Year One as a Fractional HR Leader: Lisa Boucher

00;00;02;16 – 00;00;23;16
Speaker 1
Welcome everyone. Hopefully. Welcome back everyone, to the fractional operator. I’m your host, Mike Nelson from hourglass SaaS, which again, to my knowledge, is the first and only operations platform built by fractional operators or fractional operators, with the idea that it’s going to simplify your business. Welcome back to the show. I’m excited to be here.

00;00;23;16 – 00;00;35;15
Speaker 1
And with an old friend, which I keep saying old friend, which I don’t mean like we’re old, but I maybe I am, but, we we’ve known each other a long time. Lisa Boettcher, how are you?

00;00;35;17 – 00;00;36;28
Speaker 2
I’m good. Mike, how are you?

00;00;37;04 – 00;00;39;21
Speaker 1
I’m good, I’m good. All right.

00;00;39;22 – 00;00;42;28
Speaker 2
You know, we’re getting older, but we’re not old by any means.

00;00;42;28 – 00;00;53;15
Speaker 1
So, I mean, you know, and, like, I mean, we’re pretty active people. You’re a black belt, right? You’re you’re teaching, you’re doing. You’re, you know. Are you still sparring at all Lisa.

00;00;53;17 – 00;01;01;18
Speaker 2
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Every now and then the little students will make me suit up. They want to fight Mrs. Bell. So we do.

00;01;01;21 – 00;01;11;00
Speaker 1
That. Very nice, very nice. Lisa, just real quick for the audience here. Why don’t you kind of, tell us a little bit about who you are and about what you do.

00;01;11;02 – 00;01;34;12
Speaker 2
Thanks, Mike. Yeah. So, Lisa Batchelor, I call myself the air ninja. I do fractional human resources primarily for companies under 50 who don’t have their own HR people. I find that small business is a great niche because they can’t afford their own HR, but they know they need HR. And my husband and I have been running a small business forever in a day, so that’s where that niche comes from.

00;01;34;12 – 00;01;56;27
Speaker 2
I was born and raised here in the Glens Falls area. I still live live 15 minutes from where I grew up. I’m definitely a mom and daddy’s girl and can’t leave home. Yeah, and yeah, we live out in Kingsbury in farm country, and I do air, and I have my own little taekwondo school over here. And then also do some career coaching and get out and do some training and speaking in the area.

00;01;56;29 – 00;02;02;28
Speaker 1
Very nice. And how long have you been in the, the fractional realm, Lisa?

00;02;03;00 – 00;02;20;22
Speaker 2
Just over a year now. Actually, Mike, it’s been just over a year. I did consulting many years ago, and then I went to work for a local nonprofit for 12 years as the HR director, and they just decided to take a different direction with the HR role last year. And I decided it was time to go out on my own.

00;02;20;24 – 00;02;48;25
Speaker 1
Very nice. So this is like the perfect conversation, though, Lisa, because you’re a year in, which means certain things have happened. You’ve probably changed some things. And this is, you know, as as we kind of said before we really started recording, there’s there’s a lot of people coming in to the fractional realm. And so a conversation with someone that’s that’s in there are done with their first year and you’ve got some, you know, some more stories to tell, from the last year.

00;02;48;26 – 00;02;58;21
Speaker 1
I think it’s going to be a great conversation. So thank you so much. So I, you know, let’s let’s start at the beginning, though.

00;02;58;24 – 00;03;09;28
Speaker 1
When you were leaving your other position, what was really the thing where you’re like, you know what? I think I’m going to I’m going to do my own thing as opposed to go and work for someone else again.

00;03;10;00 – 00;03;29;00
Speaker 2
Yeah, there are a few factors involved. One is flexibility. At this point in our life, my husband and I like to travel a lot in the winter, and I was very fortunate in the role I was in, in that it was part time HR director and I had a lot of flexibility knowing what roles are in the area, that I wouldn’t have that flexibility.

00;03;29;00 – 00;03;47;03
Speaker 2
That was really hard to make that change backwards. But when we really sat down and talked about it between my husband and I, I wanted to make a bigger impact on our community, and I know I could do that by working with more small businesses than working with one large organization. And so we sat down and we talked about it.

00;03;47;05 – 00;04;09;05
Speaker 2
He knows what I’ve done for his business over the years. I know what small business needs that they don’t know they need. And I decided to do it on a level of you can be on retainer basis if you want me a certain amount, and I have those clients that I guarantee ours to, and they pay me a certain amount a month, but I also do it on an hourly, just like you would hire your accountant or your lawyer.

00;04;09;08 – 00;04;24;29
Speaker 2
A lot of businesses can’t afford a monthly retainer fee if they’re not really using the service, and so I offered to do it on an hourly basis because I don’t want anybody locked into anything they they can’t afford or don’t want to pay for. I think we’ve all been in those things where we’ve signed something at one point, me like, this will be great.

00;04;25;00 – 00;04;29;21
Speaker 2
I’ll just make this monthly payment and then you get to the end, you know, why did I just pay for all that effort here?

00;04;29;24 – 00;04;30;06
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;04;30;08 – 00;04;36;03
Speaker 2
So trying to have that flexible model so I can just serve as many small businesses as possible.

00;04;36;05 – 00;04;58;24
Speaker 1
Very nice. It’s, Yeah, I think that’s all of us. Right. Like, we you you really do have to be nimble as a fractional operator, because all businesses are different in different ways. And they all like to that. Some people love just that flat monthly fee. It’s easy to budget for, you know, and other people are like and I don’t know about that.

00;04;58;24 – 00;05;12;19
Speaker 1
And they much prefer doing it in a different way. So and that was going to be one of the questions I was going to ask you is like, how do you work with your clients? Do you stay hourly? Do you do you do more contract? I mean, do you see clients leaning one way more than the other?

00;05;12;19 – 00;05;13;24
Speaker 1
For you?

00;05;13;26 – 00;05;36;08
Speaker 2
It depends on the need more than anything. So I work with a local nonprofit that grew from 18 employees to 35 in like three years, and the executive director was just trying to make it all happen and came to the realization of, I can’t do everything, and we’re still growing, and they’re actually adding to their model, so they’re going to grow more and said, we need to bring an HR person in.

00;05;36;13 – 00;06;03;21
Speaker 2
And he needed to not only get processes and policies and things like that off his desk. He needed to get some of the employee management office desk. So he needed somebody that had the higher level background that he could trust to come in and do some that employ management at the same time that he really needed a retainer model where he he knows he has me a certain number of hours a month and it’s in his space, the, the hourly side.

