121 | Cultivate Sustainable & Vibrant High-Performing Cultures | Eric Stone

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

You know, the thing I learned about culture is it's hard to get the things you want known. It's really easy to get the things that don't go well. Everyone loves gossip, and that will ripple through your organization. And it takes away everything you've built.

Hello there, and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you back if you are a listener who's joined us before, or lovely to have you if you've joined us for the first time. Thanks for being here, and I think you're going to really enjoy today's conversation. Um, before we get into that, a couple of quick things as I always do. Firstly, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please give us a little rate and a like or a comment because it does really, really help with getting the podcast out there. That'd be really, really much, much appreciated. Thank you. Secondly, thank you as always to our friend and partner Workvivo. If you're struggling, and actually it's going to be interesting with today's guest talking about culture, if culture is something that you're struggling with, particularly as we're now in a hybrid world, then communications could certainly be a core part of that problem. If it is, well worthwhile having a look at their engagement platform. You can find out more about them later on, or in the meantime, as you're listening, if you want to pop along to Workvivo.com, vivo.com. You will find out more about them there. So, on to today's guest who joins me from stateside. And it's actually interesting, we've had quite a lot of guests on from the States recently. And I love having guests on from abroad because I think it just brings a different perspective to the whole conversation around culture, communications, and leadership. And I think that's just really, really helpful. So, I'm delighted that Eric Stone, who's the founder of ClearPath Ventures, has joined us today. He's also an author. He's written a book called Jumpstart Your Workplace Culture, which I'm hoping that we'll get into a a little bit of the detail around today. So Eric, good morning for you, good afternoon for me, but good morning.

Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I'm really excited to engage with your audience.

Great. Well, listen, it's lovely to have you. Before we get going, I just, rather than me doing an intro of you while you're standing there, I always just like to get guests just to spend a minute or two just telling us a bit about you, your career, and what you do today.

You bet. So I would listen. I was always fascinated with business. I was always fascinated with what organizations do to get a group of people together to achieve this common goal and, and do it at a very high level for an extended period of time. And my father was a textile salesman, and I learned a lot growing up about the ebbs and flows of being in sales. My mother was a teacher. I learned a lot about coaching and training and developing. And I took those— I started my own little business with a buddy in high school and college. I, I go to to college, graduate with a business degree at Roger Williams, and ideally wanted to, of course, be the GM of the Boston Red Sox like everybody, I guess. But they weren't hiring and I land on a— they are today, actually, which is funny. And I landed very fortunately with a company called Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which turned into Enterprise Holdings. And I was one of 4 people in an office. 11 opportunities later, I had a chance to lead the Southern New England region. Which then turned into leading a few hundred employees and took all of that chapter of my life, as well as some board experience, to transition into some consulting and some speaking and decided to push my message out a little bit further with a book that I just published called, like you said, Jumpstart Your Workplace Culture.

Brilliant stuff. Brilliant stuff. Well, interesting. Let's, let's cut straight to the nub then. Let's ask the gazillion-dollar question. How do you define culture?

Simplest form, and I'm a simple, simple, uh, plan-oriented individual, would be when your behaviors of the organization are in line with your values, so there are no gaps. And that is the simplest form, instead of getting too complicated and using big words. That's how I would define it.

Okay, and what does that look like on a daily basis for somebody that's got a team of hundreds of people? What is it, what is it you're doing to bring that kind of a culture to life?

