Season 2 - We have some BIG updates!

In this kick off episode of 2025, Rikki shares what TNV has been up to in 2024 and how she had a hard time getting started on her 2025 vision board.  Listen in for some big news and also a suggestion on setting yourself up for success on your 2025 vision board.

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Well, friends, it has been a minute. Welcome to the 2025 beginning of season two, Candid Podcast. I've been away from the game. I took a pause on podcast in 2024 to work on a pretty huge project, two projects, but one uh really important to the life of the organization I run, Tennessee Voices. And the other, a personal project that I had every intention of finishing in 24 and did not. So ironically, I decided I'd start this podcast again in 25 and went back to last season to see how we started. And I found an episode where we went through my what I would call vision boarding process for yearly goal setting. And actually a little bit of self-care sprinkled into that because the intention of my vision board and goal setting is for additional or simultaneous purpose of self-care and avoiding my own burnout. Um, and then teaching my staff to do the same. And I thought this is the perfect place to start for the first podcast back together in 2025. Now, I am starting this podcast without my co-host, Will, because number one, he's been involved in the huge project. I can't wait to tell you all about. And actually, he has a big role to play in operationalizing the project, which was part of the work we were doing last year, but now in full swing. Um, so I would say last year leading up to the project and working our way up to a start date was really on me. And then after the start date was and is now mostly on him in terms of operationalizing that. So all that to say, he's having his own long beginning to 2025 because there's a lot on his plate. Um, and I wanted to just take a second to re-engage the listeners and hopefully get him back on when the time is right and he has some free time to spare. But I also was thinking through about how we could engage more of my team around co-hosting with me, particularly because part of the big project involves uh my team and some new members to my team. So I'll get into all that in a minute. I wanted to talk a little bit about how I viewed the vision boarding process and the self-care process leading into 25 a little differently than I have viewed it in the past. So in the past, I've tried to keep it really simple. I'm not a person who uses daily journals or engages in a lot of journaling or even intention setting outside of business strategic strategic plans. I can really appreciate people who do those things. It just isn't something that I typically do and often struggle with the time it takes. I like to believe that I am uh good at holding everything in my brain and processing. But I won't say there was probably more in my brain that I could process in 2024. And I tried something a little bit different when I engaged in my 2025 vision boarding, uh, somewhat because I needed something new. I needed some additional supports around vision boarding. I was having a little bit of a writer's block, if you will, around just setting goals because it felt a little a little like um a routine and I didn't feel like I was fully engaged in it. And I was having dinner with my husband on New Year's Eve, telling him I was having a hard time reflecting on the year because we had uh a really difficult last quarter of our year, both professionally and personally. And I would say the just quick cap difficulty personally was a move, and we chose the move, and it was very exciting, and we are very happy we did it. But a move is a move, and we were um reaching out for a lot of professional services to get us moved um to try and ease the burden, uh, which I think we did in a from a task perspective and from a schedule perspective, trying to keep it from impeding or disrupting work too much. But we didn't in or I didn't um necessarily plan for the disruption um mentally, maybe even emotionally. I again really, really wanted the move and glad for it. But it's sort of like um unpacking a suitcase that you have left on a shelf for 10 years. There's some level of avoidance because you've left it there 10 years, so you don't want to unpack it. And then there's some level of just the process that um you have to face. And it was that way with our house physically, but also that way with our house emotionally from the move, just sort of unpacking memories um was really hard. And I think I often pretend that I'm devoid of those um emotional entanglements with physical things like my home, um, because I see it as material, and I know that it's not supposed to be something uh that I hold so dearly that I can't imagine losing. But at the same time, while I don't think I held on to it that way, I did hold on to it from a memories perspective, just because we had been there so long, much of my children's childhood was, I guess, there. And um, yeah, it it just it was hard to leave and be the only family member of the four of us that seemed emotionally attached and couldn't really process with with anyone. So, and it happened really fast. So I'll tell you that story, but let me just add the professional last quarter difficulties so that if you're listening and you're one of my staff or um someone who works with me, you're not you're not writing in a narrative that isn't true. So the um the difficulty in the last quarter of the year really was around getting geared up for this project uh that I've been referencing. So I guess it's time to tell you all about that. So let's do that. We at Tennessee Voices have been partners with many organizations over the years. Our mission is collaboration. Uh, part of our mission is collaboration. It's the way we get the work done successfully. And um we hold partnership very, very dear. We hold collaboration as a pinnacle of success when competition would be the more obvious choice. And that is that is ingrained in our organization, but that is also very much ingrained in me. I was trained in the system of care philosophy, right out of school, went to work for uh an organization who had system of care work. And for those of you not familiar, if you're in social work, mental health, uh, behavioral health, substance