Revolutionizing Productivity with 5 Dynamics | Karen Wright Gordon | 579

When thought leadership is successful, it puts relevant ideas into the hands of people who need them, such as in the hands of a struggling leader. Occasionally, that insight lands so strongly and so powerfully that it changes the recipient's entire career trajectory. First, they use the idea for themselves. Then for their organization, and then rarely but magically, they become a champion for the idea. Today I speak with Karen Wright Gordon. Karen is the CEO of Five Dynamics, and as you'll soon hear, she encountered a researcher's framework when she needed it most. She started using it for herself, for her organization, and then she made that choice to build a business around the framework. Karen is now in the business of thought leadership, taking these ideas forward into an era of neuroscience. Thought leadership requires more than just an ideator. It often requires a whole team to bring an idea to scale into the larger world. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership.

Ready?

Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Karen.

Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

So I want to begin with a little bit of a level set here. You're leading an organization that has an assessment that is pretty unique out in the world, and I want to start with what is that assessment, and then we'll go into the thought leadership story behind that.

Absolutely. So yes, our organization, we do have a proprietary assessment that is the cornerstone of our methodology. And so we're not an assessment company, but we do have this assessment that was developed through original research by a gentleman named Mike Sturm. And Mike spent his life trying to understand why people do what they do. And what he found is that as we move through any project or process, that we all have preferences as to where we focus our time and our energy. And that is what that assessment measures is our preferred ways of being, doing, acting, and thinking.

And can you, since there's a framework associated not only with the assessment, then as you said, the whole methodology behind it for an organization, can you just quickly explain the 5 pieces of that framework?

Sure, absolutely. So as you think about the way that we move through projects or processes together, there are common phases. Someone has an idea, someone gets people on board, aligned and engaged with that idea, someone creates a detailed plan, and someone executes on that plan. And we all have preferences as to where we want to spend our time and our energy. So if you think about the things that you do throughout the day, There are things that give you energy that you enjoy doing that you could do all day long without tiring. And there are things that are draining to you. And so that's what we're measuring is where are those phases of work that you really like leaning into that are easier for you? Not about competency. It's not about what you can and can't do, but it's about where do you prefer to focus? And then since there are 5 dynamics, that 5th one that I haven't mentioned yet, it's a critical dynamic and it's called evaluate. And so what we tend to do without awareness is we evaluate from our highest energy. But what we teach people to do is to evaluate from all 4 of the previous dynamics.

Thank you. Thank you. So as we talk about this, I just wanted to be clear that when we're talking about energy, we're talking about that work that you do that recharges you versus the work that you do where you like, yeah, I can do it, but it drains me and I'm gonna go home tired and I don't wanna do it every day. Right.

Exactly. So what it's measuring is your ability to focus on something over time without tiring.

So that's the answer. That's, that's a beautiful way to frame that. Now, I want to go into— you alluded to Mike Stern, his work and his research, and but I want to go into your origin and how you encountered this work. So because this is not your research to begin with. Tell me the origin story of how you discovered this and how you first applied it.

Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've created businesses over the years, everything from a karate and aerobic studio to, uh, telecommunications. And it was when I had my telecommunications company that we were a member of a group called WPO, Women Presidents Organization. And Mike was one of our speakers. And within my, that telecommunications company called GTCI, we had 1,100% growth over 3 years. And so phenomenal success, but I was not satisfied. I was a very young leader. I really didn't know what I was doing. I'd never been a first-line manager. And within 12 months, I had 50 people working for me. And so when I met Mike as a speaker at this WPO event, He and I just had this instant bond and instant connection. And I saw how his methodology, how if I had had that when I started that company, GTCI, how I would've been so much more successful in working with others. And so again, we had that outward success, but the people on the team weren't necessarily satisfied. They didn't love working there. We had high turnover and it was because in my entrepreneurial mind, it was all about idea to action. Without necessarily getting others on board, without helping them having a detailed plan. And so we met all of our deliverables and we met them on time and within budget, but people were pretty miserable in the process and I didn't know how to fix it. So I in turn was miserable as well. So when I came across this methodology, and I had tried other things out there before, you know, a lot of the things, and we won't name them, but you know where they are, and they didn't make a difference. But when I met Mike and I understood his methodology, which is so quick, so easy to apply, it literally changed my world.

