How to Build a Thriving Team Culture in a Hybrid Workplace

[0:00]  the core values some people just have them on a wall because they sound nice or they Rhyme or whatever but to me if used correctly within an organization your core values should be really the commander inent right allows the team to operate with agency knowing that if they absolutely screw something up but they operated within the core values congratulations you learn something that's a good thing right so I think that's a foundational thing that you know and we we purposely reflect back onto those every single quarterly meeting how do we do it so it becomes just innate of how we think how we operate across the organization all right guys welcome back

[0:59]  to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited because I have another amazing leader sitting across this digital table with me here today I've got Joe mclung who's joining me who is the president and COO of an amazing organization called Floodgate medical now today we're going to be learning about Joe's Journey we're going to be talking more so about how he came into this role the challenges that he's overcome and how the space of recruiting health care and everything else is changing Joe welcome to the show man hey I really appreciate it Keenan glad to be here absolutely man so you know heart and hustle is all about learning about the heart and hustle behind the leaders of amazing organizations who we see out there but we don't really know a lot about their story so as we kind of get into it man how's your heart doing today my heart's feeling good it's a beautiful day in Tampa Bay and uh like I say if I was any better it' be illegal in 47 States so I

[1:49]  just hope Florida's not one of them what's uh got you most excited about 2024 as we have a little bit of perspective looking back what was one of your biggest accomplishments either personal professional this year you know man you know I I would say on a professional basis one of the greatest Joys that can happen of a leader is having great things that happen in a company that you know nothing about right where things are able to replicate decisions are made accounts are won um things uh accolades uh come in you don't you had nothing to do with because it means you have the right empowerment for the people and we had a lot of that this year and I saw what I like to call the flywheel start to move right something we've been building and it's really

[2:37]  accelerated this year and I saw that really change and happen um because otherwise if it doesn't you're the self-limiting factor of an organization and that's not what I want right so I see that I think that's one of the greatest professional accomplishments you know is just to see that happen and I know my team is feeling engaged as a result of that you know uh personally I've got two High schoolers you know and uh being with them to navigate the changes you know as they as they transition from being a child to an adult right that's what this time is uh is probably i w know if I call it achievement I don't know if any parent ever says says that when they're in high school but I love the journey something that's really interesting to me is talking about the mental framework of

[3:25]  being able to trust your team right to be able to execute on the vision that you set you know a lot of people who listen to this podcast either seasoned Executives leaders of organizations or they're on the younger side right A lot of people who are younger leaders of their organizations often have the what I call the my baby syndrome if I'm not doing it right then nobody else is going to do it as well as me I want to kind of talk about 2024 and what type of things you saw start taking off and taking their legs of their own if you will and getting execution deals coming through what was the process like for you guys this year what are some of the lwh hanging fruit opportunities that you guys saw that you uh so so for us I mean I'm going to step back a little bit Kenan you know for me I I think and this is kind of organal organizational truth the core values some people just have them on a wall because they sound nice

[4:13]  or they Rhyme or whatever but to me if used correctly within an organization your core values should be really the commanders ATT 10 right allows the team to operate with agency knowing that if they absolutely screw something up but they operated within the core values congratulations you learn something that's a good thing right so I think that's a foundational thing that you know and we we purposely reflect back onto those every single quarterly meeting how do we do it so it becomes just innate of how we think how we operate across the organization right so I think that's that's fundamental I think for us this year one of the biggest changes in transition at least in our business and every business is going to be different

[5:00]  is that client engagement that client acquisition within our space of really because you're talking to many times the CEOs CFOs the yeah chro you know to be able to get that decision in previous organizational time that was all came through myself or you know previously my uh my partner Josh you know so in it's taken time to develop the people with the confidence the capability the the repetitions to be able to execute now better than I can which is what I want right and and and give them not only that agency but you know ability of the income that comes with it so there's a book that I'm reading it's

