Stephen Kenwright, Strategy Director @ Ride Shotgun

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Stephen. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So yeah, you're currently the strategy director at Ride Shotgun. However, you've done a lot in your career, you know, being a founder of a couple companies that you've then exited from. And yeah, I think we'll get into your whole career journey, but I think a good place to start is how would you describe what it is you do in your career?

What I do in my career? I'm in marketing is probably the broadest way of describing it, and I think when you do digital marketing specifically, you kind of start out with, I do something with computers. And actually, as your career progresses, you, you kind of square with the whole marketing. So like, when I'm at a family gathering and I have to tell people who don't know anything about what I do, what I do, I'd say I'm in marketing. That way you don't have to fix people's computers as well. Um, more specifically, I'm in creative content. So the most of the agencies I've worked for have been content agencies, as in they make some kind of campaign, some kind of asset. The agency I work for right now, Ryeshotgun, is one that creates a lot of content for a lot of retailers that might go anything from photography for a website, for a catalogue, all the way through to video, all the way through to augmented reality experiences and kind of everything in between.

So your job is innately creative then, right? Have you always seen yourself as a creative? I'm interested.

I generally wouldn't see myself as a creative, but I definitely work with creative people, and my job in, in terms of strategy, which is kind of what I've always been in, it is very much trying to understand the audience, who's going to be the people that actually see this creative and what's going to resonate with them, what's going to make their lives better, what's going to entertain them or inform them. And then my job is usually to help the creatives to understand this is what that person is, what they want, where they are, what they read. And help clients then at the other end of that, once we've done creative work, to say this is what it achieved, this was the end result, and this is why it was worth it and we should do some more.

Yeah, and that's what you do right now, but if we go back to your time at Sheffield University, what did you see your career sort of panning out to be back then?

I originally wasn't sure at all. If I go back to like A-levels, right, I did chemistry, physics, biology, and maths, Maths, and I kind of wanted to be a doctor, and that didn't really work out. And in the end, I did more A-levels. I did English Language and Literature because after doing a tour of some uni halls, I met a girl who just said, "You're only in like 6 hours a week if you do English." I thought, that's a bit of me, I'm going to do that. So I switched to English.

Same with me and history. Yeah, exact same idea.

Yeah, yeah. I thought, this is going to be easy, this is going to be great. I want the university experience, that's what I was really there for. And then when I'd finished, I got a job straight away in advertising, funnily enough. Hated it so much that I went back to uni and did a master's in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature because I was interested in it, but I was like, I am not ready for the outside world right now. And at that point, my plan was I was going to stay in university permanently. I was going to do a PhD, I was going to be a lecturer, and it was just sort of coincidence, fate, that I'd started doing some freelance copywriting for a different agency while I was doing my master's, and they got bought just as I was graduating, and they had a full-time position for a copywriter. So I just got offered a job and I thought, yeah, okay, that sounds fine. I've enjoyed the work that I've done so far, so I'll do more of that and just see where it goes. So it's very much like coincidentally ended up doing what I'm doing. Yeah.

And you say you land that, that job and copywriting and I guess, was that particularly formative for you? What were the things that you learned there about you and in terms of actually then feeling motivated in a career sense?

Yeah, I mean, copywriting was just sort of the natural step from doing English. And then because I worked at quite a small marketing agency, I had exposure to everything. So everything from kind of digital marketing all the way through to posters, all the way through to like more sort of technical copywriting. And I really liked the digital thing. I never knew that was a thing at all. Like, while I was at university, it's sort of mentioned a little bit, but you don't really get— unless you're doing a marketing degree, I imagine— in an English degree, you don't really get a lot of education as part of the degree about what you might do next. You know, there's all of the resources available if you want to seek them out, but I just didn't know. So when I'd actually got some exposure to digital marketing at the small agency, I'm like, I want to do this full-time. Search was particularly the thing that was interesting to me at the time as well, because I always— one of the things I didn't like about my very first job is I felt like I was selling things that people didn't want. And search just resonated with me because it's people literally looking for something. You're helping them to find a thing that they do want. So whoever you're working for, you know, there's, there's people out there that do, do need it and do want it. So it was naturally, it just felt good for me at the time.

And what about that entrepreneurial desire then? Was it— when did that arise in your career?

It never really did. It was an accident again.

Often is, isn't it?