So you're there listening to the presentation at WPO. What happens next? Do you wind up going up to Mike after the presentation, or do you connect with them afterwards? Tell me the story of you say, okay, I like what you've got, help me. Right?

Yes, absolutely. So the next step for me was that I brought him in to work with my executive leadership team. And after that session where he had worked with the team, he and I were sitting in my office and he said, I want you to run my company. And I said, well, Mike, I'm running a company. I can't really run your company right now. But 3 years later, I bought the intellectual property and developed the company.

So let's fill in a few of those details.

Okay.

When Mike came in to work with you, had he— he had the model, obviously, but did he have the digital assessment that you had and the product that you have in terms of helping scale an idea out on this framework, or what state was it in? When he came out to work with you?

He had an assessment. He did not have the platform that we have today. He did not have the business around it. I remember when he presented at the WPO that his ideas were very intriguing. But having, you know, my background also is in education. I've been everything from an English teacher to a French teacher, but training has kind of been a cornerstone of what I've done. And I remember thinking at the time, Wow, he could really use some help packaging this, trying to figure out how to present this. Because I would say of the dozen or so women in the room, maybe two of us understood what he was trying to say. And so there was still a lot of that because Mike wasn't a businessman. He wasn't interested in business.

He was a psychologist by training, correct?

Yes. Yes. What he cared about was people. Why do people do what they do? And how do I help them get unstuck when they get stuck in whatever they're doing, whether it's academics, which was his core focus, or whether it's, you know, business or personal life even.

Yeah, so this is something that we see often from the academic-practitioner gap, right? And the academic can spend the time constructing the framework, testing it, refining, etc., but then understanding what does it take to go to market, how do I go to market, how do I package How do I position? How do I sell? Those are an entirely different skill set and set of questions than is this framework valid, reliable, and useful?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm thinking about that in terms of thought leadership earlier today as well. And the fact that many of the people that we see as thought leaders, they're just charismatic speakers. Yes, they're great at taking it and packaging it, as you said. And they're looking at kind of best practices, what's being talked about, what's out there, and then how do I package it and how to present it. And you know who I'm talking about, you know, the guy who's on stage in the all-black outfit and, you know, the lights are perfect and the music comes on and, you know, everybody's just wowed by their presentation. But to me, it's the quiet person, the introspective person, the person who is seeing something, someone like Mike who is seeing something that others have missed or that is taking different concepts to create something new that builds off of that platform. To me, those are the thought leaders.

I absolutely agree. And I think we're also now in a situation where thought leadership, which is evidence-based, data-based, and carefully worked through with the I's dotted and the T's crossed, are much more essential to the problems that we're trying to solve, right? And so if you're looking for charisma and sizzle, you can certainly find that on stage. But the question is, are you, are you able to back that up rather than just the sugar high of a great keynote, right?

Right. And I knew with Mike, even though he didn't have it packaged, it wasn't polished, When I see people like Doug Engelbart, who was an early contributor in the 1960s to computer science and the internet, if you can imagine that in the 1960s, when I see Doug speaking about how Mike changed his life, because Doug was truly a thought leader, he's off the charts. If you've ever done any research on him, if you haven't, I highly recommend it. He's most famously known for the mother of all demos. But his issue was that he had so many great ideas, he only wanted to surround himself with other thought leaders. So in our terminology, if you weren't high explorer, he didn't want to work with you. But the challenge came in, and where Mike got him unstuck was by making him realize, look, you need those people who can package it. You need those people who can plan it. You need those people who can replicate it.

Because if you have a dozen people who are all explorer in the room, Congratulations, you're going on an adventure, but good luck ever trying to bring that back to anyone else.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you've heard the saying, physician, heal thyself. That was the situation when I came into the work that Mike was doing. There were 3 people sitting around the table that were on his leadership team, and they were all 3 absolutely brilliant, but they were all 3 very high in Explore, and none of them had the dynamics we call Execute. And so they— and they didn't have examine either. And so they had tremendous ideas. And I remember after about the third meeting saying, guys, you have something amazing here. What are you waiting for? Let's package this up. Let's take it out to the world.

