A Conversation with Krista St-Germain | S03E03

Welcome to season three of the Leadership Is Feminine podcast. I'm Chris Plackey, and I'm so happy that you're here. In this season, we're doing something different. One of the things that I believe to be true is that there is so much unsourced, beautiful wisdom in the everyday person. I really like to talk about what I call obscure wisdom. That means these are things that people know that unless we meet them at a cocktail party or at a barbecue or sitting next to them, you know, on a train, we don't hear about it. And these aren't celebrities. These aren't people who've written, you know, best selling books yet. These aren't people that are on the circuit that everybody else is learning from. These are everyday women who are CEOs, building, dealing with, working through all the pieces and parts of running a company. And I want to bring my beautiful clients and their wisdom to your ears because I know that you'll find it to be validating and insightful and hopefully also some fun. So, without further ado, let's get started with this week's amazing personal client and guest on Leadership Is Feminine. Welcome to the Leadership Is Feminine podcast. I'm Chris Plackie, and I'm so excited today to be talking to a dear friend and colleague and fellow Coach Warrior.

Christa St. Germain. Welcome, Krista. Thank you.

I never thought of myself as a coach warrior back. I kind of like it.

You're like og.

It's a good visual.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, we have a few more wrinkles than a lot of them.

I know. That wasn't very nice. Okay, so for everyone listening who doesn't know how amazing you are and who you are, let's talk about that. Who are you? What do you do? Who do you help? All of it.

Yes. I'm apparently an OG Warrior coach.

Yeah. So, no, I am a master certified coach. I am a grief expert. I am a widow, and I host a podcast called the Widowed Mom Podcast. And I specifically help widowed moms figure out how to love life again. Because most widows think that they're just going to kind of get used to their new normal, which is like code for settle for a life you don't really want. And I can't stand that. I can't stand it at all. And so that's what I do, is I help them get past that so they can actually love life again.

So beautiful. And you're such a beautiful example of that.

And that's why I do it. Right. Thank you. Because there was A point for me where I kind of didn't really want to admit out loud that I really was thinking my best days were behind me. I didn't really know what to do about it because everybody was like, oh, you're so strong. You're doing so great. And even my therapist was telling me I probably didn't need her anymore. And you're like, well, wait a minute. Okay, if I'm so strong and I'm doing so great, but yet, really, it just feels hollow and robotic and meh, then this can't be it, right? This can't be it. And so when I figured that out for myself, it just lights a fire in you, and you want to share it and you want to help other people.

So what was that journey for you? I'm curious. I love Krista, in full disclosure, has also been a client. Right. So you did the how to CEO program a long time ago now. And.

I love the story. I don't know. I'm so intrigued by the stories that women have that have led them not just to the work of the world, that they do the work in the world, but also then to have this thriving business that has led you to lots of wonderful things also. So I'm kind of curious what that lily pad leapfrog thing looked like for you from when you became a widow to now you have this beautiful practice that you have.

Yeah, it didn't look like a lily. Lily pad leapfrog for sure. It looked like a train wreck in the beginning. Yeah, well. And I had owned a business, so my husband died when I was 40. I had been in business for myself when I was in my 20s. I owned a couple of fitness centers. And so I've kind of always had, like, a little bit of an entrepreneurial bug, but I got to a place with that one where I almost filed bankruptcy. And it was really stressful for me, and I didn't know how to manage people, and I was trying to. I went back to work full time to try to support myself as I ran this, you know, two charity fitness centers, essentially.

