The Movers Showcase - Fall 2025

Oh, got to think about it, got to dream about it, got to find a way to do the things that Hello, hello, hello! How are you all? Hello, welcome to the Mover Showcase! Yay! We are so delighted that you are here, coming to us live and hot from all over the world, 'cause you know, that's YouTube for you. It is all over the world.

Hello, hello.

My name is Sally Koering Zimney, and I am myself a speaker, a bestselling author, and your neighborhood professional nudger. That's what I do. I nudge people from wherever you are to wherever you wanna go. And I am also today the proud coach who has the incredible privilege of working with all of the speakers in the Movers Collective here at Be Moved. And 3 of them are here with us this morning. And they are here because they want to have a bigger impact, because they believe in a message that they know can move the world, and because they are driven entrepreneurs and leaders, and they know The power of moments like these. So it is awesome that you're here. It's awesome that you are going to be moved yourself because that's what they do. They are movers. And movers in my mind are not just like, they're not people who like pick stuff up and move things, although I do get random emails from people who want a moving company. That's not what we do. We move humans. We as movers understand the power of our purpose, the power of what happens when we have this exchange of ideas and meaning and connection. We want to not just be moved, but we know to do that we ourselves need to move. And that's what these words and ideas can do. So you are here to move and be moved. But I want to say this too, because one of the things that, whoof, these three are especially good at is a thing that any mover has to figure out. And that is that we have to build our self-trust. And we do that by trying in public like this, moments like this, despite however we might be feeling that day, despite questioning suddenly everything like I was this morning, despite my fire alarm that keeps going off upstairs. We don't know why. Don't worry, there's no fire, but it is buried under about 5 pillows right now. But yet I am going to show up and try in public. Because it's not just because it's brave, but because this is how we move other people. This is how we have the impact that ultimately we know that we can have. And here's the deal. It's very different than confidence. Confidence, screw confidence. Confidence is BS. Right? We might feel confident some days, but some days we don't.

And who knows why?

It is finicky, it's fussy. Mm, screw confidence. I don't have time for confidence because some days I feel it and some days I don't, and there's really no reasoning about why. But self-trust, on the other hand, self-trust is something we build with intention. Self-trust is earned and learned by showing up anyway. That's what we're doing here today. Because after you show up anyway, and you do it, and you survive, you're like, okay, turns out I can do this. Turns out I am capable. Turns out I learned some things and I would do it differently next time. This is how we grow. And instead of waiting on the sidelines for the perfect moment, for the slides to be perfect, for us to feel perfect in our perfect body, we say screw that. I'm going to show up anyway. This is how the world is moved. Yes to the possibility of rejection. That's fine. We are here anyway. And this, this is what's happening here today at the Movers Showcase. And listen, speaking is not for the faint of heart. It is something that is in each of these speakers who I cannot wait for you to meet. It is in them. They are— they feel that pull out front because they know the power of what can happen. And you can want it and also be intimidated by it at the same time. You can want it and also feel like, can this possibly be for me? At the same time, most of the people I work with have both of those feelings, but we risk the rejection because We risk the fear, we risk the vulnerability because the connection that we might create is the difference. The connection, the impact, the movement that we are building is worth it. It's worth the risk. So today you are not just watching thoughtful presenters, brilliant experts and humans, and totally, by the way, praiseworthy and hireable speakers for your next event. Okay, they will, they will wow your audience because I've coached them and they're brilliant. So they will. What you're really witnessing right now are acts of self-trust. You're seeing what it looks like when people choose growth over comfort, connection over perfection, and the spotlight over the safety of the sidelines. So we are starting off today with a woman who has been with me for a really long time, really since day one that I started this particular program. And I cannot wait for you to meet her. And we're going to start with a question that I have for you, uh, and it feels relevant. Do you ever have the heaviness of the Sunday scaries because work It's just no longer fun. Mm-hmm. Or maybe work was never fun. So that Sunday scary, it's sticking around. I personally don't like any of that. And I want to get better at creating workplace where everyone wants to come to work, right? Where everybody experiences what Jen Whitmer is going to bring with us today out front. Jen, a self-proclaimed recovering conflict avoider. I feel that. She has 20+ years of experience leading groups from classrooms and schools to volunteer groups, and hardest of all, leading herself. She is an international speaker, a consultant, a joy bringer. She holds, uh, graduate certificates and many of them in music education, theology, and leadership, along with Master of Arts in Communication and Culture. From Webster University. Oh my gosh, she knows what she's talking about. Uh, she's also had training in conflict resolution. She's a certified Enneagram coach. Let's talk about the Enneagram for sure. She asks big questions that lead to wild dreams, connected ideas, and joyful flourishing. Jen lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her high school sweetheart husband of nearly 30 years, Michael, and their 4 kids, uh, and a surly cat that allows them to live in the house. And she felt it was, along with all of that very impressive information, important to share 3 things with you. Number 1, Jen just really wants her life to be a musical. I can attest to that. It's true. Number 2, Ted Lasso might just be the most perfect show ever. Agreed. And number 3, she is a loud laugher. So we are excited for you to join in with this joyful, joyful experience. Please welcome Jen Whitmer. Jen, I can't hear you. Jen, pause.

Can't hear you.

Okay, how's this? Perfect. My journey— we'll start right on over— my journey to joy at work began when I got fired. So let me rewind just a little bit and tell you a story about what I learned from a student called Maisy. I worked at a school of about 300 or so students. I was the Director of Assessment and Feedback and Report Cards, Parent-Teacher Conferences, and everyone's favorite, Standardized Testing.

Right?

You're not laughing and smiling at that? I get it. I totally understand. It's like groans heard round the world. When I was this Director of Assessment, I came in and Maisie was really nervous. She was nervous about the test because every year everybody was nervous about the test, and I knew, I just knew, there had to be a better way. We didn't have to do it like this, right? We didn't have to create all of this extra pressure just to get accurate assessment results. And I was sitting at my desk, and behind me we had a rooftop playground, and so the window behind me, everybody in the playground was laughing and giggling, and they were screaming, and I, I was like, could we make testing feel like that? And so I got to thinking, and we decided to beta test this idea. We changed when testing occurred and moved it up into the middle of the school year instead of the end, as I like to call the Maycember Madness. And we moved it up into January, we decided to— I sent home balls and bubbles and little note cards so parents could connect with their kids about what was happening, rather than amp up the like, you gotta do this well. And so we decided this is what we're doing. And Mar— Maisie's mom came in after we had done this grand experiment, and she gave me this gift. I opened up this present and it said, "Jennifer Whitmer, Director of Good Moods." I was like, "Jessie, what is this?" And she was like, "Well, you know, Maisie was really nervous about testing. It was her first time, and she came home every day like this." And then she proceeded to do the most amazing impression of her 9-year-old, and she was like, "Ma, testing is the best. We get cheese sticks, we get extra recess, they give us animal crackers, both iced and uniced animal crackers, and we play a game, and I mean, all we have to do is talk about what we talk about every day." So based on Jessie's impression and Margot's experience, Yes, my first part of my theory was correct. We didn't have to make testing full of anxiety and stress. The second part of my theory, would we get better results? Well, here's what happened. When Jesse gave me my plaque, I had already seen the scores. Our students had scored in the top 25% of schools as a whole. And many individual students had scored much higher. And 4 years later, the US Department of Education awarded our school a Blue Ribbon School, which is the highest academic honor in the country, and it's only awarded to 50 private schools a year. We brought joy into our work, into our, like, the workiest work. We didn't buckle down. We brought joy. And we were more effective. I'm pretty sure that's your experience every day at work, right? That's what you do— joy, productivity, excitement. No, I, you know, I get it. And unfortunately, I think most of the time we don't think about joy at work, and what we experience is workplace stress. And anxiety, and it costs us. And lack of joy at work in particular costs us more than we realize. 83% of workers in the US suffer from workplace-related anxiety. 83%. I just think that's unacceptable. And of those 83%, 3 in 4, 3 in 4 say that it significantly impacts their home life. That means what's happening at the conference room table is showing up at the dinner table. And in the US, these workers say that it's difficult to concentrate because of their workplace culture, and it's on the rise. 46% in 2018, up to 65% last year. That's huge. And I want to know what that looks like for you. Are you rereading the memo because your mind was somewhere else? Are you rewriting and rewriting and rewriting the email because you don't want to make anyone angry? Well, it's no surprise then that these statistics are showing up across the board. The one that is the most devastating to me as I have been researching and writing my book, Joyosity, that's coming out this fall, Every time I write this and when I found it in the research, it stopped me in my tracks. Work-related stress causes 120,000 deaths a year. We're literally dying from lack of joy. We're literally dying from lack of joy. I know that if you ask most leaders, they're gonna say, Positive culture, great. We want that, but it's just kind of a nice-to-have, right? Like, that's great if you can have it, but that's not really the purpose of what we're doing here, right? I mean, we're, we're here to make— we're in business. We're here to make money, right? I think that sounds an awful lot like greed. And I don't think that's who you are. I don't think that's who we are. I think it's a bill of goods that we've been sold. It's a scribbled-on piece of paper with a bunch of empty promises. There's a better story and there is a truer story about joy. And don't you worry, I've got receipts. I believe that we're in business in some way, shape, or form to solve a problem for people. We're here to solve a problem for people, and if we solve problems well, people will pay us money, and that results in a profit. If you want to solve problems well, then you have to be curious, you've got to be connected, and you have to have a clear purpose. And that's the basis of joy. That's the basis of joy. It begins with the people because healthy organizations have joy. Joy is the heartbeat of a healthy organization. Joy— Will Godera says that too many companies have left the human behind. They focused so much on products, they've forgotten about the people. He also says that when you make the choice to put your team and the people that you work with in center, customers follow. And that's what separates the everybody else from the great ones. People-centered cultures and joy-centered cultures don't see joy as a nice-to-have. Joy is at the center. It's the heartbeat. It's the way we get all the other things that we want at work. Those are the lagging indicators, including profit and engagement and productivity. And joy means results. 25 years of studying the financial performance of culture and companies, Great Places to Work found that companies that have high trust cultures where joy is at the center, they outperform the market by nearly 4 times. Just in case you want to see it really close up. If you want to have great results, you need to have people who are full of joy. And joy needs to be the heartbeat of what you do. W. Edwards Deming, who is basically an organizational psychologist, he studied how productivity and people work together. And he says that people are entitled to joy at work. They're entitled to joy at work. That was the core of his message. So after all of that, if you are at least a little bit curious, would you like, you know, give a little heart on the YouTube? Because I want to know, are you, are you at least wanting some of this? Is this curiosity to you enough to stay and figure out, okay, if joy does all of this, how do I get it? So we're going to talk about today really what joy is, what it, what it really is and what it isn't. We're going to talk about 3 signals of joy and we're going to start exploring and take you through a map to get to joy. We're going to start with some balloons. So the Great Forest Park Balloon Race starts just a few miles from my house. It is my absolute— my husband's absolute favorite St. Louis tradition. He first— when we first moved to St. Louis, friends took us and he was hooked. And he has, like, it's on our calendar years in advance. It's a tradition we've figured out with our kids now, the ones that are now in their teens and 20s. We go, and I can't just tell you, the man loves balloons. And the night before the actual race, all of the balloons are spread out across the central field of Forest Park, and it's called the Balloon Glow. And more than 100,000 people flock to the park with picnic baskets and blankets and strollers and bikes and to watch the magic of these amazing balloons, like the magic of fire with these enormous globes of silk. One year, all our kids were finally old enough to walk and help tote and carry, and so all 6 of us piled in the car and we stopped at Schnucks for all of our picnic fixings and we drove to Forest Park. And then we promptly got stuck in traffic because 100,000 people and only 2 roads into the park, it's gridlock. And our kids excitement just really started to dissipate, you know, as we inched along, it just started to dip. And then their whining increased when we finally found a parking space at the park and loaded the wagon with our folding chairs and blankets and food. And I'm just trying to keep them engaged and encouraged, but I'm failing. Miserably. And Michael, his favorite event, his irritation is steadily growing. And as we trudge down the slope amidst the crowd, dusk is gone and now the sky is dark. Everyone, everyone's in a bad mood. And delusional me, I cling to like the sheer force of positive vibes. Desperate to salvage this experience. And then out of the haze, a woman toting her own picnic basket collides with our wagon, and we stared as she face-planted into the grass. No one moved. No one spoke. Her stumble just drove the dagger in the whole night.