Yes. So I'd gone through agency life for about 6, 7 years, and generally speaking, when you are in an agency, you know, any— most businesses, the higher up you get, the more your job is sales. And that's fine. You know, there's lots of nice things about that. You get to travel, you get to see new— meet new people, and you get to have really interesting conversations and see under the hood of a lot of different businesses, which is really fun. But you, you do travel a lot, and particularly pre-pandemic, I was in hotels like 3, 4 nights a week, just on the road all the time. So I'd gone brand side and gone to work for a brand, a company called Pendragon PLC, but it owns Stratstone, Evans Halshaw, which are car dealerships, because I'd got to the stage in my life that me and my wife, we wanted to start a family. And I want to be in one place. So I was doing that, that was the plan, you know, my wife was 4 months pregnant, um, and it just was clear that that wasn't going to work out either. And there's some really nice things about living where I live in the countryside, and, you know, affordable housing in the north and all that kind of thing. So lots of good positive things about it, but one thing it does lack is big companies in a 40-mile commute from my office, from my house. So when it, when it was clear that I wasn't going to be staying at Pendragon, I was like, either I'm going to have to wait possibly another 6-12 months to find another job like that, or I'm going to have to go back into an agency in a sales type role where I'm going to be away again and, you know, traveling all the time. Or I guess I could start something because then at least I've got some degree of control over what I'm doing with my time. And with my little boy on the way, it felt like at least I can then make sure I'm going to go to the appointments and all that kind of thing, and I can be there when I need to. So it was literally circumstance and not because I personally have always had that desire to be a business owner.

Okay, so if you take the sort of like, uh, self-deprecating nature out of that, another part of it is having to back yourself to actually be good enough to do it, right? Um, so Yeah, I mean, when you actually launched it and found that, like, there's so many other things that come into building a business, right? You know, the team, um, you know, the right— did you have a co-founder?

I did have a co-founder, yes.

Yeah, and I'm always interested in those dynamics, especially from a student lens, like what you were looking for in your, in your talent and what made, like, even a co-founder stand out to you.

Yeah, so, uh, like I mentioned, the further you get in your career, generally speaking, the more sales is involved. So in terms of backing yourself, like Obviously I was in a situation at the time where we had a little boy on the way. It's literally just that I think I could sell stuff, so I feel like I'm going to be fine. Like, worst case scenario, I can get food on the table. My co-founder Carrie was a very different personality to me. She is high energy, gets people very excited about things that they have no reason to be excited about. So when we're going together for a meeting to some B2B insurance brand who's going to insure your van for you, making those people excited to be in the role that they're in is a skill, and she has that skill. And I'm very much the pragmatic, okay, let's work out exactly how we're going to deliver this, how is it going to work. So that differing personality is beneficial in that environment. There's lots of hard things about that, you know, when you are two different people, but there's lots of good things when you've got those complementary skill sets and you're not sort of trying to work out, well, where do I end and you begin. Because, you know, we very naturally settled into, into different sorts of roles. In terms of like the talent though, I mean, you, you firstly have to hire people who can do things that you can't. And one of those, one of those outcomes of you progressing and getting more and more into sales as you get further away from the work. So my background being in search marketing, primarily in sales for like the last 5 years prior to that, and you know, some other stuff, but mainly sort of sales and administrative kind of end of things. There are people who are doing search marketing all the time who could do it better than I can now. You know, they are better at the day-to-day, they are more up to date with the tools available, etc. So some of those bits where you're actually facilitating the work for clients, that they're— they— you need people who've got those skills. And then over and above that, you want to grow a team. You know, if you're trying to grow a business, you don't want to just go and hire people who are the best in the world at this one thing all the time, because you're going to get quite a deep business in that sense, it's going to be very expensive to run. You are going to get a lot of people who want progression and aren't going to be able to get it because they're already at the top of the game. Right. So you want to grow a team, which means that when you're looking for graduates, when you're looking for younger talent, you're looking for people who've got the attitudes, who want to actually learn, and who really want to be there more than anything else, right? The technical aptitude is something that you learn on the job most of the time because there's no career, there's no degree in SEO. So yeah, you know, you, you learn that in your agency life, in your brand life, or whatever. You don't learn that at university very much.

So say you're a student and you do have that attitude, you know, you've diversified your portfolio, you've made yourself stand out in the interview, You talked about in terms of scaling, you need to basically delegate, right? Well, how do you make sure that you empower and not micromanage as a founder?