And I decided, okay, that's just for the birds. Safety does not exist in the entrepreneurial world. Safety exists in the corporate world. And so I went back to the corporate world. And fast forward, that's where I met my husband. Then he was my second husband, and he was kind of my redemption story because my first marriage had ended not so well. And Hugo, to me, was proof that it really is possible to find someone who will treat you like you want to be Treated and who is amazing and wonderful and just, you know, all the things kind of the Renaissance man. So when he died, I was, like, on a real high in terms of, like, everything. Just felt like my kids were doing great and I was doing great, and I was so happy and lots of great visions for the future, and it was just all fairy tale, like. And then poof, you know, gone. And he was in an accident, and he was trying to change the tire on the. On my car on the side of the interstate. And somebody with meth and alcohol in his system did not see Hugo's car and hit the back of his car and trapped him in between his car, my car. And so, like, you know, top of the world to rug, totally pulled out from under you. And, yeah, it was just pretty awful in those early days. And I had a good therapist, thankfully, way back from when I had gotten divorced, because that took a long time for me to get through that. And so in the early days, it was just a lot of trying to get back to functioning. It was that acute grief where you can't, you know, it's happened, but you. You can't really reconcile it. And you aren't really back to functioning yet. You're just going through the motions and putting one foot in front of the other. And sometimes your best days are just the fact that you got a shower, you know, and so a lot of talking about it went back to work. We had worked together, so that was actually quite a mixed blessing. Everybody knew him, so they also felt the loss, which was really comforting because it wasn't just me. Right. But also reminders of him everywhere because we had worked together. And fast forward, I think it was about six months. I had followed Brooke Castillo's podcast for. I swear, it was like episode 10. I mean, I found it early.

Yeah.

And just about the time I felt like I was, like, coming up for air. And that's when everybody was like, you're doing great. My therapist like, you're doing great. And I was trying to figure out what to do next with life. That's when she launched Scholars. And so I joined Scholars. Interestingly enough, at the same time, I joined Scholars, I was pretty sure, and my therapist had almost convinced me of it, that I should be a therapist. So I enrolled in a marriage and family therapy program.

Interesting.

And I was waiting on it to start. It was going to start in September, and I joined Scholars, which started in January. And between January and September, I had such a powerful experience with coaching, which is not what I was getting from Therapy. No offense to therapy, but by September, I was enrolled in life coaching certification and quit my job. Or well, planned to quit my job, but pulled out of the marriage and family therapy program and then just decided coaching is what I want to do.

So that's what we did. So I certified, quit my job. We went.

Became certifiable.

Became certifiable and interesting. At that time, I didn't really want to coach. I don't think that was what I wanted to do. I thought that would be too sad. But I just hadn't done enough of my own work yet. So I just knew coaching was amazing and I wanted to help people. And I didn't really know how I was going to use that. And then it unfolded and then at a certain point, I was just kind of, why would I do anything else besides help widows? That doesn't make any sense.

Interesting. You know, one of the things that a lot of women who work in sort of healing, healer roles. Right. Which is what I consider the work that we do most, like there's a challenge to marry that and also running a profitable business. Right. That, you know, here I am serving and healing. How can I also make seven figures? I'm kind of curious how you've married that in your brain or if that was never an issue.

Like, as in, you should give it away for free because you're helping people. So how are you charging?

Yeah, I was just talking to somebody the other day about. Right. Like, a lot of people who work in healing space think you need to be poor to be, you know, to be worthy of your gift.

You know, that was less an issue for me. I think I also recognized pretty early on that when I look back over what I have taken seriously, you know, the more if when I've had skin in the game, that's when I've grown the most because I took that work seriously. Even scholars for me at the time, because I had never spent money on coaching, was a huge deal. Right. And that's why I think I created such a powerful experience for myself, is because I showed up. I mean, I did every page, the workbooks, like, I did the work. And I did that because the money to me, right. Had me invested. And so I wanted that same experience for other people. And I knew that they would value what they paid for.

So. Good. So what do you think you've learned most by running a business that supports widows?

What have I learned most?

Question. I appreciate that, but I'm kind of curious because you started with one intention and that sort of evolves. Right. The more we grow, the more we help people, the more we know.

I think personally I kind of expected. I didn't expect the growth to keep coming, which I don't even know why, because I've always thought about growth as being a lifelong thing.

I'm still surprised sometimes, which surprises me at how I go through something, I get good at it. I coach myself through all of the fear and the drama and I expect my life to be somewhat better. And I get there, I realize it's. It's actually not. And then it's like the next level of that same belief.

