Stop pushing HUMANS with pressure and start CLEARING THE PATH for them.

Sa. Good afternoon, LinkedIn friends. Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First Humans, with our favorite Value First Human, George B. Thomas. Happy Tuesday, my friend.

Happy Tuesday, brother. How the heck are you doing?

I'm doing great. This is by far my favorite opening because I get to say our favorite value first Human, George B. Thomas. Yeah, throw that out there.

I let you do it each time, but I was like, ah, at least I'm human and I might add some value. But, you know.

Yeah, that's, that's the thing. This framework, it just let the words do what the words do. Like, let's not overthink it.

Yep.

And today we're talking about commitment Number five. We're on. We did, we did a first episode talking about Superhuman framework where this kind of like jumping off point into some value first stuff. And this is our fifth commitment that I'm just going to get into and then, and then we'll dive into some conversation. Number five is we will remove barriers rather than add pressure. We believe naturally. We believe value naturally wants to flow between willing participants. When obstacles are removed, we commit to identifying and eliminating the friction points that prevent people from connecting with valuable solutions rather than adding artificial pressure. This means we will identify and eliminate unnecessary steps in customer journeys. Rather than adding qualification gates, we will simplify processes to reduce cognitive burden and friction. Rather than extracting maximum information before providing value, we will make information freely available rather than using it as bait for lead capture. We will remove artificial gates that block natural progression rather than creating conversion requirements. And we will focus on making it easier to engage rather than creating incentives that feel manipulative. We can. That's no problem, right, George?

Yeah, everybody's already doing that. Why are we meeting today? No, listen, it sounds. Maybe it sounds easy, maybe it doesn't sound easy. Maybe it sounds difficult. Maybe you hear Chris say that and you're like, well, how in the world would I even be in business? Like, how. What would that look like? So I'm, I'm, I'm interested to see where we, where we head down the road today, but I can tell you that even I have kind of got captured up into this sometimes. No pun intended. You know, literally the other night, I, I might tell the story as we kind of go through this, but the other night I was laying in bed and I'm like, why did I, why did I make the choice to add that feature? Like, maybe I should just remove that feature because, like, isn't the ultimate Go xyz? Well, is that feature actually putting a barrier for them to get to XYZ and like. And I did it out of habit until I rethought about. Anyway. So like, yeah, I'm, I think it's a part of this conversation is going to be about breaking habits and reprogramming your iOS in your brain and in your business to be able to do some of these things that we're going to talk about.

Yeah. And. Or let's dive into what. See what those barriers look like. I think there's some obvious ones but also there's some, some hidden ones too. So the obvious ones, like so easy to talk, so easy to talk about gated content.

Yep.

You know, requiring forms of form, yet it's still persistent. Like that's why we're here. Like we got to get the message through at some point. Mandatory demos before pricing. Visibility. Multiple steps before talking to a human. Information scattered across disconnected systems. But some hidden ones, internal handoffs that make customers repeat themselves. Processes that are optimized for our convenience as the business and not the convenience of the customers. Qualification that filters out people who don't fit our assumptions. And communication. This is a big one in the HubSpot ecosystem. Communication that requires people to adapt to our language and our timeline. If you're not sure what that means, it's a barrier. When you have to explain deals. The word deals in HubSpot, when people are used to saying opportunity. Right. And not everybody is there to listen to that explanation about deals. That means it's a barrier. Right.