[5:48]  on my shelf back over here it's by an author named Dan Martell and it's called the title of the book is called buy your time back and he talks about the pros principle of 8020 he says you know often when you're an early leader you think that you need to do do 100% of the work well let's dice up that 100% equation if you can find somebody who can do the work 80% as good as you but it's 100% their responsibility that 80 plus your 20% of extra time equals 100% [ __ ] awesome so why would we not put trust into our soldiers to be able to go and execute on the mission but a lot of leaders struggle with that though because it's like a lack of trust or a lack of control releasing it what do you think that's about you know I I think a lot of times many times people in a leader uh leadership position come into a leadership because they're excellent in what they did right and they take a pride in how it's done and the way they

[6:38]  did it right and so the hardest thing for any new leader to do is to actually step back and allow people to fail because they forgot those Early Times how they failed and learned and you learn more through failure and realize guess what it's not going to break right there's going to be a few of those glass balls you have in organization okay those stay close to them but most of them aren't glass balls right they can be dropped they're rubber they bounce and so have confidence have trust because the worst thing you could do of any organization is say oh yeah I call it the seagull management you know go do that and come back in and oh that's totally wrong and crap all over it and change it all back right because guess what's going to happen the next

[7:24]  time you're going to tell them to do something they're going to wait because they they don't want it to have to redo it they're going to wait till you come back in his spec and then get started and let you do it over again so you've got to just it's it's trust and you know what guess what sometimes you let people go and you realize I wouldn't have done it that way but that's so much better than I would have or it got the same results so who cares so Joe where did you come from like what type of person were you before you engage with you know a Floodgate medical and stuff like that what was your early Journey like I want to know for the audience perspective yeah so so um I I've started a men device right out of graduating Florida State University in the 90s right which was at the time you know uh surgery centers were just starting and it was an explosion of

[8:14]  medical Innovation and so it was a great time to join in the medical device world were you exposed to that at Florida State or was this something that were you exposed to medical device at Florida State uh there there was a lot of the people that graduated ahead of me that went into to Med surge medical device there was a company called position Sales and Service based out at Jacksonville down the highway that hired a ton of college grads that had great success so there was it was uh it was either that or Consulting with the kind of two career pass right so I went into the medical device space um you know and I was there for the first 16 years of my career started as a sales rep carrying the bag ioner a territory in the Pacific Northwest I mean I I recruit now and I think about what I did and I'm like I don't know if I could sell that I I went

[9:02]  and packed boxes for two months that was the job you training uh in the warehouse and then they would ship you anywhere they had a territory I was a Florida I was in Florida they shipped me to Seattle they had wow the whole Pacific Northwest no Revenue you know I had a draw on commission and went out there and I followed blue hes for a little while you know like I you had to figure it out went to Kinko printed my own brochure um guys listening might not know what Kinkos is they they print they print things for you um but uh so is that where we're at in society man do we think that people don't know what Kinkos are I don't know haven't been around for 10 years you know I know you're making me feel old man oh my gosh so um and you know so had to

[9:51]  Pioneer that territory so but I so from that I learned a lot of you know just how to take initiative and then um was a sales rep work my way up to regional manager a national sales manager and my last role at my corporate comp last corporate um opportunity I had was a uh General Global general manager for a business unit uh so it was about $150 million business unit um for what was DJ Global now was an nois then when I exited there I had a vision for a startup I wanted to take a swing myself I took a swing H you know what I foul ball right but uh I and so I was actually my Josh who's founded Floodgate

[10:40]  I is a friend and fraternity brother fraternity brother we had our first job together and he started this you know when I went to DJ and um I was calling him ask him hey do you know some in the market I was looking for a role get back to what I did but reality my life goal was to have ownership something to build something where I didn't have to travel my kids were at the time five and I didn't want to miss that and this this hit everything and so join Josh bought some in and and we had a vision of creating something different in a fragmented space of being able to be truly a single Source solution for Medtech and provide the values that single Source single recruiters couldn't