Shows up to greet me again when I'm. When I'm ready to go to the next level. So it's like this constant evolution of my capacity to have and my capacity to let it be good and the limits of what I believe I'm allowed to have and worth having. And that just keeps coming.

I would imagine that's huge work, especially for widows. Right? That word, like somehow that you weren't worthy of. I would imagine that's a big. I see that hugely in leadership in general. Women who really struggle with worthiness struggle to lead others.

Yeah, yeah. And I think widows struggle in somewhat different ways in that they make their own success or their own happiness mean something about themselves or their relationship. If I'm too happy, I didn't love them enough or all this drama or I don't deserve happiness because of what happened or because of my role in it. And yeah, there can be a lot to work through there.

We recently had a client who husband passed away unexpectedly and so leads me to ask you, I'm curious. I would imagine that many of the women you coach, or several anyway, are also entrepreneurs. They have their own. So it was a unique challenge for this woman. So she's lost her partner, her husband, and also still has this million dollar operation that she's responsible for. And I'm just kind of curious if you've had other women like that in your program and, and how you sort of help them navigate that you know.

More than female business owners. What I have had a lot of are women whose husbands owned businesses. Oh. And then they found themselves in the position of trying to run that business. And that has happened a lot.

And then there's a lot of. Definitely a lot of the wrong person is in the role. It should be him and not me. I can't. I don't have the ability. And also, interestingly enough, a lot of obligation.

Where women will try to make themselves do something that they didn't really ever want to do and live out someone else's dream instead of.

Focusing on their own dream. Yeah. And deciding that it wasn't for them. And sometimes they'll end up staying, staying with it and loving it and turning it into something that's their own. But it's not an easy journey.

No, I think it's a little. I think when you have a job job or you don't have a work commitment, it's different. But that immediate obligation of a business and employees and team members, plus your own grief, I would imagine is just a little more compounding. Right.

Yeah. And then especially if it's not going well, you know, if the business isn't all that profitable or there's some sort of drama in there invariably does seem to be that. And then Covid, of course, has thrown so many businesses.

Challenges that are just so out of the ordinary and so add that to the mix and yeah, it's a heaping amount of fun. But.

The way of the world, these.

Things, those things in there. Okay, let's ask you a couple Krista questions. Started this business. So let's just talk about the business and the team. How big is your team? You have a few people on your team, right?

I have a few people on my team. Everyone's contract at this point. So I have Becky. She's like my right hand person. I feel like VA is a completely underrated name for her.

Promote her to operations director.

Yeah. And sometimes we call her client care specialist because she does all of those things. So she handles all the onboarding and offboarding and she actually has her own team of VAs that report to her that I don't even have anything to do with. So she delegates a lot of the lower level tasks to them. But she's been my kind of right hand person since 2019. So we're still going strong. And then I have Jamie, who is a former member client, interestingly enough, cousin of Becky, which is how it all works. But Jamie came and did the program after her husband Eric died and it was really powerful for her and she did a couple of rounds of masters and then decided not to go back to her civil engineering job and just came to work for me. So she's been doing that in a couple of capacities. She's been doing mentoring within the group and she's learning to coach and she's done selling now she's doing a social selling role in addition to all of those things. And she does coaching in Slack. She's a pro at the tools that we use. And then everyone else is really very specialized. So I have somebody who edits my podcast. I have a social media group, I have a public relations group, graphic designer, those kinds of individual positions.

So what do you think is the easiest part about all that? Corralling all that talent to deliver on.

Your vision when you can hire the right who and you're not at all invested in the how because they're the experts on the how. Like that for me is a big deal. So that's what I love about the contractors that I work with. Even though Becky and Jamie aren't, they're technically contractors. I. We're communicating on a regular basis and I'm giving them guidance. And it's not as though I have hired a who and just completely say, you know, but with, with the other people, I trust that they are the expert in what they do. And so it's easier for me because I can articulate the outcome that I want and, you know, by when I want it and how we measure success, but then not be micromanaging and into the how they do it and just let them do it in their own way and bring it back to me. And I love that.

