121: How to Steer Through a Downturn and Stop Micromanaging with Annie Hyman Pratt

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We as leaders or business owners, when we're not good at controlling our own emotions and we approach a person to give them feedback from a bad place, right? From a self protective or judgmental or fearful or frustrated place, okay. And we give feedback in a way that's not optimal, that maybe is coming off as criticism or judgment or has like a tone. Then it's like we've sort of disqualified our own feedback because now we're stuck in the position of like was it you or was it me?

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Welcome back everybody. I am so excited to be here today with Annie Hyman Pratt. She specializes in developing leaders, teams and infrastructure to drive business growth through her company, Leading Edge Teams. She came as a raving recommendation from Megan Doherty, the co founder of One Stone Creative who is producing this very podcast and I have to say the most delightfully tiny team that I've ever worked with. So the Trickle down Effects of Annie's Works Works her career started with her family's business, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Basically where I lived all throughout college at UCLA to do my homework and my reading. I have so many fond memories of studying at various Coffee Beans and her career skyrocketed from there. She had decades of success and experience as a C level executive and business advisor and just recently launched her new book the People seven Agreements Entrepreneurs and Leaders make to Build Teams, Accelerate Growth and Banish Burnout for good. Annie, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

When I found out Megan did not mention the Coffee Bean part and so I just always love a Recommendation from a friend. She said, you've got to check out Annie's book and her work. And then when I read the Coffee Bean, I just jumped out of my chair. I was so delighted. I have such fond memories. And Coffee Bean started in LA with your family. And so the smells, the surrounding environment, I think the one in Beverly Hills was closest to campus. I know you went to UCLA as well, but what a formative way to grow up, to be immersed in that kind of business. And then with you taking over, scaling it, and then ultimately selling it, I just would love to hear any thoughts about that time of your life, maybe when you first took the reins of it.

Yeah, first of all, it was a great time during that time. It was what I call the coffee beverage revolution. So when I worked in the Coffee Bean stores, like in high school, in the later 80s, we did have espresso machines and we sold cups of coffee, but very few of them. We had, like, bar stools around the bar and customers could sit there all day. And a typical day, we'd sell like $2,000 in beans that people would take home and to make coffee at home. And just a couple hundred dollars, you know, $200 in the bar drinks. So that was 1986, and by 1991, that ratio had completely reversed. So it was a really interesting time. And so I came back to the business basically at the very beginning of 92, and it was a time where the stores were growing like crazy. We were converting all the stores from having these little tiny espresso machines and very small beverage stations into much bigger ones. And it was also the time where the ice blended mochas got super popular. And we invented those. We know we had Starbucks spies in our stores trying to figure out how do you make those amazing, you know, wonderful cold.

And yours were always better. They were always better with, like, so much yummy whipped cream on top.

Totally, totally. They were always better. For sure. It was a great time. It was a time where I could make a lot of mistakes because the business was so strong. So I sort of had the luxury of. It was hard to make a mistake that could kill us at the time.

I would be so afraid to make a mistake because you were young when you took it over. And then it was growing so fast. It must have been so intimidating. Or at least I'm putting myself in your shoes, thinking there's no manual. Especially at that time, the Internet wasn't the way it is now, where you can just connect with so many people and look everything up and Meanwhile, you're running this rapidly scaling business when you're just out of school. Talk about trial by fire.

Yeah, no kidding. The good thing about being so young, right? Because I think I was 22 when I came back to the business. The good thing about being so young is you don't know what you don't know. So I think it was only kind of like after I would make a mistake that it was like, oh no, that was kind of bad. But luckily we got through it. And I also did learn that the best learnings were through mistakes. You know, I know people kind of say that, like it's always good to, you know, people need to be good about making mistakes when you're in business. But I found that to be like extraordinarily true. It was the fastest way to learn. Painful, but still often the fastest way to learn.

You said that one of your big ahas of that time was that you're a micromanaging people and that, oh, that's such a painful mistake to learn in my case, over and over again. But can you take us to a moment where you got the self awareness that you were micromanaging? Because you're right. When you're early in your career, you've probably never even heard the phrase you wouldn't know what it is. You think you're just being a good leader.