[11:28]  in our world and to take it from transactional to something that's truly a partnership level and we' we've built that and we've got more to go but we're well on our path and achieving that objective what were some of those early days like when you guys are sitting down right and you say Hey listen we're going to partner on this we're going to move forward we want to do something different what were some of the differences that you were trying to create inside the marketplace just in layman's terms like what were some of the low hanging fruit opportunities that you guys saw you know I mean so I I think you know one of the things is you know the way people make decisions today is they need to have trust in the brand right they need to they need to be able to lean into information with the digital environment you have before they get excited about something and so we want to help companies create a better corporate brand right in the

[12:17]  marketplace um you know we we saw there was an opportunity to create a differentiable brand for ourselves by giving value not by promoting ourselves but by giving value information on whether it's salary you know what the salar is out there we got a great salary guide you we get thousands of downloads in our space every single year um uh to be able to how to how to look for a job right most people hopefully they don't have to do it very often their lives but when they do it's a scary time how do we support those individuals better U by having scale and then you know operationally how do we make it easy I mean I told you you know that job transition time can be scary and it's usually confusing you have these big forms you fill out and there's dark holes and all of that so we want to

[13:04]  create the technology and the workflows they made it transparent simple and the stupid word we came up with is dazzling right and we seek to dazzle because you know that you know when you get dazzled I don't even know you know but it's it's something you can't explain but you know when it happens and so that's our objective and that's kind of what we set out and we knew we couldn't do that at scale um uh with without scale so we've uh been scaling to be able to do that to bring those resources together that will differentiate Us in the marketplace when you talk about what we're talking about here is you know a lot of organizations think about transactional Natures of relationships right especially when they're trying to attract customers but what you guys are talking about is becoming a trusted resource building reciprocity in the brand by enabling

[13:51]  people with education and information so they can navigate that transition better is what I'm hearing you say yeah I mean our mission is Improv lives it really is we just happen to do it by uniting great people with great companies and if I look at If I Stay core to my mission is how am I helping you how am I improving the life it's going to come out for me and that's core to how we believe and how we operate and to your point we don't want to be transactional we want to have a seat at the table to really understand the needs and if we can help improve that situation your quote unquote life we're going to do it and if we can't I'll tell you that too and that's the way it should operate and that that way you know our clients several of them we've had for 15 plus years and that's the way we want to be we want to be an

[14:39]  integral you know part in achieving Mutual objectives and that's more fun than being transactional right you could be strategic alongside but in that relationship right you also have to have the mindset of abundance if you will to be able to give away all the secrets the information to build enough reciprocity so then people come to you that seems like a the common way that people are doing it today but for a long time reverse engineering that value proposition of give first yeah and then have people come to you seems scary for a lot of leaders yeah no I mean I you know I think I I don't I've just it's been core to who we are we just you know we we have a you we wanna we want to give the information I do think it is interesting we do come from a position abundance I know in a lot of areas that in recruiting especially I've talked to

[15:29]  several competitors colleagues whatever you want to call that are very just closed and I'm not even G to tell you who I'm talking to I'm not gonna inter I mean we kind of flip that when when we go out and start a search I send you the names and information of everyone I'm going to go after right just I want to make sure there's transparency now some people look at that as wait you just gave away everyone you know they can go call them what's how' you want you give it away I'm like if that if that's what that's what they really want to do they'll figure that out and we won't be a partner very long right but the partners we need value the rest of the service right so but it's uh to your point it's operating differently it's operating in a in a position to trust I actually think I am of the opinion that I would rather trust 95% of the time to please

[16:20]  that 90 you know plus percent of the people we interact with and open myself up to be disappointed taking advantage of that 5 perent of the time you know 95% of time I win 5% of the time I don't I'll take that any day of the week through a I would rather die on my old my own sword right being somebody who's gonna give first rather than being somebody who protects and only takes a small portion of what I actually deserve you know what I mean yeah no I mean that's we're we're we're built to be able to give to Pro produce values for others that's what we're here for what has been the biggest process of maturation for your team over the last year I know that you have a ton of responsibility president and coo so like what are some of the top initiatives that you've been able to kind of push across the line that you're proud of