00;06;03;21 – 00;06;19;06
Speaker 2
It’s more of those folks were like, I think I got a handle on this. I just need to call you now and then. So I just had a conversation with somebody who said, I need to relook at my benefits at renewal in September. Can you do that for me? Because I don’t understand health care and I don’t know what I’m looking at.

00;06;19;08 – 00;06;37;13
Speaker 2
And I said, yeah, I’ve dealt with that for many, many years, and I actually had a benefit certification in one point in my life. So I know what I’m looking at when I look at different health care options. What are you really providing for your employees? Is it worth providing to? The model? Depends on and and the employer.

00;06;37;13 – 00;06;53;10
Speaker 2
And I try to remind that of them that what do you really want need for me? Do you need me to be your HR or do you just need support? So that’s how I approach it from a lot of places. Say I just need it off my plate, I need you to come do it. And so I do it.

00;06;53;10 – 00;07;17;09
Speaker 2
So another nonprofit I work with, they’re interviewing for a position and they said, we have so only so much time in our day. Can you do all of the initial interviews, finish the top 3 to 5 candidates. We need you to do that for us. Absolutely. And so this week, that’s part of what I’m doing this week. I told you before we get on wrapped around this interview is eight different interviews I got to do for them to help sort that out.

00;07;17;09 – 00;07;36;07
Speaker 2
But it’s one of the things I love to do the most. And so for them, it was it’s a mix. They want me to be there for the employees, but they want the higher level. So for them, the hourly model works because next month they might not need anything from me. Yeah. So it’s just a nice mix and it’s nice for me because it keeps it challenging and it keeps it different week to week.

00;07;36;07 – 00;07;37;08
Speaker 2
What I’m doing.

00;07;37;11 – 00;08;00;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it’s it’s funny, you’ve now touched on two things that I think my or not when I think about that when I talk to fractions that they often say and one is the mobility that you have as a fractional. Right. Like I can do, I can do my job from anywhere most of the time. So it gives me the ability to travel and still be working.

00;08;00;17 – 00;08;15;24
Speaker 1
And then the other thing is you never get bored. You’re always doing different stuff. Right? So it’s not like the, the, the doldrums, you know, the monotony of doing the same tasks every single day. All day. It doesn’t. It’s not really there. Right?

00;08;15;24 – 00;08;38;17
Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely. That is a beautiful thing that. Yeah. And we went to Florida in January of this year and the weather was horrible here while we were in Florida. And I just kept extending our stay. And the day and every day was, how much longer can we stay? When do we have to go home? Yeah. And I would just call home to friends and family and call the cat sitter and be like, can you work a few more days for us?

00;08;38;17 – 00;08;50;17
Speaker 2
And yeah, it was great because we didn’t have to worry about what space did. We have to get back to that flexibility, I mean, you know, pros and cons to being an entrepreneur, but that’s one of the big pros. Is that flexibility, that flexibility.

00;08;50;17 – 00;09;16;03
Speaker 1
Yeah. You can control your time. And where you are is a little bit more right. Yeah. What I I’m curious about when you started, did you like start with a, like a program, like did you have a very specific offering that you’re going to do for folks when you first started, or was it just kind of like, I do air stuff, I’m gonna have conversations, see what air needs are out there, and then we’ll go from there.

00;09;16;08 – 00;09;34;29
Speaker 2
It’s pretty much what it was. I just started calling all my friends like you and said, hey, by the way, I’m doing this. So if you know anybody who needs help and it just kind of grew from there. You know, I called friends who are lawyers that do personnel work, and I called friends who do payroll and friends who do background checks and just said, hey, I’m out here.

00;09;35;01 – 00;09;50;22
Speaker 2
This is what I’m going to be doing. If you have clients that need help, and they’re people I worked with for years and like, well, what are you offering? I’m like fractional HR. I can be your HR person on whatever level you need and just hit the ground running and said, let me see what’s out there. Let me see what people need.

00;09;50;22 – 00;10;08;13
Speaker 2
Have tailored a little over the year, have figured out who my clients I want to work with are and who those that don’t quite fit. And I think that’s important when you’re in business, that you don’t accept every client because you need money. You accept the clients that you fit right with because you want to serve them well.

00;10;08;15 – 00;10;17;21
Speaker 2
And I’m starting to step more into the training and speaking area as well. As time has gone on. There’s a lot of need in the area for that as well.

00;10;17;23 – 00;10;35;18
Speaker 1
I want to I want to ask you about that. But before we do, I don’t want to leave the, recognizing who your target market is and and really honing in on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and who you’re doing it for. Walk us through a little bit of how that’s changed over the year.

00;10;35;21 – 00;10;52;13
Speaker 2
Yeah. So when I started last year, I really thought it was going to be a lot of the local blue collar organizations. We’re going to need HR people because that’s what my husband does. And I thought, you all need HR. None of them want it. Is that that’s true? That’s so funny to me. Like you need it. You don’t want it.

00;10;52;13 – 00;11;21;13
Speaker 2
And I literally had connections say to me, I met with this company today, and then when I heard them talk, there are and they would be an HR nightmare. You don’t want them and they don’t want you. And I’m like, fair enough. It seems to be leaning a lot into the nonprofit and the small professionals. So nonprofits that are smaller really can’t afford their own HR, but they know they need support, and they worry a lot about compliance and liability in order to stay doing what they’re doing.

00;11;21;16 – 00;11;36;10
Speaker 2
And so that’s been a great niche. And I love the nonprofit area. And I will say this out loud, I do give a nonprofit discount for all those nonprofits out there. I just think it’s the right thing to do. At the end of the day. Somebody yelled at me the other day and said, but you’re leaving money on the table like, oh, they’re nonprofits.

00;11;36;10 – 00;11;56;22
Speaker 2
They’re working so hard. So nonprofit is near and dear to my heart. But those small professionals, I have a small insurance company, a couple of small financial investment firms. They know that there’s some compliance and things out there they should have help with, and they just need that higher level. Can I call you? And I’m not sure how to handle this.

00;11;56;24 – 00;12;14;29
Speaker 2
And I think of it the same way. We have financial professionals in our life for a reason. I call my financial advisor and say, what should I do with this money? And he’s like, here’s what you should do with it. Same thing with HR. So it seems to be the niche of those small professional firms and the nonprofits that really are leaning in in our community.