Exactly. I think I'm being a good leader and I think that other people are messing up, right? Like it's like this feeling of, you know, not having a good understanding yet, that people are generally doing the best they can and that everything that you do in business is a two way street. So often I would have delegated something and done a really poor job with that. Like maybe told somebody to change up the store schedule. That might be something. I come into a store and I say, look, you don't have enough staff in the morning, so you need to change that up. Okay. But instead of talking to them about what does that really mean? What did I see that I would say that what's it all about? What am I aiming for when I say get more staff? Then they would start to redo the schedule. I'd go in looking over their shoulder and kind of say, well, that's not right.

Then I would say, you need an extra person on the beverage station instead of kind of talking about it up front of what wasn't working so they could figure it out. So my micromanaging, not only micromanaging, but had the flavor, which I think is common of kind of judgment that's one of the biggest problems with micromanaging is that the other person really gets the feeling that they're doing a bad job. Not that you're micromanaging because you want to bring down your own discomfort, which is the case, but the way it comes out is it comes out as like blame, judgment, criticism on the person who's being micromanaged. And that's why it's so painful. If I had come in saying, you know what, I'm not a very good leader yet, and so I'm going to say a bunch of things that might feel like criticism to you, but they're not. They're really, because I'm insecure. It might go differently, but at the time you don't know any of that.

You do such a good job of describing how micromanaging and feeling judged immediately then sends people into self protective mode, like a defensive heated state. And I love what you just highlighted too, which is that the reason micromanaging happens in the first place is that the leader is trying to tamp down their discomfort like they've overheated in some way upon seeing a problem and are not responding skillfully. You said it like there's a tinge of judgment to it. How else can someone discern micromanagement from. Well, I give specific, great feedback to help people grow. You know, some people, there's probably a fine line in between, I would imagine.

Yeah, there is. There certainly is. Because people need feedback and people need support. So the approach really matters. And so I think of it as like, when I'm going to interact with somebody and I want to support them in doing a better job, the first thing is I'm going to be thinking of that. Like instead of going into a situation thinking, you're messing this up, instead I go into a situation thinking this person in front of me is already a good person with strong potential and is capable. Like, I have to start with that in mind. And then I'm going to be thinking and I want to support them to do better from here and from there. Then I usually go into, how would I say it, like, tutor mode. Not telling them what to do, but asking a lot of questions, hey, this isn't going that well. What do you think you could do differently? How do you see it? Right. It's like I go into open ended question mode and that helps so much more because then they get engaged from a place of being able to hear and feel that I want them to get a better outcome that I'm not going in with A bunch of criticism of like, you're doing it wrong. That's the thing. It's like, we gotta start from the place of, let's help you get a better outcome because that'll be better for everybody. You, me, the business.

One thing I find tricky is, let's say you've had a few of those and you've given feedback. At what point do you then make the decision that maybe they aren't a fit for the role, or their strengths and interests just don't align with growing in the way you need them to grow? Or as you said, so well, the bar keeps rising and people have to grow and evolve just to meet that continually raising bar. And so how do you tell then? I've had experiences in the past, I'm into the 11th year of my business, where sometimes I felt like I was giving feedback into a vacuum. It just didn't ever click. And so I always found it hard to know whether I was micromanaging or expecting too much or this person just isn't a fit for the role or for the company altogether. How do you navigate that part of the process and the dance?

Yeah. So it's such a good question. It's a really common question and it actually has a fairly simple answer. And then a thing that's running underneath that I want to talk about. So the simple answer is, if you've given this person feedback and support maybe three times and they've made no progress, no progress. Like you're having the same conversation without any improvement at all, and the impact is just getting bigger. The impact is getting to be too much because there's a difference. Like in the early days of working with somebody, you. You may be doing kind of most of the tasks anyways. So when somebody doesn't do something, well, it's like, well, I'm going to solve all their problems, I'm going to cover for them anyways. Okay. But then over time, you actually need them to take on the responsibilities. And if at that point they can't do it and actually deliver a result that works for you, then the impact is getting to be too much. Their lack of improvement, lack of being able to actually take something fully off your plate because it's not enough to just do tasks. They have to take the whole responsibility so that you can have confidence that they can do it without you looking over their shoulder, without you having to answer every question, without you having to think, did that actually happen or not? And then I think the thing that runs underneath this is where I talk about Self leadership. A lot in the book is that when we as leaders or business owners, when we're not good at controlling our own emotions and we approach a person to give them feedback from a bad place. Right. From a self protective or judgmental or fearful or frustrated place. Okay. And we give feedback in a way that's not optimal, that maybe is coming off as criticism or judgment or has like a tone, then it's like we've sort of disqualified our own feedback because now we're stuck in the position of like, was it you or was it me?