The first thing is we've really got to understand what delegation is, because it's not just a 'can you do this?' You have to be able to tell people what the outcome you actually want is, because if you just say 'do it like this' and here's a playbook, here's the step-by-step instructions, you're going to get probably exactly what you wanted. Might not be the way that you would have done it, it might not be to the standard you want, whatever. That's just life, that's natural. Whereas if you tell someone, I want to achieve this, this is what I need this piece of work to do, how would you go about it? Then, you know, clearly at the very early stages of someone's career, there's a learning curve and they've got to try it a few times, but people are full of good ideas where they can actually give you a completely different way of doing things after like a couple of months in a role. So it's more about trying to demonstrate the outcome that you want and understanding or helping the person you're delegating to understand how will they know it's good, like what is going to be good about it, what is the requirements of the piece of work that's coming back to you. If it's a technical document, how will you know that it covers all the bases? If it's a creative campaign, you know, what are the boxes it's got to tick? So that's the fundamental thing. And then the other end of that is then when it comes back, not just throwing it away and doing it again yourself. Like, one of the hardest things about being a manager is coaching and saying, I would have— I think that it doesn't meet the mark in this particular area. Given that, how would we actually change it? And not just, yeah, thanks, it's quicker if I change it myself. Because 10 people, no one wins.

Yeah, I guess it's like you have to position yourself as naive compared to what, you know, the younger generation is able to bring into the industry. And in terms of their skill set, it's about like almost like emotional intelligence to understand what actually someone has offered and why did you hire them in the first place. Yeah, and I saw on that you mentioned that there isn't a degree in SEO marketing, What then could a student who might want to pursue a career in this, like, how can they identify they might be someone that's good at that?

In terms of agency roles, there are agencies that do graduate schemes which are pretty good, you know, they're usually quite short schemes, you get paid to be there, there's internships, etc., which are good. SEO is a slight outlier, there's a few of these, but SEO is a slight outlier in the sense of you could make yourself a website and start learning just by reading and doing and trying things. And the barriers to entry there are quite low, you know, you need to register a domain and you need to get a website, might be £40-50, and you can actually have a testing ground. And when you're talking to a potential employer about what do you know about this, well, I've actually tried some things and I've seen what works and what doesn't, or at least I know how to make some of these modifications to our website that are going to the things that I'm going to be doing as a job. So those, like, learning on the job things, particularly in this kind of digital marketing space, really handy. And it really does demonstrate that you are willing to learn and you are willing to experiment. And experimentation is one of the key things, really.

Yeah, we go back to yourself and your own career journey. I read a, you know, particularly inspiring post on essentially like you realizing that even though you're very clearly a very capable founder, you know, an ex-CEO and scaled a company and all these kind of things, it just wasn't really for you that founder life. And, um, or at least maybe in this current stage of life, right? So if you could just talk me through sort of what was going through your head as a founder and why you ultimately made the decision to, you know, take a year out, find out what you want to do, and then come in as an employee again.

If I think about to the actual business that I sold, um, we— or sold my shares in— we had an objective that we wanted to meet together. We wanted to get the business to a certain size and sell it. But, you know, until you actually get into it, you don't really know what you want to do. And me and my co-founder, eventually we found that we wanted different things. I wanted to sell the business and go and do something else, and she wanted to stay. So ultimately that made the timing thing a little bit different. It wasn't about building to a certain scale and then selling when the time was right. It was like, well, I know in the future that's what I'm going to want to do, so actually maybe now is a good time to do it. And particularly, um, the timing from a world point of view, like I'd gone straight from a job that I'd kind of fallen out of and with a little boy and then straight into a founder lifestyle in the pandemic as well. and we grew that agency to 110 people in about 2 years. Like, it was a very fast growth business. I just found myself like, I have not looked after myself at all here. And like, it'd been years since I'd done any exercise, and I'd found that I'd been drinking quite a lot, and it just didn't— it didn't feel sustainable to me. So that was ultimately the reason for deciding that I wanted to do something something else and to take a break.

Did it have shades of feeling almost like a student again? Do you know what I mean? Like, but just in a different, you know, phase of your life, because it's that you're— it's all got to be pushed on by yourself. Like, ultimately it's that same sort of a manic depressive feeling of like having to push yourself to do work, right?