Well, I think you can even go deeper than that. Like the amount of, especially in our space marketing and HubSpot, the amount of jargonese that there is. Right. It's a CRM for a CMS for a xy, blah, blah, blah. Like it's just, you know, one of the things that I think I'll say it's a God given talent because I don't think I'm smart enough to actually do it, but it just happens is being able to simplify the complex and, and that's what I would want businesses to do. By the way, it might be a great AI assistant prompt. Write the thing that you're gonna write and then ask it to rewrite this in the level of simplifying the complex for mere mortal humans and then read what it actually spits out. It might, it might be very interesting what you get. But like the acronyms got to go. The, you know, the thing that you made up six years ago and you're, you're tied to because it's your Baby's got to go. Like, it has to be, especially now in the world that we're moving into, it has to be all about them. Like, we've said it for years. It's, you know, what's in it for me? What's in it for we? Like, no, it's, it's literally, we got to flip that. What is in it for them? And how do we present it, talk about it, build the journey. Them, them. And then what does that make us do as an organization? Like, I, again, today, I literally had a meeting. And there's a way that we do things, Chris. We do things at Psychic Strategies and we do partnerships, AKA retainers, and we do it based on hours. And I'm talking to this client and I'm vibing with this client and I'm like, man, they're gonna be cool to work with. And they're like, yeah, unfortunately, we can't do a partnership. We can't do a retainer. Now I could immediately have been like heels in the ground. Sorry, that's just how we do things here. But I decided to remove barriers and say, you know what? All right, here's the thing. We can do the same pricing. We just won't call it a retainer. We'll say it's a one time thing. And we know in 30 days you're not going to use this anymore, or in 30 days you're going to decide that you actually do want to turn on a partnership because it'll be the new year. So we'll just do a one time project based on hours for this. And they're like, yep, send over the quote. It's it by, by the way, it was the same thing, right? For the same price, for the same amount of time. Just positioned as a one time thing instead of a partnership. Over time, you gotta. We're in a world where you have to be, I'll say nimble, maybe flexible, maybe. The word I'm looking for is you actually care about the outcome that you can create for the human more than you care about the stringent static process that you have in your organization. I'll shut up.

I'll shut up. Oh, that's a perfect example of removing the barrier. And that's where it helps, like the upfront decision that there won't be like, we will find barriers and be ready to remove them at any cost. Because I remember when we first started working together, before I became a consultant, I was like, george, how do you get away with this? Two line terms and conditions? Like, it's literally like just be a good human. That's, that's basically what it says. Yeah, be a good human. I'll be a good human. And if it doesn't work, okay, like no long term contracts. And I've started using that as well. And it's just when you can show up that way, first of all, of course the other person says yes when you like, like switch. Oh yeah, that's cool. We can do it that way.

Yeah.

Now since your system already like plans for that, basically, you know that it is just month one and we can call it whatever your process needs to call it.

Yeah. What's funny, Chris, is that you brought that up because the amount of humans who, when I say in the initial, like discovery call, by the way, I don't even call it a sales call. It's like a discovery call where we're discovering if I'm a good fit or they're a good fit. When I say, yeah. One thing I really hated about working in agency life was Everybody wanted a six month or 12 month retainer. We don't do that. We want to make sure we're doing good work for you. So the only thing we do is ask for a 30 day notice if you want to up the amount of hours you need or just not use this anymore. Either way, no harm, no foul, but just 30 days is all we ask. And their facial expression is like, where has this been my entire life? Right here at Psychic Strategies. That's where it's been. But it, but it was because I hated the way it felt historically when we had to say that. The other thing is, I always make fun of like, listen, just so you know, we don't live in points, we live in hours. Like it's seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. So when we do our billing, it's based on hours. And people are like, oh, thank God, just thank God. You know, the amount of people we've talked to and they try to do this point structure that's confusing as all. And, and we don't know what in the world it means anyway. I'm like, yeah, no, we're not going to do that. Like, how about we just keep this human?

Yeah, all that stuff creates like those are all the barriers. And because they're there, then we create pressure on the other side. Like the points is a good example. The pressure becomes, I gotta, I gotta use the points. Like let me think of something I might not need in this moment. Or the account manager on the other side is like, hey man, let's get on a call, let's, let's figure out how to use these points.

Yeah.

Both of them are like, yeah, it doesn't even, it doesn't feel right. Right. And that's where I, I'm running into this a lot. Like, especially as the hourly and like AI approach starts to clash like hardcore. Right. Because I'll say, I mean I doubt you operate differently than you did back then. There was an hourly like allotment.

Yeah.

For, for Chris at his previous job. But yeah, it went up some months, it went down some months and we never even like talked about number of hours used and the relief. Like you mentioned, I've started getting in, finding a way into relationships like that now.

Yeah.

Just the release.

Talk about that. Can I talk about that? Yeah.

So.

Because people, I don't want people to think that I'm crazy and I definitely don't want the people to think that the people that I help are crazy because of what we do. But I can tell you the amount of times that I've had anybody ask, have we used our hours in the last four years is maybe one time, one client. And by the way, that client has never asked again and that client is still a client.

So.

