Work With Anyone — Even the Complicated Ones with Ryan Leak

Real conversations often aren't happening. That's another impetus for the book, actually. I think we've lost the art of just talking to one another. We have not lost the art of talking about one another, but actually talking to each other to be able to say, hey, if this person's agreeable, hey, can we chat? I want to, I want to have a genuine, authentic, perhaps vulnerable conversation with you about our working relationship. And whether that person's agreeable or disagreeable, to be able to address the elephant in the room, to say, hey, you know what, I could be wrong. But man, the way, the way that I'm seeing our relationship is that, man, there's, there's often this tension. And I'll be honest, I don't, I don't want to work like that. And I don't think you do either. And so, and I just want to play my part. So is there something that I can do? Is it the way that I present ideas? So you now you get your day in court, but you're the one setting up the court case. And so I think when you're able to do that and just be one of those people that has made a decision, I'm gonna have genuine conversations. We're gonna talk about the thing. We're not gonna dance around the thing. I, I, I wanna be able to talk about the thing. We're gonna spend so much time together. And so if we're gonna do that, we might as well address the thing that we're always thinking about all the time.

Ryan Leak, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. Here's my first question. Tell the audience how you are complicated.

I'm complicated in multiple ways. Uh, number one, my friends say that I have what's called selective frugality, which means I will spare no expense for certain things, and I'm insanely cheap on other things, which means I will stay at a 5-star resort But I will not pay $9 a bottle for water in the rooms. I'll go to Walmart and get a 24-pack and walk through the Four Seasons lobby with a 24-pack of water. And my wife's like, why are we here if we can't afford the water? I'm like, how do you think we can afford to be here? Okay? It's because I've got selective frugality. You know, it's funny. I've got this— as we were doing the book campaign for How to Work with Complicated People, there was a PR firm that was looking in. looking into helping me. And they didn't know the title of my book. And they were like, hey, we'll have you in New York, we're gonna have you in Miami, we're gonna have you in all these places. And, and I said, well, I don't know that I can do that because of my speaking schedule. And I just laid out my speaking schedule. And literally the guy wrote back, Ryan, you're too complicated to work with. I'm gonna pass. And I said, well, hey, I've got this book coming out called How to Work with Complicated People. And if you just read the book, I promise you it will help you work with me. And so, uh, I, I secretly wrote the book for anybody that works with me to, to figure it out.

That's a ninja move right there. A little bit of reverse psych— well, it's probably not reverse psychology, but what a, what a fun move to write a book for everybody else in the universe to work with you more efficiently. That's pretty smart.

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

So what was the origin of the book? When did you decide to write it? Was there a specific complicated person in your life and you said, Geez, I need to really research and figure out how to deal with this person.

Yeah. Well, yeah, you know what's so funny is I started working with more complicated people after I wrote a book on how to work with complicated people. Like, my employees and contract workers kept getting more and more complicated. I'm like, oh, I needed this book like ahead of time. But mostly, you know, I do about 100, 120 events a year. And so a lot of my clients were— and their biggest problems weren't change management. Their biggest problems weren't COVID. Most of their problems were people problems. In fact, we learned through our research that people actually can pull off a pretty difficult job with people they enjoy over their dream job with people that they have to tolerate.

Mm-hmm.

And so when it comes to job satisfaction, well, it had very little to do with their job description and a whole lot more to do with the people they actually had to pull those jobs off with. And so that was the impetus for writing this book.

Yeah. I read in your book that the average person spends at least 85,000 hours throughout their lifetime at work. And you had a fun line where you said something like, that could either be a life calling or a life sentence depending on the people that you work with. I thought that was pretty clever.

Sure. Yeah, no question about it. I mean, you're going to just spend a great deal of your life at work. So, and it's not always going to be an ideal job. So, but can you be an ideal person that people look forward to working with? I think you can. So that, that was the exciting part.

Yeah, it reminds me of somebody I brought onto my team at Book Thinkers a few years ago. His name is Luke. He was, he was working in a different industry with people he didn't necessarily enjoy, and the culture was poor. He was making a lot of money though. And as we were talking about it, and as I was talking with him about Book Thinkers, I knew he'd be a great fit for our culture.

Right.

Right fit on the right bus. And so as he was evaluating the opportunity with us, I said, hey, listen, man, I can't pay you as much as you were making before. And he said, listen, finances, that's just one way to look at currency. There's also cultural currency, workplace currency. And so he made a step into our business. down financially, but went sky high from a cultural perspective. And I really think that just highlights exactly why you wrote this book.

