you consider the different combinations I've had some people say, for instance, my income is fine, but I want to work less.

Yep.

Or maybe they're like, I don't mind working a lot of hours, but I want to get paid for it.

Right.

And then some people want both. The key thing with all of this is you get to pick your own version. In the book, I share a few combinations. For instance, you know, if you're living in a high cost of income city and the goal is to stay there, you know, your version of earn more is going to be higher than someone in a smaller town. For instance, that, that kind of thing, you get to pick what your target is and then you can work toward it.

Have you seen any core? So I think I would fall into the category of like, hey, I've got ambitious earning goals and I like working hard along the way. So I don't have a desire to work less. I probably will always have a desire to earn more. And at some point in time, who knows, both of those could change. But is there any magic in the idea of working? Basically what I'm asking is, is working less part of the key to earning more?

It doesn't have to be. I think it's something that people tend to want some combination of both. And I would say also to your point where your goal is earn more and it's not necessarily work less or work a lot less in your case, you're probably in a category of people where you want to do things you enjoy and things that have a high payoff, for sure. For instance, if someone is working 50 hours a week and they're fine with that, they usually want to focus on things that will give them the best ROI on that time, either for whatever the payoff might be or just that they enjoy the most. You know, if you're doing 50 hours of things that you really like, that could be better than doing 40 hours of things you hate.

Right.

And the book is about, of course, getting to whatever your ideal is.

Yep. Okay, so we've defined the ideal. Now we've got a goal. How do we work less and earn more?

The next step is to understand where you fall on what I would call the day to day involvement meter. So imagine a fuel gauge where you've got from empty to full. And there are four stages of day to day involvement. And as people are listening, think about which of these seem to be where you are now. And you can be in more than one at once. You might be more optional, for instance, in your sales process, less optional in other ways. But you know, as people are thinking along stage one, you are mandatory. And yes, for the video, we've got the gauge there. You know, initially, stage one, you're mandatory. You can never get away. You know, you couldn't go out to lunch without something blowing up along the way. You can get to stage two. That's where you are necessary. Things are somewhat better. You can be away for a day or two and your team's handling more. Sometimes they're making choices that you have to fix later that create problems. But you know, it's getting better. That's stage two. Stage three is a lot better. That's when you are now needed, not necessary. You could go on vacation for a week or two and things generally are running fine. You're focused on things you generally like doing for the most part kind of thing. And some people choose to stay there Stage three needed. But if you want, and this is especially important if you want to have an exit, but it works if you're committed to running a lifestyle agency. You would go from stage three from needed to stage four, which I call optional. And at that point you are just that you are optional. You don't need to be there all the time and you're doing things that you enjoy doing. Again, you can be in more than one stage at once. For instance, you might be, you know, mandatory as the sales closer but optional for doing the initial screening. You know, think things like that. Or maybe you've delegated your subject matter expert work and your project management. But maybe you're still doing account management and client strategy. And maybe your goal is to get out of doing account management but keep doing high end client strategy. You could do whatever you want. The key is to understand where you are now and where you want to go. Are you pursuing optional stage four or are you happy with stage three becoming needed? And there are certain things you can do to move up each of those steps, but that's the important next step. Understand where you are and where you want to go.

I would imagine and take this, take this where you want to take this piece. But a big piece of becoming optional is obviously your own leadership skills but also growing leaders internally to be able to step up and replace you for sure.

