The Movers Showcase! March 2026

If you go to California, I never got to know. I'm growing all up at my best and I don't like to be alone. If you go to spread your wings that I never had to grow, you are never ever out there on your own. Oh, I am all the things I've done.

Hello, hello!

How we doing? Welcome, welcome to the Movers Showcase. We are so, so glad that you're here. We're gonna make this a super fun, powerful hour-ish, and maybe a little half in there. I've got two amazing speakers who are coming to you to be with us together here in the next hour and a half, and I cannot wait for you to meet them. They each bring really unique, powerful ideas that will change the way you work, change the way you work together, change the way you show up at work. And you get to see them, these two brave women, when they are sharing with you something that wouldn't necessarily be ready for showtime. Okay, both of these women are super talented. You're gonna be like Sally— after you watch them, you're gonna be like, actually, that was amazing, that was awesome, that was so ready for Prime time. But for these two women, they're utilizing this experience to test out some message, to prepare for upcoming events. And that is what we do as thought leaders, as speakers, as people who want to influence and change the way people think and feel and do, what I like to call movers. These movers are here to show you mid-readiness. I mean, they're way beyond mid-readiness, but this is how we get to the place of moving your audience. You cannot practice in isolation. You cannot just imagine an audience. You've got to actually show up with heart beating and take some deep breaths and show up for your cue and practice the technology and press go. So that is what we do with our time together. And I am so delighted to start us off with an incredible woman, PhD, Janet Marling. She has done some incredible work nationally working with students who have been in transition, students who transfer from one college to the next, and she's been pivotal in bringing that conversation to the national level and giving these often underserved students support. And she's taken the work that she's done now and is bringing it to a broader audience. So she's continuing to serve education audiences and organizational audiences who really care about how it is we work and live together. Because when we're at work, we're still living together. So Janet is a powerhouse, and I'm so excited for you to hear from her. Please give a big warm round of applause for Janet Marling. Yay!