I love how you say when it has a tone. We all know we've all probably made. We've all probably done that. I've done that. I'm trying to be so cool, calm and collected and yet there's a tone secretly super annoyed or disappointed or whatever, the emotion is flaring.

Exactly, exactly. And when that kind of takes over, when you can see the person react to that, then you're left in that spot of like, oh, maybe I blew it and giving the feedback. And so the reason we want you to get good at regulating those emotions is so you can give feedback and be confident it's actually not you.

If the other person actually can't start to improve significantly, meaningfully improve from your feedback, then chances are they're not going to be a fit, maybe not a long term fit. Maybe you have a different role you can find for them that they would be a good fit for. But otherwise, you know, there's going to be a time where the impact is just too much on you. That's the thing about small business owners, right? Is like, yes, you do a lot of things already. So the things that you do need to get off your plate really need to come off your plate.

Yeah. And I love how you do such a good job too of calling out the drive by delegator. You're saying there's the micromanager. But then also sometimes business owners are like, I'm not going to micromanage, I trust my team. But they end up dropping something without enough context in the first place. And oh, that was so insightful to just call that out and say it might not just be a feedback issue after the fact. How are you delegating in the first place? So I'd love if you could walk us through your ace delegation approach.

Yeah, it is pretty simple. And I really think of business as that the main mechanism for teamwork, for interacting in business is working through agreements. So that's one of the things that I think is really Changing has changed, even about high performance in business is what we need from people. There's a quote from a book called Turn the Ship around from a submarine captain and he says, what we need now from people is thinking hands are not enough. And it's so true. Most people on teams today are knowledge workers. They're not making a widget with their hands. Even if you work at Coffee Bean on an espresso machine, you are not just pushing buttons all day. You actually have a pretty complex job of having to sort through different kinds of beverages, having to figure out what you're going to make first, second, third, having to figure out, oh, no, I don't think I have this one ingredient now. I have to figure out how to substitute. You might have to deal with an upset customer while you're doing your job. And all of that requires people being in a good place and doing a considerable amount of thinking because things aren't going to plan. That's a really, really big thing that we need. So we work in agreements because we want both people to be very engaged in. Can I make this agreement work? Can I actually take this on and make a real commitment here to get it done, not just take it on and think to myself? You know, I might say in the old days I would, especially if I was with somebody who had a lot more authority than me, that maybe was a bit intimidating. I would say yes to any task, any delegation, but in my mind I would be thinking like, maybe you and.

I share that so much. The people pleaser that just wants to in the moment reduce discomfort by agreeing. I've done that my whole life, in every area of my life, totally.

Then you're thinking in your mind, well, I'll renegotiate this later. I'll try to figure out how to get out of it later. Or the ultimate denial of like, it won't be so bad. And, you know, instead of engaging from a place of like, no, no, no, right now I actually really need to talk about if I could really do this thing. So delegation starts on that premise that it's a two way street. Not only am I going to be delegating in a way that the other person can take on the responsibility, but they've actually got to be thinking, I'm taking on a real responsibility here and I need to engage from a place of asking the questions I need. So, okay, so the very first thing for delegating is to be engaged and have both people engaged. The second thing is you've got to delegate outcomes, not tasks. Outcomes. When we delegate a task that would be something like go make this spreadsheet. Okay? A spreadsheet is a task or a deliverable. It's not an outcome. We don't care about spreadsheets because for their own sake, we care about the information they're telling us. We care about the decision we have to make from the data in the spreadsheet. So when you're going to delegate, you want to delegate an outcome, Meaning it might sound something like I need a spreadsheet that is capturing the revenue data for the last three months, comparing it to last year so I can see how far down in sales we are and where it's coming from. That's the outcome we're looking for. Right? Is data that tells me something that I can do something with.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I like the example you shared, by the way of forever delegating the desire to grow your list, but that you hadn't specified why or who you wanted on the list. Like in hindsight it seems obvious, oh, of course we want this type of person for this type of program enrollment. But if you don't be super clear up front, the outcome is still murky. Maybe to the person on the receiving end, totally murky.