00;12;15;02 – 00;12;35;12
Speaker 1
Hey, you know, it’s it’s interesting that you say that who you thought was going to be your target market ended up not being the target market. Right. And I, I, I’ve experienced that myself so many times throughout my career where I was like, I’ve got this new offering or this new whatever it is. And I’m like, oh, these people are gonna love it, right?

00;12;35;12 – 00;12;42;19
Speaker 1
And then, yeah, they want nothing to do that. And it’s like, what do I do now? I know about your pivot.

00;12;42;19 – 00;12;43;10
Speaker 2
That’s what we do.

00;12;43;10 – 00;13;22;02
Speaker 1
And we that you pivot. Yeah. And that’s, that’s one of my favorite things to talk about because I think that anyone that’s been a business owner or an entrepreneur in any space, let alone fractional, has received feedback from the market and had to make changes. Right. And I always love hearing those stories about what those changes looked like and how quickly you’re able to do it and, and, and how it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to you, which is almost always what people say, you know, like it stinks in the beginning, but so so you had to pivot on who you’re working with, and you had to pivot a little bit

00;13;22;02 – 00;13;28;05
Speaker 1
on how you’re working with people. Were there any other pivots, big pivots that are noteworthy?

00;13;28;08 – 00;13;45;18
Speaker 2
Not really. I think one of the things when you go in for yourself is you’re not always sure what your real niche is at the end of the day, and you kind of work your way there. When it comes to the speaking and training engagements, what I found is nobody’s willing to talk about how to have hard conversations.

00;13;45;21 – 00;14;07;01
Speaker 2
And I’m in. It’s on two levels. One is the hard conversation of people aren’t meeting expectations. How do we have that conversation? And that forever and a day has been a problem and will always be a problem. But my martial arts training has taught me that the kindest, most compassionate thing we can do is have an open, honest conversation about something.

00;14;07;03 – 00;14;20;08
Speaker 2
Most people appreciate it more often than not. Believe it or not, I’ve actually fired somebody who hugged me and said, thank you for always being honest with me and helping me the best you could. So there’s that.

00;14;20;08 – 00;14;22;12
Speaker 1
Expected turn of events there, right? Right.

00;14;22;20 – 00;14;49;11
Speaker 2
Was I thought she was turning to slug me and she hugged me and said, thank you and she blew me away. Seven oh, I was ready to defend myself. And she hugged me. The other hard conversation that I just did a presentation on for the Capital Region Air Association is how to talk to your employees to create dedicated, loyal employees who are valuable to your organization, to create tension.

00;14;49;13 – 00;15;15;00
Speaker 2
So many people today are saying, I can’t keep good employees. I can’t find good employees. It’s not that we can’t find them and keep them. It’s that are not having good conversations with them to understand who they want to be with us, to help them fit who we are. And so one of the things I learned from somebody I worked with for many years, who’s one of my favorite mentors, taught me that we need to know people not just professionally, but personally.

00;15;15;02 – 00;15;28;19
Speaker 2
And for years in the air space, we were told don’t get to know person people personally. That’s not what you should do, blah blah blah. The reality is, if I don’t know you, Mike is a whole person. I don’t know how to bring your best self to work.

00;15;28;22 – 00;15;49;27
Speaker 2
And so the best example I can give is somebody that I worked with where she was hired into an administrative position. And one of the biggest key things we learned about her. She loves social media. She’s rarely on it, but she’s fascinated by it and researches it constantly to look at the trends and how do you get things to go viral and how do you make things work?

00;15;50;00 – 00;16;14;19
Speaker 2
And when we leaned into that skill, she blew up the social media for that organization. And if we never asked, what are your passions outside of work? We would have never used that from her. She’s been promoted three times within a small organization, within the same seat, but promoted within her own role because of what she brought to work, because we chose to learn who she was and what talents she had that we didn’t know about.

00;16;14;22 – 00;16;36;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up because I, a two years ago implemented a tool in the business that did just that, where it was like, hey, like, I want to know, like what your professional goals are. We call it the 135 conversation. I have it at least once, sometimes twice a year was like, I want to know where you want to be professionally one year, 3 or 5 years so I can help you get there.

00;16;36;02 – 00;17;09;16
Speaker 1
If I don’t know what that looks like for you professionally, I can’t put you in situations to help you gain skills, help you gain experience, and so on. But I also did it on the on the personal side and I’m always like, no, I’m not asking for you to share things personally that you don’t want to share, but if you have personal goals that you are comfortable sharing and you can share those with me, I’m going to look for ways that I can support you in that, whether if you’re training for a race and you need some extra time or whatever, it’s going to be right, like, and it doesn’t always turn into anything

00;17;09;16 – 00;17;20;23
Speaker 1
other than I just know more about the person, but sometimes it turns into real ways that I can help them. So it’s. Yeah, I think it’s, I think super important that you know who people are, right? And like, yeah, well.

00;17;20;25 – 00;17;41;28
Speaker 2
When an employee feels cared for, they’re happy. When employee is happy, your organization is happy. When your organization is happy, your customers are happy. And good employees will take care of your customers. And somebody asked me one day, well, if you do all this investment into these people and you make them into these great employees and then they leave you, what was that worth it like?

00;17;41;29 – 00;18;00;24
Speaker 2
About what if you do the investment and they stay with you and they make your organization better? Like that’s a short sighted thought to me and I think is employers, we should make employees the best we can be, whether they stay with us or leave. But that now makes us an employer of choice, because people are going to tell their friends, you should come to work here.

00;18;00;24 – 00;18;03;11
Speaker 2
They take care of us.

00;18;03;13 – 00;18;05;22
Speaker 2
It’s to me it’s just common. Yes.

00;18;05;24 – 00;18;09;18
Speaker 1
Or even what if you don’t invest in them and they do stay.

00;18;09;19 – 00;18;15;20
Speaker 2
Oh my goodness. Right. We’ve seen it half and that’s always a disaster. Yeah.

00;18;15;23 – 00;18;42;28
Speaker 1
But yeah. So I you know I’m curious. Obviously owning your own business is hard. Yeah. No, no way around saying that. Right. It doesn’t matter what industry and it doesn’t matter what your business is. There’s no such thing in my belief, as an easy business. No, what what are some of the things that you’ve seen over your your first year in business as a fractional HR person, challenges wise, that you had to overcome.