We gave up.

We packed the car, shut the trunk, and left the balloons behind. Not even the majestic balloons could withstand that— the crushing pressure and deep disappointment of that moment. Because positive vibes and excitement aren't enough to sustain us in this life. It's just not enough. So it is a good thing that joy is more than that. So often when we think of joy, we think of cotton candy, we think of balloons. I want you to replace that common idea and with and replace it with something far more stable. I want you to think of lavender. Lavender spreads and it has incredibly deep roots that grow best in rocky soil, pretty hilly. It's got a bite of acid to it. And a lavender bush has roots that are so deep that it grows as deep as the roots are tall. And when even in rose, it's kind of a little wild, and its fragrance— most people can smell a lavender field like a football field away. Cotton candy dissolves on your tongue, it's gone. Balloons, they float away, they pop or deflate. That's not joy. The joy we're talking about, real joy, real joy has deep roots, and roots form in the dark. When we think about joy, it needs to have more depth than something that is going to disappear in a moment. So here is my definition of joy. Intense happiness from a feeling of deep connection and appreciation and experiencing something greater than ourselves. Intense happiness from a feeling of deep connection, appreciation, and experiencing something greater than ourselves. That's joy. And in fact, the subtitle of the book, Joyosity, is Cultivating Intense Happiness in Work and Life. Even if things are what they are. Because joy is gritty. It's worthwhile and it's productive. I want you to think about something. I want you to think about a moment where you experienced this type of joy at work. You felt connected to other people. You were appreciating what you were getting to do. Everything was working even beyond just those of you there. I want you to feel it. Maybe even if you're not driving, you know, close your eyes and just think about it for a moment. Feel it in your body. I'm imagining you did not arrive at that moment without a little bit of struggle. It wasn't just easy peasy pumpkin breezy. You got there with some work. And yet every time I ask this in front of an audience, I see smiles across the room. So I'm imagining your smile right now. That feeling, that feeling is joy. I want you to keep that feeling when we start to jump into some of the business metrics of what joy actually produces at work. So first of all, joy has an intense impact at work. It increases productivity by 31%. If someone is experiencing joy at work, they are 31% more productive. There's a 25% increase in the group performance. Now, I am not a mathematician, but I do get the concept of exponential math. So if my joy increases the group's performance by 25%, if you also experiencing joy, it just goes up. That's what we want. And also, people who are experiencing joy at work are 3.5 times more likely to help other team members. I mean, that means they are, you know, using their discretionary effort, as my friend Kerry Campbell says, their discretionary effort to help the group goal that keeps them out of your office as the leader. It keeps them out of the HR office. It keeps them from submitting tech tickets and bogging things down because they're helping each other. We call that collaboration. People who experience joy are better collaborators. Unfortunately, joy's virality, the virality of joy, also is toxic. The other end of toxicity has the same effect. A toxic employee, the one who is not experiencing joy, the one who has dipped over into toxicity, is 2 times— they cost you 2 times the amount that your top performer does. So, just in case you're like, "Well, we're going to keep them because even though they're kind of toxic, they're our top performer." It's costing you. It's costing you far more than you realize. And what often happens is that toxicity comes before in what we call toil. So, here's what toil is. This is the opposite of joy. The opposite of joy isn't work. It's toil. So toil is overtaxing work that is meaningless. It feels outside of your expertise, skills, resources, interests, or enjoyment. And too much toxicity— or too much toil is what then turns into toxicity. So everybody's got stuff they don't like. Everybody's joy and toil are actually different. For me, it's spreadsheets. Creating invoices, analyzing website data, cleaning out the cat's litter box. These are things that I do not enjoy. They feel like toil. Everyone is different, but regardless of what your toil is, the result of toil is costly. Increased levels of toil are linked to impaired cognitive function, which means you're not thinking quite so well. Diminished memory means you can't remember that thing. That you're like, oh, I was supposed to do it, and what did they say? A reduced ability to learn something new. How many of you have adopted a new system in the last 18 months? Yeah, learning something new. And decreased engagement, this kind of hard, lean-out culture. That's what happens when we experience toil. And you've all got parts of your responsibilities that you don't like. I've, as I said, and there are things that nobody likes to do, but we have to do it in order to get to the good stuff. So it, does that mean, okay, I just have to be happy all the time? Absolutely not. That would be completely unhinged. So there is a formula. Isn't that amazing? There is a formula to create these positive outcomes and it mitigates the ones from the toil. So it is 35% of your week spent on things that you enjoy. If you're spending 35% of your time on things that you enjoy, you feel connected, you're resourced, and you keep the toil to 10%. If you keep the toil to 10% of things you don't like, this is how you experience joy at work. That's the threshold. So when that poor woman bit the dust, over our wagon. Our ratio of joy to toil was out of whack, mostly because we were depending on something outside of us. We were depending on this one great balloon experience to bring us joy rather than growing it looking inside, growing it from our own connection, and growing it from gratitude and joy from something bigger than us. You can't outsource your joy. So how do you know that you have it? During the early months of starting as a school administrator, I was sitting on my couch and my partner at work, Dana, the director of curriculum instruction, was running on the track at her local community center, and we were working together on an enormous project. We were working on an accreditation project, so Have you ever been through like an audit, a certification project, you know, something like that? They're super fun, aren't they? And you just love like standard 2.195 in this folder, right? So you— we've already talked about my love of spreadsheets, you know. And so Dana's running at the gym telling me all the details, and I'm digging through the files to make sure that everything is in the right spot. And I'm brainstorming ideas and Dana's running and telling me, oh hey, go find it here.