Hey there, Sally! Hello everybody, and thank you for that warm introduction, Sally. I really appreciate it. I am a student of yours and I'm following your advice today. Thanks for setting the bar a little lower. I am shoving off perfectionism in the name of doing and getting out there and trying something. So this is a talk that I'll be giving at the end of April to a higher education organization in the state of Tennessee. So we often think about partnerships and innovation and people kind of quaking their boots a little bit. So we're going to dismantle the normal way of looking at partnership and think about it from a student-focused perspective. So that is where we're going to start today. We are starting with the student, an outside-in approach to innovative partnerships. All right, I have a love-ick relationship with this word. The word is innovative. If you can see it, it's kind of cutesy, but innovative. The creative, like Optimist, to me is like, yes, how fun, let's get everybody together, let's collaborate, let's innovate. But then there's that practical side of me that says, oof, innovative, that's a really fuzzy word. And are we truly just setting folks up for failure if we're just throwing them into an innovative partnership without actually giving them a roadmap on how to get there? So that, um, ick is a little strange. So I'm curious to know from all of you, what, when you, when the words come to you, innovative, kind of what pops into your head? Are you a little intimidated? Like, oh, I don't even know where to start. Are you excited? Like, yeah, bring on the creativity. Do you roll your eyes at some new initiative? Yet another. Or perhaps are you thinking, like, innovative related to what exactly? Yeah, I totally get that. And don't get me wrong, I honestly don't have an issue with being innovative. I don't have an issue with the word. I think that there's a tension though that I wanna bring forward that's real because there's a lot of pressure to have partnerships be innovative. And we find ourselves in places where we don't quite know how to maneuver. Because in my experience, the most powerful question isn't who should we partner with, but rather the question is, I think a little simpler, but actually more difficult to play out. And it's a two-parter. Instead of who should we partner with, we should be asking what do our students need right now, and who in their sphere of influence could really affect change or influence change for them. So let's sit with that for a minute. That's a little bit of a different paradigm shift from the standpoint of "Let's partner" versus "What do students need?" So today, instead of bringing you a laundry list of exemplar relationships that are on the innovative side today, I really want to challenge us to think a little bit differently. I'm gonna present you with a framework, a little bit of a methodology to do just that. Now, I've been in higher education long enough to know that when you bring the word partnership and layer on the word innovative, feelings come about. Maybe some of these feelings are things that you're experiencing as you're sitting in this room right here, because perhaps you came to this conference with a full calendar, with a mandate that you didn't ask for, with kind of still some unresolved feelings around the last partnership that you were involved with that kind of fell apart at the seams. Or maybe you heard some really cool stuff at yesterday's session that you can't wait to talk about when you get back to think about new partnerships. Whatever it is that you're going through, whatever it is that you're feeling, you might have one or two of these that pop into your head. You might have three or four. Whatever it is, it's okay. It's okay to feel what you're feeling about partnerships, even when it's not positive, because the work is hard. And when it doesn't come together, it's not necessarily your fault. It's not a lack of, of effort on your part. It's just the nature of the beast. It's complex. So when we think about how partnerships develop, sometimes we're voluntold. Sometimes there's a statewide initiative that comes together that we're asked to be a part of. Sometimes we choose to be in a collaboration, maybe with a colleague, because we have some of the same interests. But those are all typically relationships that have been formed from the inside out. And when we do that, when we form those partnerships from the inside out, we run the risk of getting entangled with people who kind of are living in that same water, creating the same problems, living with the same structural inequities. And sometimes it's hard to shake ourselves out of our normal way of being. So an innovative partnership, by my definition then, is something that's formed with the student need in. And when the student need is genuinely the starting point, we find that the right partners suddenly become visible. And they might actually be individuals, organizations, or other entities right underneath our noses, but we had just never expanded our thinking enough to really bring them into our spheres. So what might it look like to think about an outside-in structure to explore student needs as a starting point for partnership development? You know what? I'm really glad you asked, because for the next few minutes, we have an opportunity to really explore what that looks like. Through a group activity. You're going to have a chance to really think through, um, what you would see as a student need, the opportunity to then think about who in that sphere needs to be included, and then start shaping some of those partnerships. So we have to have a student in this process, right? And I've taken the liberty of bringing to you a composite, a composite persona But I know her. I know her because she lives in the data that I have been in day in, day out for the past 23 years. This is somebody who has risen through focus groups, who has been a part of student advisory panels, who sat across from professionals who are supporting them through their academic journeys. I know this person, and this friend, if you will, is named Jordan. So let me introduce you to her. And as I do, I want you just to grab a piece of paper, your phone app, your notes, whatever, but take some time to think a little bit about the friction points that our friend Jordan, our student, the person we're stewarding, some of the friction points that might be occurring in her life as I share a little bit about her with you. So here she is. This is Jordan Gilkey. Jordan is 34. Her partner serves in the military, which means every 3 to 4 years her family packs up and starts all over somewhere new. New state, new schools for the kids, new job search, and as for Jordan, a new set of questions about whether this is finally the time she gets to go back to college. Jordan has built a career in the years in between her moves. She works in healthcare administration and she's really good at it. I mean, top notch. She's been promoted, she's held leadership positions, she's managed budgets, she's led teams, she's made decisions that have affected real patients. Her employers have recognized her, she's been promoted, and her colleagues respect her. The only thing that hasn't kept pace with her professional life is the credential that would formally reflect it. She started pursuing her degree quite a few years ago at a community college and earned 38 credits—carefully chosen, hard-earned, well-won credits—that really revolved around a study plan that started before her kids got up and after they went to bed. She moved to a new place and enrolled in a new college and quickly found out that 14 of those credits would not transfer. Into her new institution. Not because they weren't rigorous, not because she didn't complete them, not because she didn't follow the rules. It was because her credits weren't recognized in a particular way because the sending and the receiving institutions didn't have an agreement that it would have made those credits portable. She realized that spending $4,200 retaking courses just simply didn't make sense. So She put her head down and went back to work. She didn't get mad, but honestly, she started quietly wondering if it wasn't in the cards for her to pursue a degree. But now she's in a new state and she's ready to start again. And what she needs this time isn't just a school that will accept her transfer credits. She needs an institution that appreciates everything she's learned over her work span. She needs someone who that will recognize her demonstrated competency, and that translates that into academic credit that counts towards a degree. She needs an institution that understands that she has to move again, potentially in 3 more years, and has thought about that in their planning for her. Jordan isn't looking for any shortcuts. She's just looking to be seen and to be respected. You see, Jordan isn't merely a mobile learner, transferring credits between institutions. She is an entire ecosystem of unmet need. And you know, everybody in this room has a Jordan. It may not look like this Jordan. She may be a, he may be, they may be a traditionally-aged student who's going through their first transfer transition. The person may be facing very different circumstances. It could be somebody that you're developing policies for because you work at the state level, but you know, you know somebody like Jordan who's had some challenges along the way, who are finding themselves having to navigate situations that were never built for her. So let's get to our exercise. You're gonna take 4 minutes and you're gonna brainstorm a list of individuals, organizations, and other supports that might be able to address one or more of the friction points that you just recorded. But I have a caveat, and you're not gonna like it. You cannot list any other higher education entity on that list. None. Nada. Not. Too easy. All right, you've got 4 minutes. Go! All right, we're back. What I want you to do at this point in time is to identify 1 to 3 of those potential change agents from your list. And for each one of those individuals or organizations, I want you to ask, what do they know or potentially control related to Jordan's friction points in her overall situation that we don't? Okay, what is going on in that relationship? What is going on in their set of knowledge that is beyond ours because that's not our area of expertise, but yet they impact And remember, they're in her sphere and they have the abilities to potentially provide her with some sort of relief from these friction points. So just 5 minutes, go! And we're back. All right, could I get 1 to 3 volunteers who might be interested in sharing Who was on their list? What do these folks know that you don't know? So that we can start getting an idea of maybe some of these really creative places that we might be seeking to engage in partnerships. And as we're talking through that, I want you to just start putting this term in your head. I want you to think about these folks as anchor partners. These are folks who are anchoring us in Jordan's needs and a potential solution. And therefore, again, it's uncovering those invisible different types of partnerships that maybe we hadn't considered before. All right, thank you for everybody who has willingly shared. I hope this is a conversation that you'll continue. But before we wrap this exercise, I really want to revisit how I intentionally described Jordan to you, because I didn't start out with what she was missing, like gaps that she needed to fill, I started with what she's already built: her expertise, her leadership, her resilience. Illustrating these assets was an intentional choice because how you all perceive your students really is a ref— then impacts what— how you see your students and how you see the possibilities So therefore, we need to be thinking about the lens. When you bring to the table a lens that's asset or deficit perspective, changes the way in which you can potentially engage in these innovative partnerships. So when we frame mobile learners as people with deficits, we tend to find remedial relationships, but when we frame them as assets, we find transformational. Relationships. And suddenly the partnership landscape just immediately changes. So this is that first kind of nugget that I want you all to remember, is the most important move in building partnerships that actually work is starting from who your student already is rather than what the institution and your organization wants them to become. We meet them where they are. And look what just happened in this room. Like, you began with a student, you took time to understand their needs, you set aside the familiar and uncovered partners no one would have identified on their own, more than likely. And you saw Jordan differently, not as a person with problems to solve, but a person whose assets point towards solutions. That shift from institution out to student need in is the foundation everything else builds on. And then now in our conversation, the discussion becomes, once you see the right patterns, how do you build something that has staying power? So let's start with the importance of partnerships being reciprocally advantageous, and I have the perfect illustration. So most of you probably don't know this about me, but I was a band kid. I played the clarinet in the symphonic band, the marching band, the basketball band, and then the saxophone in the jazz band because why not? I distinctly want— remember one sunny Saturday September afternoon when I was in college. It was parents weekend and my parent— my mom and dad had come to visit. They were still— they were sitting in the stands for our halftime show. Honestly, being on that field was so exhilarating