00;18;43;00 – 00;19;01;25
Speaker 2
You got to have a pretty big belief in yourself that it’s going to work out, that you’re going to make it happen. You got to have a belief that all things work out, because financially it can be scary to go from knowing you. I mean, you did it once upon a time, like when you knew you had a paycheck in your account every Friday and your health care was covered.

00;19;01;25 – 00;19;20;25
Speaker 2
And if you wanted to take a vacation, somebody did your work while you were gone. I was sick last week. Nobody could do my work for me. Yeah, I figured out how to get the work done because my clients needed me. That’s some of the hardest lessons that you learn is, yes, you have a lot of flexibility in how you can do things.

00;19;20;28 – 00;19;38;16
Speaker 2
The unexpected moments. You don’t always have, the support you would have if you were in an office. So putting support systems in place for that, how can I figure out how I can get other things done if I can’t do it for some reason in being a, you know, I’m an office of one. There’s no team here. The team is me.

00;19;38;16 – 00;19;43;27
Speaker 2
And four cats in the cats are not helpful when it comes to air.

00;19;43;29 – 00;20;05;17
Speaker 2
The I got one that will give you great hugs, but that does not fix your attorneys at the end of the day. So I think that the hardest things in business I’ve learned is in especially knowing who your client is and not taking on a client that you know, it’s not going to be a successful relationship just because you’re looking at how do we pay all the bills in the next coming months?

00;20;05;19 – 00;20;24;14
Speaker 2
Setting yourself up for that success to be able to afford to take that time to build your business, to build it at the right rate. So it’s sustainable. I want to make sure I’m servicing clients well so they stay with me long term. You know, having a contract that’s open ended in 30 days, you can be out of it.

00;20;24;16 – 00;20;41;18
Speaker 2
I have to serve you well so you don’t walk away from me. Yeah, right. But I believe that that motivates me to give you the best of me, to make sure I take care of you. Well, more so, because I want that reputation I was taught by my parents. It takes a long time to build a good reputation.

00;20;41;18 – 00;20;59;10
Speaker 2
It takes a moment to destroy it. So making sure that you’re building good relationships over that time as you take clients on so they trust you, that you build true trust. And it takes time. Clients aren’t just going to hand you everything day some well, I’ve had one that did give me the access to everything like day one.

00;20;59;10 – 00;21;18;28
Speaker 2
She signed the contract was like, here it is. But it takes time to build trust. It takes time to build a client base, and it takes time to build the correct client base. So you’ve got to have patience. You gotta have deep belief. You got to have a great support system around you. My husband has been my biggest supporter from day one.

00;21;19;00 – 00;21;37;02
Speaker 2
My mom looked at me and said, why aren’t you consulting? You shouldn’t work for one person, which shocked me. It was the last person I thought would say that. And I have a group of women around me, mostly women, just the way it’s gone. There are some men, but mostly women around me who, when it’s a rough day, I can call them and say, wow, today was hard.

00;21;37;02 – 00;21;58;14
Speaker 2
Walk me through this. You know I’m facing this. What do you think I should do? How do I get through this? And just knowing you have a community around you is huge. So I would say the top things. If somebody is going to walk this walk, be ready financially to deal, have a support system and have a huge belief in yourself that you can do what you think you can do.

00;21;58;16 – 00;22;08;17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, there’s there are definitely I don’t want to say a lot of low moments if you’re lucky. There’s not a lot of low moments, but there’s some real low moments when you’re working by yourself.

00;22;08;19 – 00;22;28;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, the days that you put a proposal out and you think you have nailed it, and they come back and say, we went another direction and you’re like, oh, wait there, that happens. And you have to be prepared. You can’t be so attached to the outcome that it’s that affecting at the end of the day. But it’s hard some days.

00;22;28;10 – 00;22;46;01
Speaker 1
Yeah, that I, my wife and I talk about it all the time. The emotional roller coaster of sales, you know, like to your point, you don’t get a deal. But then when you do get a deal, that’s the best day ever in my life, right? It doesn’t even matter if it’s a big deal. It can be like half dollars.

00;22;46;01 – 00;22;46;14
Speaker 1
I’d like.

00;22;46;14 – 00;23;02;26
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Or when you get the deal that you didn’t think you would get. Oh, yeah. Those are the one nonprofit I got this small nonprofit out in New York City. I’m like, she’s not going to hire me. Why would she hammer me? And when she calls was like, yeah, I’m in. Let’s do this. I was like, oh my goodness, this is so exciting.

00;23;02;29 – 00;23;30;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Then that coming? Yeah. It’s great. It’s it’s so wild. I and it’s, you know, it’s interesting to one thing I’ve adapted and I’d love to talk to you about kind of like your, your business development strategy as far as sales and marketing and stuff goes. But I know one thing I’ve developed or adapted or are just kind of done the last couple of years is and this was this was a, you know, again, I’m, I’ve been selling my entire career.

00;23;30;02 – 00;23;48;26
Speaker 1
I’m almost 50 years old. So I’ve been selling stuff for a long time. And but the last couple of years, I’m kind of just like once it’s out there, I just kind of forget about it or I try to anyway. Right. I think earlier in my career, you know, I could have put that at a, well, say a $10,000 contract.

00;23;48;26 – 00;24;02;10
Speaker 1
And in my mind, I was already counting my commission. Yeah. And then you don’t get it. And you’re like, oh, shit. Yeah. So now, now it’s like, well, we’ll see if it comes back around. But it’s nice when they do. Yeah.

00;24;02;12 – 00;24;24;18
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, I think, I think about a lot of that. I don’t have any formal sales training. So that has been one of the biggest things I’ve had to learn over the last year is how to do sales well without feeling salesy. I have a friend who’s a phenomenal Aflac agent who’s done a lot of mentoring with me, and I’m grateful for that.

00;24;24;20 – 00;24;46;08
Speaker 2
And the biggest thing she said to me and this made it easier, was you’re not trying to book an appointment for a sale, your booking, an appointment to see if there’s any connection should you might walk in and sit with that person and find out they are not the client for you, and that’s okay, she said. You’re just trying to connect with people, but if you never ask, the answer’s always no.

00;24;46;11 – 00;25;04;26
Speaker 2
And so I still have to pump myself up to make those phone calls because it’s not naturally in me to sell. But yeah, you got to learn how to be a salesperson. But at the end of the day, we’re always selling something. Yeah. I’m married. I have to sell my husband on my ideas.