So everybody knows. But when you have, because we're talking about remove all barriers when you have almost almost immediate response. That's removing a barrier. Well, it's a mindset barrier of I'm going to communicate with this human and two days later or three days later I might get a response. Right. No, I'm going to communicate with this human and I'm going to get an immediate response. Second thing is, well, they're probably two weeks or three weeks out or a month out to get to the thing that I'm trying to do. When that thing is done in a day or two days and you're like, okay, cool, done, like move on. Now you've removed a barrier. Immediate interaction, almost immediate completion equals massive amount of value. Nobody gives a shit about the hours. Did the things get done in a timely manner that I didn't have to stress about? It was worth triple the price. You see what I'm saying? Like that's, that's where like if you're focused on those things, the, the things that the humans really care about, they end up not caring about the things that they've historically had time to care about and fuss about when you're just doing it the old school way.

This is why, this is where I'm coming from. When I talk about project management, like software and Just a whole, like, I don't know how it, how it stays around with the AI is like, if you can remove all these barriers, it's just like a whole world of administration, you know, goes away. And so much of what we do is like, oh, what happens when they ask about this? It's like, well, let's just live. So they don't ask about that. Let's just create value. And then they don't. And then both sides. Because the barrier that is hard to measure and quantify and understand is uncertainty.

Yeah. You know, you know how many, you know how many dreams have died because of the gate of what if? Like, there are so many times I've caught myself younger, George. And don't get me wrong, I still deal with some of this, but like, I'm going to. I think I can help these humans and they're willing to pay a good amount of money. But what if. Maybe, maybe I don't. Maybe they're not a good fit for me because what if. No, maybe they're a good fit for me because they're going to push me out of my comfort zone and I'm going to need to learn something new to complete the thing that they're actually going to need to be completed or need to be done. Right. So like, like if there were two words that I could help remove from a negative connotation. Because by the way, you can. What if the good side of this too, but from a negative connotation. If I could remove what if from people's vocabulary and, and switch it with something of like a needs to learn or a. Already have a system in place or like something along those lines. I would, I would do it because it's again, it's a barrier. Not external, but it's an internal barrier that we need to remove.

Yeah. And I like in that, like the other side of that is what if? And then you have a bad answer and then cya, like cover your ass.

Oh, God.

So that probably could be the. Because I like that Marvel series on Disney too. What if? It's a, it's a watch. Right. So we don't want to prevent that kind of imagination, but humans are also built to ask it in all scenarios, what if. Right. And we've built this CYA mentality.

Yeah.

That is a barrier in itself. And just some examples of, of why we add pressure instead of removing the barriers. Adding another email sequence, easy redesigning qualification process art, creating urgent messaging. One of the quickest wins in the book. People will tell you. Removing required form fields requires cross functional agreement and newsflash. That's not easy in teams that are usually built around this stuff. And so much of this comes with just the trust in, in being helpful.

Yeah.

And understanding what's going to come back.

Yeah, bro. You know how my mind works and how much I'm like tied into my assistant at this point. And I need to, I need to get things in the moment because they come and I know they're gonna go and at least I'm documented. You brought up this cya, which by the way, my, my dad when I was younger, he said, son, cya. Like it's one of those things. It's like walk it off cya. Like there's, there's just some dadisms that we got along the way that sometimes I think we bring those into life and business and maybe, or maybe not we, maybe we shouldn't, I don't know. But Chris, I literally went to my assistant, I said, and by the way, I was just being ultra Canada, I go, hey, CYA is usually cover your ass. What could it be with a positive spin on it. And so I love that we're talking about what we're talking about today because literally the first thing it spit out was cover your audience. Focus first on serving, protecting, and honoring the people you help, not just protecting yourself. The second thing it gave was clarify your approach before you act, slow down, simplify and get clear on your plan of why and your next move after that. It's like, choose your action, create your advantage, coach your attitude. Like, things like that. But those first two, cover your audience and clarify your approach. I think that's a better new CYA than what we've historically learned along the way.

Oh, man. Yes, yes. And you've mentioned a couple times, like the relief that people have related to choosing the removal of barriers versus the cya. Like, nobody enjoys those conversations, but we've been through it so many times and that's painful when you have trusted relationship. It's like, oh, we got to get the contract out. I'm going through a process right now. And again, these are systems. So not. None of this is easy, but you can work together to make decisions to start going in this direction. We have some of the value. First crew is working on a relationship and we just got asked yesterday, it'll take three months to approve you guys in our vendor, you know, approvals.

Oh, wow.