And all of a sudden she's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

And I was like, are you okay? What's wrong? I mean, I'm thinking she spit the dust on the track. Matt is pounding on the glass. I've been running for an hour and a half. Now Dana is not a long-distance runner. She's like a couch-to-5K girl, and she has never run that far. But time had disappeared because we were experiencing joy. So 3 aspects of joy are how you know that you've got joy. So if we're gonna dig for joy, if real joy has deep roots, I'm gonna give you a little shovel to help you figure out, okay, here are the things that I know if I'm experiencing joy. The first one is I you feel lucky, you feel favored or fortunate to get to do this. Like, oh my gosh, do they know? Do they know this is part of my job? Do they know? Like, or please don't ever take this part of my job from me. That is this experience of feeling favored or fortunate. Like, I'm so excited I get to do this, almost like guilty that it's a part of what you get to do. That's the first thing. The second one is this idea that it connects you to other people. You have a sense sense of belonging. You have a sense of belonging because of the activity that you are doing. So you're excited that you get to do this part of your work. It's like your favorite thing. You love it. I always like— this is my favorite thing, getting to do this with you, sharing this information, being— speaking, all of that. This is my favorite. And also, it feels connected. It feels connected to you. I feel like we're having this group experience. We are having a group experience. I feel a sense of belonging. That is part of joy. And then it's connected to purpose. It's connected to the purpose of your work, your North Star. So when our school was going through accreditation, my work around testing had an important part of that, and I had to spend a whole bunch of time in a spreadsheet. The purpose of my work in that spreadsheet was to create that schedule so everybody had the right testing schedule, so it wasn't stressing everybody out. It, it was a little bit of toil, but because I could connect it to purpose, it changed how that felt. Purpose isn't what the task is. My North Star also wasn't trying to get good test results. That wasn't my North Star. That's not the purpose. My purpose was to create world collaborative people in the world. So these humans that we were in charge of at school, we wanted to partner with teachers and parents to help them engage the world, to be collaborative, grace-filled, and creative problem solvers with critical thinking and impact culture for the better. That is purpose. That is my North Star. So what is some of your purpose? Why do you sit at the receptionist desk? Why are you involved in creating the financial budget? Why are you calling customers? For Dana and me that day, accreditation supported way more than just a stamp on our school. It meant more opportunities for better student learning, that we create those creative problem solvers in the world. Your purpose is connected to joy. Something greater than yourself increases your joy at work. So you feel favored or fortunate, results impact more than just you, and it's connected to the purpose of your work. You're connected to people and purpose. And a lot of us think, well, that's not really available to me. And I want you to stop that right now because I want to challenge that little voice in your head that just started to say, I mean, it's fine, it's fine, my job is fine. And if I can borrow a line from Ted Lasso, don't you You shouldn't dare settle for fine. You should feel like you've been struck by lightning. That's the power of joy. If that's the power of joy, if that's what you want, how do you find your way to a lightning strike? What is that like? So, I have played the piano on the stage of Lincoln Center because of Jade Simmons. I was at a conference and Jade was the keynote speaker, and she asked in the audience if anybody knew how to play the piano, and my hand went straight up. And she actually picked me because I was on the floor and, you know, I was easy, I guess. And she said, "Well, how well do you play the piano?" And I was like, "Well, I passed a proficiency exam." And she was like, "Well, when was that exam?" I was like, "In the '90s." She's like, "Okay, great. You're still going on stage." And I was like, "Ah!" The amazing thing about Jade in her experience is she doesn't just do it herself. It's a collaborative effort. And she really talks about being able to exist in the fullness of all you really are. And what we didn't know at that moment, what the audience didn't know, is that I was willing to raise my hand and say, "Absolutely, I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of this collaboration." is because I had spent the last year thinking about something Jade had said a year before. See, I had been at an event where Jade was the keynote speaker and where Jade talks about her definition of purpose, which is, "Purpose isn't what you do. It's what happens in other people when you do what you do." Purpose isn't what you do. It's what happens in other people when you do what you do. And I realized when Jade said that I'd been playing really small. I was trying to fit into this corporate mode, like this is the way I'm supposed to be, when I'm kind of like this. And it— so it took this year of struggle and of figuring out, well, what, what are my favorite things to do? What do connect me to people? What impact— what are the things that I do that impact people more? And so all of these brave little yeses of being brave, as Sally talked about at the beginning, self-trust of jumping out and trying started to create these brave little yeses, started to create more joy for me because I knew where it was connected and I was practicing it. I had decided here are the things that bring me joy. Here are the things that are like toil and I'm going for the joy. And so when she said, who plays the piano at Lincoln Center? I had a mini library in my hand.

There I was.

I was ready to go because that brave yes had been practiced over time. So purpose, again, isn't the thing that you do. It's what happens in other people when you do what you do. So you have to work at it. You have to work at it. You have to dig. Remember, real joy has deep roots. You gotta dig for it. And when we dig for joy, we start to create that viral experience of joy with other people. It starts to spread, and that creates what I call joyosity, because your curiosity about your own joy starts to help it be more than just you. So joyosity, my definition, is flourishing. It's overall peace, it— wholeheartedness, well-being, contentment with yourself and relationships, engaged in meaningful work that brings you life and to your community. That's real joy. That creates something greater. And I gotta know, isn't that something you want? Don't you want joy in that way? That speak— that feeling? So you have to take the time to dig, to connect to this idea of what is— what am I love to do? What's grateful? What gives me a sense of belonging and connects me to other people? What impacts more than just me. So we have just a couple minutes while you're listening here. I want you to think about this. I'm going to go through this idea of the Joyosity Explorer Map, and I'm going to give you a moment to think about it, but then get the rest of the map in, in a moment, because what this does is it helps you dig. So I want you to think about the— this idea of joy. What do you feel favored or fortunate? Like, you would be like, oh my gosh, please don't take this out of my job. Like, don't do that. What are the things that you just love to do and you feel like other people are in it with you? You feel like you belong, you're connected to others. And what are the activities that so directly connect to your North Star, to that purpose? Just think about that for a moment. This is a brainstorm. Don't edit, don't censor. Write it down if you can. Think of those things that bring you joy inside and out. What are like, I just feel so damn lucky I get to do this that you can't believe it? What connects you to other people and feels like that North Star? You have to know what that is in order to practice those brave yeses toward joy. What about toil? The other end. You also have to know what causes you toil. What feels like, oh my gosh, it just feels ridiculous and repetitive, like, oh my, what is always the thing you avoid? And not because it feels daunting or just big, but just like, I hate that. Or maybe you don't have the resources to do it, like, I don't mind it, but I don't have enough time or people to do it. What is just mind-numbingly uninteresting to you. So after this, when you do these exercises— and I'm going to give you a way to get the rest of the exercises— you get to do a bit of choose your own adventure. You get to figure out, well, what's my 35%? Am I spending 35% of my time in these things that I just said bring me joy? Am I spending more than 10% of my time in the things that feel like toil. This is just the beginning of the Joyosity Explorer Map. It has 3 more stops on the map to help you. So I really want you to have it. We don't have enough time today. So if you want to scan this QR code, this is for anybody listening, you can go to talk.ac-jenwhitmer and you enter the code joy. And it's going to let you also give me a little bit of your thoughts about today. And as a thank you, I'm gonna give you the rest of the Joyosity Explorer Map and a few other bonus resources. And the reason this is important is because that feeling of joy has to be sometimes taught to other people, and your feedback helps me get better. It also helps other people know that this was worthwhile to you so we can start helping them get more joy. That's what we want. So I would love it if you would get that QR code, at least save it in your phone, or put it— open it up on your browser if you're at your desk and finish that. And at the end, I will make sure that you get the Joyosity Explorer map so you can finish the other 3 stops on the exercises. If you'd like to dig real deep, the Joyosity book is available for pre-order. You can get it at jenwhitmer.com/book. Books and get it when it comes out at the end of November. And then if you're like, wait, I think I need a little bit more, you're like, I want to bring this to my team, or maybe I need some work exploring it myself, just shoot me an email, Jenn with two N's at JennWhitmer.com, and we'll just say joy, and I'll ask you a couple questions and we can see where we go from there. So when you've got this, if you're, if you're not quite finished yet, that's okay. Leave it open in your browser. And I want you to come back for a moment because it was just a couple of years after Jesse walked into my office and we had won that Blue Ribbon Award that I sat in my leader's office in this, on this ridiculous white couch, and these words just slapped my face. I'm eliminating your position. How did we go from a joy-centered, highly effective culture leading this amazing achievement? How do we get there? We had lost joy. We'd, we'd removed it from the center. I mean, we still had moments, but it wasn't the center of what we did. We had moved into pleasing donors. Let's try to get a new facility. Let's cut some corners. Let's create fake peace so it all looks good, but it wasn't joy. I feel like so many leaders that I talk to, like you, experience that every day. The joy is gone. And you're like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. Where, where is joy? We've got 60 years of research that tells us human-centered, joy-filled, trust-filled businesses are more productive and profitable. So why don't we do it? Why? Why is joy not the heartbeat? I think it's because we believe we don't deserve it. When really joy is the very thing that keeps us alive. Do you have the audacity to choose joy? Because joy is what will save us. Joy is what will save us when we have to have those hard conversations with our coworkers and big decisions. Joy is what will save us from crippling pervasive anxiety. Joy will save us from the slow decline and 120,000 deaths a year. Joy is what will save us. So go cultivate joy because you deserve joy.

Thank you.

Here we go. Try this. Applause.

Yay!

I'll take it while I drink my coffee. Drink your coffee. Well done. And stop. Thank you. Applause. Wonderful.

Hi.

Oh my gosh, Jen. So, so wonderful. To hear you. I've heard this talk many times, of course, and every time I have a moment, every time I have a moment where I'm— I, I go a little bit deeper and think a little bit more about what my own challenge, my own challenge with this. And of course, like, uh, you have your statistics, your research, your— it's So my essential readiness. Oh my gosh. So I actually, I mean, I, I have a lot of questions for you. We have a few minutes. What I would love to know is you're somebody, you, you kind of hold both of these really interesting realities. You're this like joyful, playful person and you're like deeply educated, deeply researched, deep, like brain and emotions, both of them. Can you just talk about how that plays out in your life, that these two elements— I think it's a beautiful strength of yours as a speaker and as a human, uh, but I know it's also like a little bit of tension, push and pull on this.

Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the curiosity piece, honestly. And, and that's why I say that curiosity is what helps sustain joy. Because when I go through that Joyosity Explorer map with clients and we dig a little bit deeper, either in a group workshop or with my leadership coaching clients, one of the things that I say is the thing that we talk about toil, like you're not resourced for, you don't have enough time for, or maybe something you used to love but don't anymore. And that's the curiosity piece. This isn't just like, oh my gosh, I—

sorry, more applause. I'll take more applause.

You know, it's not just I— this is what brings me joy for forever. We have to continually keep that curiosity going. So that curiosity into my own life, I think, is part of it. I think I am such a, like, just a nerd-out curious person. In general, like I could do all the read— I loved writing my book. Some people are like, "Oh my gosh, it's such a pain." I kept doing research. I finally had to be like, "Oh my gosh, it's fine. It's fine." Like, get— And so I loved it so much. But even just this past week when Sally was asking us, "Hey, final things. Are you going to do the showcase? Are you going to be here?" And I realized I'd spent so much time writing my book, which was really fun. But I was in the part of the book that wasn't as much fun, like deciding how to sell and market, and that part is not what I love.

Yeah.

And, um, I needed to have— my ratio was off.

Yeah.

I was spending time in toil, and I was like, I need to just do the speaking event because it's my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing. I need that joy because I need the gratitude. Don't take that away from me. It's my favorite. It connects to purpose because I get to control my time. And that's part of choosing joy. So those emotions and curiosity about the data play in and out because I have to— I can't take you places I'm not willing to go. I can't stand here and say I'm not willing to do that for myself. So that digging into even making decisions about how I spend my time is how I continue to make sure that this is very real to the audiences and the people that I work with.

Yeah. Okay, so you talk about the joy ratio, and this is, this is one of those things I'm sure when you're writing or you're, you do a little research and you figure out, oh my gosh, this is so empowering. At least that's how I feel about it, is this realization and recognition that joy is not that it doesn't have to all be joyful or like even mostly joyful. Because it doesn't feel doable or realistic. So, can you just talk a little bit more about the role that this joy ratio idea plays and why you think this is so important?

Well, there's— so there's the 35% that there's a— the research that you do, if you read a lot of things, you'll start to notice a third is a common human experience is probably the best way to say it. Uh, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Revenge of the Tipping Point talks about the magic third, and that's what this is. It's kind of this magic third. When you get to this much amount of time, what I like to say is it makes the toil tolerable and the messy middle, that 55%, almost magical. Yeah, because like you have this joy is what sustains us through the rest of the two-thirds. And, and you start to know if— once you start paying attention to this ratio, once I like discovered this about a year and a half ago and I started paying attention to the time factor, and it's often why I say a week, because the— you can't necessarily make it happen in a day, and so it kind of takes a little bit of time for a week. And you start to notice, oh, I've— okay, so you know what, when you're just like, oh my gosh, why do the hits keep on coming? Yeah, you know, the car breaks down, the kid gets in trouble, like, like everything. It's like, oh my God, like that happens in your life. That is when that toil ratio, it's out of whack. And so the way to fix that, a couple different ways, is working on the messy middle, which in the book I talk about how do you manage your mindset, how do you engage with other people, how do you experience play, your rituals, routines, all that's in the book. And where's the joy? How can I find moments of joy, that what happens is it just like goes, ah, okay, it starts to reset. And so that magic third is incredibly powerful when you pay attention to it, and then you know how to switch it.

Right, right. Well, and, uh, you have talked about your book a lot, and so I want to give a highlight to this moment because it's not out yet. But where are you at? When can we expect it? Yes, give us the deets on the book.

I know I start recording the audiobook next week. So last night I actually dug in for, again, doing some rehearsal for it and making sure I could pronounce names, uh, because there are a few in there that when I wrote them I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to pronounce.

I know it's very different, isn't it? I've, I've said this word in my head many times. I have no idea if that's how it's supposed to sound coming out of my mouth.

Uh, so I, I write a story about Simone Biles in the book.

Yeah.

And I still cannot quite yet say her coach's name, so I'm gonna have to keep practicing it.

Okay. And, uh, just say it with confidence, Jen. Say it with confidence.

So that's what's happening.

We—

you can— available for pre-order right now. And so if you go to jenwhitmer.com/books, you can order at all the places that you like. If you like Bookshop, if you like Barnes Noble, Amazon, all the places are there. But you can also join the Joyosity Works Very Important Party, and those are the people that are getting insider early access. They're getting a few other little special goodies. Some early access to the book will come next week, I'm hoping, because it's in— uh, we're finishing layout, we go to print, and so then you'll start to be able to get a little bit of early access. To actual chapters. And, um, I'm just excited for this book to be out in the world. I have Will Godera, Bob Goff, uh, Maxine Clark, who is the founder of Build-A-Bear, um, have endorsed the book. So I've, I've got a couple other people that I've asked that are reading it that I can't wait to see what they say, if they'll endorse it or not. So it's, it's exciting. It's exciting.

I'm so proud of you. You have worked so hard. You have put your whole self into this. I mean, you do not hold back. I love that you have an extra extra section at the end. It's like, of course you do, Jen Whitmer. Of course you have an extra extra.

We've got extra extra at the end.

Absolutely. Just so impressive and profound and important, along with being, uh, just food for the soul. So, and joyful, like you, you yourself are joyful, but this, this is actually really quite deep and profound and important and essential. So, uh, thank you for bringing all of that, the full breadth and depth of who you are, into everything that you do. I love working with you. I'm proud of you.

And well, thank you.

Yeah, let's give Jen Whitmer one more big round of applause, shall we? Here we go. Thank you, Jen. Oh my gosh, amazing team.

Yes.

Okay, we'll do more applause. We'll do more applause.

I hear you.

Applause. And okay. Oh my gosh. I hope you enjoyed that. Jen Whitmer is as you, I hope, just experienced, deeply, deeply researched, so intelligent and a delight. And I think that's kind of, you know, powerhouse, powerhouse Jen Whitmer. It's so wonderful that she gave some time to be here. And I hope you got a lot out of it. I would love to hear if you are here right now. I see you. We've got some eyes watching. Let me know what your takeaways were. From Jen's talk? What's that, like, one-line takeaway or the memorable idea, that thing that you're like, "Ooh, I want to remember this. I want to remember this." Here's why I want you to write it down in the comments. One, it, of course, is great feedback for our speakers, but two, you taking a moment to reflect on that and decide for yourself is really powerful. And then sharing it with other people makes it much more likely that you are going to remember it. So this is a tool for you more than even it's a tool for me, but of course it helps us too. So let's see it. What were the big takeaways for you in Jen's talk? We want to hear it. Um, we're looking at in the comments and can't wait to hear what you have to say. All right, next up we have another speaker with us. Uh, her name is Robin Davis, and I am just really delighted to bring her on stage with us in a moment. And we're gonna have a short conversation about her message, who she is, and why she is here. And here's what I want you to know about Robin. She is a strategist in chief. Okay, Robin is a powerhouse entrepreneur with multiple businesses. She is an entrepreneur, but she also has the mind of a consultant, the heart of a creative, and the precision of a project manager. Talk about powerhouse. Love it. She's the kind of leader who builds businesses from a spark of strategy. She sharpens them with structure and brands them with soul. Whether she's orchestrating a healthcare RFP Response, which is one of her businesses, whether she's mentoring a team into strategic thinkers or spearheading events for her restaurant that she and her wife own, she brings vision with execution. Woo! Both. If there's a mission, a margin, or a metaphor involved, she's owning it, refining it, and making sure that it wins. Robin is the architect of impact and authenticity. I mean, dang, you know, Robin is a writer, and I hope you can tell, okay, how she brings these words and ideas together. She's not just building businesses, she's building meaning. She leads with intention, blending strategy and heart to create work that matters and relationships that last. No matter what she's doing, her through line is clear: use your gifts, uplift others, and lead with love. She sees you and makes sure that what she touches leaves the world better, smarter, stronger, and more human. More human. And she is the leader of our next needed revolution, what she calls the Red Jacket Revolution. And I cannot wait for her to share more. So please help me welcome to the stage Robin Davis. Yes, a round of applause for Robin here. Hold on. Ready? We're going to applause it.

Okay.

And there she is. There she is. Yay. Oh my gosh, Robin, thank you for being here. It's so great to have you.

Hello.

How are you feeling this morning?

I mean, I gotta live up to all that. That's—

you got this. You, you, you've got this.

You are—

you have been a leader, an entrepreneur for a long time. So help us just set the stage of all the various things that you do, and then we're going to talk about the Red Jacket Revolution. But I want people to understand the context, a little bit of your story.

Man, everything that I do. Well, uh, opened my consulting firm 16 years ago, and then we opened a restaurant 10 years ago. So because that wasn't enough, so let's just keep going. Um, so I do a lot of things, um, a lot of, a lot of thinking, a lot of visionary type things. I, uh, am the CEO of my consulting firm, and then I just basically support, um, my wife in the business areas when it comes to the restaurant and marketing and that sort of stuff.

So yeah, I mean, you are an entrepreneur in the, the like best sense of the word, that like spark an idea and ready, go, do. Uh, to have multiple businesses, successful multiple businesses, is, um, you know, one of those hallmarks of entrepreneurs. It's one of the things I was like, well, am I an entrepreneur? Because I'm not like, I'm gonna build this thing and then sell this thing. And, you know, and you, you are— you're a go-getter in that way. Like, you really are doing it. So where do you think for you that like internal drive of spark of like, I see a thing and I'm gonna go do this thing, where did that come from for you?