Yeah, I think there's definitely some similarities. I think when you're a student, particularly if you are going to university at 18, 21, your body handles things a lot better than a 30, 35-year-old. So, you know, although you are, you ultimately in an agency sometimes doing the same things. You, I always remember doing my, uh, my coursework the night before midnight in the library all night, ready to hand in at lunchtime the next day kind of thing, because I just not planned very well. And you do have that element of last minute all the time because the demands are very fast and frequent. So you know, there are hours, like later hours, not always, and it does depend on the business as well, but you're very flexible with your time and that kind of thing makes it, you know, quite student-esque, I think, yeah.

And even though you're very early on in your next stage of your career, like what can you feel are the tangible differences, um, and just how you are and how you're looking after yourself?

I think one of the real positives about having some time off and being really lucky to have that time is that I had long enough off that things became habits. And, you know, drinking is a habit and that's a bad habit, but exercise is a good habit. And so I got to the stage where actually I quite enjoy exercise, which historically I hadn't. So I felt like I've been able to keep that up in terms of like my actual new agency. The real difference is, is I've still— I still have that founder mentality where I'm like spotting things all over the place that could be better. And it's really nice to be able to say, that's— that could be better, and people take that on board. And then it's not down to me to make it better. And that's ultimately one of the really hard things about being a founder. Every single thing is your problem. And actually, it's really positive for the business if I can say, this could be better. And, you know, it's up to you if you want to put that— if that's a priority and you want to do something about it, or if it's not. But you know, you can't do everything, and it's— the balance is just so much better already.

Yeah, I think another thing that's maybe different this time around as well is that you've started building your personal brand on LinkedIn, and not just started, you have done an amazing job at doing it. And it's how I came across your work. Um, and admittedly, I'm not a client, um, you know, I'm not a B2B business that, uh, but you know, what have you seen as the positive consequences of building that personal brand? And why did you do it, actually?

I've always done bits of it, and the real difference now is the consistency. So historically, I've done the kind of public speaking, I've written blogs, I've done those kind of things, but just as and when I've had a chance to do it. And so I've definitely felt benefits from that all through my career. Like, my first agency very much felt like the way that you progress is speaking and being an expert and sharing your knowledge because that's what the owners did and you could kind of reverse engineer, well, clearly that's what they value. So if I do that, then that's a way for me to progress. So I've always done bits of that. And then I had a year and a half off where I did none of that whatsoever and all of a sudden came back and I thought, I'm going to see what happens if I actually just do it and stick to it. So I posted like every day for like a month and I've kind of kept that up as well. And again, it comes down to being a habit, I think. But I was really surprised by the reception of people generally being very positive about it. People telling me, you know, it's obviously nice to get likes and stuff, but the people that message you and say, I appreciate that, that really resonated, you've helped me, that is one of the most useful things for me, one of the most helpful things that encourages me to keep actually posting things.

And obviously— Peter Wood as well. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. If people actually want to hear what you've got to say and they tell you so, then you feel you've got an obligation to keep, keep saying things that help people. Because, you know, I like helping people. That's again one of the— I know I've talked quite a bit about how, you know, you end up in sales, but sales is helping people. Someone wants something and you help them to help them to get the solution to their problem, or you help them to find someone else who can if it's not you. So I think naturally I've been quite happy being a helper.

Yeah, it's interesting what you're saying about sales there, is that I do think it does get a bit of a bad rep, and potentially every, every industry does, with the wrong players involved. But what would you say actually makes a really good salesman from your experience?

First and foremost is listening. I think you, when you think about all of the stereotypes of a salesman and things that you really don't like about that experience, everyone's had bad experiences with salespeople, it's people who talk at you, try and persuade you of something, and you feel like you're being sold to. And, you know, that kind of classic used car salesman type of vibe, that's how it certainly used to be. Really, when you're in sales, your job is to listen, find out what the actual need that this person has is, and then your job is to either say, we can't do that, that's not us, you know, we don't want to take some money to do something that we can't actually deliver on, but these people that I know can, or someone else that you might want to talk to, and help them to fulfill that requirement, you know, just generally be helpful. When you're in the sales role in a business, your job is to make sure that the people who are going to do the work are not getting work that is just not achievable, it's not demoralizing, you know, all those kind of things. It's to protect the staff from from bad clients, from bad customers, is a big part of it really. So you've got to listen, you've got to spot those red flags, but you've also got to spot whether we are a good fit for each other.

I think that's— it's interesting thinking about something you said earlier about, you know, how you don't like selling things that you don't actually believe in and how much you hated that. And I think that probably stood you in really good stead with— yeah, when you actually were a founder picking who your clients were going to be. I imagine you had to reject as many as you took on by the end of it, at least.