[17:06]  from a professional perspective this year yeah I me I I think um it's really that development of the team you know I mean we have our team has come from many walks of life we have retired army Colonels we have returning um stay-at-home moms you know returning to the you know the quote unquote Workforce I know they're working at home but you know back into the um we you know so we have all kinds of walks of life that have joined our team but they all share that same heart energy will initiative and being able to uh have an environment where they can learn quickly develop quickly make an impact and provide value rapidly um in an area that they feel that they're gaining I

[17:57]  mean we were we've been one of the Tampa Bay's best place to work for five years in a row that's my best award right because if I'm achieving my first mission improving lives which our people that best place to work award means I'm doing it right so five years in a row now what does the structure of your guys's team look like right now are you guys in office are you hybrid are you remote what does the the team look like yeah it's a good question so we do have uh five individuals that work fully remote right most of them um started in Tampa in life that allowed to uh made them migrate away you know to North Carolina and Oklahoma Etc we've had a couple that through hire or Acquisitions or based other places um and that that functions

[18:45]  well but you know it's it's we have we have courtly meetings we bring people together uh to keep that you know cohesion um the rest are in Tampa and it's a a fully we were hybrid workplace for hybrid workplace was the thing um you know so I it's always been you have it's here come in and so we have the classic you know Monday morning's quiet Friday afternoon's quiet but uh you know you have interspersed the rest of the time so and it works right I mean our job doesn't need the the interaction is positive but you don't need it day in day out right A lot of it is going to be one-on-one they're doing their individual things so allowing in the spaces to be able to do it we built pretty cool office here i't say we've got a couple pickle ball courts we got ax throwing we've got you

[19:32]  know tons of fun things around a little putt course you know that they can use to kind of break up the mind doesn't get used as much as you think it's more weekends that we use it honestly so we do work um but it it creates a a really unique environment what do you think about your ability as you know a leader of the organization to build culture through those small interactions right on digital platforms like slack and zoom and sending out encouragement and stuff like that I'm really interested because the landscape of how we build teams right has changed dramatically and it doesn't seem like it's going back to everybody being in the office so we have to have a dual strategy for engaging with people in the office put putt pickle ball but also people who live in Oklahoma and North Carolina they don't get that same experience so how do you kind of strategically think about the ability to engage with them yeah I know it's it's uh one of the things I don't

[20:21]  think for me is ever I came from sales leadership first that's where I cut my teeth so sales leadership is always teams right so you know and we used to have to do it through voicemail messages so I I think you can create a spre to core um when people aren't together you know and I think it starts with that shared Vision it STS with consistency um making sure you're cogntive and you have the right leadership right so sometimes I think when people get fully remote and they let the span of control get too wide you can't bring everybody together she make sure you have the right leadership structure so they're able to create they have that consistencies of touch and one-on ones to bring you know to make sure they feel hurt right within their organization so I think that's some of the the key factors you know in

[21:09]  making that successful um and we do bring people in uh at least twice a year maybe sometimes four times a year uh where we get together and we do something fun we have our meeting you know we create some of those connections as well but you have to be intentional about doing so what do you think if you could reverse call back five years right and you could sit down with Joe and give him advice about how he can be a better leader for the next five years what piece of advice would you give to that younger version of yourself um you know I think it's the advice I always try to give myself which is I have a if I'm in the room I have a tendency to take over it's my nature you know um I've gotten better slightly but

[21:58]  my nature is to you know and mainly because I'm an outward rapid thinker but it it has the byproduct of suppressing other thoughts in the room sometimes and so I need to consistently be better on taking the taking a step back and keep my trap shut many times it's purposely by not entering the meeting not being part of it uh but uh I think as I could that's always been my challenge do you have an example in your mind of when this became really relevant to you of saying hey I need to take a step back oh I mean it's been ever since I was a leader right you know I talked about the first time I had leadership I'd go out and you know rideing on the sales calls and be with a physician and I'd want to jump in too much and just you know so I've been chastising myself for that for