Yes, here's something not to do. I spoke in an agency conference was four years ago and I shared the concept of work lesser and more and the four stages. And afterwards an agency owner said this sounds great. I'm currently mandatory stage one. I want to get to optional. She said I want to get there in a year. She didn't really have a full time team. She said I want to hire someone who's like a rising star and I want to pay them only 75,000 a year and I only want to hear from them three times a year. I said that probably is not going to work. You know, if they're rising star, they're certainly going to expect more than 75,000 a year. Especially if you're expecting them to contact you only once every four months. Like that's, that that's unlikely. And to get there in a year, you know, probably not. I, I never heard from her again. But you know, the good news is you can make progress and a lot of that is about building up your team. For instance, if you don't have currently don't have a strong number two, that would be an important place to Start and it's going to take time to develop them. If you don't have a number two in place already and, and, or you don't have a candidate who's on your team already, it could take a year and a half to find them and take them through a process to get them ready to handle things. On the other hand, if you have someone who's high potential, it could certainly go faster. Some of it depends on the individual. And ultimately you want to build a ramp up plan for them. I mean you really want a new higher ramp up plan for any role at your agency. What do you expect from them in month one, month two, three and so on? This is workable for any agency role. I have an article about that where I share some sample plans for a salesperson, for account manager, an operations person and so on. But what is the ramp up plan? And for a lot of agencies, people will be in a certain role, if they meet certain metrics, then they get promoted and they get promoted. So for instance, you know, maybe someone is in a manager role and if, and you know, they have potential, you've talked with them about, you know, their future path, potential path, maybe they'll go to a director role and then maybe they'll go to a VP role. And after vp, maybe they'll go depending, maybe CEO, maybe they'll be managing director, maybe after that, perhaps depending on the path you're looking for, maybe president, maybe eventually becoming CEO if you want to become the chair of your agency. The key with that though is to have a phased process. Don't just desperately take someone who has high potential and make them the CEO or the president or the coo if that's not where they are now because you're throwing them into the deep end of the pool without giving them the support they need. You know, good team members can deal with a lot of challenges, but it is unfair to them and to yourself to not have a phased ramp up plan. Because you need to see do people succeed as they grow. I saw this in volunteering through the American Marketing association where eventually I was chapter president here in North Carolina. And the usual progression for succession planning, and this was an important thing we did for volunteer recruiting, is people would start as a committee member, then they would become a director leading a particular team on one of the groups. Then they might go from being one of two to six directors to being VP for their area. And then if they wanted, they might pursue becoming president elect and then president. And sometimes people found that they liked being at a lower level in the hierarchy. Maybe they liked being a director and focusing on one area rather than being a VP where they had to oversee lots of areas, things like that. So that's just some initial thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think it's a helpful framework. I know firsthand and you know here, as I'm sure you do every week the folks who are like hey, I'm overwhelmed here. I, I want to bring some, I've got somebody identified who's high potential and the temptation is like hey, I don't know if I can survive long enough to let them ramp up towards whatever but 100% it's unfair to, to push somebody along that path. It's not, it's not just unfair. I think there's lots of things in life that are unfair. It's just unwise I guess would be the better.

Pragmatically it's not going to work.

Right.

Right. They're overwhelmed and they quit. Then they're not going to take over for you and.

Yep.

To two years, three years, what have you.

Right, right. That's exactly right. So a ramp up plan is huge. Are there other key things. I know that you've got an entire boot camp coming around the topic of leadership.

Yeah.

Are there other things along those lines that we should be looking for implementing to build up great leaders?