No question about it. Our research actually showed that people would take a lower-paying job. Half of them, half of working America said that they would take a slightly lower-paying job to work with less complicated people. So that's totally a testament to that for sure.

And so is your perspective that you don't have to leave your job? You can start to manage those relationships a little bit differently?

My perspective is you should do the best with your part before you make the jump. Have you done everything in your power to build bridges with people, to develop all of the people skills that you can at the current job that you're at that will set you up for the next job? If that's what it needs to be. But the idea that you're just going to be a runner your whole life and you're just going to go job to job to job to job to job and they're always the problem, you are not actually growing. And so my hope with this book is that people would look within to say, how can I become the kind of person that other people look forward to working with?

Yeah, right in the beginning of your book, you sort of smack the reader in the face, metaphorically, of course. By saying, look in the mirror, you, you are complicated. We are all that complicated person for somebody else. And so there's definitely sort of like the airplane metaphor. We've got to put our own mask on first before we can start helping other people. And so when did that realization come to you? I mean, was there a specific time where you just woke up and said, you know what, I think I'm that person's complicated person?

Uh, well, I'm married, so there's that. So I'm pretty aware of where I can be complicated. I think self-awareness has always been a core principle in my life in general. I had a previous book called Leveling Up that you did a highlight for on social media, where one of the core questions in that is asking the question, what's it like to be on the other side of me? Well, when you're asking yourself that question all the time, Man, you, you're, you have to realize, man, on the other side of me, it may not be as ideal as I think it is. I've worked with a lot of clients where I love asking the question, hey, how's it going with your team? And they always say the same thing. It's going good. To which I say, how do you know? Like, it's going good according to your perspective. And so when I think about the people that work for me, I go, I could be the one that's blind. And so once I started asking, it's like, oh wait, I was pretty vague. on that request. Oh, like, I even asked ChatGPT. I said, hey, what's it like to be on the other side of me? It said, you move on to the next idea really fast. And I would imagine if I worked for you in person, it would be pretty hard to keep up with you. And I'm like, oh, that's totally spot on. So I think just trying to live with self-awareness. I don't think I have complete self-awareness. Obviously, there's that, like, the irony of self-awareness is you need others. And so I think there's always going to be something, a cue that you miss in, in that regard that, um, that you're not always aware of. So I, I think that for me, it's been probably a decade-long journey of just always being on that journey of self-awareness.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. And when you talk about you being married and you being your wife's complicated person, I had a funny moment with my wife yesterday where I shared a reel On my story talking about giving other people grace and defaulting to gratitude. And I do that with other people a lot, but I don't always do it with her. And she brought that up and it was a great moment of self-awareness where I said, you're right, I am projecting this outward and I do this with a lot of other people, but I think I need to give you grace a little bit more often than I do. And so great call to action for anybody in the audience today, either listening or watching. Think about who you might be a complicated person for and try to add a little bit more presence and self-awareness into that relationship.

100%. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's all about being able to extend the grace that you wish somebody was giving you. And that's the thing is whenever, whenever we're the ones accused of anything, we always want what? Our day in court. To say, no, no, no, you misunderstood. No, that wasn't my tone. You misread that text message. That's not how I was feeling in the moment. And you filled in my intentions when those weren't my intentions. And it's like, well, if that's what we would want from somebody else, well, then we should desire to also give that away to other people.

So Ryan, can you give us at least one example of a trait that maybe used to bother you, the people that you worked with, that you now appreciate, or at least You're better at working with it?

Man, you know, that's a great question. I'm pretty fast-paced. Like, I want answers pretty quickly. And so I think whenever there is somebody that's doing work for me, and they're taking their sweet time, it used to frustrate me. But it's a whole lot less mistakes. And so, I've begun to appreciate other people's pace where instead of demanding that everybody runs at mine.

Yeah, that's a great answer. Have you ever done a Kolbe assessment?

No. What's that?

Kolbe is one of those many workplace assessments that people can take. And I'm part of a group called Strategic Coach. I'm working my way through their program and I just did mine. And it's all about how you take action.

Got it.

And the reason I'm bringing it up is just like you, I'm a quick start. That's what they call it. I'm very high on the quick start category. I'm moving in a lot of different directions. It brings me energy to wear different hats and to focus on different projects, just like it does for you. And I learned more about that in your book.