and nerve-wracking all at the same time. I don't think we had the term nerve-sided back then, but that's what I was feeling most definitely. I just absolutely love that, being on that field repping my TCU Horned Frogs. Yes, absolutely loved that. So my bandmates and I had prepared this special program for this occasion. It was family weekend and I was ready. I knew my part. I knew where to go on the field. I knew exactly what needed to happen and I trusted the 200+ people around me who had prepared equally. I knew we were all going in the same direction. We might need to make some small adjustments, but we knew where we were going. But what's really interesting is that when you're at the field and you're in the music and you're in the show, you can't really see the shape that's being made on the field. That's being left to the folks who are above in the stands looking down, much like in this picture right here. But what's interesting is that even though I couldn't see it because I was inside of it, it was very clear about where we were headed, and we hit our marks. And the music was crescendoing and it was very powerful. My parents and everybody else around finally saw that shape we were putting on the field for them. We were celebrating the United Way and we had this lovely symbol on the field. And guess what? I was right there, right on the fingertips. It was pretty cool. So we finished our set, thunderous applause erupted, or, you know, at least that's how my revisionist brain kind of saw it. And I couldn't have been more proud to be in Amon Jay Carter Stadium that day. Now, you might be saying to yourself, like, okay, Marling, seriously, that was a nice trip down memory lane, but what in the world does that have to do with us, partnerships, innovation? Well, to me, it's a perfect example of those reciprocally advantageous relationships. See, in this scenario, Jordan and her needs was the United Way symbol. It was the shape. It was the place we were going. It was our destination. It was the reason that we were there. The institution and its partner were all of us in the band doing what we needed to do. Nobody really saw it, and we didn't always know where we were headed, but we were doing it because it was reciprocally advantageous to do so. And I want to say something about that too, because not being able to see the finished product or the whole— that's not really a problem to solve, honestly. It's just the nature of building a complex relationship and moving to something you can't fully see and trusting those around you. It's just part of making small adjustments and being part of a relationship, and that To me is what I call anticipatory courage, and that's exactly what partnerships require. So as we think about finding these, and these people who are maybe we haven't partnered with before, who are unknowns to us, the unknown is not the obstacle. The unknown is where interesting partners become visible. Now, in our context, what does each party stand to gain? Because again, we want it to be mutually advantageous, beneficial. So let's think about this. Jordan, through a relationship with the— you know, Jordan is our, our final shape. Jordan, by our effort, stands to gain something tangible and immediate, like hopefully credit that counts, a pathway that sees her experience, a degree that she can finish even if her family moves again. And time and money that she can't afford to waste. Institutions also have some very tangible outcomes as well. Enrollment stability, potentially completion rates going up, equity measures that really reflect genuine access rather than aspirational things. So then the partner also stands to gain something even different, like maybe a workforce pipeline. Demonstrated community involvement, maybe the ability to formalize what they already didn't— maybe didn't know about Jordan. Now, you'll notice that Jordan, the institution, and the partnership are all benefiting, but not necessarily in the same way. And sometimes those benefits aren't even necessarily equal, but that's not the point. The point is making sure that each party is getting what they need at that moment in a way that makes sense collaboratively. And I know this is possible because I've seen it. I've seen partnerships that change trajectories for students like Jordan, and that had rippled outward in ways that nobody fully anticipated when things got started. And then there's the converse, the partnerships that looked very pretty from the outside and had all the right players at the table with all the right language and all the right expectations. That kind of fizzled out when that one leader stepped away from the partnership. So it's just really important in those situations that we know that something from that was missing from the very beginning. Most partnerships don't fail because people don't care. They fail because the why of what's happening within that partnership was assumed as opposed to navigated and negotiated. So here's what that typically looks like. Two organizations come together around a shared purpose, or what feels like a shared purpose. The language is familiar, the intentions are good. You know, early in their process, the meetings are really energetic because they're getting to know one another. It's exciting. The normal friction that you might feel from two different entities coming together really gets swept away because it's too early. You don't see it, you don't know what's happening. So there's, you know, there's pressure, but nah, there's not a lot of metrics that have to be delved into just yet. But then the assignment gets more specific, and this is where the cracks begin and begin to widen. Suddenly the meeting becomes a little stickier. The momentum shifts. There's more time spent on remediation and repeating things than really having vision and moving forward. People start dropping off calls. They find other things to do. You know, the really— the only people left communicating are the people who were charged with leading the initiative, and it's all kind of starting to fall apart because honestly, that partnership was never really bigger than the people tasked with running it. There was no pre-negotiated why. So I wanna name a particular version of that that I just call partnership of proximity. It goes back to that notion of like reaching out to the familiar and the known. For example, two institutions in the same city may sign a transfer agreement banking on shared history and physical closeness to carry the relationship. Or maybe an institution reaches out to an industry partner their city to establish a work-based credentialing process, assuming that mutual interest is the same as mutual investment. You know, these feel like no-brainer type relationships, but in reality, when they fail— and, um, honestly, they fail more often than we'd like to admit— people are genuinely baffled. Like, we know these people, they've been in our backyard, what happened? What happened is that proximity was mistaken for alignment and familiarity was mistaken for a negotiated why. So what does a genuinely negotiated why look like? It's built intentionally without assumptions at the very beginning of the vetting process before anyone has really put their stake in the ground. The best way that I can describe this is You know, there are certain people in our lives that we just have— our relationships move a little differently, not because we're— it's without complexity, but because there are already kind of a foundation laid of genuine understanding. It's a little bit like developing a romantic relationship with a good friend. You know, things progress pretty quickly and in a way that feels mutually genuine because each person's footing was already established before the stakes that high. You still have to do the work, obviously, but the direction becomes clear more quickly because you started from a place of real knowing rather than hopeful assumption. A partnership with a genuine why feels like that, and a negotiated why feels like that. Both parties arrive at the table already understanding what they're bringing, their value, They know what each other, what the individual needs, and what success looks like on their own terms outside of that partnership. Not identical terms, remember the musicians all had different parts to play, but honest terms, terms that were co-created. And here's what makes that possible: when the work gets specific, the foundation holds. When friction surfaces, and it will, there's something to return to. And when this champion moves on, the partnership is bigger than any one person because the why belongs to the relationship and not the leaders. This is the difference between a partnership and a signed agreement, between a collaboration and a photo op, between policies and processes that serve Jordan alone and those built for every Jordan that comes after her. And makes the pathway smoother. And for those of you who operate at the system level, who share, shape policy, and are in an environment where these partnerships live and die, the same principle applies. A state transfer policy built around institutional convenience rather than student need will produce the same misalignment that we've been describing, just unfortunately on a grander scale. The outside-in approach isn't just a practice framework, it's also a policy design principle. So let's take a moment to bring all of this a little bit closer to home. And I've got 3 reflection prompts for you. First, I want you to think of one mobile learner in your institution or your organization's ecosystem.— not a demographic of students, because again, that aggregated data misses a lot of the nuances— not a cohort, a single individual. And then I want you to ask yourself, what do you actually know about this person and what they need? And how did you get that knowledge? How do you know that? Is it anecdotal? Did you learn it from a study? Did you talk to this person? Did you hear it in the hallways? Are you making assumptions? How do you know? What do you know and how do you know? And then finally, based on what that individual needs, who belongs in their ecosystem that we haven't even thought to include yet? So as you're reflecting, I encourage you just to kind of take a few notes if you desire. We're just going to sit here in silence for just a few minutes so you can kind of bring this all together. All right, and as, um, as you kind of wrap up with your internal dialogue, why don't you turn to the person next to you or somebody perhaps across the table and share a little bit of your observations and your insights from this last reflection. I think it's really important for us to get different perspectives. This is an absolute activity by choice. No one's going to look at you cross-eyed if— or crosswise if you don't participate, but be curious to share out with with your neighbor. Okay, so what you just did, that question that you sat with, the mobile learner that you brought to mind, and the partner that maybe surprised you a little bit, that's the work. That's where innovative partnership formation formally begins. Not in the conference room with the usual suspect, or in a signed agreement with the neighboring institutions who assumed their shared zip code was the same as a shared why. It begins with one student seen clearly, whose needs expand your imagination about who belongs in the room. Which brings me back to innovative. I told you all I had a love-ick relationship, and honestly, I still do. But here's what I've come to believe about innovation and what it actually means in our context. Innovation is not a property of who you partner with. It's not the novelty of the combination or the prestige of who the people involved are, the organizations across the table. Innovation is a property of where you begin. When you center a specific mobile learner whose needs you actually know rather than assume, and you ask honestly who in their ecosystem can influence change for them, the right partners become visible—partners you may never have otherwise found. That is innovative, and more importantly, it's effective. Good news: you've already begun. In the earlier exercises, you practiced starting from the student rather than the institutional convenience. You pushed past the familiar and found partners in unexpected places. That wasn't just an activity. It was a methodology, one you can take back to your institution or organization and use again and again. And in a little while, later this afternoon, you're gonna hear from colleagues who have been doing exactly this kind of work. And I invite you to listen for the moment in each of those stories where the student need comes first. I think you'll start to hear the story a little differently now. As for everyone in the room, you came here because you care about getting this work right. You came here because Jordan, your Jordan, the one you brought to mind just now, deserves better than what the current system was built to offer them. And you came to this convening, I suspect, because some of the partnerships— oh, because somewhere in underneath all the mandates, all the PAC calendars, and the memories of partnerships that didn't quite deliver, there's still a part of you that believes something better is possible. I believe it too, and I think you now have a few tools to help you build that future state. So I'll be around for the rest of the day. I hope that you will come and find me if something I said resonated with you, if something frustrated you, or maybe if you're just wanting to bounce some ideas off about what this means for your specific context. There are no wrong questions, and I genuinely want to hear what came up for you. Thanks for your time. Yay! More applause, more applause!