Oh, I don't know. That's, that's, that's so interesting because I wonder that myself. Like, was I just born with this, uh, this kind of visionary mindset and the way that I think? Um, because it is different, it is unique. And, um, you know, in the— we, we run our— I run our businesses on the Entrepreneur Operating System, and one of the things they say in that book, you know, there's visionary CEOs, and I'm I'm one of those, and I'm the very definition of that. And there's 5% of the world are these types of people. So that in itself explained a lot to me. I'm like, no wonder I get a lot of—

Right.

Oh, bless you.

Sorry. Excuse me. It came out real fast.

It did. Keep going.

Yeah. And I share ideas and stuff like that, you know, so it's, uh, okay, wait, wait, I'm just gonna pause you because you've been like, well, I just do this and I don't know, stuff like that. Uh, you just said 5% of the population. Yeah, it's like built like a visionary. So let's just pause on that a little bit because I mean, we need visionaries. Visionaries are the ones like— you who say, I see a need, I have an idea, I think this can help, I'm gonna step in, I'm gonna make it happen, I'm gonna just pursue and apply all of my considerable gifts to do this, bring people together. Like, how would you define visionary? And I'm sure EOS has a specific definition, and I'm interested in that, but I'm also curious about your definition of it?

Man, I don't know. Just able to see things and connections and how everything, everything is connected. And if I do one, if I do this thing, that's going to create this thing, and then it's going to create the next thing. And so, uh, you know, I've had one of my coaches, you know, tell me that, um, I'm building community. And at the end of the day, that is the thing that matters to me is building communities of people that find a place where they matter, where they feel included, where they feel involved because they do matter. We all matter. And so I think at the heart of it, that's what I do is just build communities. And one of my StrengthsFinders, my number 1 strength, according to StrengthsFinders, is Activator. So, like, opening the restaurant, you know, we had this idea, we had a need in our neighborhood for some really good craft beer. And I'm like, well, we can sit around and complain that we don't have it, or we can start a place. And that right there, you know, just a place where we'd want to hang out. And so when Jennifer said, yeah, I'm in, I'm like, okay, then I'll get this thing going.

And here we go. Here we go. Beautiful. Uh, yeah, the activator. Uh, why are we waiting for somebody else to do it? Let's, let's go do this. So, so important and powerful. Okay, now let's connect all of these to your message, your mission, which is this Red Jacket Revolution, which is a really cool name and kind of curiosity-inducing.

Like, where does this come—

what do you mean?

What's the Red Jacket Revolution? So bring us to the moment where you were like, oh, Red Jacket Revolution.

Well, I've, I've discovered that really life is that I'm meant to experience what we're all meant to experience is from figuring out who I am, not where I fit in. So I found that life is so much more meaningful and joyful and interesting when I walk through the world showing my uniqueness instead of trying to hide it or, dare I say, overcome it. Right? So we're born into this world of structures with rules and biases that are already built in. We're measured, we're sized up, we're compared to typical standards and norms from the moment that we emerge. It's announced, Robin is 7 pounds and 6 ounces and 19 inches long. And all of her parts seem to be in the right place and they appear to be working, you know, like they're supposed to be. And so it begins this pursuit of normal, of fitting in. And that's all fine and well until you stumble upon a fact or a feeling that signals you might be different. Ruh-roh! Now what? So, when I was at a particular low point in my life, I was told by somebody that I really trust and respect, "Robin, you are a red jacket in a sea of gray." This from the same man that encouraged me a few years earlier to bring myself to work. Don was my boss at a very pivotal point in my life and my career, and he was encouraging me to stand out, to not be afraid to share myself with the world. He knew that I was hiding a bit and had more to offer, but was also afraid of rejection and scrutiny. So the red jacket he referred to represents who you are, who each of us is at our very core, and our purpose and our superpower and our authentic self. It's uniquely you, uh, what makes you stand out. It's beautiful, maybe even weird, But when you step out of that sea of gray where you've just been trying to fit in to this one-size-fits-all world and step into your perfectly tailored, one-of-a-kind red jacket, that's when the magic really happens. And so that's why I'm here, to share with you through my experiences the beauty that exists when you have the courage to just find and then wear your red jacket. We're all a puzzle in this much bigger picture, and we need to be who we are for it all to come together. So I hope I can be for somebody else what Don was for me in that moment. And we want you, and we need you, and I am here to encourage you to share yourself with us.

Beautiful, beautiful. So, you know, you're wearing a really lovely orange shirt. Do you feel this like pressure? Oh my gosh, I'm going to wear my red jacket all the time.

I know, I know. I'm like, missed opportunity. No, no. There's a red piece of art behind you.

Yeah, yeah. You've got your red, you've got your red. Uh, it's such a powerful idea, and I think, you know, it sounds, it sounds really good, and everybody goes, yes, yes, let's do this. But what are some of the characteristics? Like, what do we do when we're like, I want to, I want to bring my red jacket, that special thing that I know that I question sometimes because I've always felt a different about it, or sometimes I get comments about it, or whatever. Like, what are the— almost not like tactical, but what are the things that we can do more to help really empower our inner Red Jacket?

Try it on.

Try it on.

Just try things on, you know. You don't— if this is gonna work, or I don't know if that's gonna work, or I'm really interested in that, and pursue it. Figure it out. Is that something that I'm meant to do? And then just trust that your gut, the universe, is going to provide the answers for you. Yeah, but you just gotta show up, right? Put one step forward and say, hmm, I think I might, uh, I think I might want to try that out. Yeah, you know, get better at identifying really quickly, um, over time whether that's something you— that, that is a yes or a no. But it's really being present in that, in those moments when you are giving it a shot, uh, to be aware, you know, does this feel good? Does this— is this working? Is the— are the signs pointing to move forward, or maybe it's not for you?

So when have you done that in your life? What's, what's an example for you of a moment where you're like, I'm gonna try this on, I think, I think this is part of my red jacket, but I don't know?

Yeah, well, when I was 27, I picked up— I grew up in Western New York, about 40 miles south of Rochester.

Woo!

Western New York. And, um, but a little town. And, um, I was a singer and a songwriter. And while I was doing some stuff in, in my hometown, I thought, no, I want to go to Nashville. I always wanted to live in Nashville, and I wanted to be where the creative energy was flowing, where it was happening. Maybe I've got a shot at this, maybe I don't. The only way you can find out is if you if you go to where the really good and talented people are. So I just picked up and moved, um, and packed up what I could, put the rest in storage, and just headed off to Nashville. Uh, no place, uh, no place to live, no job. Uh, but you know, 27, you've got all the— it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine, it'll be fine. And it was. Um, and so I just— I came down here, and, uh, for several years was, well, for a couple years, uh, it was, was, was doing the songwriting thing in the community, going out and doing songwriters' nights and doing all the things. Um, and, and pretty quickly recognized a couple things. A, I don't know that, um, this is the lifestyle for me. Like, this can be— I could get in real trouble here, um, with this kind of, with this kind of power and influence. Uh, and secondly, You know, it was like, there are some really talented people. While I might be a good singer, I realized I'm not an artist. There are people that are clearly made to do this, and this is their purpose, and this is, you know, their mission in life, and they're really good at it. And recognize, mm, that's not me, and that's okay. I'm having a great time. This is a lot of fun. But I'm not going to make a living at this, you know? Yeah, yeah.

There's, there's an undercurrent in the Red Jacket Revolution idea that gives you permission to not know exactly what your red jacket is. Like, we don't— we have a sense of it, but like, the, the journey to really owning that requires us to, to try some things, move to Nashville, and get closer and closer and closer to what our purpose is.

Yes.

So can you talk about purpose for a moment? Because that is a through line in your words, your writing, your idea in The Red Jacket Revolution.

Yeah, I mean, it's just there's, there's, there's something that I've always felt this, why am I here? You know, what is the bigger purpose? And that might have been an epiphany when I learned that I am child number 4 in my family. And I learned, overheard my mom talking one day about, yeah, we just planned on those first 2. Oh, oh, we just planned on those first 2. And then she, you know, was on birth control pills got pregnant with my— her child number 3, my sister. And then she had her tubes tied and she got pregnant with me. And she's like, okay, what?

That is terrifying.

Make it stop.

Oh my God.

So in that moment, probably my first feeling was, oh, I'm not even supposed to be here, or wasn't— I wasn't in the plans. And that could have made me feel one of two ways, you know, like, oh, I'm a mistake. Um, or in my mind, you know, eternal optimist, I'm like, well, I'm a goddamn miracle. Yeah, I'm a goddamn miracle. Look at me. So, so I guess at that moment I felt like, well, there's got to be some bigger purpose, bigger reason for me being here, because against all odds Here I am.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it says a lot about you personally that in that moment, you, your response to that was recognition of like how incredible it is. And so there has got to be a purpose for me. Yeah. Do you, do you think about that? Does that drive you to say like, listen, this is my one wild and precious life. I gotta go for it.

It does. I mean, we're only here for a very finite amount of time. I'm gonna have fun. And you have more fun when you're in alignment with who you are, you know?

Yeah.

And it's finding— it's, it's, you know, that. And the more you are yourself, the more you attract exactly what you're meant to have. And there's great joy in that.

Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, Robin, what is next for you? Can you just give us a peek as you are really living this in real time, getting closer and closer to donning the full— I mean, like, you've, you've been wearing your red jacket, but I feel like it's like getting embellishments now or something. Like, the red jacket's getting an up level. Talk really quickly about what's next for you. What is the vision for this message and mission?