And then they have to start guessing. Then they just have to start thinking, well, what do I think it might be, even though I'm not in the position to even know. And then things can go terribly awry. So we need to tell people the outcome and then the other thing we need to tell them is kind of the greater part, purpose underneath. It's like, if I get this outcome, what does it provide me that's even more important. So my spreadsheet example, when I say, hey, I need data so I can figure out what to do differently with our business because the revenue is down, then the greater purpose is I need to grow our revenue. I want to be able to look at this picture so I can make better decisions and have the revenue go up, not down. And a lot of people are facing a declining revenue right now because the outside environment, the economy, all kinds of technology online. Oh, my gosh. Supply chain issues. There's so many things going on in the world right now that are making it harder on business.

Let's talk about that. I'm so glad you mentioned it. Right before we hit record, I was already starting to ask you this question. I took your quiz@leadingedgeteams.com and I'm indeed a ship captain, which is the perfect metaphor for what do you do when you are a small business owner? And I feel, if we were lucky, we got through 2020, we knew. We're like, oh, my gosh, it's this crazy global event. We gotta double down. We gotta make it through this time. We can do this. And now here we are a few years later. The economy is in disaster mode right now as we record this. Anything can change at any time. What do you do when the ship captain is tired and the seas are still super rocky and the revenue is down and there's no sign that it's back anytime soon? Like, even from a morale standpoint, what kind of pep talk can you give those in that situation?

Yes, it is challenging. Oh, my gosh. And one of the things is to really acknowledge that, oh, my gosh, this has been going on a long time. I love the ship analogy or metaphor because it's like you're in a lasting storm. Right. It's like, ugh, everybody's been on the deck and they've.

Yeah, now we're seasick a little bit.

Exactly.

We haven't slept.

Exactly. So the very first thing is actually, you have to, as individuals, get yourselves in better shape. What that means is, I think of it as kind of like taking turns in the storm so other people can get out of the storm and get some rest. Like, you can't be all hands on deck in a marathon. You can be all hands on deck in a sprint, and that's fine. But when you've got a lasting downturn or a time where it's like, it just keeps Going, okay, well in that case, actually the urgency isn't as urgent. It's like you're in a storm. So you're going to have to treat it like a long term thing, like you're going through a winter and in winter you need to get some rest. And the reason we need to get some rest is so that we can think better. Because if you spend all day getting pelted by sleet.

Right.

You literally cannot think. And for these kinds of situations, ones that are going on for a long time, they require even better strategic thinking. They need you to be able to collaborate with your team and kind of say, what's really going on here? What do we need to do differently? How can we approach this in a way that's going to let us survive the storm and be ready to grow? And one more thing I want to say about that. So I've been through a few downturns.

Now and with companies of all sizes.

Oh yeah.

Your whole career you've seen so much.

So many companies that are tiny and just less than a million dollars in revenue and companies that have more than $100 million in revenue. Yes. So I've seen all kinds, all types. So the thing about downturns that I find to be actually fascinating because I wouldn't have known in the first downturn, which for me was like the Internet bust right after 2000. So in that downturn, what I didn't realize when going through it is that okay, things are bad and they're a while, but what I didn't realize is that as long as you survive, as long as you survive with any kind of decent health, at the end, you will automatically be there to grab the new opportunities which you can't see yet. You don't know what they are. But the thing about downturns and contractions or difficult economic times, like we're going through difficult market times, is that quite a few businesses won't make it at all. They'll go out and then the competition comes way down. And even more importantly, there's going to be some big opportunities with way fewer people around to grab them. So it's like this is the time to have faith that yeah, the skies are going to clear and when they clear, we want you as clear headed as possible. Now's the time not to try to make it all the way across the ocean to your destination. Now is the time to just keep the ship upright and keep your team in a reasonably okay place so that when you see the new opportunity, you're there to Grab it.

I love this. Yes. Yes. I love it. And I've been reminding myself the same thing too. Like, but it's so helpful hearing it from you. As long as you survive. Like, the job now is make it through. That's how I'm feeling in essentially, you know, almost year three of this, which is now. It's just a waiting game. And as we know, so many companies fold because of cash flow issues. So I'm doing all kinds of crazy things to stay afloat without sacrificing. I think in my mind, I think I could go backward. I could, like, cram my schedule with a bunch of stuff that I've already been so dedicated to clearing and moving forward. So I'm just being also a little bit of a stubborn ship captain.

That's okay.

I'm trying to survive while not totally compromising everything that I had been working toward in terms of my time and activities.

Yeah. And in terms of your well being. Yeah, that's okay. That's really okay. Because again, it's like, that's what we want to keep mostly intact. Again, it's a marathon. Let's say you're in a time where you're trying to get through miles 8 to 10, and it's like, totally uphill. It's kind of rough. You can take that part really slow. It's okay. Because all you're looking for is to slowly get to mile 10. And then at mile 10, what you don't know is that the hill is gonna turn right, that you're gonna head.