Well, you know, the one thing I utilized in order to live it was, in addition to, you know, most companies have their values and you can't of course just list them, you got to live them. But I also transitioned to something that I lived called these 5 factors of employee engagement. And to me, that was one way to really foster a high-performing culture. And what that is, is it is a very simple approach, is how do you within your organization or team truly develop relationships leaderships throughout the entire organization. You know, how do you clearly communicate your expectations and goals with your team, all levels? How do you constantly give your team the right materials and equipment and information in order to, you know, to achieve the desired outcome? How do you, how do you develop everyone personally and professionally? And I always wanted my team to be, be great at work, but take that stuff and be great at home too. It kind of gets that well, you know, mental health and well-being. And then, you know, you have to find a way to recognize performance. I should say reward performance. You want to recognize efforts all the time, but you want to reward performance. And I think when you can pull all that together, engagement is one of the major things that is going to boost your culture. It leads to, you know, you go to any Gallup survey and you look at the top half versus the bottom half of their ranking. And what you'll find is those in the top half have a much more significant— I think it was double-digit increase in customer loyalty and engagement. They have increased sales productivity, increased profitability, reduction in absenteeism. And so you put all those together, and if you could take the values and some of these engagement factors, it really yields to a strong workplace culture.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's definitely elements in there that we see in the clients that we work with. So, so definitely stuff there that resonates. One thing that I've been kind of throwing around recently in my head and in a couple of blog posts and that kind of thing was this whole idea of organizations talking about hiring for culture fit. Now, I'm kind of of a mind that why would I want somebody to come and fit with my culture? Do I not want somebody to come and add to my culture? And I just wonder what, from your experience of being a leader of people, What are your thoughts on that?

Scott, I think you are right on. So the way— the easy analogy I use is when you're hiring for fit, you know, I look at it like a shoe. You know, if you have a size 8 and you're looking for a size 8, you're going to get a size 8. You're not going to get a size 10. You're not going to get a size 7. You're going to get exactly what you need. And the problem with that is you want to go to the match. And I use the, for maybe me, a tie, you know, a tie allows me to not only maintain things, but it pops out my shirt or the pants, suit, belt, whatever it might be. It enhances the whole organization. And so if fit is the head, you know, match is the head and the heart.

Yeah, yeah, great. And again, how do organizations go about hiring? Because I think hiring for culture fit is easy. Do you exhibit these values? Are you able to tell us stories about where you've exhibited values like this before? Tell us a story about a time you've not been respectful and the impact that that's had, because that's one of our values. If you're hiring for values add, is that different?

Well, the values add again would be that it's, That is a standard. It is a character. It are the principles that are going to guide your decisions. And so you're referencing in a sense, you have to have these behavioral interview questions that are going to tell me about a past experience that might lead to something in the future. We used to do something. It was a little undercover, but it was called the character test. And I would have my executive assistant or I'd have my HR manager as the— I would do the third interviews. And as that candidate comes in, they would introduce themselves. And little did they know that how they treated my executive assistant or the HR manager was not the only decision, of course, but was a little piece of what's going to matter. If you cannot treat the team well, how are you going to treat our customers and other teammates well? And so those are the things that you go to any sports organization, they don't look when things are going great, you know, they want to see what your behaviors are on the bench when you're down 10. And what do you do then?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I love that. So get sent out a little spy beforehand just to double-check someone's character. When I think about something that you said there, just kind of resonated with me. If we can't get people joining our organization to treat our team members well, how do we expect them to treat our customers well? And of course, if we treat our customers well, if we deliver the products and the services that we say we're going to, we do that in a really, really good way, that leads, I guess, to high performance. So how do you believe, what's the tie or the link between organizational culture and high performance? How does one drive the other?

Well, you know, again, I think anytime you have shared values and beliefs, that tends to create really good behaviors. Really good behaviors over a consistent period of time lead to very good desirable outcomes. But it, you know, I call it a 6-point inspection. There are 6 things I truly believe when you're going to measure culture, what you should look at. The top 2, number 1, employee engagement, number 2, customer experience. If your employees are engaged, they are going to treat your customers the right way. And those two are half of my rating system of the six. And so, you know, I— there was a story about how you truly make a customer experience, uh, with Johnny the bagger. I don't know if you ever heard of it. So it was an employee, and you talked about how do you lead to high performance. And so there was a large grocery store chain who hired a consultant. They wanted to change that customer's experience and create some long-term loyalty and engagement. And so she gives this rousing speech and says, each and every one of you can, can make a difference by putting your personal signature on every interaction. And so after this big speech, couple weeks later, she gets a call from a young man named Johnny, Johnny the bagger. And Johnny explains to her and says, uh, proudly, uh, And he has Down syndrome, and he proudly informs her that he has Down syndrome. And I first, I didn't know what I could do. After all, I'm just a bagger. And so he thought about it. He said, well, wait a minute, maybe if I can come up with a thought of the day, I could put it in everyone's bag as I, as I finish up their experience. And what happened next was quite unique. A few weeks later, the store manager is getting a little nervous because Johnny's line is all the way down the frozen food section. And he is trying to triage and get people to other lines to move it a little bit quicker. When one of the customers says, you know, "Mr. Manager, no worries. I'm here for Johnny's Thought of the Day." And then 10 customers back, another customer shouts out and says, "I used to come here once a week to shop. I come by now every time I'm in the area just to hear Johnny's Thought of the Day.". And so, but it didn't stop there. Another couple weeks later, the, the manager calls the consultant and says, you will not believe what happens or happened. Our whole store is transformed. Now our floral department, anytime there's an, uh, a broken flower, an unused corsage, they pin it on a young child or an elderly individual and make the experience even more unique. And all of a sudden, because of the act of an engaged employee who was given direction on what they might be able to do transforms the whole organization.