[22:45]  20 years it's interesting to me I uh had an experience um last year end of last year where we had a big organization who we brought in and unfortunately the customer wasn't as responsive to the request that we had right so we had to have like an all Hands-On meeting where my entire team was there two implementation Specialists One customer success love and loyalty team member and then a marketing director who talked about some of the initiatives and because I'm like you right I knew that there was a lot on the line to get this stuff across the across the Finish Line If you will for the project to launch I dominated the entire meeting talking like 30 minutes didn't give my my team opportunities to talk about their initiatives what they were doing after we hopped off the call the team was like hey that was great I'm glad we got that across the line but why were we there and in that moment I was like oh this is really interesting and I had that light

[23:33]  bulb go off in my head to say Keenan if you're going to bring your team to the table this isn't the Keenan show you should be in the back letting everybody take on their area of responsibility and expertise because you just showed up in front of the team and showed that everybody on the team basically wasn't valuable to be there and that was my big aha moment of like I need to step back a little bit because I kind of drowned my team out in that that instance really interesting yeah for sure it's it's a you know again it's a little bit going back to that point of you know getting into your comfort zone which is a lot of times controlling the meeting taking you know and getting into you know allowing others to to enter where you feel strong is is one of the hardest things people do yeah man so what's going on in the world of you know Floodgate medical when it comes to technology the revolution of

[24:20]  the future artificial intelligence how you guys kind of thinking about your 2025 strategy to kind of adopt that stuff we are uh you know I I think for us and it is interesting is we're thinking about uh artificial intelligence and ai's impact you know we uh we've been testing different things looking for that grand slam that big change but in reality when you look at all technology when you look at change it's the com it's the compounding impact of many adoptions that usually you look back on and go wow that changed how we did things you know so we're looking at using you know we're constantly looking at using AI to better reach our our candidates you know with messages that are are more unique that brings in the conversations we've had

[25:09]  three years ago you know so that's something that frankly a human can't do it doesn't have the scale or time to do um we're looking at using AI to capture notes and be able to you know put it together in formats that allow people to actually have a conversation instead of sitting here typing they're thinking they're engaged but allows it to have an output a format that now we're dis we're displaying that to one of our clients to one of our team members they they can quickly understand what happened they're not having to interpret how I wrote how someone else wrote it makes it simple makes it easier that data now we're actually able to feed in and are going to be able to use it long term to teach F future AI right on Hey what how do people react what's the questions that make the difference so there's just a

[25:57]  there's you know multiple levels of AI that will stack and help us get better and the idea is to utilize the tool to take away the time sitting engaging with a computer is not going to be our value in the future our value in the future is engaging with people because that the nonverbals the relationships that's are the things that are indelible and Powerful you know and I think the other things that we can automate and accelerate to allow more of that is where it's going to be and frankly we need to adopt that ahead and learn and you know Innovation advances is one of our core values and it sounds awesome Until you realize that 60% of the time Innovation doesn't doesn't work

[26:48]  and even the 40% that works it usually for the first couple months of adoption takes you longer to get there so you know but that is what we're committed to to be able to make sure we're ahead of that and allow to unlock more of the relationship building which that is our true value it's not going to be you know the messaging out of source all those things are they're they're there now but they they'll be going away yeah you have as a leader of an organization right now you have to embrace an interesting mindset right which is the duality of taking experiments on technology like artificial intelligence while recognizing that 60% like you said is probably going to fail so you have to create that mindset of experimentation instead of making decisions and moving towards specific solutions that decisions versus experimentation experimentation means there's no real

[27:36]  risk it's an experiment if it goes well it goes well a decision seems a little bit heavier so how do you kind of cultivate a culture of experimentation when it comes to technology because you got to move quick or you're gonna be left behind but you don't want to make the wrong mistake it's um you know I I think you know I think uh I want to back up one thing on AI I think it's even going to be more more the case with AI than it has been with other adoptions where you know previous software Hardware there was a single instance that shipped that downloaded that's what you had and you could make a decision did that instance work did it not AI is different I have started to try to change my mind when I'm adopting AI I'm not adopting software I'm hiring an employee a junior