Downhill, and then a cool breeze comes in off the. Exactly. I'm picturing I ran the San Francisco Marathon, the Nike women's marathon.

Awesome.

One time slower than everybody. By no means. I can barely call it running. I didn't walk. But I joke that my grandma probably could have walked it faster than me. Yeah, but it's so true.

Just keeping going is the thing right now. In this kind of environment, you don't have to be uber successful. You don't have to beat everybody by miles and miles and miles. You literally just have to stay in the race. And the key to staying in the race is to keeping yourself reasonably healthy. And to stay reasonably healthy, that means that you can't be in all stress all the time. You need breaks. And that's one of the things that team. Even if you just have a few contractors, that's one of the things that team should provide you, is the ability to step away every once in a while, at least, and that your team can take on some responsibilities so you can really get a break in your mind that you get to set down the stress.

We'll be right back just after this.

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It's interesting what you're saying about team, and I'm so curious where you've landed after all the experiences and roles that you've had. I went through a period of really expanding my team and launching a book and doing all kinds of stuff and then I almost got burnt out by the team size, of course, of all my own failings, like all the many things I did wrong and onboarding people at a time that was already very hectic, et cetera. And I've done a lot of reflecting. But it was the first time this year, right now, this summer as we record this, where I actually have allowed the team to sort of scale way down. Still one stone creative who's here is like the best, the highlight of my team and the team I worked with to launch the book. But this is a long way of saying I was kind of relieved, like I actually needed a break from managing all the people.

Yeah, that's okay.

I'm really introverted and that's why I love your book the People Part, because for the first time I really needed a break to just get quiet. And I know exactly as you said, it does make it harder to step away because I am covering certain things. But I'm also relieved and I think a lot about a lot of the team. Effectiveness research talks about effectiveness and efficiency and what's most profitable. But it never really talks about the manager's joyfulness at what size their team is. And I'm wondering for you, like how have you landed over the years in terms of the number of people and your sweet Spot in business.

For me, it really depends on not only the business, kind of like the type of business because some businesses just need more people, like restaurants just kind of depends on the type of business. But the second thing is I really think it depends on the stage you're going through and you can move back and forth between stages. How I think of it is stage one is total startup. And what you're going for in stage one is a work, working business model, right, that you have something that could actually last, that could actually, actually makes a profit. And that's actually not all that easy in today's day and age to get a business model that can provide a profit. Okay, so that's the first stage. The second stage is to get the business going in a way that's sustainable. Okay, you might still be doing a lot of things, you might only have a handful or less of part time people to support you. But what you get out of that is you get freed up enough that the business is sustainable for you that you can think that you can handle problems, you can do some small pivots when the market changes. It's not only you all by yourself with no support. So that's what stage two is. And businesses can stay at stage two for a long time. It's really okay what stage three is all about. Stage three is all about scaling, like growing, but growing to the point where your team operates the business and you move into a much more fully strategic role.

Do you think everyone enjoys that role? Like, are there some business owners that would not enjoy that? Strategic? I'm thinking of even startups where the CEO at some point sometimes steps aside.

I think it's kind of an aptitude thing. Most entrepreneurs start their business never having the thought, I would like to have a big team. It just never even occurs to them. In fact, if you ask them, they would say, you know, I want a big business with no team.

Okay, yeah.

But their ambition sort of outweighs those early rules of I'm not going to have any team. And when they want to have a really big impact and they want to stay in that strategic, creative role, then the thing to do is to scale up with team. And so there certainly are entrepreneurs who want to go for it because they want to have a bigger business and a very large impact. But there are certainly lots of entrepreneurs who don't want as big a business or want to grow it much, much slower so they can enjoy the journey more. And again, that is totally okay. It's totally okay. The thing that is Better in both examples. In both situations, whether you're keeping a small team and you're going to do quite a few of the roles yourself, but you're going to have support, is that in those times you still want to be developing your team so that you aren't stuck doing the weediest things because you do want to get freed up some to be able to be creative.

Absolutely. I want to ask you about selling Coffee Bean. A lot of business literature. Part of being a good leader and running a sound business that's operationally sound is as John Warlow, he wrote his book Built to Sell, Building it as if you can sell it and creating a saleable business. So I'm just curious about your process of selling Coffee Bean. Was it a nightmare? How was it? Did you see a lot of holes in the process of selling that you needed to fix? Like, what did you learn from the exit part of the process?