00;25;04;29 – 00;25;06;19
Speaker 2
Let’s be honest, right?

00;25;06;22 – 00;25;07;14
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;25;07;17 – 00;25;21;12
Speaker 2
So it’s just learning how to do it in a way that shows them you truly just want to partner with them. And if you’re not the right partner, it’s okay. But yeah, sells. Sells does not come to me easily. It’s something I really have had to learn to work on.

00;25;21;15 – 00;25;40;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think, you know, I just had, Todd Bailey on the show, the last episode recorded, and we were talking a little bit about this because he had a huge sales background and and just as do I. Right? I mean, I’ve always been in sales in some capacity. So selling to me is kind of an old hat at this point.

00;25;40;13 – 00;26;12;21
Speaker 1
But for a lot of people, especially in non sales industries and from a fractional standpoint, your CTO, your HR, you know, your your CEO, I was like these folks in a lot of cases are like the exact opposite of sales of salespeople, quote unquote, or, or the exact opposite of being comfortable with sales. And but as a fractional, especially when you’re in the beginning stages the first few years, or if you’re going to stay a solo fractional operator, you have to learn it, right?

00;26;12;21 – 00;26;32;27
Speaker 1
Like you have to do it. You have to become comfortable with it. And you mentioned you said something earlier that I think is probably one of the best sales tips that anyone can ever give, whether you knew it or not when you said it. But, it’s when you started, you just started calling people you knew and were like, here’s what I’m doing.

00;26;32;29 – 00;26;49;12
Speaker 1
Yep. You know, like it’s to me, it always sounded like the easiest thing to do. You’re going to do something new. You call everybody, you know, that that like, will pick up the phone, right? And hey, here’s what I’m doing it.

00;26;49;15 – 00;26;57;03
Speaker 1
Did. Or if you know anybody, but I just want to tell you about it. Would you be okay if I told you about it? And I’m sure it led the business for you?

00;26;57;06 – 00;27;14;25
Speaker 2
Absolutely. One of my biggest referral sources is a friend who owns a payroll company, and I called her up and I said, this is what I’m doing. And she’s like, my clients need you. And she’s been my biggest referral source since I’ve started. And we’ve known each other over 25 years. And she could not have been more excited when I told her I’d stepped out on my own.

00;27;14;25 – 00;27;35;06
Speaker 2
And so yeah, I think we just over complicate it sometimes. I just called a bunch of people I knew, I called CPAs, I knew I called bookkeepers, I knew I, I called lawyers, I knew that I had people that I had worked with and had experience with it knew who I was and trusted in me and said, here’s what I’m doing.

00;27;35;09 – 00;27;53;15
Speaker 2
How can we help each other? How can I support you? What are you looking for? Let’s let’s figure out how we can support each other in business. And so you and I met each other through BNI many, many years ago. That’s what we were taught. Yes, business isn’t about what I get. It’s about what I give. And when I give you what you need in return, I will get it back right?

00;27;53;15 – 00;28;09;29
Speaker 2
Givers gain is what we learned, and I’m a huge proponent of that, that if I just make sure I’m out in the world giving people what they need, then in return they will think of me and come back to me in a local organization I signed a couple months ago. When I sat down with her, I said, what made you call me?

00;28;10;01 – 00;28;31;21
Speaker 2
She goes, your reputation in our community is the reason I called you. She was every she goes, I’ve known you for many, many years. You used to help us out here before I worked here, she said, your reputation, everybody I talked to, you said, why haven’t you called Lisa? And that meant more to me than anything anybody could do for me to know that they’re talking about me in the community in a positive light.

00;28;31;21 – 00;28;33;14
Speaker 2
To tell somebody to call me.

00;28;33;17 – 00;28;48;23
Speaker 1
Yeah. And that is a great segue into the power of networking. Lisa. Yeah. You know, of building your network before you need it. And I don’t know, I I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

00;28;48;25 – 00;29;05;25
Speaker 2
Alan. Huge on networking. I started networking, I think, when I went to the accounting firm and I met you through B and I was when I really started networking, the accounting firm I worked for was looking for somebody to go to all the chamber events. I was like, you’re going to pay me to talk to people I’m in.

00;29;05;27 – 00;29;07;01
Speaker 1
But yeah.

00;29;07;03 – 00;29;25;26
Speaker 2
It’s a joke between my mom and I. Did you ever think I get paid to talk to people? She’s like, no, but you come by it naturally. But yeah, they instilled in me there, and I learned through going to be an I meetings and chamber meetings that it’s not our community is not necessarily what you know, it’s who you know.

00;29;25;29 – 00;29;46;22
Speaker 2
And so the more people you know, the more you’re out in the community, the more people know what you’re doing, and the more likely they are to recommend you to somebody. And so I’ve been in B and I groups I owned, co-owned networking group for about five years where we wanted women who had a side hustle to be able to have a group to get to.

00;29;46;22 – 00;30;03;10
Speaker 2
And once a month at night they came together. There was kind of like a girls night, but they were doing business at the same time. And the relationships in the business as we sort built through that. I’m a huge believer that there’s ways to network, and if you can’t afford to join a group, there’s three ways the network can be a part of our community.

00;30;03;10 – 00;30;22;28
Speaker 2
You just got to find them. And so I love to be an I. Meetings I started a networking group. I recently started an HR networking group. We have something called HR cafe. We hold it once a month on a Friday morning. It is completely free. Crandall library lets us have it there because it’s free and open to the public.

00;30;23;01 – 00;30;45;15
Speaker 2
You don’t? Yeah, you don’t have to be in HR where we’re nonprofit because we collect no money. We’re not even set up as an actual organization, but because we’re nonprofit, we can hold it at Crandall Library because it’s free for anybody to come. It’s full of networking. It’s full of connecting you not just with other HR folks, but with payroll people and insurance people and trainers and all these other people.

00;30;45;18 – 00;31;02;25
Speaker 2
And you don’t have to be in HR. You just have to be adjacent to it or want to learn about it. In some of the relationships that are growing that we’ve brought together has been amazing. And I just know that when we bring good people together that care about our community, we all find ways to help each other, build business and build our community.

00;31;02;25 – 00;31;10;26
Speaker 2
And so I can’t say enough about networking. If you don’t understand how to network, you need to call me and I will train you how to network. And I got.