What I'm thinking as you're telling that story is how we have vision and mission and purpose and values and all of those things in organizations all around the world. And I think often employees just see them as that's stuff for people like Eric, the senior exec, the MD. That's not for me. And actually, It's not until you say to staff, say to your employees, what is it that you can do to make a customer's day? And empower them, which is the word that kept ringing around my head as you were telling that story, empower them to make that change happen. Because in lots of organizations, people will be saying, well, if I just take a broken flower and pin it on a child, maybe that would be seen as theft. Or maybe that might make people think, well, if I break the flowers, then I can pin them on my child or whatever. But actually, just the, just the very natural way of that story happening shows that when you empower people, amazing things happen.

And then, Scott, it's also up to the organization, however many people you lead, is so now you bottle that. And so when I was working with an organization, we would take that story, that story would be in everyone's new hire training because we're trying to live our values. If customer service is truly important, here's what we feel are some of the behaviors that will lead to some really creative experiences and stand out and let us stand out as a brand. And then you don't just stop there. It should go along the lines that it's repeated throughout the employee journey. It should be something that's recognized and rewarded. Remember, one of those factors of engagement is how do you reward the quote unquote Johnny the Bagger Award? And they created the Johnny the Bagger Award. And every week they would have these little mini meetings to go over customer experience and they would again talk about who's the Johnny the Bagger this week. And then you take that information and you put it into an employee review. And so now under customer services, are you living one of our values? Everything ties in, everything makes sense. And so when you ask, what do organizations do to have sustained excellence in a unique culture? It's that.

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I want to talk about communications because I think that that plays a huge role in what you just said, because Johnny the Bagger would never have— that story would never have gotten out of that store if it wasn't for somebody taking that and sharing it with the rest of the organization, and now more widely, and us still telling the story here across the Atlantic. Before I get to that, I want to talk a little bit about something you actually just touched on there, which was performance review and the ability to put your values into performance review. Now, my sense from having worked with lots of organizations is that they find that really hard because it's easy for me to say I said to you, Eric, your objective this quarter is to sell $250,000 worth of product. That's really easy. Your objective, Eric, is to make sure you get at least a 4.6 out of 5 customer review on every customer overall this quarter. That's really easy. The how of performance management, the values in performance management is way harder because it's kind of gray and a bit murky and hard for people and mostly about stories. So, tell me a story how you've lived our empowerment value, our customer-first value, our whatever value. What experience have you had of that in your career?

I mean, I think, you know, that there goes to a few things along that journey. So if you're interviewing Scott for an opportunity for that next level, yeah, of course you're gonna have your key competencies in those 4 core areas you might get ranked on. But the question is, is what are some of those developmental things you've done? How have you truly lived those values? How have you, I write about, how have you become a culture carrier for the organization? And you do need those stories. And so the other thing that I would recommend a lot of organizations do, a lot of large corporations will kind of have this standard review. And I would recommend that you almost create this other line somewhere where you can kind of personalize some of the things that are really, really important in your own little world that you might be living in. And so, but you nailed it. It's, it's from an interview process, training process, communication process. You've gotta hear those stories and recognize those and promote those who live them.