Yeah, we rejected a lot, and rejected is a harsh word, but, you know, it is very much a— I think of it like we're a fit for some brands and we're not a fit for others. Um, the business that I founded, Rise at Seven, had a very clear idea of who it was for, and, and that was reflected in the staff, right? So it was a 75% female business, it was average age 24, 25, which is clearly generally skews younger. So our client base was a lot of fashion brands, beauty brands, and when we're working with finance brands, that's Klarna and Monzo, that's not necessarily Lloyds Bank, right? So it's, it's about the demographic, it's about having the right kind of audience, and brands would come to us because they either are those cool brands, you know, the flannels of the world and Missguided and that kind of thing, or they have a need to get in front of that audience. You know, we had the clients like Cath Kidson or the very keen on having a younger audience perceive them in a way that makes them want to buy it. So it was, it was very clear to us, like, the brands that we work with are going to be brands that are going to appeal to this kind of demographic. And I think it gets very hard to sell much of anything if what you're doing is trying to sell anything to anyone, because that comes across, like, that comes across in the conversation that 'You're just a possible customer and that's good enough for me.' And I think in that sales conversation, what you really want as a client is to, to feel like you are being vetted as well, and that this, uh, this relationship is two ways and that we're going to help each other.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that is— it's interesting, uh, that you said that you started the company almost accidentally in some ways, but that sounded very intentional, your strategy, right? Um, What do you think? It almost sounds like you're going for those more like playful brands where you can work more creatively alongside them. Is there a case, like, maybe it's like picking between your children or something, but is there a case study of a brand that you just really loved what you did for them?

There are quite a few. Like, my favourite client that I had, I shouldn't say my favourite client, one of my very favourite clients I've ever had is a company called Parkdean Resorts, which is like holiday homes. Okay. Very family orientated. It's always just resonated with me, and we did a couple of campaigns for them just coming out of COVID when staycations were going to be a very big thing, and they were very keen to make a lot of noise. So we did what we called the Royal Caravan. They very graciously gave us a caravan around Scarborough sort of area, and we decorated it like the inside of Buckingham Palace, and we hired lookalikes of the Queen— and this is a few years ago— the Queen and Meghan and Harry, and we basically filmed soap opera in a caravan in a Parkdean resort. And I loved that campaign in so many different ways, but it was about the product, it was about the holiday experience, it was about, you know, a family making memories. And at the same time, it was funny and it was getting cut through because it's interesting and a little bit different. So, I mean, we did loads of good stuff for Parkdean. They were one of my favourite clients, but that one always stands in my mind as being like one of the one of the first times I thought, we do really good stuff here, and I'm really happy with that.

That's really cool. It seems like, you know, for an environment, for an idea like that to come about through, you know, your, maybe the culture that you've set in the company, sounds like an amazing place to work. One thing I would, you know, just to play devil's advocate, I would argue that potentially this industry, like, people aren't aware of, you know, the possibilities and opportunities and different entry points. Into it, and even that is even what you do, you know, the case studies like that. Yeah, because maybe it's normally you're the people behind, you know, they don't— you don't get glamorized alongside those adverts, right?

Yeah.

Why would you encourage, um, maybe your younger self at university not knowing what they want to do to go into this industry?

I think if you think about like as an example there, you know, there's a brand, the brand has a lot of requirements, and there's people at that company that need to deliver all sorts of different things, and there's pressure like there is everywhere. And when I think about agency life, the amount of times that I've just sat and looked around and thought, I can't believe we get paid to do this. Some of the things are just ridiculous. Like we did a large Kinder Surprise Easter egg with a vibrator in it for a company, a sex toy company called Rikki's. And it was just like, this is work. We got paid for this. And so if I was looking forwards from university, just thinking, Basically, you think of fun things and you do fun things and you get paid for it. That seems like, that seems like it's worthwhile.

Yeah, it's almost a message to students to not like overly— I don't think this is a word, but overly make yourself too corporate, right? Like, is what I'm trying to say, because actually having that inner child in you is, and that sort of creative spark, and not letting go of that will stand you in really good stead For this kind of industry, or even just entrepreneurship, is inherently creative. I've had to relearn my own idea of what being creative means. Like, just because I got stuck drawing stickmen doesn't mean that I can't be a creative founder. So yeah, I mean, what would you know? I guess it links back nicely to the beginning where you said, I don't see yourself as creative, but would you say it's almost the most creative thing you're doing is who you're employing and empowering? And like how you're like sort of being the, yeah, orchestrating it all, right?