So the Coffee Bean exit was quite sudden, I guess I would say, meaning it wasn't planned. Since then, I've actually been through quite a few transactions where it was planned. Let me share a little bit of the difference. My father actually sold our business over lunch with one of our overseas licensees. He basically just got an offer that he didn't want to turn down. The thing that my parents knew that I didn't know at 30 years old, the thing I didn't know is that you can't always sell a business, that there are times where it's much easier to sell a business where people want to take that kind of risk, where they have the cash or the resources to do it. And then there are times when the market changes and the business is having a hard time growing or it's going backwards. And those times are almost very, very difficult to sell a business. So my parents knew that this is the time and we want to take it. I didn't want to sell at the time. My parents have five kids. I'm only one of those five kids. None of the others were in the business. And my parents made a very reasonable choice at the time of we could secure good resources for the entire family right now, take our risk off the table. And they did. And I had a very hard time appreciating that until like a decade went by. And one of the ways I could appreciate that is because then I was involved in other companies, either transactions, sales, or trying to sell, or coming into companies right after they had been purchased. And from those perspectives, I just got a lot more appreciation for what's really needed to sell a business. And that what I found was that what's needed to sell a business is generally a really good future is painting the picture of we are ready to keep going with a good future. Now sometimes that means big growth. Certainly that's not a bad thing that people can see that there's big growth available. But the other thing is when people can see that the business is relatively stable, that it's something that somebody can come in and operate and be set up to succeed. Those are the kinds of things of if you want to get ready to sell your business, thinking of it in terms of how could somebody take this over and be able to keep it succeeding right away that as soon as I walk out the door, the whole thing doesn't collapse. That's one of the things that I think is most needed.

Thank you for all of your generosity and wisdom and sharing all of this with us. I've enjoyed this so much. If you could give business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

Business owners are generally naturally very ambitious. They have plans, they have goals and they are really good at achieving them. Okay. So that comes with a downside in that most business owners also, when they don't achieve at the level they think they're supposed to, they can kind of beat themselves up. They can have inner dialogue that has a lot of self blame in it or a lot of kind of self disappointment or something. And I want people to really know that. Your compassion, especially your self compassion, must exceed your ambition. If you're an entrepreneur. If you're a business owner, it must. Otherwise you will torture yourself. Otherwise you actually won't have the emotional stamina to thrive in your business. The way you have to deal with disappointment is to be able to tell yourself, it's okay, I'm human. Humans make mistakes. Humans can't hit the jackpot every time. Even the best teams don't win the championship every year. And that's okay. It doesn't take perfection to be extraordinary. But you've got to be able to let go of the things that aren't going well. And the way to do that, the quickest way to do that is with a lot of compassion. Your compassion must exceed your ambition if you're a entrepreneur or a business owner.

That is so beautifully said. Such an important reminder and I love connecting the self. Compassion is what makes this sustainable. Talking about steering the ship through all the rocky seas. And thank you for this gentle and powerful reminder. We're all human.

Who knew?

Who remembered that one, we're all flawed. We're human. We make mistakes. This is hard. Something about your voice and your wisdom, like knowing all the things you've seen in business. It's just so comforting to hear you say it because I think sometimes entrepreneurs too, there's really no one saying that to us. Like we think to say it to our team. Unless you have a mentor or a mastermind group, you know, those things are great. But it's always good for someone to say, it's okay, you're doing great. Stick with it.

I say all the time you're doing better than you think. Just because you happen to be sitting on the ground because you fell on your butt right now, it's like, well, that's okay. That fall was totally expected. Totally fine. Like, you don't get to get through this without, you know, falling on your butt sometimes. That's all right.

I love it.

It's all good.

Annie, this is so fun to chat with you. Where do you want to send people if they want to learn more and keep in touch?

Oh yeah, so they can come to anniehymanpratt.com or to our business website too. Leadingedgeteams.com teamswithan s.com in either place you can find more about us. You can get the book the People Part. We love meeting entrepreneurs and new people, so please come check us out.

Well, thank you so much Annie and yes, listeners, definitely check out the People Part. It's so jam packed with practical frameworks and ways to approach many of these topics and more. So thank you again Annie and big thanks for everybody who's here listening.

Thanks Jenny. Thank you.

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