Yeah. So fun.

Yeah.

It makes it a lot easier.

Oh my God.

So what, what do you find to be difficult about corralling the talents of others to deliver on your vision?

I find that some people accept feedback easier than others.

Right.

So like, if everybody could see themselves as. As amazing as I see them on my team, that would be nice. But that's not always everyone's self concept. Right. So I can intend something to be very constructive and in my mind, it's not a problem even. It's just something we're going to solve. But I'm not upset or even really worried about it. I'm not thinking about it. And then I'll find out that, you know, one of them has stewed on something for days and we're pretty certain they were going to get fired. And, you know, it's been a big deal in their brain when it was never a big deal in my brain. And just kind of continuing to navigate how do we check in on their confidence and make sure that, you know, they're getting the feedback that they need and hearing things from me in the way that I intend. Right. So it's the communication which, interestingly enough, my degree is in communication.

Well, I think the truth is that we can all be exceptional. We can all be recognized as exceptional and think we're exceptional and we can also still miss the mark. And also.

We'Re never going to get. Because we all have our own independent minds and we all have our own little thoughts. There's no amount of me trying to curate this message that I can ensure that it lands with the intention that I had. Right. Because it still has to go through the filter of someone else's brain.

Right. And you can't control their thoughts. So, yeah, that's it. But it's. It's learning to check in to see what their thoughts are and that to spot the problems before they grow.

Frequency is, is very important. I think the big gaps in communication are where a lot of that festers and growth too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's one of the things I've started doing is every Monday when, when I have the little weekly team meeting that we have is just check in on, know where's your confidence level in your ability to do your job and where's your job satisfaction and what is that? And because I don't want to assume that. I know.

And I think both of those two things really need to be high in order for people to, you know, be effective on your team and make it a relationship that works over the long haul.

Yeah, good. I mean, we coachy types, we like to give feedback and talk about things, but not everybody's as familiar with that.

I don't understand.

I don't want to talk about how I feel. I'm not interested. Just tell me what you want. It's fine.

Well, and interestingly too, I mean, I guess that's maybe why it's been so much fun for me with the two people that are currently on my team and have been for some time. Because Becky started as a coach, you know, so she already valued coaching, but she didn't actually want to coach. She just wanted to support coaches. Beautiful fit, you know, and then Jamie's so in love with what we do.

Yeah. Well, she's lifted. Right. That's best kind of team members, really.

Right.

Because they're so connected to the vision.

Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely. What is your vision?

What is my vision? You know, if I could. Here's my, my dream vision is like anytime a woman's partner dies, they find out what I do. It's like handed to immediate.

Well, that's immediate with my client. Right. I was like, immediately, you need to talk to Krista. Right. Because I agree. It's like, no, no, no, no. Just, just like you need like the 24 or 48 hour triage kit.

Totally. And even, even if they don't ever work with me. I just don't want them to struggle with some of the basic stuff that they don't need to struggle with. Because we live in a culture that really does not understand grief.

Yeah.

And we have a lot of misinformation out there. And so when you are not prepared, it really shows. And. And so I would love to just get the information and people, this is.

Totally random, but do you have. I feel badly if you're gonna say, yeah, duh, like, but I'm gonna ask anyway. Do you have anything that you put in the world to help people? Other people help people.

Like, I can speak. Like, there have been a few people that I've known in my community whose husbands have been unexpectedly ill or had an accident and have passed away, and I don't know what to do.

Yeah. Do you have something like that?

I do.

I did a podcast episode that I send people to a lot called for those who Love Us. And so it's really designed for someone who is in a support role to listen to. And unfortunately, it's not as easy as it's not prescriptive because everyone's experience is so different. But it does give you some things to think about and some definite do's and don'ts that a lot of us don't know. And yeah, I find that to be pretty helpful. And then I recently just created a course and it's with widows in mind, but I think I'm going to give it to everyone who wants it because it's really just about the, like, grief 101.

Yeah.

You know, like, here's kind of how it goes. And even though it's designed for widows, I think anybody watching it would have a much better appreciation for what that person that they care so deeply about is going through and what it's like for them.