Yeah.

And I had my team take Kolbe assessments so that I could understand how they take action. And that, I think sometimes in order to understand somebody else, you've gotta like really fully immerse yourself in the different ways that people might take action. And, and that gives you the language to articulate it and the way, you know, sort of like the language to see it as well. And so that helped me. I'm just like you, man. I'm moving 1,000 miles an hour, and sometimes I'm like, come on everybody, let's go.

No, I want to check out that assessment, man. I'll, uh, I'll look at that later today. That sounds awesome.

Let me ask you a question. From your perspective, is it harder to work with somebody who is always agreeable or always disagreeable. And I'd love to have you maybe share with us some, some ways that people in the audience might be able to approach, like, tomorrow, uh, people in those different camps and reframe the way they think about being always agreeable or always disagreeable, because I find that a lot in the workplace.

Man, great question. So let's go with agreeable first. All right, when it comes to dealing with somebody who's always agreeable, that means they're probably not being honest with you about something.

Mm.

And so that means that they feel a certain level of pressure to acquiesce to your preferences, to your pace, to your request. And that means that they are having a secret conversation either with someone else or themselves about not working with you. So agreeable all the time is not a good sign. And so what you want to do with a person like that is you want to be able to create a psychologically safe environment for them to be honest, to say, hey, for us to work well together, I'm actually going to invite you to be disagreeable. I'm actually going to invite you to have a different opinion, to bring a different perspective. I might not hire you or I don't work with you for us to have sameness. No, I, I value your perspective. And so being able to, to get them to a place where they can be honest, you, you don't want somebody that's just a yes man or a yes woman, or that's just nodding their head and going along because now you don't have a person that is actually authentic. And so I think moving towards a person who's agreeable all the time and giving them the space to say, hey, I value your voice, I value your thoughts, to be able to, to help them feel like their voice really matters. For the person that is disagreeable, much different boat, much different strategy, I would say, in terms of moving towards that kind of person. Typically, a person who is always disagreeable didn't start becoming disagreeable when they started working with you. Okay, this is something that has been going on with them for a very, very long time. So one, like we just talked about a little bit ago, giving them a little bit of grace to say maybe the reason they're disagreeable with me isn't always about me. There's more going on in their life than I can even see.

Mm-hmm.

I love to say complicated people often have a complicated behind the scenes. And the reason I know that is because I have a very complicated behind the scenes. You have a very complicated behind the scenes that people don't always see or give you grace for. And we're not always explaining our behind the scenes, but we all have it. And so once realizing this disagreeable person has something going on behind the scenes that you can't see, it's number one. Number two, I think the way that you approach them is to be able to say, hey, here's the deal. And being able to say this out loud is crucial. Hey, I want us to have a thriving working relationship. I'm just stating my intentions. Hey, I want, I want us to have a thriving working relationship. And man, sometimes I just, I feel like I'm always like, perhaps we're always butting heads. Uh, perhaps it's, if I say the sky's blue, you're, you're gonna say it's green, you know? But I think addressing the elephant in the room to be able to say, hey, is there something that I could be doing for our working relationship to thrive? Here's the deal. We, we could spend 85,000 hours of our life together. I don't know if that's gonna be true, but while we are working together, we might as well get along at a high level. I had a client who, uh, their top talent asked to be transferred out of his department and it was denied. And so he called me, he's like, well, what do I do? I said, man, this is a perfect opportunity for you to actually have a real conversation. I think in both scenarios, real conversations often aren't happening. That's another impetus for the book, actually. I think we've lost the art of just talking to one another. We have not lost the art of talking about one another, but actually talking to each other to be able to say, hey, if this person's agreeable, hey, can we chat? I want to, I want to have a genuine, authentic, perhaps vulnerable conversation with you about our working relationship. And whether that person's agreeable or disagreeable, to be able to address the elephant in the room to say, hey, you know what, I could be wrong. But man, the way, the way that I'm seeing our relationship is that Man, there's, there's often this tension and, and I'll be honest, I don't, I don't wanna work like that and I don't think you do either. And so, and I just wanna play my part. So is there something that I can do? Is it the way that I present ideas? Do I come across arrogant and pompous? And so that just makes you wanna just go, no, I'm, you're just gonna be disagreeable. And so, oh, oh man, I, I just wanna let you know, like, I, I don't think I know all the answers. You know, I, I just know this client really well and, and I just think this would add the most value, but So, so you now you get your day in court, but you're the one setting up the court case. And so I think when you're able to do that and just be one of those people that has made a decision, I'm gonna have genuine conversations. We're gonna talk about the thing. We're not gonna dance around the thing. I, I, I wanna be able to talk about the thing. We're gonna spend so much time together. And so if we're gonna do that, we might as well address the thing that we're always thinking about. All the time.