[28:23]  employee that's going to learn based on what we train and how do we get better at training that Junior employee to Be an Effective employee right of our team so it's a I think it's a different mindset shift that I fully haven't gotten myself into yet but it's one I'm trying to lean into um the second thing I think to answer your question on how do we create adoption right how do we create things I think within organization like any groups of people you're going to have those that are early adopters that are invigorated change that are constant Learners that you know will that are looking always for the edge and the advantage and then there's individuals that are awesome to have an organization because they're gonna once something's done they're

[29:09]  going to figure out how to refine that make it better make it more effective make it consistent right there're different peoples within an organization I think where some people struggle is they try to push to the entire organization and the refiners they're going to resist because it's not it's messy right so identifying who the adopters are having them on board to test to see the impact the value the potential value then adopt it and the refiners make it perfect right so I think that's some of the things you need to you know really you're thinking about how you implement and you know most people have trial teams and beta teams and things and that's really made up with those early adopters and then once you prove the value now you can say hey guys here's the value here's why

[29:55]  we're making the decision we need your help to make it better right and that's where I think you bring them the the broader organization into those changes yeah I think about like almost an experimentation budget for those team members to start going out and testing and making things different and bringing them to the team and showing value if it makes sense everybody else adopts it as well yeah one other thing I'll say on the adoption process too is having we we we use uh traction you know EOS operating system is a small business function and we do a uh rocks which is part of that which is identifying three things every quarter three to four things no more that we're absolutely going to get done because if you try to do everything it's a target-rich environment you won't do any of them well you'll burn shiny object you know I could be the best at shiny object syndrome so

[30:44]  it's it's doing that and empowering those people to have the rocks that if I get shiny objects Sy them they can throw the rock back at me and say no I have this one you still have it you know we got to hold off how do you stay positive and optimistic for the amount of impact that you guys are looking for one of the things that I've really thought about as I've gotten older is thinking on my goals on longer time Horizons if I was going to try and lose five pounds by the end of this month right it's then I'm G to be making some certain decisions if I'm gonna try and lose five pounds in the next two months I'm going to make different types of decisions the longer the time Horizon the slower we can attack these problems how do you kind of elongate your time Horizons when it comes to your goals as you've been able to mature and become a leader and think about your goals differently well I think there's uh I've heard

[31:30]  someone said is uh you know typically people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five um so I think there's two parts of this I think that fiveyear Horizon that's a time to Envision big right because I think it does you know as Dan s you know talks about yeah 10x is easier than 2x is those Big Dreams make you think different not not most importantly about what you're going to do but maybe in your diet what you're not going to do um you know and have to make that hard call right now and I think you're you know and that the fact that those hard calls or those changes realization it it doesn't happen

[32:18]  overnight it no matter how you know that doesn't happen overnight it does until one point it seems like it's overnight success because it's been that compounding adoption or lack of action on certain things you know that have added up to surpass what you set up as five years but I think setting that pretty audacious goal um of something that uh it does help framework is that getting us on the path and it's hard right because you know you have your day in day out but that's that's the challenge had an amazing leader on the podcast yesterday her name is uh Susan Lee Vic she's the uh CEO of an organization called Joy bound people in pets and they do a whole bunch of adoption animal stuff which is really really impactful and she said you know we've seen 84% growth over the last year

[33:06]  in our organization we placed 54,000 animals in 2023 we did almost over a hundred this year whatever the numbers equal out to and she said you know one of the things that I have to do is I have to get my organization comfortable with failing High because what we told our board this last year end of 23 was we were going to hit a 90% growth year overy year mark we came in at the 84 86% Mark guess what they weren't so upset when we failed high so instead of setting your goals low and then overcoming them set your goals high and even if you fail underneath them you're still making incredible improvements in the organization that failing High culture I thought was really interesting the uh you know back that Dan Sullivan 10x 2x is example was you know son uh some playing tennis and I he

[33:57]  wanted to get you know become a college tennis player and the question was what does it take to be a college tennis player is not the right question it's what does it take to go pro because if you have the dedication to go pro you might not go pro but you'll probably have the you know ability to be a college tennis player that's a really good example right I mean if I say the objective is to get your PhD High School seems like a given right and then graduating getting your master everything else is really cool um so here's I want to give you an opportunity what else should we be talking about here on the podcast Joe that we haven't touched on here today as we get into 2025 what's on the front of your mind how have you seen what's got you excited these days yeah so you know I mean our world is the uh is firing people uhi hiring people finding people um Etc and