Yeah, Janet, Janet, love it! Okay, I'll stop the applause now.

That's hilarious.

Oh my gosh, it's, it's a little bit of a like, press this button first, then go here, then go— I feel like I'm running the Oscars back here.

The producer is in the house.

Oh my gosh, well done, well Well done. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. And especially knowing that you're like, okay, this is a new set of content. I haven't shared it publicly yet. So here we go. Um, how did you feel about it?

It came together a little better than I expected. I knew there was a good through line, but when I was rehearsing it before, it didn't feel coherent and cohesive, but that time was much better. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, good. Good, good, good. I am really excited about— here, let me— I'm gonna try a thing because I'm hearing an echo on me. Do you guys hear an echo on me?

I do not hear an echo on you.

Okay, good. Um, then I'm gonna just let it be because I hear this echo and I, I know sometimes that happens. There's a button somewhere that I have to press, but as long as you're not hearing the echo, then I will just deal with myself. Wonderful. So one of my questions for you, Janet, just to like help pull this apart even more, is obviously you're talking about how important those partnerships are, especially for students who are mobile. And what I'm just wondering is, can you bring us into the challenge of like, what is the harm of not getting these partnerships right? What's at stake?

That's a super great question because there are multi layers. Obviously, for the student, they find themselves in a situation where they are losing money, they're losing time, they are often losing confidence. They are being told that what they did well somewhere else suddenly isn't good enough. In their new environment, and that messes with your self-efficacy, and it's really challenging. Institutions don't have a lot of extra resources. They don't, their employees don't have time. These partnerships are really intense when it comes to developing and then executing on, and that's why I talked about eye rolling, because nobody wants to be in another initiative that they don't have confidence in, so it has to be right. The stakes are really high, just from a morale perspective, but also just from pulling people out of their normal work in order to engage in this side piece of their work is important. And then if institutions aren't serving their students well, then you do run the risk of not having the enrollment numbers that you want. You don't have the seats, you don't have programs that are filled, you have faculty that have precarious job situations. So it's, it's hard. And then, you know, you back out and you think about the folks who are either industry partners or others who are just trying to be good stewards in their neighborhoods and hire local graduates, but maybe don't have solid partnerships or pipelines to do that. They're spinning their wheels. Maybe some newer folks who aren't the well-known stamp logo that everybody sees in their, you know, communities. And then I just think society, when society has folks who are employed, when society has folks who are educated, that goes back into their communities. It grows their communities uniquely. It allows their people to take care of themselves in ways that they couldn't if they did not have the abilities to further their education in whatever sector that that happens to take place.

Yeah, I loved that part of your talk where you are making really clear what everybody can get out of a really thoughtful partnership, an intentional partnership, a mutual partnership. And I wanted to reverse that just and amplify that piece too, because I— you're such a positive person. You're like, here's all the good things, like it helps your enrollment, it like— and obviously this student can be more successful. But sometimes we really need to hear the underbelly too, like the hurtful side of things. So there's— and I feel that in what you're talking about, but I just wanted to give you a chance to articulate that because I think it's really important. That's great, thank you. Oh, you did awesome. I've got more notes for you that I will pass along, but really I just want to say thank you for sharing this. Well done. You are such, um, not just a, a treasure trove of experience and intellect and knowledge and wisdom on this, but you deliver it in just such a warm, concise, thoughtful way, and that makes it just— you just want to eat it up. It's so, so good. So congratulations, and thank you for being here.

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I worked really, really hard on this, so thank you.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. I can tell. And I just hope you spend the rest of your Friday and feel really, really good about it, and I'll send you some, like, more little ideas for you as you continue to finesse.

I love it. Thanks, Sally. I appreciate it. Thank you, Janet.

One more round for Janet. Yay! Oh my gosh. Oh, I don't need— thank you. Thank you for the applause machine. Thank you. So appreciate it. Yay! Oh my gosh, wasn't Janet awesome? Uh, she is such a good student. I just want to say this, probably because she's in higher ed, and so she's like knows If I, if I do all the things, then that's what we're supposed to do here. And she just is killing it out there right now. Absolutely doing some incredible work. And she shows up and she's offering, bravely offering her material before she feels quite ready for it. But I just want to share my appreciation for her courage. So fantastic. Thank you, Janet. And next up we have, uh, Jen Whitmer. So you maybe have seen Jen Whitmer before on the Movers Showcase. She has been here before. She has been with me since 2020. I think that's true. That is wackadoodle. It's amazing. I feel so honored by that. And it's been incredible to watch her journey and her growth, not just as a speaker, because you'll see she's just made incredible growth as a speaker, but really in terms of her leadership and how she has dove in so deeply. Is dove in a word? I don't think it is. She has dived so deeply into her research, into the meaning and significance of what she talks about. And she knows it so, so well. She's also an education person in her background. And so I just want to— I love working with education people because they take the idea to heart in such a beautiful, genuine, passionate way. They're like, if I'm going to talk about this, I really want to know about it deeply. You felt that with Janet, and I know that you will feel that with Jen. As well. In fact, Jen just wrote a book and it just came out. Do I have it? Do I have it? I do. Here it is. Oh, and here's my even notes that I have for myself. What a cool book, huh? Uh, this just came out, and as part of all the hubbub that happens around a book, Jen will be taking at South by Southwest in a very short amount of time. Oh my gosh, it's coming up super fast. So she is— we get to see a little preview of her South by Southwest talk today. So if you happen to be joining us, lucky, lucky you. We might have to pull it down later because it's secret, secret, special, special content. And she's ready. She's maybe is like, I'm gonna play with some things, we're gonna try some things, but she could have done it last week. So we're really excited for you to get a little bit of a preview of Jen and her South by Southwest talk, uh, and let's, let's bring her in with a big giant warm round of applause, shall we? Here we go!