Mm-hmm. And how do we get, how do we find and get those stories out there? Because I mean, you know, I think we've all had really bad experiences with rental car companies, for example, just because that's the world that you came from. We've also all had really good experiences with rental car companies where somebody came out, had an umbrella 'cause it was raining, brought us to our hire car, carried our bags for us, all that stuff. The last time I hired a car was in Birmingham Airport, and you had to walk out the airport to a little hut. There's one person sitting there, and she handed me my keys, and off I went. And there was nobody else there. So how do stories of her being amazing, how do they get out to the wider organization so that we can help people to understand what living the values truly means?

Yeah. Well, and that takes time because you're counting on someone else to be the carrier. So you're not even talking within the organization, you're now talking, how do we get that and that story out to others. And again, I think that's making a difference. You just have to put that personal signature on, on that interaction. Now, sometimes customers don't want too much dialogue, and that's a great experience for them. You've gotta be able to— we did a thing for personality styles to quickly learn how to understand what's important to that customer so you could truly execute on what they need the most. And, and then it's you know, you always have to live that, would you recommend us to a friend? That's kind of at the end of an experience. And I think if you feel really good that they recommend you to a friend, then whatever you've done along those lines and made it personal, that's going to matter and that's going to carry some, some traction.

I think one way that we've, we've certainly seen, and I think that's, that's a really well-made point, I think the other way that we've seen that clients have done a really good job of finding stories is through recognition programs. And you touched on recognition earlier on, so, you know, having something that is I hate the term formal recognition program, but sometimes it needs to be, you know, if you're nominating Eric for our Customer First Award, why are you nominating him? What is it he did specifically that makes you want to nominate Eric for that award? And that can start to unearth and bubble up some of those stories. But there is, I think, probably a bit of a role for leaders as well to have their ears open, a bit of a radar on all the time in terms of Just hearing something that somebody mumbles in a canteen or half a story. Tell me more about that. Where did you hear that? What was the outcome? And trying to find those stories and then somehow feed them back into the center so they can be fed out around the rest of the organization.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about— we've kind of touched upon high performance. And I think that for me, employee experience and customer experience are effectively two sides of the same coin. And you've touched on that already. Eric, that the experience that we give our employees directly will impact the experience that they give our customers. And I've probably quoted Branson 1,000 times when he said, "Don't put customers first, put employees first and let them look after your customers." So, how in your experience, I mean, you came from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, that's all about customer service and giving people amazing experiences. So, how do you ensure that the culture in your organization is really focused on delivering those amazing customer experiences.

It's, well, yeah, and probably is part of everyone's, one of their values, but it should be one of their promotional criteria. And, and so, uh, but here's where the rub happens. A lot of organizations will have, you know, a performance category for customer service or customer experience or Net Promoter Score or whatever you might use. But the million-dollar question is, is do you follow the restrictions that you have on customer service. So the moment you promote somebody who didn't live and have that ability to drive, you just deflate everything. And so that's why when I say live values, it is the things that guide your decisions. And so though, and I've seen it, sometimes I've had amazing talented employees who I know could take that next spot, but their customer service wasn't there.. And you cannot make the exception. The moment you do, you know, the thing I learned about culture is it's hard to get the things you want known. It's really easy to get the things that don't go well. Everyone loves gossip, and that will ripple through your organization, and it takes away everything you've built.

And of course, that— I think that approach, which I fundamentally agree with, you know, if you're not living the values, why should I promote you? Because what that says to the rest of the organization is, oh yeah, look, the values are just on the wall. We don't really live them day to day. They're just there. But if you want to get on in this company, it's okay not to live them. If you don't have great customer-first expertise or experience, then it's fine. Because if you're doing the numbers, that's okay. It's not okay. That's not what we want people to hear in organizations. So, for you to be saying, if people don't have that ethos, very strong ethos and experience and provable experience of customer-first, 'Actually, we're not gonna promote you, sorry. You know, you can continue doing what you're doing.' And I think that's— it takes a really brave company to do that, doesn't it?