So can you work with somebody that's already approved, like through an agency? And like the immediate reaction is like, oh, I don't know, like, how that's going to work, but then you step back, it's like, no, it's another possible partner in that agency. Like, you know, everybody needs coaching in this ecosystem. So it's, it's just an additional avenue versus, oh, are we gonna have to run in their systems and we won't be able to do it in our HubSpot? And so what now?

So what? So it's funny because when I hear you tell this story, I go, so what? And it reminds me another thing that just rolls off my tongue because it is who I am and how I am and how I do business. But I've seen physical relief to when I say these words and I'm like, oh, that's no problem. I work well with other humans. My ego is, has been in check for years. Like if we need to be in their system, if we need to, you know, work even if they're not that involved. And we're just doing it because we need to check a box to like, help you sooner. Bottom line that two heads are better than one. I play well with humans. Let's get us in the system and get your stuff fixed. And you know, that's. I can feel the human right now. Okay. They're not a dick. They feel my pain and they're willing to be flexible and navigate to my needs so that I don't have to be in pain for another three to six months. Yeah, I'm buying. I'm buying right now. Where do I sign?

Right. And like you mentioned earlier, I think there's a little bit of, um, you mentioned focusing on them. Like, what's in it for them?

Yeah.

You know, I think you've mentioned Ian Altman's book a couple times. Same side selling, like, what's in it for us? Like, yeah, sure as hell. I don't want to go through a three month vendor approval process. So thank you. Person on the other side who we built trust with is willing to remove that barrier, like on their side. And if you don't come to that, like you, if you don't meet them there and you're like, no, my barrier still stand? Like, no. Right. They're, they're doing work. And that's where starting relationships we've talked about a few times from that place of just trust, like doing for each other.

Yeah.

That's where you get the Lifetime customers. Right?

Yeah.

And just some other examples that are just crazy. The fact that we have to say these out loud things like making pricing transparent.

Yeah.

Oh, why is this Such a radical feature for B2B. I mean, I remember hearing that the first time, like when I read that ask your answer in 2017. And the fact that he still talks about it, Marcus Sheridan, on like a weekly basis eight years later.

Yeah.

Because nobody's doing it. Right. He's building tools. Another one. Allowing people to self serve information without forms.

Yeah.

Single point of contact who maintains context across interactions. Yeah.

Can I, Can I pause you for a second? Because just it's good to say these things, but you, you. It's not about saying these things, about doing these things. So again, and I'm saying this humbly, but Chris, those three things that you just listed, and I didn't even pay attention to where we're headed or like, you know that you're gonna say these pieces. I literally have a page on psychic strategies for HubSpot Consulting. Two things. One, the pricing is right there too. You can buy it without the other thing that we've just been working on to transition on psychic strategies. The bottom of every single page has the same module on it. And it's everything. The. The way that you get in contact with us is you book a meeting with me. Every page has that pop up. It's a meeting. We talk. It's human, it's relational. Like, it's the easiest flow to get the. The answers that you need to see if we can move forward. So like these things aren't these massive hurdles. They're just mindset shifts to enable your team to put them in the places they need to be. So I say all that to say it. What Chris is reading is doable.

Yeah. And. And largely because of this last point. AI handling coordination so humans can focus on connection.

Yeah.

Right. And. And this is the. When you get to connection, when you get to value, when you get to trust. Like something I'm doing. As we introduced the Value first team website and there's a My Value Path Portal, I am integrating the hell out of HubSpot like, Like you would to try and create hyper personalized experiences throughout the entire website.

Yep.

Which means if you show up on the website and you tell me who you are at any point, I'm tracking all of that. Right. Because that's how I get to the personalized approach. But guess what? When you log into your My Value path portal, you can see all the data that I have in my system. And if you feel like you don't want me to have some of that data, you have the power to delete it. Now, I know most cases you're going to enjoy kind of the Google situation where it's like, I like the fact that I have a lot of convenience in my life. So have my. Have my data Google. Right. I have a hunch that you're going to enjoy the value first experience enough to not even worry about that part. And the fact that we can show up that transparently is just one of the biggest differentiator around in this moment right now, where we know AI can capture data in ways like never before and people are misusing that data left and right.