Well, you know, it makes me think, like, I'm a big BBC acorn, Brit box kind of person. So I watch all the shows and, you know, we. 100 plus years ago, maybe even as early as 60 or 70 years ago, we have much more rituals around death. Right. Even if we go back the grieving and that you would wear your band and that you would wear black, not that I would endorse that, but that there was a process that recognized a widow and you would honor her, like, you would see her and say you're a widow. We identify that you're a widow rather than now, you know, you're in the grocery store and no one knows that three weeks ago Your husband died. And there's so there's not that sense of support and community around grieving. And we, I think. Right. Like we've really lost that. Yeah.

When you think about it just makes almost no sense because we're more connected or we have the potential to be more connected than we've ever had in the history of ever. And yet it is, I think, almost more isolating than it has ever been.

Nobody wants to be reminded of their mortality. And of course, Covid, I would imagine, has only just made that worse. Right. And even in the ceremonial process of death, we haven't even been able to memorialize people like we even did before. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think what I noticed too, a lot is that because we are so sold on happiness as the goal now as a culture that shows up in grief in a huge way. Because if you think the goal is to be happy all the time and you think emotions are problems, then when you don't have the capacity to handle your own negative emotion, then you definitely don't have the capacity to be with someone else as they have theirs. And so we have this kind of fix it culture. And that's where all of those cliches and platitudes that are well meaning, but that's the root cause.

There's more fish in the sea. You're young. It's a blessing they're in a better place. All those things that are received as minimizing by the griever come from this. I don't know what to do with your negative emotions, so I'll just say something. Or conversely, I don't know what to do with your negative emotions, so I'll say nothing and pretend it didn't happen.

Yeah.

Right. Like, or. Because otherwise I don't want to say the wrong thing. Right.

And really there is. There's nothing that's going to fix it. So, you know, can we just go with I'm so sorry and I love you?

Yes.

And we just acknowledge that it sucks, but we don't try to make it better.

No. Just ignore it where they are. Okay, Two more questions.

What's next?

What's happening in this beautiful business of yours that you're growing and where's it going?

I actually don't have a lot of change in mind in terms of the way the business runs. I love the program. I love the format. I love all of it.

Can we just take a minute? Sure. I just love that. I love that you love it. I love that you. That you want it to stay the way that it is. I love that. There's just something I just relaxed when I listened to. You should pay attention to that. That's interesting. But that was lovely. Okay, so. And I interrupted you and.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, when you look back and you look at the trajectory of my business, I really am not one to make a lot of change. Like, I did one on one, and I did it till I sold it out and I started making. Not only did I sell it out, but I started seeing, ooh, I could be more effective if I could help these women in groups. And then I created a group, and I've really just stuck with it. And I just keep figuring out how to sell it better and how to deliver it better, but you step back and you don't really see that much change. So what I want to do now, what I'm working on now is just changing, honestly, the sales process. So I've relied on consult calls. I've relied on a limited amount of spots, and I don't want to rely on a limited amount of spots, and I don't want to have consult calls. And I would like to figure out a way to help women more quickly. Not. Not more quickly in that they need to. I don't want to help them earlier in their grief. I want to wait until they're at the appropriate time based on, you know, their cognitive state and their, you know, well being. Because you. In order to be successful in the program that I run, we don't want to be in the early widow fog, crazy, acute days. We need to be a little bit, you know, past that. But when they're ready, I want them to be able to go as opposed to waiting. And that's the way that it's been, is they've had to wait to get on the phone with us, and they've had to wait for the next group to start. And so I'd like to speed that up for them and not have to do the calls anymore.

That's fixable. You know that.

Yeah, it is fixable. No, I know it's fixable. Yeah, it is absolutely fixable. And then just turn it up. Right. But not turn it up to the point of I really like the relationships that I have with my clients, and I like the community that I've created. And so I don't. I want to turn it up, but I don't want to sacrifice what makes the community such a great experience for people.