It does. You gotta be disciplined. You have to be disciplined. You cannot take a shortcut, that's for sure. Yeah, I used to, you know, when you're in a customer-facing position, it's really hard. I mean, you get a lot of pressure and you get some people who are unreasonable. And I actually was very honest with my team, you know, believe it or not, Controversially, the customer's not always right, but they have to feel that they're right. And there's a big distinction there.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely for sure. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's talk a little bit about— I think I'm actually— I always wonder when we're going to get to the point where we stop calling it hybrid working and we just call it working, because that's kind of what it is. I think that lots of organizations are really struggling with the idea that you can still build and maintain really strong cultures when people aren't in the office? Because certainly for me, culture isn't about a building. Culture isn't about an office. Culture is about the people in your organization. It's about those values and behaviors and aligning them and all the stuff that you spoke about earlier on. So I wonder what's your advice from your experience? How do you build and maintain culture when people aren't in the office together very often? Or if they are, it's maybe for a day a week, or I overlap few hours, but, but, you know, it's not the, it's not the 9-to-5 water cooler moment thing that, that we were used to pre-2021.

I, I think the first thing I'd give a disclaimer is whatever you're doing, hybrid, uh, remote, in person, you, you better not— the customer's experience cannot falter. And so if it's faltering, you have to reassess what's the way we get an amazing customer experience, because We put so much emphasis on the employee experience over the last couple of years, and rightly so, but we cannot also forget about that customer experience. I would keep it as simple. Listen, it's harder. You know, if you're to go to a wedding and you're going to do it virtually, it's just not the same experience. You can still enjoy it, but it's not the same. If you're going to go to a basketball game, you get a different experience when you're there. And so it is going to have and pose some extra challenges, but it does not mean it's unsurmountable. It's coming with that flexibility debate arrangement of how can you do it. And if you really think even about our discussion with these 5 factors, we are doing this virtually. We can still create a relationship. If you remember, we had a brief conversation earlier just so we could learn about each other. I mean, that was important to both of us. We just wanted to learn about each other. That's a relationship piece. It was important that you were clear with your expectations of having a mic or what I didn't have working, my earbuds. But, you know, it was important that you created a clear expectation. The good news is we didn't need too much training and development, but you guided me with some of those pieces of information. I had to learn about your audience and things like that. We got to make sure that this is resonating to everybody who's going to listen. You know, personal, professional growth. I think we probably both, as we had conversations, hey, that's a really good point that Scott made. You know how that's pretty cool. I might want to use that. And then recognition. Well, recognition, the audience will be the judge and they will reward us with some all the great views hopefully, or high fives you'll get, Scott, from the overall. And so, you know, you're going to have to be very intentional is what I'd have to say. You can still do it. You better have these open hours on some platform that is virtual to have these touch-ins, to have some extra training, to be there for people, these working hours through, uh, just a 12 to 1. I'm gonna— on Thursdays, I'm open. I'm gonna have a lunch. Who wants to join me? It's kind of the simple things. It's a little bit harder, but there are advantages. There are advantages. The ability to recruit now allows you to recruit all over the place, especially with challenging individuals who maybe had restrictions before. So you get the ebb and the flows. You don't have to travel as much. I mean, so there are good, but don't, the customer's experience cannot be affected.

And what's your take? What, what, what's your take on looking at organizations now that are kind of, many of them are mandating that people come back to the office. What, what are your thoughts on that? What, what impact is that gonna have?

I think you have to be very careful. You know, I write about this thing called the hourglass approach, and it's using the hourglass as this metaphor of building this unique culture. And it's not an eyeglass, right? An eyeglass is an eye. An hour is us together. And the top part is this discovery or this simplicity of understanding. I used to tell my team all the time, I want to have an open listening environment. But there are going to be things I might not be able to do that you might really need. But I'm going to listen. I'm going to do everything I can to be, to have you feel heard as you should. And so I think the organizations have the right to do what they want. There is consequences that follow with that. And those consequences are you might have a more difficult time keeping people. You could have a difficult time attracting for people. But they do have that right. They have taken that risk to start an organization. And if that's what's important to them, then they just need to be mindful.

Yeah, and there's probably, there's an openness in there alongside your mindfulness. There's a transparency, there's an honesty and an openness because the first question that of course people ask when they're being mandated to come back to the office is, Why? Why do you need me to come back? Because you don't trust me? Because you want to see me doing my work? Because you've got some other reason? And what are those reasons then? And being really clear and open and honest with people is so, so important.