I think you need to get this book into, uh, both sides of the US political parties. You know, talk about a group of people who can't have open and vulnerable conversations that stem from a place of curiosity and love instead of just defensiveness. And, and, you know, like, what a wonderful world we would live in if everybody just had the conversation that you just described. I would like to thrive with you, what's wrong? What can I do better? You know, it's just like, it's that simple, isn't it?

Yeah, man. Yeah. I actually got someone recently just reached out in the political space, and I actually just went and spoke for them in Chicago. And I was nervous about it because it was when I wrote this book, you know, I kind of wrote it for just the common American workforce. And, you know, I didn't— obviously, it applies perhaps more in the political space than any other space. I was nervous about it, but man, I was pleasantly surprised by how willing this group of people were willing to say, hey man, what's best for our city? What's best for our state? And perhaps going back and forth in the news isn't what's best for the next generation. So that was actually pretty hopeful. And, but man, I, I, I help whoever calls, so I do what I can.

Now, Ryan, when you speak, do you give the same presentation most of the time, or do you customize each talk for the audience that you're speaking to?

Man, so I've had a pretty fun career. I started off in church, and I was what was called a teaching pastor at multiple churches. And so I would actually rotate between 5 pretty large churches. I'm speaking to about 50,000 people a month. And consistently changing the subject, because when you are in a teaching pastor role, you're jumping into what we would call sermon series. So this week we're going to talk about anger, and then next week we're going to talk about marriage, and then next week we're going to talk about how you treat your neighbor, and then the next week we're going to break down a book of the Bible. And so I had to create 30 minutes, uh, dang near every week that needed to be relatable. humorous, practical, and spiritual, and, and to be able to move people. So that was a muscle that I, uh, I wouldn't say flex, but a muscle that I built over the course of 5 years. And so whenever I— now, I used to be about 80% church, 20% corporate speaking. Now I'm about 90% corporate speaking and about 10% church. So whenever I am sitting with a client, I always ask the question, what's the biggest challenge your people are having? And then I develop my keynote around that. Now, most companies and most events want me to do something around one of my books. And so the theme is generally one of the books, but the actual content of the deck is as customized as they want it to be. Some people will say, I heard you speak in Chicago. I want you to come do that exact same speech For my group. I say, okay. But the way that I view communication and the way that I view events is I'm consistently asking, how can I add value to the room that I'm in? And if it's something I'm, I've already said, great. If it's something that I need to write brand new, I'm happy to do that. A lot of companies have me back the next year and they go, hey, can you come give us another 60? I'm like, dude, I just gave you my best 60 last year. And so they'll say, hey, can you write us a customer service talk? And I'll be like, dude, I don't— I'm not a customer service speaker. There's people like, this is their whole thing. But they're like, man, but our people just do— they, they love you. And so I'll say, okay. And then I'll, I'll write a customer service talk. So now I have a customer service talk that, that went pretty well. So I love the art of communication and I love being able to write, uh, new content all the time. And then it also helps with social media too. We're always writing new content. For our social platforms. So, uh, so sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's not. Just depends.

We'll move back to the book in just a second, but for the aspiring speakers in the audience that heard you mention earlier in our conversation 100 to 120 talks a year, what's the first step? What should somebody be considering if they've written a book or they're in the process of writing a book and they want to get on some stages and start talking?

It's probably the number one question I get, for sure.

Yeah.