So let's take the next step. You've carried the torch and the ideas forward into the world. And some of that has been on the business side, but also you've been the advocate for the ideas practicing thought leadership yourself. How are you doing that and how is the organization today practicing thought leadership?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so we are definitely, you know, I get accused oftentimes of, or condemned maybe, of not looking at what everyone else is doing. That is not my concern. My concern is not wanting to be a little bit better than what everyone else is. My concern is in creating a whole new lane. That's what I'm focused on. I'm focused on, I know what's out there today, but let's look at what this could be. Let's look at how we could democratize coaching. Let's look at how we can bring this to the masses. Let's look at how we can change cultures and change organizations. And so technology has been a big part of that. And so the first thing is, you know, always looking at what could be and how we can take this methodology and apply it on a much grander stage than what we've seen in the past. But then you have to get that out there. You have to have champions, which we've been very fortunate in that once you know, you know. And so what we see is people who have utilized our methodology within organizations. These are people who've worked at Google for 10 years, at IDEO for 10 years, and they say things like, I've used everything else that's out there and I will never use anything else again.. And so they carry us forward. So they certainly share that message. And we bring those people together through our customer advisory board meetings that we get together once a year and we connect with them and they share best practices. We host a leader summit annually where we invite everyone to come and participate, where we bring thought leaders to the conversation and we let them share best practices. We certainly have the Train the Trainer model where we are teaching organization to bring the methodology out, not just for the initial kind of the initial wow, aha moment of, this is great to know this about me and you, and let's help use this for team collaboration. But it's when they're ready to go that next step, we also teach them how to use this in onboarding and conflict resolution and leadership development in so many other ways because it's the aha moment is wonderful and we love all the positive feedback. But it's what are you going to do with it after that aha moment? We want to change the way that people connect with one another. And to do that, it needs to be systemic, not a one-and-done situation.

Well, and one of the things that I look for when I evaluate a framework in the thought leadership perspective is, can I explain it in 60 to 90 seconds with a pen in the back of a napkin if I need a prop?

Right?

Simple enough that you can explain. And you were talking about how early on at the telecommunications company, you really hadn't had any first-line manager experience, right? And I'm looking for the ideas that you can explain to a first-time frontline manager, at the same time explain the same idea to a senior leader and get the senior leader to go, okay, I see what you're saying, but that's gotta take a lifetime to master. And there's a lot of wisdom packed into that simple little diagram or that simple little drawing. Help me understand how to apply it across my organization and weave it into culture. That's an entirely different conversation from the same diagram.

Yeah. And I think it's been a blessing and a curse for us because there is so much value in 3 minutes or less, right? There's that— you feel just, this is amazing, I love it. And then that first experience of training and coming together with your team. But what the, the true value is much deeper than that. And so yes, it can be explained very quickly, but you can also study it over a long period of time and continue to find additional wisdom and application into methodology.

Well, and going back to the karate studio that I think you mentioned earlier, one can study karate, one can study meditation, one can practice yoga, And it's not that you reach, reach an end destination and say, I've learned everything there is to learn. It is an ongoing practice. And for the mindset and the skills that are identified in the framework, I think that's exactly what's happening here is not only understanding where I am, where my colleagues are, what the situation requires, and then if we have to form a different team, where are we and how do we adapt to that situation?

Right. And it's not just the understanding, but it's the applying. And even within our own organization, we are all experts in this methodology, but we still sometimes have to step back and say, okay, there's some friction here. Let's look at what's going on. Let's unpack this. Let's figure out, you know, where the rub is coming in. And oftentimes it has nothing to do with personality. It's just an energetic conflict. It's the fact that You know, someone is wanting to stay in ideation for too long. Someone else is ready to move to execution. Maybe someone is going to the planning piece and ruling out too many ideas too quickly, but it's giving you that language to use it and apply it in the moment. And it's a practice, like you said, it's something that you have to be disciplined in utilizing that methodology in an ongoing way.

And if you and I, and perhaps a couple colleagues, share a common language. We can call each other out. Hey, let's move from explore, you know, because it seems like we've spent two-thirds of our conversation here. Let's get into the next step, right?

Not only can we call each other out, but we can use the model to gate our meeting. We can define within our meeting, like, This topic, 10 minutes, we're going to be in explore. We've got 30 minutes here where we're moving into examine. So we can be specific and call out what phase of the project or of the meeting that we're on. We can use it in our project management where we start with our explore document, but ultimately we get to the detailed plan. And so again, you're being very explicit utilizing the methodology, and it's not about personality, which is great because if you start correcting someone's personality, they take offense to that. What we're looking at is not personality, it's just a way of getting work done.