I use the ABCs of communication, and this is a time where you better— the A is the amplify. You better be very clear on why you're making your decisions. It's okay, you make them, but you better be very clear and amplify the really important things so everyone at least can feel heard. And then the B is buffer. You got to know when you buffer the message. You know, when do I kind of control it and make it easier to digest? And then when do I just convey it for the C? When do I just pass this stuff along? But yeah, very intentional indeed.

Yeah, I think that intentionality, that deliberateness is something that we talk a lot about when we're talking to clients about culture is that you've got to be very deliberate about designing your values, very deliberate about living them, very deliberate about communicating them, very deliberate in your leadership behaviors and your role modeling. Because it doesn't just come. I was actually thinking yesterday, I was out running because I was doing a lot of training recently. I was out running and I was thinking, "I'm not a very good runner. I'm too big to really be a runner." To be a good runner, you have to learn how to run. It's a mechanical thing. But we all think that if we just go out and we put one foot in front of the other faster than walking, well, that's us running and we can all do it. Actually, we can't all do it. We're a bit rubbish generally, I think, as runners or cyclists or whatever. I think the same is true of culture, if we're not actually being very deliberate about it and thinking about it and training in it and upskilling and thinking about it all the time, we're not gonna be very good at it because we're just kind of assuming that we're okay.

Yeah. I think sometimes what happens is, you know, and I don't wanna say the old schoolers, but again, I think culture is so misunderstood. I think it's all of, they think it's hugs, high fives, and it is not that. It is those factors. It is this environment, is this training culture that you can have empathy with a customer, accountability. You can have high character with, with high standards. You can develop results through great relationships. And, and so it's such a misunderstood topic that I wish people would utilize it and not just sometimes think, well, I hired you to do a job, I'm paying you to do that job, go do the job. And while we want to say that at times to some of our team, the question is, well, you hired them. You thought they were good enough. Aren't you going to supply them with some information at times? Just because they're the VP of Sales and Marketing does not mean they have every answer. So, you know, you got to be really, really mindful of all this stuff.

Yeah, if they're not performing, whose fault is that? Yeah, you know, is it your fault or is it their fault? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. It's probably not as black and white as that.

I would agree. Well said.

Yeah, yeah. If leaders are really struggling to build cultures, the type of culture that they want in their organization, what would you say would make the difference for them immediately? What's the first thing that a leader should be thinking about when it comes to creating a strong and aligned culture in their organization?

I would go back. There's so many small, simple things you could do. I think the most basic thing is usually when you're struggling and you don't know where to turn is this discovery period. And this is where you use your leadership team and you use what I call those culture carriers, or I used to call them my think tank members, those individuals who were really living our mission, vision, and values and were really the voice of the region and lived and backed it up, is gathering feedback, having a presence within the organization, whether it's virtually or in person, and really pulling from your customers and clients and stakeholders and board members or whoever it is. The easiest thing is they'll tell you what they want.. It might not always be realistic, but they're going to tell you if you've created an environment that allows it. Let's start there.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that will eventually really go down the hourglass. As you get the feedback, you synthesize the message, it goes right through, crystal clear, and then you get the reinforcement as the hourglass would circle out.

Brilliant. So that whole idea of going out, looking for feedback first, bringing that back in, synthesizing it into something that is very clear for the rest of the people in the organization to be able to get aligned behind.

Absolutely. Dead on.

Yeah.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Listen, time has rattled on. We're gonna leave it there. But before we do, just if people want to get in touch with you, I know you've got an exciting week coming up. If people are listening to this in future, it's currently the 29th of September, 2023. I think your book is launched next week, which is exciting. Well done. I think everyone, everyone who writes a book deserves a pat on the back, or probably their partner and family deserve a pat on the back, a bigger pat on the back possibly. What— where can people find you? Where can they find out more about you? Where can they find out more about the book?

Yeah, I think the easiest thing is certainly I'm on LinkedIn, so that's an easy channel where I'll put out some content. I'm on Instagram, so Clear Path Ventures underscore. Uh, you could go to eric@clearpathventures.com and shoot me an email. You could go to ericdstone.com, you'll learn more about the, the book itself. So I'm accessible at a variety of channels. I've created a YouTube channel. So a whole bunch of different ways you can reach out.

Excellent stuff. Well, listen, Eric, it's been a pleasure chatting to you. I really appreciate you taking the time today.

Really enjoyed it, Scott. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.