[34:45]  what does that look like in our space in medical and Medtech I'll give you a little insight where I see it I mean it's been an interesting ride you know for uh since the pandemic obviously you know we had that everything stopped all at once um we didn't sit on our Clean Hands developed a lot of tools but then then it went the opposite direction everyone was hiring it was frothy and you had high cost of goods go up in an our space and in the amount of capital go down because all the you know some of the adventure banks failed Silicon Valley all of those and and the interest rates run up that combination meant 23 it dropped 9% right you know and hiring an ourspace because people couldn't pass prices along now as I look forward I think the whip saw the the

[35:33]  whip is out of the line which is great we're seeing seasonality back um we're starting to see liquidity come back into the market slowly which is I think good you don't want it to come too fast you'll create another frothy over overe exalted environment and so I really think 25 will be a very solid strong growth year um you know there could be something else out there that I don't see but I really think this year is going to be uh you'll see the innovations that have been waiting there's tons of dry powder sitting in the capital markets they're waiting for time to be able to put to work I think that now is going to happen and we're going to see some uh significant investment in med tech and growth in our space I mean I'm really excited to see what 2025 looks like you know I think we've dealt with a lot of uncertainty

[36:20]  over the last couple years and now we're getting into a time where it seems like that capital is going to come back into the marketplace and we're going to start investing into growing our teams and everything again which is really exciting for you guys but I think it's it isn't the 21 Capital where it was growth at all costs right I think I think it's the good kind of capital that's saying we want to invest in drisk profitability um you know uh there will be of course buy and share that will always occur but I think there is going to be a lot more pragmatic Capital which is I think more sustainable yeah you don't think that we're ever going to see a 2021 time in the recent decade or the upcoming decade like we saw I hope not there was I mean there was some was crazy yeah there there there was you know like there was

[37:08]  too much exuberance let's say that right you know it's like I think uh Johnny Rockefeller you know he he was famous for getting out of the stock market before the crash and his answer was once my shoe shine boy started giving me stock tips I knew it was time to get out you know so would you have that exuberance of you know like uh you know speculative messers um that uh you know they could spell the problem I don't think let's let's let's take the the Sho shine boys from back in the day to being your crypto Drop Shipping YouTube 21-year-old Financial experts so maybe we're seeing some of the same patterns in society right now you know what I mean probably same comparison exactly exactly man well Joe man I can't thank you enough for coming on the show

[37:54]  brother it's been an amazing time getting to learn about your heart and hustle and heing about the things that you're doing in this space innovating thinking about a mind of curiosity when it comes to Technology Innovation AI building teams remote everything else we talked about here today man thank you so much for coming on show he I really enjoyed it it was a great conversation Ken thanks absolutely the last thing we have for you is a conversation or is a our previous guest wanted to ask you a blind question now the blind question is a really interesting one this is an individual who is a market president for a large Automotive Group out of North Carolina East Coast Area okay what actor or actress in what movie and what role best describes you Joe oh gosh actor actress in what role best defines me oh my gosh that is a really good one you know um wolf of w

[38:44]  I'm kidding the vibe yeah that is definitely not me you know not definitely not me H that would be the shocking one that would be like what what is he talking about my gosh that is that is almost a stumper what what should I go with here you know because all the ones I go to are the big ones like you know Marlon Brando The Godfather you know Jeff however Fast Times at richmont high you know like I don't think any of those actually are hitting the nail on the head there um what what about uh Kevin ker Field of Dreams we'll just go there I'm an Iowa boy there we go school I like Kevin cner he seems like a fairly good levelheaded guy and uh Fielder dreams is a great ey movie so I'm not sure if that's my final answer Bob but I

[39:31]  will uh I'll take it for right now and there we go brother that's a great place for us to end today's episode Joe once again thanks for joining us on the podcast man really appreciate it I appreciate it thanks bye now catch you guys in the next one