Well, and I might describe it as preference rather than personality, right? In the sense of, if something you enjoy and you can go into a flow state easily and you can be working on that style of work all day, then That's your preference rather than, yeah, I can do it, but it feels like me filling out my taxes each year.

I hate it.

When does it end? Right?

Yeah. And it's deeper, deeply rooted on what you did early in life where you received recognition. So truly what we're measuring are your most efficient neural pathways in your brain. What is tried and true for you? And so for me, you know, execute is one of my higher energies. So explore and execute.. And so I was always the first. I always wanted to be the first to finish an assignment. And I graded papers for teachers after that because I wanted to be first. But I got recognized for being fast, for getting things done quickly. So that became something that I trusted. Other people, they were recognized for how detailed they were, how thorough, how logical they were. And so that got deeply embedded. So if we think of our brains like backcountry roads and superhighways with these neural pathways, we have some that are more efficient and those are the ones that have been embedded. We can— we go there quickly, we go there easily, and it doesn't require much energy. We have others that are like backcountry roads. And for me, one of those backcountry roads honestly is exciting. It is doing a presentation like this. I can do this. I'm having a conversation like this. I can do this. But afterwards, I am going to want to go be alone for a little while. I need to recharge because it's much more energetically draining for me. And so again, it's not about whether I can or can't do it. It's just saying this particular path, it's a little bit tougher for me from an energetic perspective. It takes a little more out of me.

Absolutely. And if I were to state back, when you're driving home from wherever you are, and if you're driving home from somewhere, you know the route, you can be almost on autopilot, pull into the driveway and say, wait a minute, how did I get here? Right? You don't recall the individual steps, but if you're having to consciously put in effort step by step because either it's an unfamiliar path or as you said, it's a task where there's a heavier cognitive load on you, Yeah, you're going to want time to recharge. And so being aware of where is this easy for me and where is it hard, absolutely valuable in a work context.

Right, right. And so when you think about kind of that route that you go, even before that, it's what route did you choose? What were you optimizing for? So for me, I'm optimizing for low stress. So I want the least amount of traffic possible. I'm optimizing for something that's interesting. So I want to see different things, you know, and that's because of that explorer dynamic. I like to just kind of see what's out there and I want to do it in a low stress way. Whereas, use my husband as an example, he's what we call abundant examine. So very detail-oriented, logical engineer. And so he's optimizing for efficiency. He's going to take the quickest path. He's gonna, he's figured out every angle. He's figured out, you know, how close can I get before I have to quickly—

I have fewer left turns if I go this way and I waited fewer lights.

Yeah.

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Yeah.

So I want to ask a question around the thought leadership, specifically on the ongoing work, because this is not a museum piece. From everything that I've heard from you, there's ongoing layers of research that's being done with customers and clients as well as internally. Could you speak to that?

Sure. Well, we love it when our customers surprise us with research that they've done around our methodology, and we've had that happen in a few different instances. Our methodology can be applied in the corporate world, but it also has a very valuable application again where it started in the academic world. And so we saw that the Joyce Cabrillo Foundation, they brought about a 6-year longitudinal study with students who had gone through a program called the Academy for College Excellence, or ACE for short. And Mike Stern was actually a co-creator of this program, and it's very heavily— it has a very heavy Five Dynamics influence throughout the program. And so what they did is they looked at this 6-year longitudinal study to look at where the students were today as compared to the control group of students who had not had the benefit of going through this particular program.. And what they found was that the students who'd gone through the program, they were just from a financial perspective, were making 155 to 644% higher than those that were in the control group. And the number one thing that they recalled was the Five Dynamics methodology. They, uh, we spoke with the person who interviewed them after everything was done and the studies were published, and they said they could still tell you, I'm high explore, high examine. And they talked about how they utilized that in their work life. And so that was amazing for us just to actually see that from a study that was conducted that we had nothing to do with. We've also had healthcare clients who have— they've done some baseline surveys within healthcare to look at teamwork and team satisfaction and physician satisfaction. And patient satisfaction as well. And then they rolled out the methodology, the Five Dynamics methodology, not only just from a training perspective, but from constantly pulling teams. As teams would shift, they would use the methodology again. They created lapel pins that showed the scores so you could quickly identify who was focused where. And it changed the conversation. And it made people feel more empowered to share something that they might not otherwise want to share. So for example, it's very hierarchical. A physician comes into the world feeling like they need to know it all, they need to see it all, and they need to have all the answers. And so it freed them up to say, well, I have Katie over here on my team, and she might see something that I'm missing. So even though she's the PA, let me see what she thinks about this. And so it just kind of gives you that voice and makes you feel empowered to share.. And so what we thought with this healthcare organization, and again, we didn't even know about it until after the fact, was that all of those satisfaction levels went up. Employee sat, physician sat, and patient satisfaction.