Oh, thank you, Sally. Um, now I'm a little like, where are we? Um, yes, South by Southwest is in just a week. And so if you are watching this, I am starting the way that we're not supposed to start, by thanking Sally. So I wanted to set this up a little bit in the idea that I am also practicing, though I have been with Sally since like 2020 and actually before, because I found her on her podcast. I have been playing with this for some new things. And so this is what Sally loves to call a friendly audience and a deadline to make it happen. And I'm really grateful. So I'm going to actually pretend that this is much more of a live talk in person. So if you're watching online, you can just pretend you're in the audience with me and, and how we would start there. So And now that you know the setup, here is where I want to start. My journey to joy at work began when I got fired. So I'm going to rewind a little bit and, and set you up with how my story intersected with a great third grader called Macy. I was working at a school of about 300 students. I was the director of assessment and feedback, and so I was in charge of Report cards, parent-teacher conferences, internal assessments, and everybody's favorite, standardized testing. Your favorite, right? I mean, yeah, groans heard round the world. Most people have that response, and so did Maisie and almost every other kid, parent, and teacher. I I just knew there has got to be a better way. It can't just be like this. And so I was sitting in my office and the playground is right next to me, behind me, and listening to the sounds of recess, bouncing balls and giggling. And I thought, oh, what if we started with a different question? Could we make testing feel like this? Could testing be joyful? So, we decided instead of cramming everything into the Maycember madness, we moved it to January. We spread the tests out so the kids weren't overwhelmed and neither were the teachers. We sent home little kits with balls and bubbles and a note encouraging families to engage with their students and ask curious questions rather than, "We gotta get to bed on time." And also, send them outside to play in January in Missouri. So, Maisie that year was a 3rd grader, brilliant kid, but very nervous about testing. So, testing comes and goes, and even with a snow day in the middle, it all goes well. And the week after our Martin Luther King break, Maisie's mom, Jessie, comes waltzing into my office and drops a purple gift bag onto my desk. And I take out the raffia and inside is this plaque and it reads, "Jen Whitmer, Director of Good Moods. Jennifer Whitmer, Director of Good Moods." And I'm like, "Jessie, what is this?" And she's like, "You know what? You knew Maisie was so anxious about testing before we started. But during the week, she came home every day excited about what was going on." And so Jessie proceeds to do the most amazing impression of her 9-year-old. "Mom!" Testing is the best! We get cheese sticks and extra recess, and they give us animal crackers, the iced and uniced kind. And you know what? All we have to do is talk about what we talk about every day at school. So part of my theory was correct. We didn't have to make testing stressful. It didn't have to be this difficult. But the second part of my theory Would we get more accurate and/or better results? Well, here's what happened. When Jesse presented me this lovely plaque, I had already seen our test scores, and our students had scored in the top 25th percentile of schools around the world. And 4 years later, the US Department of Education recognized our school as a Blue Ribbon School, which is the highest academic honor honor, and there's only one, and one awarded to only 50 private schools each year, based entirely on culture and test scores. So we could bring joy into our work, the, the workiest work, the real nitty-gritty of our, our jobs, and it could be more effective. So I'm kind of curious about where you land on this idea of joy and what your experience is right now. So we're going to do a quick experiment. Go ahead and stand up. And we're going to turn this room into a spectrum. The left wall is joy at work is possible and people are entitled to it. The right wall is joy isn't realistic in most workplaces. And everything in between is the spectrum. So find your place in the spectrum based on what you believe right now. Don't overthink it. Just move where your body says you belong. Okay, great. Stay standing where you are because I have another question for you. Raise your hand if you're actually experiencing joy at work right now. Take a look. Take a second, look around the room. Interesting, right? Now imagine this at scale across the entire workforce. And what we're seeing right here, unfortunately, is very common. Go ahead and head back to your seats because here's the pattern the data shows is happening everywhere. So right now, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about joy at work, but what's actually pervasive is stress and toxicity and anxiety. And it costs us. It costs us so much more than we realize. Right now, 80% of US workers report that their workplace is toxic, which is up 13% from just last year. Also, 83% of us suffer from work-related stress and anxiety. And of those 83%, 3 in 4 say it significantly impacts their home life. Well, I mean, with all of this, It's really no surprise that engagement hit an all-time low in April of '24. And also that work-related stress has negatively impacted the physical health of 77% of employees. And all of that leads to 120,000 work-related stress deaths every year. We're literally dying from lack of joy. We've built workplaces where stress is the norm, burnout is expected. It's like the price of admission for success. And joy is treated like a perk. That is a severe design Flaw. And most leaders, if you ask them, they're like, "Yeah, sure, joy is great. That's what we want. But it's kind of, you know, like a nice to have." But the system is built for exhaustion. We reward burnout. We celebrate overwork. And then, we act surprised at these statistics when people disengage. Sure, joy is great if you can get it, most leaders are going to say. But here's the rebuttal in their minds: that's not the point of what we're doing here. We're in business. We're here to make money. And that idea feels a lot like greed. And I don't think that's who we are. I don't think that's who you are. I don't think that's who we want to be. I think It's a bill of goods we've been sold, scribbled on a piece of paper with a bunch of empty promises. Here's the true story. Don't worry, I've got receipts. Yes, we're in business to solve a problem, and if we solve problems well, it results in profit. And to solve problems well, you've got to be curious, connected, and have clear purpose with your people. And that is the foundation of joy. It begins with people. Will Godera says that too many companies have left the human behind. They've been so focused on products, they've forgotten about the people. And he also says when a company makes the choice to put their team and their customers at the center, that is what separates the great ones from the rest. I don't think you want to be the rest. I think we need to understand that people-centered cultures don't just see joy as a nice-to-have. They know joy is the way we get all the things that we need at work, including profit, because joy is the heartbeat of a healthy organization. We have 25 years of tracking positive, high-trust cultures with joy, and it shows that they outperform the market by nearly 400%. 400%! And years ago, Edward Deming, famous organizational person in the office organizational world, and he said that people are entitled to joy in work. So I need to ask, with all of that, aren't you just a little bit curious about the power of joy? Which, great, that's why you're here. So here's the journey we're going to go on today. First, we're going to talk about what joy really is, what it isn't, and what it does. What are the 3 signals of joy? And then an explorer's map to joy. And we're going to start at a balloon race. So the Great Forest Park Balloon Race, uh, starts about 2.5 miles from right here at my house, and it is my husband's absolute favorite St. Louis tradition. We started going with friends when we first moved here and continued the tradition with our kids, the 4 who are now in their teens and 20s. I mean, the man has swag. I cannot in any way oversell how much this man loves balloons and this event in particular. The night before the actual race, all of the balloons spread apart across the central field of Forest Park. More than 100,000 people flock to the park with picnic baskets and blankets and strollers and bikes, and they watch the magic of fire inside these enormous globes of silk. So one year, all four of our kids could finally walk and help tote and carry, and so we all piled into the car and stopped at Schnucks to get our favorite picnic fixings and drove to Forest Park. And there are about 100,000 people that come to this event, and there's only two roads in, so we immediately were stuck in gridlock traffic. And our kids' excitement really just started to disappear as they went. We inched along and my husband's irritation is starting to go up a little bit. And as we, you know, crawl, the whining increased. And we finally found a parking spot. We loaded all of our wagons and they're like, "Mwah, mwah," putting everything in. I mean, if you've been around children, you understand this. And my husband is like, "They're ruining my favorite thing." His irritation is just