I would say you already have a stage and it is social media. And the wonderful part about social media is if you write some content and you sit down and you look into your phone and you deliver 50 to 60 seconds, If it's good, they'll let you know. If it's not, they'll let you know. And so that is the best testing ground for your content to know if it's good. Me and some friends are potentially, potentially gonna buy doesmybooksuck.com because People are always like, dude, I wanna write a book. I'm like, but does it suck? And then it's like, well, how do you know? And so we're like, man, can we create the kind of company that helps people basically score their book in a bunch of different areas that says, hey, you know, uh, on a, from a grammar standpoint, from a consistency standpoint, from a link, you know, and we would have kind of all of our, all of our areas in which we would rate a book. So it wouldn't just be like, oh, my opinion, but there would be sort of an objective scale. But it's the same thing with speaking. It's like, are you a good speaker? Well, social media will tell you if you are or if you're just okay. And, and that can be literally measured. And so I think the place that I would start is social media to be able to test different pieces of content. We do that every day. We are consistently posting things that I go, I don't, I don't think that's very good. I thought that last week about a video. I was like, yeah, I, it's me talking. I said it, but it doesn't mean that it was the best thing that I said in that talk. But I think it'll help some people, so I'll post it. Got 100,000 views in the first day, which is a lot for my specific page. And so it was like, oh, that did a lot better than I thought it would. I didn't actually think it was that profound of a statement, but for a lot of people it was very profound. So now you know what buttons resonate with people more. And then some people, that's how they actually find their way. They find— I've got another good friend, he posts a ton of content, and he said, hey, tell me what you think about this video he sent me. And somebody had just DM'd me and said, man, I wish you would make more fatherhood content. It's needed. And well, my friend's video was about fatherhood, so I just sent him the screenshot and said, hey, you're meeting a need. Well, that actually like sparked something in him. Now he's doing a whole fatherhood series, and like now he's like getting into like the fatherhood space, and it's some of his most shared content. It's like he's found his niche. But that's— if you literally were talking to him 3 months ago, he would have been more of in a generic Uh, speaker in that way. And so I think if, if you're trying to start and you're trying to figure that out, I think social media is the perfect platform on all the platforms. Do it on YouTube, do it on LinkedIn, do it on TikTok, do it on Instagram, do it on X, do it on Threads, and see what resonates with people the most. And, and from there, I think you can start to— here's what I know, dude. I can't tell you how many people, and I'm sure it's happened with you a ton. I can't tell you how many people who finish a book and say, all right, what do you think? And I'll say, I think it was a bad idea to begin with. You shouldn't have finished this book.

Yeah.

You should have never started this book. So even with my team, I have book ideas all the time and say, hey, what do you think? And I go, nah. And I'm like, I'm glad I didn't just go write a book and say, hey everybody, what do you think? It's like, No, you, you should test content to see what's gonna resonate with people the most, what's gonna add the most value to people, and then begin to move forward. I wrote a book on generosity and then sent it to my literary agent. She's like, nobody's gonna buy a book on generosity. I said, what do you mean? It's like my life passion. I love talking about giving. She goes, yeah, but nobody thinks they're greedy. Like, no one wakes up today and goes, oh, I'm a greedy person. If only someone would write a book to help me fix my greed problem. It's like, and she was so right, but I spent 6 months writing that book and I'm like, I should have just called her first and said, hey, thinking about writing a book on generosity. And she would have said the exact same thing and I would have saved 6 months of my life. Now, did I learn a ton from that experience? Of course. And, uh, but it's a book that will never get published for that very reason. So I think whenever somebody's at the beginning, I think being able to test these ideas on the internet. is one of the greatest gifts, and you get to do it for free long before you're on a stage and you're testing content. That's not the place that you want to be testing content unless you are a professional speaker and that's just what you do. But when you're starting off, social media is where it's at.

I think that's an amazing answer, which doesn't surprise me given that you get asked that question a lot. So you spend a lot of time thinking about what you would do and the advice that you would give. Yeah, it's a lot like In the business world, we talk about MVPs, minimally viable products. You don't just assume a customer's need and spend years and millions of dollars building a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, right? You test it out and you collect feedback and you build with your client base. And I think books are starting to be built that way. You know, James Clear with Atomic Habits was a good example. That was a blog for years. All of the content was available for free. He cherry-picked the content that was shared and engaged with the most, built it into a book. There was already a clear need for the content he was writing about because it already— there was already proof in the pudding, right? So I think what you're highlighting is that we can use social media to do the same thing. And I've also been told that books that turn into speeches are a lot less successful than speeches that turn into books because the speech gets tested and you collect feedback and you get to look See what's impacting people, and eventually you turn it into, uh, into a book. So it's a, it's, it's a better model that way.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So Ryan, now that your book has been out for a month as of today's recording, uh, what's the number one piece of feedback that you're getting from it? What do people love?

Uh, man, I've, I've gotten, you know, when it hit the New York Times bestsellers list You know, I got hundreds of texts from people just so, so excited about it. And, you know, a lot of the feedback that I get on social media around it is, man, this is, this is helping me navigate some really tough relationships. I think the surprise, the surprising feedback that I've gotten is how much it's impacted people's personal relationships.