I think so. Like, you can often think that we've got to market our company so that we can go and get clients, and we've got to be perceived in a certain way, we've got to think very carefully about who we are for, who we're not for, and how do we get ourselves out there. And it's almost a temptation to then think, oh, and now I need to go and find some people to do the work. But actually, that perception, that creativity in your approach, that's what is attracting people to come and work for you as well. And you've got to set expectations, you've got to set the tone throughout that marketing. It's not just about clients should get this experience and your staff should get this other experience. It's about trying to provide a consistent environment for everyone that really sort of delivers on what it says it's going to deliver. So yeah, I think that's true, that, that, that, that clarity of who are we for and who are we not for. And, and when we've decided that, how do we make sure that those people who might come and work with us want to stay and experience, you know, the next 5 years or 10 years with us even, because that should be a goal for us, it should be about creating a really good place to work.

Yeah, I love that, and I can genuinely tell, you know, I think this is kind of something that people feel like they have to say, you know, like about company culture, but it really shines through with you that you put talent first, it's refreshing. Doing a careers podcast to speak to someone like yourself in that. And as we come towards the end of the episode, is there a particular message that you just want to hammer home to this younger generation or the people at university who maybe they're really daunted by careers right now and they're really, you know, everything seems a bit overwhelming, you know, what would you say to sort of reinstall their faith in careers?

I think The reason that I didn't do the PhD is because I was told that the amount of time you have to spend being just so engrossed in your subjects, you need to write constantly, you need to be constantly published. I found that idea just be totally overwhelming. But then I actually found something that I like doing. I tried a few different things. I went into copywriting, it was okay, but it wasn't really for me. And then I moved into digital and I loved it. And I ended up— I think about it all the time, I write about it all the time, I'm really engrossed in it. And it's literally just, it just happened to be that I managed to find something that I enjoy doing. And there's so many different career options. I think it's absolutely fine to not like that one, not like that one, keep trying and find something you do like because, you know, at the end of the day, you're gonna work for quite a long time and you have to enjoy it, but you can. There are so many really interesting jobs out there. I think digital's one of them, but there are lots of others. And if you do enjoy it, then it makes you good at it and it makes you feel confident and comfortable because, because you end up being good at it because you enjoy it. I love that.

Um, and my final question to you then, which I ask every single one of my guests, is that when you first, you know, started off your career in copywriting and, you know, graduating from Sheffield, you, you would have a certain idea of what a successful career would look like to you then. And fast forward with everything you've done and all that you've learned What is your definition of success and how has it changed?

It's changed a lot because I was— I had this kind of— in my first role, the motivation for me was— and, you know, some people don't enjoy their careers. My wife had a really tough time of it as a primary school teacher, and there's lots of reasons why that's the case. But I had this pressure that I put on myself where I wanted to progress fast enough that she could quit and I could support the family and no one needed to worry about it, and she could decide what she wanted to do. So my early, early, uh, career aspirations were get to about this amount of money. £40,000, I think, was the number in my mind. Bearing in mind I live in the North and this is sort of 2012, you know, it might have been inflated a little bit now, but I had that. And then I didn't really think too far ahead beyond that. So I had that idea of success, and when I think now about, you know, what I've ended up achieving. I'm really proud of lots of things that I've done. I wouldn't have seen it. It wasn't where I kind of anticipated going. And it was only when I got to that milestone when I thought, oh yeah, my wife could quit now. And shortly after that, I'm like, do you know what? I actually enjoy this. I really do like it. And it's not just the supporting the family, but it's also, it's fun. And you know, that's my definition of success, being able to support the family and actually having some fun while you're doing it.

Do you almost feel a little bit guilty saying that? Like, or did you, you know, like that, oh, I actually just really love my job? Because it's, it's, I, I feel like a lot of people are scared to almost say like, yeah, it's just good, I'm just really happy and proud of myself.

I don't feel guilty. I do appreciate that there are lots of people that don't enjoy their jobs, and it's obviously very easy for someone with privilege to say just quit and find another one that you do enjoy. It's not as straightforward as that, I appreciate that. But I see every day lots of people around me who I think they enjoy their jobs too. So, you know, I don't feel guilty. I feel like that, that, that should be more and more available to everyone.

And that's a great way to end the podcast. Stephen, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.