steadily going up and up and up. And I'm doing my best to be like, "It's fine, it's gonna be great, we're gonna get there, it's all fine," keeping everybody engaged and encouraged. And we start trudging down the slope amidst all the crowd of people, and by this point dusk is gone, the sky is dark, and everyone is in a bad mood. And I am trying by sheer force of positive vibes to salvage experience. And suddenly, out of the dark, a woman comes with her own things and faceplants, tripping over our wagon. And we just stood there staring. We were, we were done. We couldn't, we couldn't come back from that. Not even the majestic balloons could withstand the pressure and disappointment of all all of that pile up and exhaustion. And it's because, like in life, positive vibes and excitement aren't enough to sustain us when the bad things happen in this life, when the pile effect comes. So it's a good thing that joy is so much more. And when we think about joy at work, most places treat joy like the balloons. Or like cotton candy, a little employee appreciation day, maybe some pizza on a Friday, a Slack channel of fun. Well, that is like, well, cotton candy. It dissolves on your tongue and it's gone. Balloons float away, they pop or deflate. And so that's not joy. I want you to replace this idea of cotton candy and balloons balloons. And I want you to think about joy like lavender. Lavender is a field that spreads. Lavender has incredibly deep roots and grows best in hilly, rocky soil that has a bite of acid in it. And the bush's roots are as deep as the plant is tall. It's a little wild, but it spreads. And you can smell it from like a football field away. When cotton candy dissolves and is gone and balloons float away, this is the real joy that we're talking about. And real joy, real joy has deep roots, and roots, they form in the dark. So I want to give you a definition definition to work with with joy. So you've got the picture of lavender, but here's a working definition of joy: intense happiness from a feeling of deep connection and appreciation and experiencing something greater than ourselves. Now when I say intense happiness, I do not mean every moment of every day. That would be unhinged and unsustainable. Joy has depth, but it's not shouting all the time. And when that kind of joy shows up, that intense happiness shows up in the way that we work together and relate together and accomplish goals together, it becomes something bigger that I call joyosity, the business of joy. And this is the idea that I explore in my book that Sally talked about, and it's this overarching sense of peace and well-being, and it has an idea around it that is, um, being engaged and curious about yourself and the people around you and working on meaningful work that brings life to you and your community, because joy is what keeps us alive. And Before I jump into some really measurable outcomes, so the joy impact in your workplace and what it actually does for you, I want you to find a moment when you experienced this type of joy at work. Just go back in your mind. Maybe it was a pitch that went great. Maybe your team wrestled with a problem and you worked it out together and it was amazing. Maybe you were buried in medical journals and you were searching a patient's research knowing you were helping them. Go, go back to that moment. Maybe close your eyes, feel it in your body. I'm betting you didn't arrive at that moment without any struggle. Yet the smiles on all of your faces are amazing. That feeling, that's the lavender. That's what I want you to keep in mind when we look at what joy does in the workplace. So research shows us that people who are experiencing joy at work have a 31% increase in productivity. And it's also viral. When someone in the group is experiencing joy at work, the entire group has a 25% increase in performance. Now, I am by no means a mathematician, but I do get the exponential growth of joy. And when somebody who has joy at work is also 3.5 times more likely to help other team members. They use their discretionary effort to get to the purpose and the group goal, and they help one another, which keeps them out of the leader's office, out of the HR office, submitting tech tickets. Things move along more smoothly. This is what we typically call collaboration. The opposite is also true, that toxicity is also this viral. Harvard Business School found that a toxic employee costs your organization more than twice as much as the contribution of the best performers. So when joy is this intense happiness and we get all of these great results from it, what's the opposite? Not working? Nope. The opposite of joy is toil. So toil is overtaxing work. It's work that you don't like. It's outside of your area of expertise. You don't have the resources for it. It's not interesting or enjoyable to you. So for me, it's almost always going to involve a spreadsheet, definitely creating invoices, analyzing website data, and, uh, clearing out the cat box. Everybody's different. Regardless of what toil is, toil is as or more costly than the toxic worker. Toil is related to increased levels of impaired cognitive function, diminished memory, the reduced ability to learn something new, and reduced engagement. I know that we all have parts of our job that that we don't like, that nobody wants to do. I mean, the cat box and spreadsheets. And so you, you might be thinking, okay, Jen, so if I can't be happy all day every day and there's still going to be toil, I don't want toil, what, what do I do with that? Is there some kind of like formula to get the positive outcomes and mitigate the negative ones that we are currently experiencing across the board? So glad you asked, because, well, yes, yes, there is. It's called the joy ratio. And what we want is 35% of our time spent in activities that we enjoy and that are— we are experiencing that intense connection, we're experiencing meaningful work. And then we want 10% of our time spent in toil, activities that are overtaxing and we're not resourced for. The other 55% is what I call the messy middle. And when we think about this, just over a third feels really manageable to cultivate joy and create positive outcomes. So I want you to think about some kind of new thing that you have done. If you've had to adopt a new process or a system in the last 18 months? Yeah, almost everybody. You've probably had training or onboarding. Maybe you're the one that had to lead the training and onboarding. Which posture of the group do you want implementing the new thing? The group that enjoy— we're going to call them Team Joy— that is more productive, they help each other out, and in general they're way more flexible and resilient, and they're probably having a good time while they do it. Or do you want Let's call them Team Toil, the group that doesn't have to have any, doesn't have any brain space to learn anything new. They don't remember the details well. They have difficulty concentrating and in general have a hard, like, lean out approach. Raise your hand, which one do you want? Team Joy? Team Toil? Yeah, I'm choosing Team Joy every single time because when people are operating from joy, and in the joy ratio, their brains, hearts, and bodies have capacity. They can think flexibly, remember details, collaborate, solve problems, and deal with that messy middle much better. But when people are operating from toil, the brain shifts into depletion. Hearts disengage and bodies are drained. Focus narrows, memory drops, collaboration becomes infinitely harder, and everything becomes heavier. When that poor woman bit the dust over our wagon, our ratio of joy to toil was out of whack, and a lot of it was because we were depending on someone outside of us to float joy our way rather than growing our own from connection and gratitude and purpose. You can't outsource your joy. So how do you know if you actually are experiencing joy? Well, let me tell you a story first. There, one August night, early in my time as a school administrator, I was sitting on my blue couch while my partner at work, Dana, was running at the track. I was the director of assessment, she was director of curriculum instruction, and we were leading a massive project together. Our nearly 60-year-old school had never actually been accredited, so we were going through the first accreditation process. If you've ever done accreditation certifications or audits, you know the true fun of folders like Standard 2.9A1. We've already discussed my love of details and spreadsheets, so not my favorite, but you know, needs must. So on that night, I'm on my couch, laptop on my thighs, corded headphones in, while Dana is running at the community center. I'm reading the standards to her, typing away, and she, who knows the school inside and out, is directing me to find the evidence we need on the server. We're brainstorming and laughing and talking over each other with ideas, and suddenly she's like, "Oh my gosh!" And I'm like, "What's wrong?" I mean, she's running, so Now I need you to know, Dana's not a long-distance runner. She's a couch-to-5K, 35-minute run-walk girl. And she says, "Matt is pounding on the glass. I've been running for an hour and a half." She basically ran a 10K without realizing it. Time had disappeared for both of us because we were so connected to the work we were doing. We were excited that we got to do it and what we could do for our school. Accreditation is detailed, high-stakes, hard work, but something interesting was happening that August night. Joy was revealing itself. And later, when I started paying attention