Yeah, I think you and I actually share some of that, like, I call it intimacy. I Have a real goal to maintain that in my business with my clients. That isn't to say that other people don't have that, but I'm just not interested in a massive program. I want to know everybody that's in there. I will. You know, we just rolled out a new program called the Sage CEO, which will be a much more personal experience with me. And I love that. But I'm still very involved in my have a CEO program in the lab. And that's a goal. So there are some limitations. Right. That we naturally are putting on ourselves by doing that when we build it around our availability or personal interest of what we want.

Yeah. And it's not to say that I couldn't love it if I did it another way, but I really love being able to get on a call and coach someone and remember the last coaching session with them or remember three sessions ago how that thing that they need to hear now is totally related to that thing we've already talked about. And this is just the next progression. And I.

I don't know what that capacity is where I wouldn't be able to do that. But I don't want to go past that capacity. If I do go past that capacity, then what I would probably want to do is, you know, do something that's a lower cost, higher volume, you know, help a lot more women. But, you know, I'm not in a rush for that.

No. Because you love your business. Okay, so what's one thing you're super duper afraid of, but you're going to do it anyway?

Struggle with this question.

Are you afraid of anything?

Intellectually, I'm really not that afraid of things. I still feel the fear though, whenever I decide I'm going to do something new or different.

And it's not about one thing, it's just about whatever the next evolution is. It's the constant whatever I'm going to do next. Watching my brain try to leave my body and go into intellectual, logical problem solving and then pulling myself back into my body and what lights me up.

That'S the cycle. I just keep seeing over and over.

What you're saying is, you know that you're going to feel uncomfortable and afraid.

About something every time, but you still.

Move yourself through it to do it.

You don't need to. So. Yeah, so. So it's not a particular thing that I feel like is out there in the future that I have to get to. It's just like every single next thing that that feels that that is outside of my current self concept. Right. Like not every little thing, but whatever the next big goal is that I set for sure there's going to be a part of me that has fear and I'm going to notice my old patterns come up and I just kind of. I get better and faster at coming back to myself and to what lights me up and try and getting back in that flow. Right. Which is not where my logical brain wants me to go. My logical brain wants to go to problem solving. And then things aren't fun and they don't flow and they don't work and they're effortful.

Effortful?

Yeah.

Is that a word?

I don't know. Is it? I don't know about.

Like it. I like it.

Yeah. It's like, it's like it becomes a slog. Yeah. That's one of the things that I learned from you, actually. I don't know if you intended to teach me that.

But that it could be fun. Like, I have a tendency to take things really seriously. And one of the things I think you do so well is you have so much fun. Like, you're light hearted. You get it done.

Yeah.

But you have fun.

I have to have fun.

Yeah.

I have to think about things as like being a playground. Otherwise, like, if I start to think of myself as an adult and things really matter, I can't do it.

And I have to go, oh, wait, we can have fun. Remember? Hey, fun. Remember that thing?

Like, what would be the most fun way to attract lots of women and not have to do consults?

Yeah, we do this and it could be fun.

I bet you could come up with a way.

Well, that's exactly how I worked myself out of the, like the last iteration of this. Right. Is. Is going, wait a minute. What lights me up here? What would just absolutely feel like a dream to do here and then follow that and then boom. Like, I solved the problem that I was so stressed out and losing Sleepover. And then in an hour it felt totally different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I. Last year I created a wisdom card deck for my clients who joined the lab but in advance. Before that, I was just wanting to rip my face off because I wanted it done, but the work of it was awful. I'm like, this is going to be a nightmare. And so my coach said to me, how could this be fun?

I said, well, it could be fun.

If I could just get on the phone with someone and tell them what I want them to all say and they write it down and then somebody designs them and then it's done and she's like 10. And so I did that and I just planned hour long calls for a few months throughout the, you know, sporadically and then they were done.

Love it.

And that is, you know, I think it's a very overlooked option. So thank you for pointing it out because I do think a lot of us get way too bogged down and also very serious. Okay, last question. What's the, what's the bit that you, that you just wish, you know, you have your coaching wisdom which is brilliant and lovely and for any one of you that are listening who think that working with Krista would make sense for you, I can't recommend that enough. I would also love to know you obviously had your, as you put it, charity life fitness businesses.