Yeah, yeah, There's. Well, you know, at the end of the day, there's always been good actors, bad actors. I, I am terrible at reflecting on what bad actors will do, but I'm great at like, well, here's how we can use it for the power of good, right? I would have made a sucky Darth Vader. I would have been a great, like, you know what, Obi Wan or whoever. Maybe. I'd actually, I would have probably been a great Jar Jar Binks. But that's a whole nother story. So. So the Drunken monkey. Okay, if you know, you know, but here's the thing. Like, the hardest part of all of this that you're talking about is casting off the way that you think it's supposed to be, because it's been that way forever. Let me, let me explain. I'm going to go back to one of the easy ones and it's form conversions, right? So I'm working on this new side project. And the goal is to get people to become kind of, not in a community sense, but like a member to this set of tools and this content that they can educate themselves through. And so the goal is to get them to be a member, to get access to these things in that flow. One of the things we created is an assessment where they can do the Superhuman framework assessment. And about three quarters of the way through the assessment, I had programmed in a form conversion so that they would get. I would get information before they got to their dashboard. And again, I'm laying in bed the other night and I'm like, what the frick is wrong with me? Like, why, why? Why is that there? Why would I not just get them to their dashboard so they can see if they need to focus on one of the four cornerstones or the 10 pillars, or if they're golden and they don't need us at all? And if they see the dashboard and they make their own decision, wouldn't it be nice if there was just a button to Immediately take them to the place where they could become a member and get access to these tools and these resources. And so I literally went into my cloud code buddy and said, hey, buddy, I effed up in the assessment we put in this conversion point. Can we please go remove the code? The feature that there is no longer conversion point and the human can just get to their dashboard and therefore make a decision if they want to do XYZ or ABC moving forward. Boom. But. But I had to, like, catch myself and I had to realize what's the ultimate goal. And I, I realized, like, there's no Port of Directors. This. But this business is not going to have anything called an MQL or SQL. It's going to be. You either use it for free or you become a. Those are the two options. Like, and so again, simplifying the complex, removing all barriers, creating dope experiences for the user, like that. That's. This is where our brain should be.

Yeah. And that's such a refreshing conversation. Yesterday, people are starting to rally around this particular KPI, which is conversations like, yeah, how many conversations can we have? Right. And what George just described there is the willingness to say, okay, usually we put the form there because we want to be in control of whether or not we have a chance at that conversation.

Yep.

Meanwhile, if value is provided, they're gonna strike up that conversation when they do it. Everybody's starting from a better place. Right?

Yeah.

And if they don't, that's also good for everybody because it's not a fit or they're not ready or all these things. Right. And you just start from this, this place of, of trust and those things. Like, I know, like anybody listening to this, we feel that. Right. And like a couple episodes ago, you, you closed on, like, when's the last time you interacted with a business and felt relief?

Yeah.

Right. Like, people notice when things are easy. They remember when somebody made it simple, when usually it's hard. And that relief is like one of the fastest ways to just. Loyalty, advocacy, connection. Meaningful conversations where we're not on guard the whole time. Like, the whole idea of, like, negotiation and doing battle in these initial conversations, like, nobody, nobody wants to do that. So if you haven't figured it out, very valuable for you to remove these barriers. So to get into. It's got some interesting challenges here for the transformation that we're asking you to make. Because this is, this is how it starts. Just identify one barrier anywhere Right. In the customer experience and remove it. Right. And removing it is different from improving it Optimizing it. Like this is. Where is that form fill? Oh, maybe we just remove this property and then this property and we just ask for. No, remove it all together and watch, you know what happens. Like, George just gave you a great example, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you've got form fields and forms that don't actually inform the service. It just creates another email. An approval step that delays without adding value, the gate between someone and information they need. And not only do they need, you know, they need it to the point where the process cannot move forward without them knowing that information. Like, it always amazed me. And this is a perfect example of letting your process drive worse outcomes. Because that's the way we do things in manufacturing. Very common practice still, because we have manufacturer reps and there's regions, and we got to make sure everybody gets the right leads. If you want to download a brochure about our product, if you want to learn about our product, you have to give us all this information, like, a lot of information, because we've got to route you to the right person. Right. Like, how crazy. Imagine if you could not just go to the HubSpot website and learn about HubSpot. You had to.

Well, they wouldn't be HubSpot, right. That, like, Salesforce would still be king. You know, it'd be a blue Ferrari and, like, you know, an orange junker in the junkyard. But that's not. It's not where we live. Like. Yeah, and that's the thing. Like, there's been so many organizations just show that it is the true way. Like, the things that we're talking about. Right. Like, I mean, listen, I did a whole inbound talk that was around, like, purpose, passion, persistence, love. Like, as an organization, you know, Patagonia, QDs, like HubSpot. Like. Like, there's just. There's been organizations that show, like, being different, being human, caring, removing these. Because you care, removing these barriers that we're talking about. It just. It works. Like, it works.