00;31;10;28 – 00;31;44;28
Speaker 1
That, you got that, I got, so I want to as we’re talking about networking because it’s something that we’ve already mentioned in this podcast, but I think it’s the most important thing about networking that people often misunderstand or miss entirely. Maybe, but it’s the idea. It goes back to that givers gain mentality of you can’t go to a networking event expecting to get and take from that networking event, right?

00;31;45;05 – 00;31;59;18
Speaker 1
And if you do that, no one’s going to want to network with you, right? Yeah. Got you got to give. You have to lead with goodwill. You have to give it. Can you talk a little bit about how you employ that strategy when you’re at networking events?

00;31;59;20 – 00;32;25;29
Speaker 2
Absolutely. One of the things that I do is I do not try to meet 100 people and pass out 100 business cards. I want to make 3 to 5 really good connections at the end of the night, and I might think about ahead of time who I want to connect with. And so I will go and I will see friends and I’ll be like, hey, let me catch up with you after, because I want to go connect with people that I’m not well connected with or that I need to catch up with first.

00;32;26;01 – 00;32;50;00
Speaker 2
And then it’s, hey, I’m Lisa. I have admired what you’ve done in our community and I know you do X, Y, and Z. Could I buy you a cup of coffee sometime and just learn more about you and your company and how I can support you and your company? That’s it. In. I have taken some people the coffee that I thought would never say yes to me about coffee, because I was forwarded enough to say, I just want to get to know you.

00;32;50;03 – 00;33;11;18
Speaker 2
And I have some very good friends that I’ve made that way that I’ve said, hey, I just am really impressed with what you’ve done in our community, and I want to know more about what you’re doing and how I can support that. And if become friends over time, that now also support me in everything I do. And so I think when you network, you have to be intentional and it can’t be what am I going to get?

00;33;11;20 – 00;33;29;07
Speaker 2
It’s going to be who’s in the room that I know that I can support in some way. So can I connect them to somebody else? Maybe I’m talking them or like, oh, we’re hiring for this position. I know somebody who’s looking for a job like that. Let me connect the two of you. I did that recently.

00;33;29;07 – 00;33;53;12
Speaker 2
Another HR fractional HR person needed help because their person is out on maternity leave. Called me. I couldn’t service the client the way they needed, I said, but I know somebody who probably can, and I connected her to that person. So you have to go networking intentionally. You can’t just throw your business card out. I think people will call you, and then you can’t be afraid to send the email or make the phone call afterwards.

00;33;53;12 – 00;34;13;06
Speaker 2
It says, it was great to meet you. I loved our conversation about are you available for coffee at this date or time and give them options, right? They’re probably not going to call you. You need to call or email them. And I have been very successful that way and making connections and getting together with people that way, I think.

00;34;13;13 – 00;34;23;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, the other thing too, I’ll say you and I each know 200 to 2000 people. You and I might know a little more because we’ve been in the community a long time.

00;34;23;04 – 00;34;25;08
Speaker 1
We’ve been in the game for a while for many.

00;34;25;11 – 00;34;47;00
Speaker 2
But the average person knows 200 or 2000 people, and if they sat down and really wrote a list, they could come up with at least 200 people. So it may not be the person in front of you, it may be the people they know. My former business partner used to say this, and everybody thought my brother was the owner of Google for a while because she would say, she would say, you don’t know if Lisa’s brother’s the owner of Google and you might want to meet him.

00;34;47;00 – 00;35;07;21
Speaker 2
And for a while people were like, is your brother on Google? No. But that is the honest truth, though, right? You don’t know who I’m related to, who I’m friends with, who I’m connected to, who I do business with. So I may not be the person you do business with at the end of the day, but I might connect you to the people that you are going to do business with.

00;35;07;23 – 00;35;18;27
Speaker 2
So even if it’s the receptionist of the organization who’s the gatekeeper, you have no idea what she might unlock at the end of the day, because you took time to get to know her.

00;35;18;29 – 00;35;38;10
Speaker 1
That’s that’s a rock solid point. I have always had the, I don’t know, mantra that there’s no such thing as a bad cup of coffee and that I would have coffee with that everyone. I don’t care if you are my target market, if I didn’t think you could buy it from me or whatever it was is like you.

00;35;38;13 – 00;36;00;24
Speaker 1
To your point, you never know who they know. And I, I’ve always gone to those cups of coffee with the idea of like, how can I help this person? So it makes me curious, makes me discover about them. And then sometimes, yeah, it’s just I’m going to connect you to someone. So I think it’d be a good connection or I, you know, I this or there’s so many ways that you can help each other.

00;36;00;27 – 00;36;09;00
Speaker 1
And then you turn around and, and they’re sending you business and, you know, it is no such thing as a bad cup of coffee.

00;36;09;02 – 00;36;11;14
Speaker 2
Well, the coffee might be bad, but, that’s true.

00;36;11;20 – 00;36;12;07
Speaker 1
That’s true.

00;36;12;07 – 00;36;13;10
Speaker 2
I’m a coffee snob.

00;36;13;10 – 00;36;25;08
Speaker 1
So are you okay now? I mean, I am, too. I definitely have my, you know, my likes and dislikes when it comes to coffee, but. So.

00;36;25;10 – 00;36;54;01
Speaker 1
Trying to think about where to go from here at the obviously, in the first year, getting clients is one of the most important things that you can do. However, you still have to do the things right, like it’s not all puppies and rainbows and drinking coffee and meeting people, networking. You still have to do the things. I really love to hear how that has changed for you over the last year, right?

00;36;54;01 – 00;37;02;18
Speaker 1
Because I, I’m sure you’ve just only gotten better at it, right? You only got more efficient. Maybe you’re putting in the systems like, what does that look like for you?

00;37;02;21 – 00;37;21;16
Speaker 2
That’s a great question because there was that tipping point. You know, back last summer, I took a little time off first to like regroup. And it’s hard to leave a corporate world when you have a title and that’s what you think you live by. And then we have to go, that’s not who I am, okay? It’s a title.

00;37;21;16 – 00;37;38;13
Speaker 2
It’s not who I am. So I took a little time off, and then I really jumped into networking and calling people and getting out for coffee and going to as many chamber events as possible, joining the chambers, doing all of those things. But then, right, you get the clients and you’re like, but wait, now I get to do the work.

00;37;38;15 – 00;37;59;01
Speaker 2
So there becomes this tipping point of I can’t be out networking all the time and doing all the work, or I never sleep. So what do I do? So you have to really block your calendar out. So I’ve gotten so that there’s certain blocks of time on my calendar that are for networking, and there’s certain blocks of time on my calendar there for client time.