Yeah, I mean, that is still TBD. Like, I'm still kind of figuring it out. But, you know, this was the year I committed to, you know, I've known you, Sally, since, you know, 2018. And I kept saying, not yet, not yet, not time, not yet, not yet. Now's the time. And I feel very strongly that now is the time. I committed to working on this message this year. And by the end of this year, it's, we're gonna, it's gonna be wrapped up. I'm gonna be ready to go. And, and I'm just excited to, to get out there. And again, you know, do that thing that we do is just let's get out there and try it on.

Yeah, yeah, you are living your message. It's, it's wild to me. It's true for all of my speakers and myself. The, the message that I'm living keeps coming back. It keeps showing up in my life, keeps testing me a little bit. It's like, okay, I am—

are—

am I overcoming my self-doubt and what's holding me? I'm working on it, but I'm definitely living it. And you are doing the same thing. You are living the go try it on right now.

What's the worst that can happen?

Yeah, I mean, hey, uh, the worst thing that could happen, I suppose, is you're on a YouTube show and everybody's like, if this is the worst, like, you got this.

I've seen that look before.

It's all right. I am just so grateful, Robin, for your trust in me to help usher you and this message and movement forward, because I really think this has— you, you yourself, because you are so living it authentically yourself and wrestling with it and, um, and care so deeply about this, and you've been waiting in the wings Yeah. And you're like, it's go time. And that sort of intention and energy and level of purpose is powerful. So I really can't wait to see where you go from here. And I'm rooting for you. I'm cheering you on. Let's everybody give Robin one more big round of applause. Here we go. Oh, I, uh, here we go. Yay! Thank you so much.

Your partnership.

Oh, well, it's, it's, it's my privilege and my honor. I can't do this without your leap and letting me in to walk along beside you and give you the nudges, um, to simply do what is already inside you. Uh, it's, it's a real joy. Big hugs.

Thanks for having me here today.

You are so welcome. Thank you so much, Robin Davis. Thank you, thank you, Robin. Fantastic. Okay, we have one more speaker for us this morning, uh, and I cannot wait. I cannot wait for you to meet her if you haven't already. But if you and I have known each other, you probably have met Erica Biddix. You have probably had, uh, plenty of opportunity to be nudged by her. Even though I'm the professional nudger, she's aggressively helpful, and she has probably helped you aggressively at some point or another. And if she hasn't yet, you're about to be helped Aggressively by Erica Biddix. Erica is a longtime entrepreneur. She herself built and sold a business, uh, wildly successful. It sort of like took her life by storm. I'm sure she'll tell you a little bit about it. Uh, and now she is a coach for female entrepreneurs. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, but coaches people globally. Globally and has this incredible community called OTT Entrepreneurs. It's also a coworking space in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has 3 amazing young people in her life who keep her very much on her toes. And, um, Erica, are you— I, I think I see you in our green room. Are you ready? I see your screens. Are you here? I just want to see your face. Let's see if Erica is all ready. Oh, oops.

Hold please.

We're gonna go make sure Erica is ready to go. Her screen— her slides just disappeared. Let's make sure.

Hi.

Um, hi Erica. Erica, if I bring this on— I see your screen. Where's Erica?

There she is!

Okay, let's give Erica a big round of applause! Erica Biddix!