And you've also started this business. So what is that piece of wisdom that you think is great to share with other women who are running businesses of their own? Things to something to remember.

Huge lesson that I had to learn was just to get good at failure.

I think we talk about this kind of a lot now, or at least in my friends and I do because maybe I'm surrounded by coaches, but I really was. I remember back when I worked at Learjet how many times I would read an email to make sure it sounded good, had a perfect punctuation, like so far past the point of diminishing return. It was insane. But in that culture, mistakes weren't okay at all. You were not supposed to fail. You were supposed to. It was all about flawless execution.

And so you just spent so much time trying not to fail. And it took me a while to really get good at see, at switching that mindset for myself and seeing that, you know, no, what I really want to do is not just, you know, throw spaghetti at a wall and see what sticks. It's not like shotgun failing. Yeah. But purposeful. Try something and if it doesn't work, you have new data. We learn by doing. It's okay, just keep going. You know, that kind of massive action type of failure. And that took a long time for me because I, I just didn't have any sort of positive self talk after failure.

Well, yeah, I think it's, you know, it's a little more compounded. Even when you have their own business and you are the business, it's your coaching, it's your service. Right. Like, okay, if they're not, if they don't buy this or they don't like this that, you know, not to over personalize that really learn to make that distinction between there's me and I'm lovely and amazing. And then there's this business and that is outside of me and I'm going to play with this business to find and make it as successful as it can be. Yeah.

And I also see the similarities in terms of, you know, what I did prior career where I was in a manufacturing engineering role. You know, the goal was design something but don't spend a lot of time in design. You know, design, build, test, repeat over and over as fast as you can get that cycle to go. Because that's the only way you get information. Information to determine whether your design is actually worth anything. And so when I could make that switch into my own business and just decide, okay, iteration truly is the goal. Just iterate as fast as you can. You know, still you, you want to wait long enough to gather data so that you're not just iterating for the sake of iteration.

Right.

But you're moving at a speed that doesn't have you. Ready? Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim, aim forever. Which was the way that I used to be.

Like the email. The email, right.

Oh dear.

Yeah.

Oh, and just like over perfecting like, you know, well, should I charge this or should I charge that or should it be six weeks or should it be 12 weeks or you know, just all those things that don't even matter at all. You just got to do them. You just got to try them and see what happens and then don't be mean to yourself. Congratulate yourself for trying something. What an idea.

Yeah, that's critical. And, and I think that's true. I was just talking in my had a CEO group just this morning. We were talking about like that's also true for building a team. Like we sort of have this belief that, oh, I'm going to hire someone, it's going to be perfect. Everything's going to be great. No, it's not. You're going to hire someone and they're going to make mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. They won't stay. You might want to fire them. They may never come back. They may call you the day they're supposed to start and not show up. Like there's lots of things that are going to happen, but that's not a signal to stop.

No, no, that's more data.

Yeah, exactly.

Than take, take with you. Yeah.

Keep going. So well, thank you my friend for spending some time with me today. It was delightful to see you.

My pleasure. I look forward to seeing you in, in person at some point again. Couple months stops being weird.

I'll be tan because I will.

Well, I will just have come from Puerto Rico, so I will be somewhat tan. You're going to see Sunny? I don't think so. I'm staying in a different part of the island than where she is. But. But it seems like the place to go. Everybody's apparently moving to Puerto Rico. I don't know.

I wasn't born there, but I moved there when I was one.

Oh, I didn't know that.

I lived in Puerto Rico for six years. Yeah.

Oh, then maybe I need to get travel tips from you.

No, I don't know.

It's too long.

Lens of a seven year old. No.

Fair. That's fair. Here's what you should do. Go to the beach, take off all your clothes, get sunburned.

Done.

I think that's about the extent of my life that I could share with you.

But it's a beautiful. I'm looking forward to it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks for spending time with us today.

You bet.