Consider the the right approach for your agency around training, coaching and on the job experience. So my recommended training, my recommended entry level manager training is from manager tools@manager-tools.com they have an 8 hour effective manager training. I've done their in person version years ago. Send my operations manager to do their virtual version. So it's manager-tools.com it covers things like coaching, doing one on ones, sharing feedback, things like that, core things that are really helpful. And even if you have a lot of experience as a manager but have never had formal training, I would recommend it. That's a good starting point. Then you have to decide what to do from there. Is it more about leadership and management training in that case doing something like my Agency Leadership Intensive which is an eight week virtual leadership development program for agency owners and executives. That's an option. You may choose to do training that's more technical in nature depending on the work they're doing. For instance, if someone is going to become the VP of account services, maybe you want to do specific training about account management. You know that kind of thing. I have versions of that. Jenny Plant in the UK has a year long and other programs to do that kind of thing. And, and then you know, and then the question is, what do you do after that training wise? And as LOS gets into coaching, you need to coach people. Just because people have the potential and they have the training doesn't mean they're still not going to struggle in the moment as things go. And that's where coaching comes in. You know, if you are not meeting with each of your direct reports every week for at least a 30 minute one on one meeting and O3, as manager tool says, you're missing a lot of opportunities and you might be like, well, I've got five people reporting to me, that's two and a half hours a week. And I'm like, those are a great investment of two and a half hours a week. And if you have 20 people reporting to you, you have too many people reporting to you, so fix that as well. But so coaching people and then some of it on the on the job side is people just need to get that experience themselves, right? They just need to go through that experience. Another powerful thing which you can get with my agency leadership intensive and other programs is doing a 360 evaluation, getting feedback from people that you work with today who report to you or peers potentially. If you're in an agency executive role, if you have a business partner as well as past bosses and past colleagues from before you joined or started your agency, that can be really helpful. And you know, if you want to do the really all in approach to leadership development, that could include doing ongoing executive coaching. I've worked with my own coach, I coach clients, but I've worked with my own coach for eight years and it's great. You could also do a more boot camp in person type program. I did one of those over a decade ago from Gornell Leadership Gornell and it's their leadership jumpstart. So you're basically at the beach in North Carolina for a week. But it is not a vacation, it's not therapy. But I would describe it as sort of similar to two years of therapy in a week. You assessments ahead of time, you do the 360. It's intense but you come out of it. And for me it was life changing. The feedback I got, I completed it when I was 30. I thought I was a pretty good manager. I'd been in different roles and so on. The feedback was that effectively from the 360s I was good at getting things done, but not at making it fun for the people around me. That was sobering. Or as one of the other Pissman said, you can't be a Leader if no one wants to follow you. And that was a wake up call. I could have chosen to ignore that feedback and to sort of proceed it as is. But I realized there was going to be a limit on how far I could go if I didn't fix that. And so I made a number of changes. One of those was reading the book the Human Brand by Chris Malone and Susan Fisk. They talk about the idea of warmth and competence. Competence is getting the job done, which, you know, I was good at doing. Wormth was you make people around you feel special, that you care about them. And so I've adopted that, including in my volunteer leadership and in my work at Seikus & Co. And clients. And it has been transformative. So if you haven't done a 360 eval, I would recommend.

I wanted to pull back to the book, but I can't after you share that. Because I think I'm, you know, that person who's like way over index on competence and under index on warmth likely. And I think that's probably different too virtually versus in person. I think it's much the warmth thing is much harder for me virtually. So are there anything, any other tips you can share that have worked well to raise that warmth score for you as a leader and manager?

Some of it is just taking time to ask how people are doing and to follow up. You know, maybe they mentioned that, you know, you've got a team member and they have kids and they're involved in sports or dance or scouting or things like that. And maybe they mentioned, you know, their child had a recital, ask how did it go? Or they had a big game, how did that go? Kind of thing. You're showing that you care about them as a person, not just as a worker, which is a long time challenge. One of my grandfathers was a business professor and consultant for 40 some years and I read some of his research from the 1950s. His focus was what we now call organizational behavior. And he found that employees at large corporations said they wished their manager would treat them as a person rather than just a warm room. So you know, if, if you feel like, oh, asking like, you know, how's your day going or how's your week going? Or how, you know, like is it a waste of time? It is not a waste of time to the person you ask.

Yeah.

Also, you know, I mentioned the 30 minute one on one meeting, the O3, you know, so like one on one kind of thing which comes from manager tools. I use that technique with my own team and the framework they have is October 10th. 10. 10 minutes to ask whatever the employee wants to discuss. 10 minutes of what you, as the manager want to discuss. Although in my experience, most of the stuff on my list the employee will bring up earlier. And then 10 minutes about planning for the future, which could be around professional development. It could be around other things, around their career trajectory or maybe longer term projects that they're working on, things like that. I got a comment from a team member several years ago who at that point was in her mid-30s. And she said after the first o3, she said, this is the first time a manager has ever asked what she wanted to talk about.

Yeah.