Thank you, Sally Koering Zimney. So I grew up in a bar. My grandparents purchased the oldest bar in Indiana 15 years before I was born. I was born, and when I was 4 years old, my dad took over the bar. My name is Erica Biddix, and I am an entrepreneur. My daddy was my entrepreneurial hero. He dedicated his life to the legacy that his parents set up with this bar, and what that meant is I spent my youth cooking in the kitchen, my teens exploring the tunnels of this bar that had served as part of the Underground Railroad, and in my early 20s I even met my husband at this bar. The smell of cigarette smoke or stale beer or the sounds of a pinball machine bring me right back to that building like I was there yesterday. I knew it inside and out. And in the 30-plus years that my dad ran this bar, he turned it into an internationally recognized blues venue that takes up a full city block. And to this day, I can be in Disney World or Paris or Spain and see someone wearing a shirt from this bar. It sounds idyllic, and it sounds a lot like what we're told about entrepreneurship via social media or in all of those trainings that are going to teach us to become overnight millionaires. But the part of the story that is important for you to hear is that the same year my dad took over the bar, my parents divorced and I moved to another state. So I got to spend 6 weeks every summer and every other Christmas with my dad back in Indiana. But while I was in the same city as him and sometimes in the same building as him, I very rarely actually got to spend any time with him because my dad was always at the bar, because my dad and that bar were one and the same. He had expectations, he had bills, he had employees, and he didn't want to fail any of those people. But that life as an entrepreneur kept him from being the kind of dad that I know he wanted to be. I started entrepreneurship in 2016, and that is a very long story with lots of ups and downs, way more than I have time to share with you here. But it included founding two businesses, keeping both of them afloat during a global pandemic, and also eventually hitting that magical seven-figure number with one of the businesses before also at the same time hitting absolute rock bottom. It includes a lot of ignoring the lessons that I should have learned from my dad. I entered into entrepreneurship with a really stellar business plan, but with no plan for how I was going to actually integrate it into the life that I have, the one that I share with my wonderful husband and my 3 overly confident kids and my 2 really fluffy puppy dogs. And even as I was doing this, I knew that something needed to change, but I didn't know what the change was, and I certainly did not know how to make that change. So in case you haven't figured it out, that is me in this cute little yellow shirt with my daddy as a baby, and I want to tell you about this other yellow shirt in the second picture. So one of my businesses, Sally mentioned it, is We are a global community for female entrepreneurs online. We do also have a physical location here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And our initial branding was very bright yellow. And our kind of rules for the business were be cool, be kind, and be nice. A few years ago, we rebranded. We did away with the yellow. And what that means is there was a lot of swag left over. These rules have carried over, but the yellow shirt, sadly, went, you know, went the wayside. What that really means is it turned into pajamas because I had a whole bunch of these shirts. And I oftentimes reach for this yellow shirt. I wear it very often, never think a thing about it, and tossed it into my bag to go to Nashville for a girls weekend a couple years ago. We were in the Airbnb, I was brushing my teeth, and something about that exact moment I looked in the mirror and I saw myself wearing this shirt that I hadn't really paid much attention to. And all of a sudden, I just— my brain exploded. I went running into the room next door and my girlfriend said, "Are you okay?" And I said, "I am not. I am not okay because I just saw this shirt in the mirror." And what I know to be true is that as an entrepreneur, I'm not being cool or kind or nice to my family. It was a moment of really tying back to the experience I had had with my dad and kind of the first time I actually acknowledged that maybe I was making some of those same missteps. We hugged, went back into the bathroom, started doing my hair, and another minute or two later I dropped the hairbrush and went running back into her room, tears streaming down my face. And she said, "Are you okay?" And I said, "I am not." I'm not okay. I'm not okay because I just realized I'm not being cool or kind or nice to myself as an entrepreneur. And that was the moment that I realized what it was that I should be doing. And that should be was defining success for myself. I had entered into entrepreneurship thinking that the way you succeed is by making a lot of money. And that's because that's what I had always been told. Every time my dad talked about, "I have to be at the bar because of this," it tied back to that same type of definition of success. And in that moment, I started to recognize that maybe, just maybe, I could do things a little bit differently. It was the beginning of launching and pulling together what I call my Anything at All model of success. This model is what has taken me from rock bottom with my first business that was by all accounts super successful and taken me into the business that I run today as an entrepreneurial strategist under the name Erica Biddix and also with my Autt Community, where I help women to define, design, or redesign businesses that they lead in a way that they can have the actual ability to define success for themselves so that they can actually integrate it into the life and the reality that they live in. So we do this a couple different ways. We've got two different guardrails. Our first guardrail is our aspirations. These are also our goals. A lot of people will talk about SMART goals, and I think SMART goals are smart in and of themselves. However, they always tie back to numbers, which generally in business ownership ties back again to money. They're supposed to be on a specific time, they're supposed to be measurable, and all of that is great, but also if we're going to redefine success for ourselves, we need to also start thinking about our aspirations in a different way. One of the ways that I know that I am happy with what I'm doing and that I'm reaching my goals, my aspirations, is that I am happy to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. I woke up a little bit nervous about being on this stage today, but at the end of the day, I know in my gut that this is an important message that I want to be sharing. And so I am reaching my aspiration of feeling good about what I'm impacting in the world. So when we talk about aspirations, these are things that we are working towards, things that are on the horizon, things that may one day become our second guardrail, which is boundaries. Boundaries are things that we are absolutely holding tight to, no ifs, ands, or buts. But I don't like boundaries. Boundaries are hard. Boundaries, boo. This is what I hear every time the word boundaries comes up in conversation. But I would challenge you to to look at boundaries as things such as, do you wear contacts? Do you have to wear glasses? When you drive, you are going to wear your contacts or your glasses. That's actually a boundary. If you have a food allergy, you're not going to eat those foods. That's actually a boundary. And the important part about boundaries is not just that we know what our boundaries are, but honestly, that we say them out loud because an unspoken boundary is not a boundary at all. It's just something you've got in your head. It's important for us, especially as entrepreneurs, to let our clients, our customers know what those boundaries are so that their experience with us and with our businesses has already had a level set at the get-go. So I want to talk about how we're going to utilize our aspirations as one guardrail, our boundaries as the other, and what that does is that protects that precious piece that precious piece of life that is in between there. I could make a very long argument. I actually have my soapbox right next to me that in corporate America, we live to work. And I don't think it has to be that way. And I don't think post-pandemic that that is now the prevailing theory. So many people saw that we could actually change the way things were done. And as entrepreneurship became an option an opportunity for so many people. This is another option and opportunity that we have to add on to that, which is to create and build businesses that actually work for the lives that we are living. Obviously we've got life over work here, and then what I really think is most important is building all of this model of success, definition of success for yourself, on a foundation of community. It is great to sit in a room by yourself and utilize a whiteboard or some sticky notes, sticky pad, and create your, your model of success, but if you don't ever share it with anyone else, you aren't getting any feedback, you aren't getting any support for implementing this model. When you've got community and you say to them, my aspiration is to feel great when I come to work every day, they can see maybe when you come into work every day you don't look very happy, You've got grumpy face every time you walk into work. Community is who can point that out to you and help you try to figure out where your adjustment needs to be made there. It can be like my next-door neighbor in the office who has a boundary of not working on Fridays coming in today, a Friday, and me saying, "Why are you here?" Community helps everything. The power of community creates magic. And specific to a model model of success specific to your aspirations, specific to your boundaries. That community can be the difference of really, to use a word, jended, toiling at what it is that you're doing, or enjoying the job, the business, and what it is that you're bringing to the world. Now, we talk about this model as these guardrails, and those are all great, but there's another piece of it that becomes very very important. So I want you to meet my coffee mugs. This is a wonderful beauty shot of them here. When we're talking about aspirations and we're talking about boundaries, everything tends to get kind of put together. And what I mean by that is anytime you've got a decision to be made as a business owner, I'm gonna go with 99.99999% of the time, the business is is going to win. We live in a world where oftentimes the answer to "Can I do this?" is met with "No, because..." but it's not been done that way, or it's just not going to work because the business needs. What I know from my dad is that anytime a question was thrown at him, the business always won. And frankly, it happened with me a whole lot too in my first few years of entrepreneurship. And so I was building the model of success. The question kept coming back: How do we keep the business from winning all the time? How do we create businesses that are supporting our lives and not lives that are continually supporting our businesses? And I believe the answer to it is in these 3 coffee mugs. I like to look at these 3 coffee mugs as complete and total individual silos. So let's talk about this first coffee mug. This is the you coffee mug. This is who you are as a human without any sort of rules, restrictions, responsibilities. I'm talking no people, no pets, no plants, no clients, no email, but just who you are on this earth. Now I recognize that is not how life actually works, but I still want you to think about When I ask you the question, what is your aspiration? Or what is your boundary? I want you to answer those questions without thinking about all of the restrictions and responsibilities that are around you. You're not tied to this answer. I just really truly want to know what your answer is. Now, this is really hard. This is really hard, especially for women, to take all of those things away and answer the question. What do I really want? Or what do I really need? So I do it with a little bit of help from Miss Frizzle and the Magic School Bus. And when I'm thinking about the you silo or the you coffee mug, I am picturing myself floating around in space in an astronaut uniform where nobody can get to me. So we're going to come back to this mug in a few minutes, but I do want you to— anytime I'm going to ask the question, what do you want? I want you to give an an honest answer to that question. Now, the second coffee mug is the business coffee mug. Now, I do work almost exclusively with women, so every time I talk about the business coffee mug, everyone's like, oh yeah, I got it, that's, that's the business. Until I say, this is the business without you involved. You're over here hanging out as an individual in this coffee mug, in this silo. And when I'm talking about the business, I am talking about just the business. Now, as entrepreneurs, especially those of us who are solopreneurs or have very small teams, are we the business? Absolutely. When it comes to marketing, when it comes to different aspects of business, you're always going to be engaged, you're always going to be, you know, put together in there. But when we're talking what are the goals for the business and what are the boundaries for the business? This is where I want you to think about the business and nothing but the business. No rules, no restrictions, no responsibilities other than what the business has responsibility to. Here's why: when you are making a decision and you are combining the thoughts of what you need and what your business needs, you're not actually doing what's best for the business. You may be coloring what the business needs by what's best for you. So same rules, don't worry about the impact outside, just answer the question honestly. What goals does this business have and what boundaries does this business need? And then we've got our third coffee mug. This is our family coffee mug. Now this may be your actual family, it may be your nuclear family. For me, it's my husband and my kids. It may be your community at large, which could be your Sunday school group or the group of friends that you have dinner with every Tuesday night. What I want you to think about for this coffee mug is really who is it around you on the regular that your decisions impact and whose decisions impact you. Because we've got our "you" coffee mug here— just you, nobody else. We've got our business coffee mug, which has nothing to do with you. And then we've got our family or our community coffee mug, and you are actually a part of this silo. This is where you're in community with folks, right? Their decisions impact you, your decisions impact them. And so as we talk about the aspirations and the boundaries for this particular silo, for this particular coffee mug, those are really boundaries and aspirations that need to be made also in community. Community. So I always suggest that this is an activity to sit down and do with your family, right? To give you an example of how it does not work when you let everything stay tangled together, let's talk, um, Disney World. My family really likes Disney World. So my husband is going to come home and say, I think we should take the kids on vacation to Disney World, and we should go this particular week. I'm a business owner, so I'm immediately going to say that won't work because the business needs me to be in the office, right? And so then it's, it's off the table. Or maybe it is, um, actually the kids are in school and they can't leave school that week, right? Lots of no, it's not going to work because, because, because. And then oftentimes we leave that discussion or that decision where we just don't feel great about it because no part of that felt good, saying no and turning down something else, right? If, however, you separate your silos out, and I'm going to start with, I'm going to start with the family one for this one, and we say, okay, what does the family want and need? What are our goals and boundaries for this? Well, our boundaries as a family is that we're not going to miss school. We just— that's not a thing we're going to do for vacation. Our aspirations for our family though are that we really want to spend some dedicated time together outside of our actual home, because my family specifically, we know that really getting outside of our day-to-day is how our family connects the best. We also know it takes us a day or two to really get into it, um, so we know we can't miss any school, but we specifically want 4 days when we go on vacation as a family. And that's the only discussion that we're gonna have when it comes to this coffee mug. We're not gonna look at my business calendar. We're not gonna, you know, look at how many days my husband can be away from his job. We're just going to say, all things being equal, no responsibilities, no restrictions, we don't want to miss school, that's our boundary, and our aspiration is that we want to spend at least 4 days going on this vacation. Now if we pop over to the you coffee mug, so this is just me. Hi, nice to meet you. I love Disney World, but also I am having foot surgery. I'm making this up on the fly, y'all, so just go with me. So as I look at my you coffee mug, I'm thinking, what are my aspirations? What are my boundaries? My aspiration is I just want a break, right? I just need a vacation. I don't care who it's with. It's just time for me to take take some time off. But also, I've got a boundary that I'm having foot surgery, and so I am going to be on crutches for— how long are you on crutches for foot surgery? I don't know— for 2 weeks, right? So that, that's my boundary. Um, I need a vacation, yes, I'm all in, I want to do it, but also I can't do it over these particular dates. Okay, then we're gonna go to the business coffee mug, and the business is going to say, um, we've got some aspirations and some sales goals that require, um, that require Erica being in the office and available for this many days in the month of May. Um, and also, um, the boundary is that Erica is the only one that does that particular offering, right? And I'm the only one in my business that does one-on-one coaching, for instance. Okay, so we now have— instead of looking at all of it and being like, nope, I can't leave the office, so we're just not going to do it. What we've done is we've identified what days the family is going to be available or not going to be available and how many days we need. We've looked at the boundary of the business calendar and what that looks like, and then, you know what, we've got this issue with the foot surgery going on, and what it does is instead of having an immediate No, we have these different silos. We can look at what the information is for each individual silo, and then we can see where the Venn diagram starts to overlap. And so now we know that we can go on vacation for 4 days over these dates that don't overlap with me needing to be in the office, my business needing me, or my foot surgery having already happened. I cannot begin to tell you how powerful it is when you are making decisions to go through the exercise of looking at what that decision, the needs and the wants are for each of these individual silos, and then starting to see where the positive overlap is instead of immediately saying no because. So this particular model, this model of success, the purpose of this model is to write the definition of success for you. I'm going to give you a very personal piece of information here, which is that I've bootstrapped this particular business for close to 6 years, and I've not actually paid myself a standard paycheck in that entire time. What I have done though is that I have paid someone to work part-time for me who is absolutely integral to the importance of my business. And so while I've not been putting money into my bank account, which is, you know, the definition of success for many other people, I have been able to buy my time. I've bought my time enough that when I got COVID and then my whole family did a couple weeks ago, I took 2 weeks off without any problem. It allowed me to take my kid on a college visit yesterday and the day before that. I have bought my time and have earned my success of being the kind of present mom that I want to be for my current teenagers. Somebody else might look at that and say that's not successful because of money. I really don't care. We redefined the word 'ought' to mean anything at all, and that means we can also redefine success. You can do the same thing too. And really, if you are setting this up, I want you to not only take away that you can redefine what success looks like for you, but that you can also build a business that lets you be cool and be kind and be nice to yourself. I'm cheering you on.

Erica, Erica, I'm coming on, I'm coming on to join you, don't worry. Hello! Yay!

Thank you, thank you.

My sound effects, that's why. There we go, there we go. There's a lot of muting and unmuting and it's, um, it's fine.

I couldn't see myself the whole time, so there we go. I could only see my— I could only see my PowerPoint, so Oh, okay.

Well, you did a beautiful job. Um, lots of comments over in YouTube. Erica is so good at this. Um, isn't that fun?