abuse, anything like that, you're probably exposed at some level to a system of care philosophy, meaning that a well-coordinated system that resources together and collaborates amongst itself is better for the person being served than a disjointed, dysfunctional, non-collaborative system that doesn't talk to each other and therefore does the patient a disservice in getting the help they need. And so, in in this philosophy as a CEO, when it is sort of natural to think more competitively, it's something that you have to either one, really strongly believe in, or you have to force yourself to think, stop it, because you have to do the collaboration to be part of this system of care and to claim that you you know use that as part of the philosophy that guides the work you do. So, in order to honor that, I I definitely always think in the lens of collaboration, and it's not hard for me because I was really trained up that way. And there are times as a leader and as just a competitive person by nature that I've had to maybe work through a difficulty that seems like we should be um less collaborative just as a reaction to something. But I've I fight that always because it's never what's best for the people we serve. And I know that because I saw it happen in my own family when I was young. So um, and so as a basis, collaboration is key. And for that reason, I have a lot of friends and colleagues around the field in the mental health, uh, child abuse, prevention, um, supportive care, substance abuse, all all of those, all of those industries. And I have, as an organization at Tennessee Voices, we have well over we have hundreds of MOUs, memorandums of understanding with collaborative partners. We um I'm very fortunate to have wonderful colleagues. I I really love the group of CEOs around me, and I'll call out in particular the female CEOs around me only because um there are several of us who started leading smaller nonprofits around the same time, about 10, 11 years ago, and we we've sort of stayed parallel and connected as we've done our work. One of those CEOs, and She'll be on the podcast, uh, is a CEO that I really admired. We both came into our role um after the veteran CEO before us left and retired, and uh we were appointed or hired by the board and took over an organization uh around the same size uh doing similar work with a similar need for some change, not because of mismanagement or poor leadership, but environmental factors that were forcing change on small nonprofits at the time in which we came in. And so we leaned on each other when we had time to really think about ways in which we could do our work well and ways in which we could grow as CEOs, but also ways in which we could work collaboratively. And it took us a while to figure this out because we were both finding our footing, we were both changing our nonprofits in some ways that we needed to respond to the environment and our industry. And we had a lot of internal work to do. I mean, just simply as new CEOs, but but other factors. So um we a time or two would just grab a lunch to um to share stories about what we were learning and um what our experiences were like and talk about change management. We talked about change management a lot. We talked about culture, we talked about collaboration. And as we sophisticated as CEOs and matured our understanding of the industry, we started to talk about collective impact a lot. And we began talking several years ago about opportunities to work on collective impact, and it was hard to find the right next step, but we kept attending um you know, opportunities in our field uh with groups that were gathering to learn and uh again work parallel to each other and keep touching base. And um I don't know exactly when the tide changed a little bit in our conversation from how can we work together to how can we literally work in the same company doing the same things we're doing now, but together. And I would say probably well, actually, no, let me back up. I looked back into my emails and my notes from our our conversations, and it was around April of 2023 when we said it sort of out loud. And I was I was scared to talk about it because I assumed that she would feel like I did, which was what about all the questions that we'd have to answer to get to that kind of conclusion that we could combine our organizations? Um, and the first question was in my head, who's the CEO of the combined organization? And I had to feel like I was ready to explore that vulnerably and openly. And then I was sort of like worried about her feelings in bringing that up as well. Um, so I probably pondered it for a good year before I brought it up. But with the help of a mutual friend, uh realized that we were both, she and I were both thinking of this at the same time and kind of concerned about maybe um not offending each other. I don't think we were I don't think either of us would have been offended if we had feelings about being, you know, who's gonna be in charge. But I think we were worried about it being a really uncomfortable conversation and wondering if we could trust each other to have that conversation. Or at least I was that was my wonder. I don't know if that was hers. So with the help of our mutual friend, we entered into the conversation. Um, cause the our friend, our colleague friend told us it was okay, that we were we were both kind of on the same page and to go ahead and engage, it was safe to engage in the conversation. So we had the conversation and it sort of it was sort of like we were completely in sync about how this was gonna play out if it worked. And we the obvious was sort of what rose to the top, which was Tennessee Voices was a larger organization with a broader population being served and a longer continuum of services. However, the other organization was not inferior to Tennessee Voices, just had a more narrow population and uh fewer opportunities for services in a in a full continuum. Now, they were doing exactly what their mission said. They weren't prior to this point trying to be have more services per se. But as their strategic plan emerged, there was a desire to offer that continuum. And we had been doing some partnering work around referral, like when they had certain families that fit and needed our services, they would call us and we would do the same. And so, and because that's