That's fantastic when you can tie it to outcomes. Now, I know that the initial research, you've also been layering behavioral neuroscience onto this. So how, where does that, the next wave of research fit in within the organization, the work that you're doing?

Yeah, so when Mike did his work, we didn't have things like FNIRS. And that's actually where we're going to next. We're in conversations now. We've been working with Stanford, for a group in Stanford for quite some time on trying to get the study lined out. And as you can imagine, an organization like Stanford, it takes a while to get to where you want to be. But that's kind of the next layer or the next frontier is being able to present different issues or different challenges to people that we know have various scores and then see what happens in their brains and then see what neural pathways are being illuminated.

Right. Because there's a couple of different layers there. One, if you recognize patterns of preferences, which really the framework in some ways is based on. And you're saying, hey, some people have superhighways, some people have backcountry roads. Great. What lights up when different people are presented with tasks? And does that match? You're right. Can we actually see now with the lens inside the brain of someone presented with the task and how they respond? What does that fatigue look like? I mean, even from my perspective, I can see some of the research questions and hypotheses that would be fascinating to be able to take from framework, which is based on observation and experience, and then test it into— I would assume Mike Stern would have loved to see how people's brains light, light it up.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. He was definitely a scientist that wanted to study and understand everything. And, you know, really, when I think about the methodology that we have, None of us have high energies in all dynamics. None of us. Mm-hmm. And so to me, what's really important from any leader is that you recognize where you go naturally, but you also recognize where you have those blind spots. And to me, a leader is only a collaborative leader. That is the only type of leader that I want to have leading me in anything that I do. Because again, none of us see everything. We all have blind spots, but that leader is the one who can then say, I see, Bill, that you see something that I don't. What do you think about this? And then they take that in and they incorporate that into what they do next. A leader to me is not someone who just acts on impulse and does it with force, but instead they're being collaborative and listening to people who know more than they do. I intentionally surround myself with people who know more than I do because, you know, I want to empower them. I want to step back and I want to see what they can do because I know I'm not the smartest one in the room. You know, I've done well over my career, but I'm— there's always somebody smarter. It's always someone I can learn from.

Someone smarter, someone who's built better pathways for thinking in different areas. Right? And so the things that I may spend my time looking at and thinking about, there will be things that I see instantly respond to and say, "Oh, obviously X." But someone else may look an entirely different area and say, "Well, what about Y?" And as you said, you have to look for those unseen areas that you are not even thinking of asking questions on. Which, yeah, it has to be collaborative leadership. So one big question that's going my head— through my head now is the approach for thought leadership within the organization. Obviously you're practicing thought leadership, but you've also got several other people who are practicing the thought leadership in different areas. Could you speak to how the team shares the workload? Because as you said, there are certain parts of thought leadership for you which are tiring.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we do have others who we are supporting in their thought leadership approaches. One, we have someone on staff who has a degree in behavioral neuroscience. She's in her 20s, so she's very young, but she also has a lot of great ideas about what the work and life should look like. And so we're really promoting her being able to share those ideas. And especially as people are trying to figure out how do we work with this next generation, how do we— to me, it's not a balance of work-life, it's a blend of work-life. So how do you blend work-life and how do you, how do you have work that supports your life? And, you know, not just your whole life is around work, which honestly, for me, for many years that's what it was about. It was about, this is what you do. You work, you work hard, and you do the best you can with your family. But it wasn't as blended as it is today. Even though I can say that with my organizations, even with the first one, we started as a virtual organization in 2000. And so we are doing some things on the cutting edge of that, but it's still nice to kind of have this voice from this next generation that because I have to speak to it.