to moments like that and moments when people loved their work, across industries and age groups, I noticed something interesting. A pattern emerged. Joy leaves signals, and there are 3. So signal number 1, if you're experiencing joy, you feel favored or fortunate, like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I get to do this," and not comparison fortunate, like, "Meh, at least I got a job." That's not what I'm talking about. That's not joy. Joy sounds more like, "Do people know that I get to do this part of my job for work?" There's almost a, "Eugh," about it. My Uncle Mark ran offshore oil rigs, which basically means a floating town of 200 people in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico while operating multimillion-dollar equipment that could wipe out an ecosystem if something goes was wrong. So no pressure. And if you ask Mark about work, he'll shrug and say, "Living the dream. At least, you know, I'm working." But if you dig a little bit deeper, the real story comes out. And he'll tell you about the community he built on the rig. He'll tell you about training West Africans to run their own rigs coming out of colonialism. He'll tell you about waking up to the the brilliance of open water and a sunrise. He almost always ends those stories in the same way. How does a farmer's kid from Tynnum, Missouri get to do that? That's the signal. That's when you feel that moment, I can't believe I get to do this, and you've scored the gold at the end of the rainbow. Signal 2: Belonging and connection. And belonging isn't just about proximity. Dana and I weren't just working together that night. We weren't just two people on a phone call or two friends laughing and brainstorming and finishing each other's ideas. We were a part of an entire community working to move our school to accreditation. And as humans, We deeply need to be part of a team. We need to belong. And joy? Well, joy is a team sport, my friend. Connection and belonging are the connective tissue of joy. It's your signal that you're a part and you belong. Signal 3: Your work impacts more than just you. There is a purpose to what you are doing that makes it meaningful. Jade Simmons, who is a keynote speaker, uh, amazing concert pianist among other things, her definition of purpose is purpose isn't what you do, it's what happens in other people when you do what you do. The impact on others, that North Star that you're creating. Accreditation involved so many parts of my toil signals: details, files, spreadsheets, endless meetings. But accreditation opened up incredible opportunities for our students. But even opportunities for our students, that just wasn't even the real purpose. It was bigger than that. I worked every day to equip a generation of kind, curious, and adaptable problem solvers for the future. Suddenly, every cell in that spreadsheet, every file to get filed, every meeting connected me to something so much bigger that was gonna last beyond me. I wasn't doing a job for a paycheck. I wasn't getting a stamp of approval for our school. I was a part of changing the world. When those three signals show up, you've got joy. You feel favored or fortunate. You have a sense of belonging and connection, and the results impact more than just you. And when those three signals overlap and combined, you get all of those benefits that we've already talked about. And those signals are absolutely available to you. So I want to challenge that little noise in the back of your head that some of us still hear that says, no, it's fine, or, well, that's just— we can't get there, that's just the way it's always going to be, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. As, uh, Roy Kent likes to say, "Don't you dare settle for fine. You should feel like you've been struck by lightning." That is joy. But how do you find your way to a lightning strike? The real question is, where are those signals showing up for you in your work right now. So let's take a look. I call this the Explorer's Map to Joy. If real joy has deep roots and roots form in the dark, we've got to shine a light and know where those roots are growing. And most of us think through joy never, and we move through life and work so quickly, we rarely stop to ask or great questions like, what actually brings me joy and energy? Where do I feel connection? Where does my work make an impact? We don't think about that. And if you don't know those answers, it's almost impossible to cultivate the joy ratio in work and in the rest of your life. So we're going to take a minute to look at that. Yes, right now. So I would love for you to grab a piece of paper or pen. We're going to go through the Joyosity Explorer Map, which is my tool that helps you see what brings you joy in your work, what feels like toil, and how to cultivate the joy ratio. We're going to do the first part of your map now. So, like I said, grab paper. I would rather you not use your phone. I suggest using paper, but if a phone's all you got, we're going to make it work. And I want you, for this first stop, to write down as many things that you can think of that bring you joy inside and outside of work. Where do you feel so damn lucky you get to do it you can't believe it? What are those little activities? What gives you a sense of connection and belonging? What impacts you— what impacts the people beyond you? Now, this is a brainstorm. There is no editing or censoring. Just write it down. I'm going to want Write for about 20 seconds. Okay. Draw a line, flip the page, whatever. Now we're going to write down as many things that you can think of that are toil and draining for you. They drain your joy inside and outside of work. Again, what feels ridiculous and repetitive? What is always overwhelming, or you don't have the resources to do even if you liked it, or something you used to like that you don't like now? What is mind-numbing and completely uninteresting for you? Same thing, no editing or censoring, just write. I'm gonna give you about 20 seconds. What did this exercise reveal for you? You've got a bit of a choice right now. Do you need to work on something like purpose? Do you need to figure out the joy ratio? Let's, let's go back to the beginning where we turned the room into a spectrum. I want you to stand up and see— we're going to see where we are now. Now that you've done this activity, you've thought a little bit about this question. Again, left wall: joy at work is possible, people are entitled to it. Right wall: not realistic. I want you to, after the joy ratio and the Joyosity Explorer map and the definition of signals of joy, move to where you are right now. Okay, raise your hand if you're in a different position, if you're in a different place than where you were at the beginning when we started today. Okay, point to the direction that you moved. Just keep your hand up and point to the direction you moved. Keep it up. Look at that, culture change in under 30 minutes. Go ahead and head back to your seats. And as you think about this choose-your-own-adventure, this is just the beginning. The Explorer Map actually has 3 more stops on it. And so I want you to have the full thing. And so you can help and keep continuing. So scan this and you can go to jenwhitmer.com/joyocity-explorer and I will send you the full Explorer Map. So you can keep working on this after today. Because the worst thing about conferences is when all the goodness stays in the room with us right here and nothing actually changes when you go back to all of the notifications, all of the emails, and all of the demands. I want you to use this map to experience all of the goodness of living in the joy ratio. And if I spark something today for you, I'd appreciate a really quick rating on the South by Southwest Go app. You can do that later today. But if you've gotten this— everybody got that? Once you've scanned that code, I just want you to set your phone down and I want you to focus because I want us to go back to a story for a moment. A few short years after Jesse walked into my office imitating Maisie's joy. I have this plaque. We won a blue ribbon award. I sat on a white couch in my leader's office, and these words slapped me: I'm eliminating your position. How did we get there? After study and thinking and doing all the work, I have discovered we had lost joy as the heartbeat of our organization. We had moved away from the purpose of creating curious, kind world changers into pleasing donors, uh, to get a new facility. We were trying to cut corners and moved into creating fake peace so it all looked really good. We were still doing good work, but joy as the center, it was gone, and we turned into a toxic, unproductive place. And I think a lot of us around the world, the data shows us that we're in that place right now. We're all still doing the work, but we're in this place of slow decline. So if we have 60 years or more of research showing us that human-centered businesses with joy are more productive and more profitable. And we all say with our mouths that we want joy. Why do we still refuse to build them? Because the system we inherited runs on exhaustion. And the problem with an exhaustion-based system is eventually we humans break. It's not a knowledge problem. We know what to do. And honestly, I don't even think it's a courage problem. It's a problem with belief. Somewhere along the way, we started to believe that we don't deserve joy at work when joy is the very thing that will keep us alive. Joy is what will save us. Stop waiting for joy to float your way. Start now and grow it. Thank you, everybody.