Yeah. In almost any of these. These process steps that exist because we've always done it that way. Like Ripe. Ripe for removal, handoffs that force context reestablishment. Now used to, like, oh, there's a balance here. Right. Because what I was running into when sales. When veteran salespeople would give me the reasons why they like hearing it from their mouth. Right. There's lots of value in creating those scenarios where it's like, we're in a different conversation now. We're in the part of the journey. Yes. We might have asked that question A different way before, but now we're. We have more context. So let's ask it again and let's talk through it. Right. Because I'm a different person and I might be able to provide more value in this moment, since we're talking about it live. Right. That is very different from. Just give me the. Give me your address again, because I can't see it in the system. Yeah, right. And what you want to watch for, if you, if you can remove any of these. Right. It's not about conversion rates. They will improve, though, likely relief signals, right. People moving faster, expressing surprise at how easy something was. Like that. That phrase expressing surprise. Right. Guess what? AI is pretty good at reading transcripts and, and picking out moments like that, Right. Spontaneous, positive feedback and that's.

Right.

I'd like to highlight super and Matt Bolian's team, like, the way that they just share, like demo, like people responding live on demos. That's where for them to take a recorded conversation. There's, you know, there's some agreement with the person involved there. Like, they're not gonna just share them, like, openly on LinkedIn. They're making a choice that that's a part of their strategy, that they know that there are moments like that during the sales process that it would be valuable for them to share with other people. So they go in, you start to build the strategy around it, right. So that it's not a traditional metric, but to suggest that, you know, it's all like, emotional and how are we going to track and measure that? You create the scenarios where it happens and then you're ready to leverage it. Right. And that's where. When you can shift your focus on that stuff and away from the conversion rates, all of a sudden the conversion rates get better, right. You're not focused on it anymore. And this is. Oh, man, I love how this lines up. Almost like I made. Made the framework myself with the help of my AI friends, of course. Next week, we're talking about recognizing signals, basically what I just described. Like, when you can stop the manufacturing and the control and like the pipeline and funnel metrics and all this stuff to say, like, humans are just a part of a factory and we can process them. You'll start noticing, you'll give yourself space to start seeing all these signals. And guess what, folks like HubSpot's already bringing in these signals from the market. And a lot of what Value first is about right now is helping you understand if you decide you want to start doing, you got the tools, like technology's there. You just have to decide. We want to start keeping track of this stuff. Like authentic interest. Like those moments where the salesperson's at the. At the trade show and they just know. They know they're in like, flint. Like, they already know, but there is no forms to fill. You know that. You can sense that the trust and the relief is there right in front of you. We can create moments like that in the. In the digital space, too, because when you remove these barriers. Right. It just naturally flows. Those are the kind of signals that are much more valuable than any kind of language lead score you might put together.

Yep.

Yeah.

I tell you, it's. Well, anyway. Different podcast. Yeah.

Yeah. Looking back on the conversation today, what's. What's one thing you want related to, let's say, barrier removal that you. You'd like to help people?

I mean, I'll. I'll just say this. It's a choice. It's a choice. You're either gonna be about it or you're not. If you're about it in the future, your organization will grow in a different way. I might even say in a healthier way if you're not. Your organization might grow, but it might be in maybe a toxic way. Right. There's. There are so many things that we don't think about when it comes to leadership, when it comes to organization, when it comes to culture, or I should say, some of us don't think about. There are many of us out there that think about it, and I just think that you having the choice or you talking to leadership about the choices and then making the choice to take action on some of the stuff that Chris and I have been talking about today and. Or previous episodes, if you missed, go watch them. Just make a choice and go with it. Make a choice and learn from it. That's what I'll say.

And here's a trick I meant to bring up before. I need to bring it up in just every damn piece of content I do right now. If you don't know what choices to make, sit down with your team, ask the question, do we have a unified customer view if we don't, what's in the way? This goes just as much for internal barriers as it is for external barriers. Like, what's in the way of us seeing the information we all know we need to see that can, like, laser focus you on some immediate barriers to remove because that'll often relate to the customer experience as well. So until next week, when we talk about recognizing those signals, look at your processes this week not to. Not to optimize them, but to question, you know, whether they need to exist at all. And until next time, thanks so much, George.

Thanks.

Have a great week. Thank you.