Or another example. And you know, this works remotely or I'm doing the O3s remotely as well. In my volunteering, I would send thank you notes to people and notes in general about appreciating what they were doing. And one of the volunteers on my team had helped run an event. So I sent for a note and it was sort of my usual routine. I spend about $1,500 a year on postage. And I sent the note and I heard from her a few days later when she had gotten the note, and she was like, thank you for sending that. I've worked in marketing for 20 years and I've never gotten a thank you note from a boss before. Small things add up. You still need to create a good environment for team members and make sure it's not a. A roller coaster. You know, part of work lesser and more, is making your agency more stable, more sustainable, and less of the, you know, wild swings, which is going to help with your retention. But small things matter.

Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about leadership. I think warmth is helpful. We've talked about defining success and understanding kind of the gauge of where we sit in terms of how necessary we are to the firm. What else? Like, where do we go from there?

You need to apply what you've learned and keep learning for the rest of your life. I mean, I'm. I'm being a little glib there, but I mean, in my case, I've invested. I was doing an estimate at one point in terms of investing in my own leadership development, something like tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours if we include some of my volunteer leadership development work with my own coach, therapist, doing the leadership development programs and things like that. It never ends. But it is worth considering that if you are the owner of an agency, you are a manager, you are managing people, even if you delegate a lot of it maybe you are the CEO and you have a COO or a president who's overseeing everyone or almost everyone. Or maybe you manage the COO and the sales and marketing team and your own assistant, but everyone else is instructed there. You're still managing people. And if you don't like managing people, one of the things to consider is do you want to run an agency? The management portion will never go away. But it also doesn't have to be so hard. If all of your approach to management and leadership is based on past, perhaps dysfunctional bosses. They were doing the best they could with what they had. Probably. But that doesn't mean you have to keep doing it the same way. But it's a choice. And some of that choice could include investing time. You know, the work Lesser and more book is under 200 pages long. If you listen to the audiobook, it's four hours or faster if you listen to it at, you know, faster than 1x speed. But like anything in life, it's what you do with it. You know, if you read or listen to the book, don't do any of the exercises, don't go to get the free workbook at work lessrun. More book dot com. You're probably not going to get as much of an impact as if you invest time in doing the exercises and applying Things and getting 360feedback from your team. Like you don't have to do the Agency Leadership Intensive to get that 360 feedback. There are tools online to do it. They're not cheap, but you know, there are options kind of thing. Whereas if you choose to put your head in the sand and, you know, not listen, you're not going to grow. And if you want to grow, you can. But it'll take choosing a commitment to do it and then implementing.

Right. Yeah. Step up and lead.

Yes.

Tell me a little bit more about this boot camp that's coming up.

Yeah, so this is the agency Leadership Intensive. It is an eight week long virtual boot camp, virtual program for exclusively agency owners and C level executives. So you don't have to be an owner, but you need to be in the top management team at the agency. The last time I did the program, the leadership intensive, it was 2/3 owners, 1/3 executives. You can bring more than one person from the, from the agency if you like. We had that last time where people said it really helped to have the same language with their closest colleagues. But you know, what do you get from it? You'll do the 360 eval, so you'll get Private feedback from people you've worked with over the years, anonymously. You'll get tips to build your leadership and management toolbox. You'll build your network of agency leaders from all over the world. This year we already have applications from people in three different countries. So you're getting a global perspective. And ultimately you're going to build a custom 60 day plan to help you grow in 2024. And you can use the framework and all the tools to keep repeating that, to grow from there, from people who did the previous program, you know, feedback. People love being part of that cohort. You know, people, some people stayed in touch with, others from the program afterwards, that kind of thing. And you know, I, I love hearing from people who share that things have gotten better for them at their agency. And, you know, that's just really, really rewarding. The agency Leadership Intensive is by application only. I want to make sure that the cohort is filled with people who are motivated, who want to improve and who want to support each other. So you can't just buy a ticket and join. You have to apply. But the application takes less than 10 minutes for most people. And I'll get back to you within a couple weeks. And pricing is tiered, so the sooner you apply, the lower your ticket price. So if, you know, you're watching this now, the applications for the March and April program, 2024, close at the end of February. So if you're hearing this before the end of February, it's not too late. You go to seikus and company.com, go to training and you can learn more.