Hmm.

You know, because it is a book for— it's how to work with complicated people. And the key word there is work. So we focused and narrowed in on the workforce because that's where people spend most of their time. But I think I'm— I've been surprised by how many people have taken the principles and said, oh, I need this for my brother. Oh, I need this for a tough conversation with my mom. Oh, we need this for a tough conversation with You know, somebody that, you know, it could be their doctor, for crying out loud. I mean, there's— I'm surprised by the application that people have been able to use it with. So, that part has been pretty rewarding for sure.

There's a book in the wealth management space or financial planning space that gets purchased by financial managers and given to their clients a lot. I'm spacing on the name. It was given to me. And the premise of the book is, as a, as a person working with a financial manager, I need to be more emotionally intelligent and impacted less by the fluctuations in the market. And the reason that financial managers give that book out to people is so that their clients then become more resilient and they experience less turnover. So it's like a little bit of a selfish play. I'm teaching, I'm training. my clients to work with me in a more efficient way. And I think going back to how we started the conversation, your book is great to gift out to family members and your coworkers or the people that work for you or with you so that they can deal with you in a more efficient and more loving way, especially if you're a complicated person. And everybody that listens to the Book Thinkers Podcast, we're high performance, we're all complicated people, right? So I think that's such a great sales pitch for your book is like gift it out to as many people as possible to improve your own life, which is so fun.

Totally. I love that.

Yeah. Um, okay, couple of last questions before we wrap things up. Number one, where can people go to get a copy of the book and learn more about you?

Uh, Amazon, How to Work with Complicated People. And you can always go to ryanleak.com and find all things me. I'm @ryanleak, R-Y-A-N-L-E-A-K, on all social media platforms. And, and, and that's, uh, those are the best places to connect with me.

All right, amazing. If you could change one thing about the book you just launched, what would it be?

You're not gonna be surprised by this. Uh, the one thing I would take out is, uh, the first couple of paragraphs about my fear of dogs. I would take that out.

Because why?

People love their dogs, man. And it's, again, I was, I was trying to, you know, give as much of a personal example as I possibly could. But I think it can somewhat be a turnoff for the reader because they want to like, like, I would have just not mentioned it. I would have just used something else. But it was a pretty funny moment when, unfortunately, my friend passed away. But he was— it was like basically in his dying days, his dog ran up on me. And I'm like, I've never petted a dog before. And I'm just like, but for my buddy, he's dying. I'm gonna pet a dog. Now, he didn't know that, that I had this massive fear of dogs. Dude, I was chased by dogs as a kid. So I was terrified of like Rottweilers and whatever. And I have like a massive scar on my leg. From running from a dog. Because I hit the ground and slid and popped up and kept going and like flesh is hanging off my— so I have a terrible experience with that. Most people's dogs are fine. But I put that in the book. But I look back and I go, man, if I could, if I could get that, that even just that paragraph back, I would. Because a lot of people have said, hey, love your book. Sorry about the dogs. And I'm like, it does.

It does. It does stick out because it is a controversial take about something that is so personal for people. But I'll tell you what, I think that will improve retention in a lot of fun and quirky ways for people, and it'll, it'll get them to bring up the book more often and word of mouth will increase. So I don't know if it'll be a net positive or negative, but I could, I could see your take. You could have just said, you know, I, I make people take my shoes off or their shoes off when they come to my house or something, you know? Sure, sure, sure. Well, listen, Ryan, if you're ever in the Boston area, I would invite you over, but we have a 95-pound chocolate Labrador and he's sweet, but he sheds a lot. So we vacuum all day, every day. He's only allowed on the first floor because it's a mess.

Yeah, I get it. I get it. Well, we can meet for coffee. That'd be great. And sorry about Jayson Tatum. That really breaks my heart.

Yeah, mine too. But we won last night. But we won last night anyway.

I told— I was telling my wife, I said, I think this will actually inspire them.

It's a deep enough roster that we'll see what happens with this series. Yeah. Yeah. But thank you for your condolences.

Of course. Of course. Well, I appreciate you having me on too, man. I really do.

Yeah, it was a good time. We'll put the links in the show notes and I look forward to continuing the relationship with you. So, uh, again, thank you so much and congrats on the book.

Hey, I appreciate you.