Thanks, Aaron.

Love you too.

Yes. Um, powerful. I mean, Aaron's, Aaron's here for you. Here, hands here for you. So, and Jen said this, and I think this is important. Jen Whitmer, she said, when Erica does this with you, It's phenomenal. So do you, do you do this with individuals? Do you come in and work with groups on this model? Tell us about how this comes.

Absolutely. So this model is truly the basis of every work that I do, every piece of work that I do. So every woman that comes into the Autk community, one of the first things we do is develop their individual model of success. Every woman that I work with individually or in a group group setting, we— everything ties back to this model of success. And the reason for that is, how can I help them reach what success looks like for them if we don't know what it's supposed to be? Yeah, we're not using the same definition for everybody, right? Everyone has their own definition, but we have to write that definition first.

Yeah, yeah. Every time you do it, I really have to think. I really have to be like, have I ever really separated myself?

Yeah.

I mean, that's the, the mind bender one where I'm just like, you know, and I love the visual, Mrs. Frizzle, just like floating out, floating around.

Yeah, I got it.

And I know you get this. We've had many conversations about this because you are a wonderful friend, but it's like we spend our especially if you, if you are a mom or a parent. But I, I, you know, I think especially moms, we are— so much of our identity is in showing up for, uh, our kids. And so when you're like, no pets, no plants, no kids, no—

I'm just like, I'm like, here's the thing, you're not tied to what you say out loud, but you're allowed to answer the question, what do I I want? You can say it out loud. I mean, what I want is 12 hours of sleep a night. That is an honest statement. It's not reality, right? But I can say it out loud. And I think the more we practice answering questions like that, the easier it becomes to actually make things reality for you. Do I need 12 hours of sleep? No, I, I— that's not a thing that ever we're going to get to, right? But what that actually points to is I, as an individual, I need more sleep in my life, right? And so when I'm talking with women, when we're doing this for them, it's the beginning. It's opening the door of bigger conversations that need to happen, right? One woman that I did this with, we— I was asking her, we were kind of doing it, I said, what are your hobbies? And she hesitated, and you could tell she just was like, she had no idea how to answer it. And not because she didn't have any hobbies. Her answer was I don't know how to have a hobby. That is a very different discussion than, have you thought about reading or crocheting, right? Like, why don't you— how to know how to have a hobby? Because she's never allowed herself any space or time. And so as we went through that for her, her goal, her like immediate goal that we set up, was that she was going to take some time to just sit in quiet. 5 minutes. She was going to take 5 minutes every morning and sit in quiet because that was her first step towards figuring out how to have a hobby, much less what the hobby actually was going to be.

Yeah, it's wild. And you and I are at a similar space with our kids as they, as they start leaving the nest. As I'm like, I need to go, I need a hobby stat because I can't— uh, the, the games, the meets to watch, that like all of these things are leaving my calendar And I'm like, I don't want it to be filled with just more work because I easily could because I love it and I'm passionate about it. I know it feels— it's purposeful. I know it's impactful. And I am not my business. It's just such a—

you are not your business. Nope, nope, nope.

Oh my God.

It's like one of the things is when we talk, when I talk with women, you know, there is always an aspect of how much money do you need to be making. We live in a world that requires money, right? And oftentimes they will conflate that number that they need to be making, that their family needs, with what it is the business needs to make. And that is the easiest way to look at why you should separate those things, because those numbers are wildly different. As you and I both know, many people go into entrepreneurship thinking, I need to take home $5,000 a month, so that means I need to make— I don't do math— however much that is, $60,000 a year.

Okay, yeah, great.

In reality, your business is also going to need, um, insurance. You're also going to need, um, plenty of subscriptions to email marketing and where your website is hosted and blah blah blah blah. And at the end of the day, your business actually probably needs to be making $8,000 a month in order to pay you $5,000 a month.

Right.

And it's just thinking about pulling apart the decision-making into the silos that I think really can be super powerful for making decisions.

Yeah, really powerful. And, you know, a framework like that was— what I think is really cool is, of course, and we're just kind of pulling the— lifting the hood a little bit, you use this in your speaking. So keynotes, workshops, you use it with teams, you use it with the individuals you work with. Um, it's just really a, a take-with-you kind of model. And even to be able to pause and ask yourself a question— who's answering this question right now? Is my business answering this question right now? Am I myself answering this? Am I answering this with my family in mind or not? Like, um, I think it it's really clarifying.

Yes, yay clarity! We love clarity. Well, and I will say, even in our, like, in our community or with Anna, who I work with, um, we use the phrase coffee mug all the time. So somebody will start a conversation and then somebody else will say, okay, but what coffee mug are we talking about here? Or if we're having a discussion about something happening in the business, I will say, I am saying this as my You coffee mug right now, or I am saying this as my business coffee mug. And just saying it out loud that way, um, changes the way your brain thinks about it. So for instance, with my business, my business, um, is her own person. Like, I can picture her, she is next to me, she's this imaginary friend, she has her own pronouns, she/her, um, and I reference that and And just the change in that mindset is talking about the business as not me, right? And so we practice that when we go through this. Somebody will say, okay, so my, for the business, my goals are, and I'm like, nope, back up, say it again. What's the name of your business, right? And they'll say, okay, so OTT's goal for this is, right? So it's always using their or the business name or whatever pronouns you're putting on.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

So powerful. And I think really transformative for people if they put that to use.

Yeah.

And I want to acknowledge you sharing about how you've been bootstrapping for 6 years is really powerful. And I think important because it shows this huge transformation. Transformation for you. When you start out talking about your dad and his, um, focus and real soul focus on the business, and you finding yourself in a similar place and recognizing, I don't want to do that— like, you could, you could have been paying yourself for the last few years, but it would have cost you time away from these other things that are really important to you. And I just want to honor and acknowledge that. Thank you. And you saying like, yeah, it doesn't meet everybody's definition of success, but it meets yours.

Yeah.

And it, I mean, it can be picking your kids up from school every day. It can be managing to get a workout in 5 times a week. It's different for, for who everybody is. And to kind of put a button on the story about my dad, We lost him to cancer almost 5 years ago. When I say this bar is a big deal, I mean, his death was the front page of the Indianapolis newspaper. And the night he passed, we went to the bar and, you know, lifted a beer or several to him. And it was on the news. And so as we were like toasting him and we're hearing the news person talk about him, and the only legacy they really talked about was the bar. And I know that his family was what was most important to him, even if that's not how he was able to live life out for himself. And I just, I think about that. I think about that because that's not how he, that's not what he would have wanted. You know, he just didn't know how to break out of it. And so it's super important to me to help women break out. Of what we've been told we have to do.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, powerful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, one final thing for you, and that is you have some really exciting events coming up.

I do have some really exciting—

Erica, let's just talk about Speaker Erica for a moment.

Let's do all the things. So I am speaking at the Over the Edge Conference, um, later this month. I'm really excited to be on stage with a woman who arguably has played a very, very large role in my entrepreneurial journey. Shout out to Jade Simmons, who actually Jen even mentioned her and her— you want to talk about power of community and connections, that is really, really special. So I've got that happening. I have got an upcoming intensive in person.. So if folks want to fly into Knoxville, we've got 3 days with a group of— we'll have 5 or 6 women plus myself, and we will spend 3 days really pulling apart all the pieces of their business, looking at where they're wanting to go and where they're feeling the rub, and then putting it all back together during that 3-day, that 3-day time period. So I love an intensive. It is so transformational. For women that come in, um, and do it. And one of the funny things is this model, we talk about it a lot, and I, I teach in our community, you know, 2 or 3 times a month, um, and the model comes up there. We talk about it in the intensive. Anytime I speak, I talk about it. And so there are women like Erin who have heard me talk about this model no less than 15 times. But one of the important parts about it is that you're not doing it in January and then that's your definition of of success for the whole year, right? Like, we have different things that happen in our lives, and I love the availability of this model to change and adjust with you. And so every time they hear it, they're sitting in a different space than they were the time before. And so different pieces of it hit them, and they're able to make adjustments where they feel like they need to.

Beautiful, beautiful. Well, I included this little QR code here, which gets you access to Erica's freebies page. Yeah. And there's all kinds of helpful things on there. So I just want to encourage that.

There's a lot.

Your own model. You can, you can download your own model with some work through on.

Yes. Love it.

Love it.

Love it. Well, thank you, Erica. Beautiful job. So wonderful to have you here. You are a dear friend.

I love you so much.

I love you too. Erica and I are hosting an online event, actually, Actually, November—

November 7th. I only went through September in my brain. November 7th.

I know. No, no, that's okay. November 7th, we will be back online. Uh, actually, we will be not on YouTube, so we'll get you links to that if you're curious about it.

Just check out thepermissionslipconference.com. You can get on the list. We are opening registration imminently. Um, get on the list so that you're the first the first to know.

We have a meeting this afternoon probably about just that, don't we, Erica? We do. We sure do. Amazing. Okay, one more time, let's give Erica a big old round of applause for— well done, well done. Thank you for being here. Okay team, we are wrapping up this showcase. Thank Thanks to our incredible speakers, Jenn Whitmer, Robin Davis, Erika Biddix, for their time here, for their insights, for their beautiful, beautiful ideas that I know will move the world. And so thanks to all of them for their willingness to try in public, to step out front, to get out of the sidelines and step into the spotlight. I am so proud of you, and keep going. This professional nudger's got your back, and we'll see you all at the next Movers Showcase, which we will do in December.

So be on the lookout for that.

Bye, team! See you all soon.