Perfect. Make sure we link that up. I think that it's a really valuable resource though, for folks who are serious about taking what we've talked about here and applying it and all the, you know, all the stuff that we know we should do or we'd like to make a move in this direction, like, yes, I think you hit the nail on that earlier. Like, hey, we just got to step up. We start somewhere and start applying, applying.

What we've learned to turn things around. Is there anything you're going to do differently or follow up on from what we've discussed?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the thing you said, what did you say, $1,500 a year in postage? Yes, something like that. So I was writing down, you know, I've probably, teenage years would write down like, you know, a New Year's resolution at New Year's and went a while without any, like, official resolution, then tried some different periods. And so anyways, I've kind of moved to like hey Q4, I'm going to start thinking about it and I'm going to start I kind of get to try stuff on for size and before it's a new year I get to start you know, doing whatever. And so one of those things has been write a letter. It's got to go in an envelope and be sealed every day. Doesn't have to get mailed every day and only every weekday. I'm not going to make myself doing seven days a week, but a little bit lower. And so through the end of the year I'm writing and sealing one, at least one letter every day. And so following up on that and making that a personal touch point with with team members as well is a thing I've started. So we run on eos and you know, each quarter kind of the rock champions who from my who out of my direct reports have done really well on rocks. I want to find ways to reward around that as well. You know, you hit the 80% bar or whatever that looks like and have some, some gifts, some things from that. So that's this is kind of fresh in my mind and you mentioned that it's been super helpful. So I did that this quarter and did totally personalized or customized gifts for folks and But I think one of the things that I want to do that I wrote down is you were talking about I if my camera was shaking, it's because I was typing and my keyboard was moving here. But extend that beyond just my immediate team. I think coming from the owner of the company, I think it be more impactful to other team members who are not send my direct reports.

So absolutely helpful. And you can talk to your direct reports to learn more about people of like they love this. They love they spent a lot of time in this that kind of thing to give you some ideas and some of it, I mean even, even small things add up. For instance, I had a client that worked with Aramark, the sort of the services company. And I was in Australia for a trip and I noticed that right across from my hotel was the regional headquarters in Australia for Earamark. So I took a photo and I texted them a photo and was like hey, it's Earamark. Or I was in a vintage shop and they had like clippings of vintage ads from the 1960s from you know, magazines. And one of them was for a particular type of product that one of my clients specializes in for their marketing. So I sent them this. You know, ad from the 1960s for things their clients would be selling now. And I actually just heard back. They, they've received it and they're going to get it framed.

That's awesome. Those, those little touches and the, the people who are good at this stick out in your mind. So, so, you know, I can think of a half dozen. I think of like, I don't know if you know Jeremy Wise from Rise 25, but he's excellent at wherever he, you know, he was out in San Diego and took a picture of ClickUp and just texted it to me. And it's just like little, you know, people who are good at. Oh, here's this, this random thing that I came across. James Carberry from Sweetfish Media, I think is really good at this. Hey, I'm coming to Pittsburgh. I know you're there and you like baseball. I'm going to a Pirates game. You're going to go, hey, like, just some folks who are, like, those people stick out in your mind who are good about go. It's, it's not. Sometimes it's bigger, but often it's just small things that, hey, they just thought of you. And there are some indications instead of doing what most of us do when we think of somebody like, oh, yeah, like Carl's great, actually send a text or send a, you know, send a message.

Yeah.

Write a note or something. It's meaningful.

Yeah, you're right. A lot of people, or maybe most people don't, but I think once you get into the habit of it, just like for anyone listening, once you get into the habit of it, it becomes very easy.

Right. Well, this has been great. Well, I know we went over, so. I told you I'd get you out of here on time. I'm close to that. But, Carl, this has been awesome. We'll put all the links and resources that you mentioned today in the show Notes. Thanks so much for joining me here for the fourth time on Agency Journey.

Thank you and good luck.