part of our job. We we have a whole resource coordination role in the community as an organization to make people make sure people find the resources they need, collaborative partner. And so um everything started lining up and the conversations were going really well. I think I began to really, really see my CEO colleague in a way I never seen, and just kept being so impressed, so impressed with her leadership, her courage, her vulnerability, her ideas, her her ability to see the future, be just like me. Uh, so we decided to engage our board in those conversations, and again, went really, really well. Had of course both had boards that ask lots of questions, which I think is the role of a board member. So I think all the questions were completely appropriate and I think they were fair, but to our advantage, and I'll say this is true for my board. I don't I don't know her board as well yet. I'm getting to know them, which is my current priority. Um, but my board most certainly had experience with companies merging and um I could see the value and also were happy and willing to help me mitigate the risk because they because they knew corporate mergers, they knew both the benefit and risk side. And so they were willing to help me, which was incredible. I had board members specifically who had expertise in mergers and acquisitions. And one of the unique things about this uh decision is that a nonprofit doesn't technically uh merge with another nonprofit. They make a decision to combine their business. There's no money exchanged for this. This decision is a strategic decision, and uh there's really no settlements or negotiations or things from a um financial standpoint. There are lots of what I would say little negotiations in agreeing to how. You'll go about the work when combined. And so mainly we had to look at did our missions align? Most important conversation, did our missions align? And then did our strategies and plans align? And did the outcome for the clients that we care for make it better or worse for them if we combine? And so we explored all that. And I would I would love to get her on the podcast with me to talk through our experience. I I I think one of the most exciting next podcasts we do could could be just uh maybe the two of us talking about our process and and what actually was going through our minds, um juggling all of this and still running our organizations and beginning to tell, once the board approved, beginning to tell our staff and walking with them through all of that. But that would be a whole other long conversation. I'm excited to tell you today that as of January the 1st, technically the second, that Tennessee Voices combined our organization with an organization called Nurture the Next, which is a prevent child abuse organization, a chapter of the Tennessee chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America. We are under the brand Tennessee Voices. We are bringing all of their employees into our organization as Tennessee Voices employees. Because when I started as the CEO in 20 February of 2014, we had 21 staff. And I every time I say that, it's just I have to stop and thank God for blessing the growth and blessing me to know how to lead. Um because it's not easy to grow that fast, and it's not easy to scale. And most of that growth and scaling happened in the last five to six years. So it's been, when I say it's been a difficult last quarter, and it was, I'm circling back now to the conversation with my husband on New Year's Eve. I just don't, I don't even remember what happened this year. That's what I said. I just I'm struggling to put a period on 2024 because I can't even remember what happened before the merge and before the move. And the merge and the move became two of the biggest points of my 2024 that really could I could not process 24. Um they were such heavy lifts that I would for a not for a second change it because the decision to merge will be one of the single most important best decisions of our organization in the history of this organization. I hope that Kristen, uh the the her that I've been referring to, uh Kristen's the CEO of Nurture the Next. She agreed to come into Tennessee Voices as the chief innovation officer and work with me. I could without her, this didn't work at all. Um it's such a blessing to have her on our team. She's incredibly talented, she is relentlessly positive. She is a visionary, and she is an innovator. And she is somebody I have really admired and one always thought would be incredible to work with. And I it's just a dream to have her committed to being on the team and being part of this long term. And so um, really, really easy. She made it really easy to do all the beginning phases of this work with me around making this decision, laying out our terms, if you will, working with the attorneys on the logistics and the legal process of getting merged. And last quarter, really, we turned it over to our teams, um, both operations and finance, to operationalize and get us merged. Um, which is a which has just been a lot of task, a lot of task and an incredible team willing to do them, which I feel totally blessed to have. Um but hard, hard because there was 4,000 decisions almost almost a day. And so the merge and the move, the merge and the move, the move is also something I wouldn't regret uh ever because it brought about a lot of positive changes um that enhanced our family and our routines and our community, and um we're past the hard parts of that move. And so now it, you know, we can look back and say, it was 100% worth it, and we're really glad we did it. But when you look back at your years, typically easy to reflect, you just pull out your last year's vision board and go, okay, did I do this? Did I do this? And did I do this? And I am such an achiever. Um, if you've taken Clifton Strength profile, you know who you are. Um, this I'm competitive. Uh sometimes that is mostly internal competition with myself. And I'm a few I'm very futuristic. That's one of my high, actually, that may be number one. I'll have to go back and review one or what's number one or two um belief and futuristic. And in so many ways, I was working within my strengths. And in so many ways, they worked against me because when I pulled out the 2024 vision board, I didn't meet some of my goals. And that was hard. That that was