00;37;59;04 – 00;38;20;16
Speaker 2
And if I don’t have a client project or I’ve finished one and I still have that client time, then, then it’s time for me to do those follow ups, reach outs, creating other opportunities, and you just fill that with the other thing. So yeah, you really have to get intentional with your schedule. I used to think that being blocked into a schedule, like took your freedom away.

00;38;20;16 – 00;38;40;06
Speaker 2
And what I realized was a really well done schedule actually gives you freedom in, And I’m a person who I like to get up and get going in the morning. I don’t necessarily like to leave home, but get going so that by 4:00 in the afternoon I’m finding things up and I’m not stressed about what didn’t get done for the day.

00;38;40;08 – 00;39;00;13
Speaker 2
So yeah, you’ve got to balance that. You’ve got to block time out and you got to be able to say to clients to, yes, this is when I can get to your project. Is that timeline work for you? And if it doesn’t, then figure out how to readjust. And like being sick last week, you know, you got to figure out what needs to be done and what doesn’t, and how are we going to make it happen.

00;39;00;13 – 00;39;15;23
Speaker 2
But yeah, you have to start balancing your schedule. So now I’m a little more intentional about what events I go to. Before it was just any event to make connections and be at. I was going all the way down to Albany and Schenectady and Troy, and you were like, you got to come to this one. You got to come to that one.

00;39;15;23 – 00;39;31;18
Speaker 2
I was like, okay, so I was putting the time in. But you also start to learn what events really do give you the best bang for your buck that are worth going to in which ones are just kind of at happy hour, that nothing is really happening at. And so you start to weed through some of those as well.

00;39;31;20 – 00;39;58;28
Speaker 1
Do you have like, a mechanism or a method or a way you deal with the common trap? I don’t know, trap is the right word, but there’s a thing that business owners go through because the work is never really done. Right. And so it’s always and I and to be fair, I’m asking this for personal reasons, because even after 25 years of being self-employed, I still have not figured this out.

00;39;59;00 – 00;40;11;20
Speaker 1
But I, I don’t ever end my day because I’m always like, oh, I gotta get that stuff done or I gotta, I gotta go do that. Like, do you have a way that you are able to say, like, I’ve accomplished enough for today and I’m happy with it?

00;40;11;22 – 00;40;30;18
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. I have a continuous to do list. So I have a planner and a nap planner. The top three things that top 3 to 5 things that have to be done that day are honored. And those are the top focus. And then the rest of it shuffles. There are some nights I’ll sit in the office and work till seven, 8:00 at night because I feel like I have to get something done.

00;40;30;21 – 00;40;50;23
Speaker 2
But typically if I’m doing that, it’s because at the end of the week I want to take time off. And so if it’s client work, client work always comes first. I always put client work first. But the back end stuff for my business, that’s what I would absolutely has to be done. What could be put off another day or two or hey, it’s a rainy Wednesday night.

00;40;50;23 – 00;41;07;29
Speaker 2
I might as well sit here and work anyway because I can’t go do anything outside. I worked a lot of Sundays over the winter. What the hell else am I going to do in upstate New York in the winter when I don’t like to be cold? So I would get in the office 2:00 in the afternoon. I’d work till six, 7:00 at night.

00;41;08;00 – 00;41;27;29
Speaker 2
My husband has his own business. He does the same thing. It’s just the way we like our life. But Saturdays I take the whole day off because I spend it with my parents. And I don’t want to do work on a Saturday. Right. And so some there’s going to be seasons where you’re working 68 hours, 80 to 80 hours a week on your business because you have to.

00;41;28;02 – 00;41;45;03
Speaker 2
But there’s going to be seasons where you can say, I can put a 20 hour work week in this week and everything will be okay. Yeah. And you just you you look at it, I take either Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. I sit down and I get my calendar ready for the week. What is my calendar look like?

00;41;45;05 – 00;42;11;10
Speaker 2
I’ve also got. And so before I will put something on my calendar, whether it’s a lunch, a dinner, a meeting, anything, I look at what my calendar looks like for the week and say if I add this, does it make me feel better? Or does it stress me out that I’ve put it here? Because I’m finding that if I put too many appointments in a week and then I get stressed out and then I’m worried about can I get the work done, I’m distracted.

00;42;11;12 – 00;42;26;25
Speaker 2
Right. So I do that. Now I look at my calendar and if somebody is like hey can we have coffee. Who is it. What do they want for me and how can I best insert it in here. And I’m not afraid to be like I can’t have coffee with you for two weeks. Most people are understanding.

00;42;26;27 – 00;42;48;13
Speaker 1
So really just comes down to, well, not just comes down to. But it sounds like that calendar system of blocking your time. And then but also that that critical task list, right. That 3 to 5 is like here’s so assigning priority. Yeah. And then and then saying I did enough. Just let’s come down to that.

00;42;48;14 – 00;42;53;16
Speaker 2
Right. So think back to the corporate world when you worked in somebody else’s office.

00;42;53;18 – 00;43;08;03
Speaker 2
There were nights we would stay and work late. Right. Because there were deadlines and you had to get stuff done. But for the most part you went, what’s my priority today that my boss, what will your, your boss, if you had to tell you what was priority for the day? It’s the boss. You tell yourself what it is you’d say.

00;43;08;03 – 00;43;23;19
Speaker 2
As long as you get that 3 or 5 things done today and show up tomorrow, I don’t care. And that’s what you have to do with yourself. You kind of have to step back and say, if I were telling an employee what needed to be done today, what would I tell them? And when it’s done, when is it okay to unplug and walk away?

00;43;23;21 – 00;43;44;09
Speaker 2
There’s nights I have clients that I’m texting with until 7:00 at night because they have an immediate need and I’m there for them, but then there’s weeks at a time that I’ll go that I don’t hear from anybody outside of those hours. And it’s okay. You pick and, you know, sometimes you got to be there, but most of the time your clients aren’t working after five either, so they don’t want to hear from you.

00;43;44;11 – 00;44;12;01
Speaker 1
Yeah, I will say that is one every single day at around that 5:00, I’m just like, okay, I’m not going to get any more emails today because that’s like my biggest thing is I’m in meetings all day, I’m working with my team, I’m working with my clients, I’m doing podcasts and all while that stuff’s happening, the emails are coming in and they’re stacking up, and every one of them is something that needs my attention then.