Oh my gosh!

Congratulations! Well done. Well done. Hello. Okay. I just have to laugh. I didn't mean to press the air horn.

I thought it was great.

Me too. I'm like, I'm going to keep that. That was so, so fun. Well done. Thank you.

How am I feeling? I am feeling a little, uh, a little stumbly, but not as stumbly as I anticipated, so that feels good. Um, and I really know the places that are new, they don't feel integrated yet. And because I have given this talk, uh, as an hour and a half, I've given it for 45 minutes, I've done it for an hour, you know, like I've given it so ways for different audiences. Getting it for a South by Southwest audience that is going to follow with an interview with my publisher and a Q&A, it's just a different— it's a different iteration. It's a different audience. And as you remind us about who's in the room really matters about how you change it. And I have also evolved how I think about it since I wrote the book. And having done this many ways with different people, I want it to be the sharpest expression of my point of view. And, uh, I don't— it doesn't feel totally scary, but I want to make sure I say it well. And so I'm still a little self-conscious about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. You just said something really interesting, which is since you wrote the book, which was not that long ago, your approach to it is evolving or changing. Can you say more about that?

Well, I think when I— one of my favorite quotes, which I shouldn't call it a quote because I never say it right, is, uh, from Francis Bacon, and he talks about, uh, how what communication does for us, what reading does for us, but writing makes us exact. And so having to put it down in writing shaped more of— shaped me in exactly how I feel about about something. And then I am forever learning as a business owner about positioning. And the thing that I've noticed right now, that we are all— because we live in an exhaustion-based system, I'm kind of tired of it and I want to call it out. And I am feeling the effects of that because it's so hard to pay attention to things. And so I am trying to make it even clearer, what am I doing? And so I'm starting to— I am forever trying to put another ornament on the Christmas tree and trying to make it less clever and more clear, but still be me and who I am. So is that answering your question?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I was curious if it was a reflection of the now of the context, right? That very much things continue to get more intense in lots of different ways. And joy is one of those words we hear a lot about where people are just like, joy is an act of the revolution, joy, we know, I know, I can't access joy, well, there's no joy. And so it feels very timely. Right. And yet when you wrote the book, we continue to be in a different place every week. I feel like we're in a different place. So I love that, you know, when, when you're speaking about this idea, you can adapt it. You can continue to finesse and, like you said, find the sharpest way of saying it. Uh, when it's in a book, it's like, that's a marker of that time, you know. So it's just kind of fun to see you continue to grapple with what this idea is in the world as it is right now.

Right now. In fact, I interviewed about— interviewed and got and surveyed about 50 leaders around, I mean, the industry, you name it, like literally every industry, and to try to really see the placement of joy right now, what was missing, what's hard. And that was incredibly helpful. And then also, as you've— you continually remind me and us in your program that The now is so important and who's in the room. Like, it's not just me, but who is in the room. And the South by Southwest audience is a really specific— it's a really specific group of people and very different than when I show up at— I have a local family business that I work with their leadership team. It's a very different audience. And so thinking about how this works in that space was also a part of what I am practicing, very much practicing.

Practicing today? Well, as a professional speaker, I just want to commend you for continuing to take your craft seriously, to not just say, you know, like, I made it, I'm doing my thing, I got this, I don't really need to practice. But you continue to rehearse, practice, you put on your shoes, like, you take advantage of these opportunities.

And actually, Sally, you'll be so proud of me.

I'm telling you, it makes a difference. Wear the shoes that you're gonna wear because you move differently. I love it. Huge congrats! I'm so excited for you. I can't wait to hear how it goes. I wish I could be there in person to just love it up and watch as you bring this to this specific audience, um, which is a really big deal. Excited for you.

I'm super excited. And so next Saturday will be, uh, an experience, and I'm excited for it.

Next Saturday, there it is. Oh my gosh. All right everybody, let's give Jen Whitmer a big warm round of applause. Thank you, Jen. Well done, well Well done. Thank you for being here. Oh my gosh. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, applause. Oh my gosh. Thank you for joining us. For those of you who caught us live, as we bring this to you every few months, we'll showcase a few more speakers here from the Movers Collective. It is such an honor that you would take a little time to connect to experience these brilliant people, to honor and encourage them as they are bringing these ideas out into the world, to continue to finesse, because that is what the pros do. Even the pros, we're practicing, we're finessing, and we are leveraging those opportunities to share it with the people when we have the opportunities in front of us. So we're We're so grateful that you're here. Thanks for being a part of our process. And be sure to follow our amazing people today, Janet Marling, Jen Whitmer. Hope to see all of you at the next showcase. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.