Absolutely. And so I like this layering of how do you find different audiences, how do you speak to different audiences, because a behavioral neuroscientist is going to speak in a different language and approach than someone who has an entrepreneurial background, who's been, you know, a business leader making decisions. And so being able to speak with different voices around the same idea becomes an asset in being able to expand your reach.

Right. And then another individual, our chief revenue officer, he actually is doing quite a bit of thought leadership as well. And he, his perspective is, first of all, he's high excite, high execute. So he has a lot of external energy. He's a great conversationalist. You can put him in a room and he can talk to anyone. But he also was a customer. And so he experienced things as a customer first and then became a part of our team.

But that's your story too.

Yeah, it's true. It's true.

But I see sort of a pathway evolving here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get quite a few emails from people who have been exposed to us at other places saying, I'm, I've just stepped back from this and I would love to work with you.

Well, and those, that's a different layer. So there's the people like you mentioned earlier, the people who will evangelize the idea and help you spread the idea. People who say, hey, wherever I go, I'm bringing this idea with me because this is the only way I want to work. And then the people who say, I love this way of working, let me help you actively spread this idea as part of your organization. Those are some wonderful responses from people who touch an idea.

Yeah, and, and you never know when they're going to come back either. We're working with someone now who is supporting us on the product side, and he's been an executive in product at some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, but he just kind of happened to to be between gigs and we're looking at doing some things which I can't really announce yet, but we're doing some pretty cool things from a technology standpoint and he's been working with us trying to help us bring that about. So.

Very cool. So Karen, as we begin to wrap up, I wanna ask you a question. Okay. You took on someone else's ideas. In thought leadership, and Mike's been the third guest in this conversation, if you will, right? How has it felt being the advocate for someone else's work, and how do you keep it fresh for you so that it stays vital?

Well, You know, I feel a huge responsibility around being the— I see it as the caretaker of Mike's work and the evangelist of Mike's work. Again, his legacy is important to me, and he gave everything. You know, he's got kind of that typical inventor story of died without much means at all, never really made money off of what he was doing. Devoted his whole life to it, jeopardized his relationships with his family. I mean, was just 100% dedicated to it, but he created this amazing thing. And so I'm very passionate about wanting to expand his legacy because I see what he did. I see the work that he did and I see how it changes people's lives. And that's what keeps it fresh for me is that sometimes I still go out and I will engage with customers, especially if it's someone that I know and they're like, hey, can you come and do this training session? Session. And so I'll go and I'll do that. And every time that I do, I just think, oh my gosh, this has just changed lives. I saw the light bulbs go off. I saw people talking together and working together where they've had so much friction, and now they're figuring out ways to be collaborative. And I just see the effects that it has, and that's how it keeps it fresh for me.

So I will point out something. We're recording on Zoom. And I want to share it with the audience who's listening in. So earlier I asked you about the first time you heard Mike share these ideas. I saw the spark in your eye at that point as you were reconnecting with that moment, and the same spark in your eye materialized when you were talking about being the presenter. And that seems to be a connective point that I want to call out. You seem to flash back to the same facial feature and that same energy right there at the moment.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, again, I've been passionate about this now, I guess at this point it's been about 17 years that I've been committed to it. And, you know, and I really, when I went into it, I thought, I'm gonna do this, you know, but this will be like kind of my last maybe 5 to 7 years of working here. But You know, I started, officially started the company 14 years ago. I'm still passionate about it. I still love the work that we're doing. I'm excited about the future. I'm excited about the possibilities and, you know, some of the new technologies that are out there and how can we use those to further our objectives around creating this place where we see others, we respect the gifts that they bring, we value them, we listen to them, and we figure out how to to get more done in— for the good of humanity by working together collaboratively.

Karen, thank you very much for joining us today. And if someone wants to poke around or understand a little bit more about the framework or things we've been talking about, where would they go?

Yeah, so definitely our website, simplify.com. That's S-I-M-P-L-Y and the number 5. So simplify.com is a great place place to start. We always are happy to connect with individuals who are just curious and want to learn more about the methodology. Email to sales@simplify.com is a good place to start, and we'll definitely just be happy to have a conversation with you and show you more about the methodology. And you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I am Karen Wright Gordon, and, you know, always putting out new articles and sharing things that I find valuable there as well.

Fantastic. Thank you for taking time today, Karen. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Thank you, Bill. I appreciate you giving me the time as well.

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