00;44;12;01 – 00;44;22;10
Speaker 1
But every day at 5:00, I’m like, okay, I’m probably not going to get any emails, and if I do, it’s going to be a that’s such a slower frequency. It’s just like, who? All right, thank God.

00;44;22;12 – 00;44;39;27
Speaker 2
But you got to train people to like I have found there are a lot of people are just emailing you in the moment. They don’t need you right now. They’re working on that right now. Right. So they don’t necessarily need you to answer in this moment. They just need you to know that at some point they need it.

00;44;39;29 – 00;44;58;12
Speaker 2
So I don’t look at email all day long, I take breaks, I’m looking at email here and there and answer when they can. So I had an hour break between my last interview and a call I had before you, and I took that hour to get some lunch, and then sit down and answer a few of the top priority emails.

00;44;58;14 – 00;45;11;21
Speaker 2
And then when I get done with you, I have about a half an hour to an hour break. I’ll look and see if there’s any priority emails. But right now, while we’re on here I am. Everything is completely shut down. Even if my husband called me right now, it wouldn’t come through.

00;45;11;24 – 00;45;12;03
Speaker 1
So that.

00;45;12;03 – 00;45;31;19
Speaker 2
I can be focused in. It’s okay to to take your phone and put it on focus, work for an hour so nobody can bother you, right? We’re just so trained that this, that we’re trapped and strapped to this thing that we think we have to answer it. When in reality is sometimes somebody will text you a question, and when you get back an hour later, they’ll be like, never mind that.

00;45;31;19 – 00;45;32;20
Speaker 2
Figured it out.

00;45;32;22 – 00;45;33;14
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;45;33;16 – 00;45;37;27
Speaker 2
And it’s not me ignoring you. I just right now, that’s not my priority.

00;45;37;29 – 00;45;42;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. The phone.

00;45;42;03 – 00;45;42;19
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;45;42;21 – 00;46;13;14
Speaker 1
It’s a thing. Always be changing our attention. Lisa, one more question for you. If because I think you’ve got such a great vantage point for this question. But if you are going to go back to yourself a year ago and change one thing about what you did then compared to what you’re doing now, what would you change or what would you tell a year ago, Lisa, like, hey, you’re going to do this for a little while.

00;46;13;14 – 00;46;19;01
Speaker 1
It’s it’s not going to work. Do this instead or something along those lines.

00;46;19;03 – 00;46;24;18
Speaker 2
You know, that’s a great question. And I thought about that over time.

00;46;24;20 – 00;46;46;21
Speaker 2
I’m a true believer that I had to walk through the way I did to help others who come behind me, excuse me so I can say would have shut up, could have all day long. It doesn’t matter. I think what’s most important over that last year is just learning who I really was and who I really wanted to show up, as in this world.

00;46;46;24 – 00;47;13;20
Speaker 2
Sometimes when we work for somebody else, we turn ourself into who they need us to be and not who we should be. And it serves nobody. At the end of the day, I wish I had just reminded myself of that early on, but I do believe when I do career coaching for women, I had to walk through what I did in order to help them understand that it’s okay to feel what they’re feeling and go through it the way they did.

00;47;13;22 – 00;47;15;21
Speaker 2
But yeah.

00;47;15;23 – 00;47;38;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s one of the other shows that I do, I do with a guy named Derek Foster. I don’t know if you know Derek or not. He don’t shout out to Derek or read Dio cleaning Systems. But Derek and I talk about it a lot, and I, and I should say, he reminds me of this all the time when I start whining about some obstacle I’m facing in my business.

00;47;38;09 – 00;47;56;05
Speaker 1
And he’s just like, you know, he’s like, you just kind of have to. It’s a process and you have to go through it no matter what. Right? And every time you learn that lesson that allows you to graduate to the next step and there’s no no shortcuts, no miss in it, you just gotta go through it. All right.

00;47;56;07 – 00;47;56;23
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;47;56;25 – 00;48;15;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. There’s two things I think of one of them. I don’t know who said this, but you have what you wished you had a year ago, right? It’s a good reminder. A year ago, I wish I had the problems I have now. The other thing I think about is, we have lived a very blessed life. I cannot complain about anything.

00;48;15;05 – 00;48;30;12
Speaker 2
And when my husband and I are having a rough moment, whether it’s in business or personally or whatever, we remind ourselves people wish they had the problems we have. Yeah, because in the grand scheme of life, our problems are probably not that big of a deal.

00;48;30;14 – 00;48;34;16
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s the perfect spot to end it on. Lisa.

00;48;34;18 – 00;48;35;18
Speaker 2
Right. Thank you.

00;48;35;21 – 00;48;42;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. No. Thank you. I’m so grateful for you to come on the show. I really you you were so gracious. You said yes immediately.

00;48;42;26 – 00;48;43;17
Speaker 2
Curse Mike.

00;48;43;17 – 00;49;01;05
Speaker 1
It’s you. You know, that’s amazing. And again, the power of a strong network, right? Like we’re all there to help each other. So thank you so much. That was great. I really enjoyed that conversation. I think that, I’m excited to, for and for your business and what you’re doing, and it’s growth and it’s exciting.

00;49;01;07 – 00;49;06;01
Speaker 2
Thank you. It’s exciting to see where you’ve come from since you started, Mike. It’s been a great journey to watch.

00;49;06;01 – 00;49;09;14
Speaker 1
So yeah, you know, never a dull moment. At least I try to keep it spicy.

00;49;09;21 – 00;49;12;21
Speaker 2
You always entertained me. Which was the most important part.

00;49;12;23 – 00;49;15;06
Speaker 1
You know, that’s. I feel like that’s my job.

00;49;15;09 – 00;49;16;10
Speaker 2
You’re doing great.

00;49;16;13 – 00;49;40;12
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. Yeah. And of course, thanks, everybody for listening. I almost forgot which podcast I was recording and did the the wrong closing line here. This has been the fractional operator podcast. Please check us out. You can go to our website. Hourglass. That’s, hourglass SARS-CoV. You can find our podcast episodes there.

00;49;40;12 – 00;50;00;11
Speaker 1
You can find our blog there. You can find our newsletter that is a curated list of content from around the internet each week that, is built specifically for fractional operators and, trying to get some of that information out there to all of us. And, you can also find our podcast, of course, on Apple Rumble, Spotify and YouTube.

00;50;00;14 – 00;50;03;06
Speaker 1
And thanks for hosting, everybody, and we’ll see you next week.