that was really hard for me to um to accept and to actually consciously let that be the case. Consciously choose not to complete a couple of things because I prioritized the merge and the move. I would say both of which were not on my vision board. Um, and I had to figure out how to rationalize making room for two really good things that weren't necessarily on my vision board. Um, which meant I had to move two or three other things off the board and decide if they were a carryover, one of which was writing a book that I committed to. And I want to talk to you about, I want to talk about the book um on this podcast, maybe introduce the ideas today and then later start sharing some of that with you. But ultimately, the vision board was said to finish the book by the end of the year, and I didn't. And this began a whole layer of processing my vision boarding for 2025 differently than the norm and the routine and the way that I typically have taken my staff through the process. So, all the way back to that conversation on New Year's Eve with my husband when I said I can't even remember what the year, what happened this year, besides the merge and the move. He said, get out your camera roll on your phone and pull it by year and just go month to month and make a list. Make a list. And so I I thought, yo, that's a really great idea. My brain is so clouded with so many things. I feel like a computer that or or a phone that um the storage is almost full. And so um I said, yep, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit and do that. So I opened my phone, opened my journal, and made a month-to-month summary. And when I looked back, I didn't even remember some of the best experiences of my life happened in 2024. And sadly, when I sat down with my husband and had been reflecting for days leading up to New Year's Eve, I and said I couldn't remember. Once I started going through the camera role, I was kind of sad for saying that and for not holding space and gratitude for some of the absolute best experiences of life. So I decided step one of my new vision boarding process was an audit of my year. Just going back and seeing in pictures. Because you take the pictures of things that are important to you. You take pictures when you make memories, you take pictures so you'll remember hello. And so maybe I just have to chalk it up to my brain and as an older person, and I'll need to do this step forever. But I I went into the camera role and started auditing and writing summaries month to month, and um that led me to another couple of questions. And so if you're listening and you're vision boarding or you're thinking about 2025, and you you're that person that maybe maybe you listened to us last year. Maybe you've been uh maybe you're on my staff and you've been through this process. You kind of know you're setting your goals and your four quadrant areas, and you're picking a word that is a theme across all those goals. It's pretty straightforward, and you can get it done in an hour if you really wanted to. I am suggesting adding some steps and taking a little more time because I think the gratitude wouldn't be there and wouldn't have influenced my planning for 2025 like it should have if I hadn't have taken the step. So the process after the audit was really about reflecting on what brought me joy in 2024, because I was reflecting on what was big and what was hard and where my challenges were. And I was really struggling to set intention and vision for 25 based on challenges and struggles. And the light bulb went off. That that isn't the way to vision or set intentions at all. That is actually the worst way to set your vision for your year, that you really need to be basing it off of the things that brought you joy in your year and then adding some time to reflect on what was hard and not giving what was hard more airtime than what brought you joy. And that led me to thinking about the human experience. I mean, negative emotions have more impact than the positive. Difficult things have more impact on us than the easy things. And we have to force ourselves to remember the easy things, the joyful things, the positive things, or else we get tripped up on, or we give too much airtime to everything that was hard. So I have to say this. I'm pulling out my journal, so you may hear papers. I have to say that when I did my year audit month to month, when I say one of the best experiences of my life happened in 2024, let me tell you, and this is just one, there were so many. I didn't even realize I traveled that much in 2024. I had started the year by attending my book writing camp at the Ritz Carleton. I paid to go and be with a cohort of writers led by expert writers and authors who told us how to process for first-time writers how to process or set a process for writing our book and then how to publish it. And I'd forgotten how wonderful this isn't even the best experience of my life. I'm just starting with one of the travel opportunities. This wasn't even um the best thing, but it was such a good thing. That weekend was just an incredible time for me to think and to be alone. And the I've never seen in a Ritz-Carleton before, but it was absolutely unbelievable. It was gorgeous, and um I remember coming back with so much excitement for my book idea. And I even had a conversation very shortly after that weekend with a publisher who was interested in publishing my book, and it was a huge entity that publishes books on leadership. And I was just over the moon excited about this opportunity, and I was doing really well from January to April booking in time during my evenings and weekends to work on this book. And then the the merger task sort of took over, and I absolutely started to lose the time to do it. And what I did was tuck that book writing desire way far away because I wasn't succeeding in it, and I didn't want to listen or hear or think or even look at it. Because if I wasn't gonna make the goal, then I was just gonna mentally like shut that down because I'm a I'm an achiever and I'm competitive with myself. So, but I'll take you to February and then we won't go month to month, I promise. But I when I say I have one of the single most exciting experiences of my life. When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with watching the Miss America pageants. Okay, you can laugh right now because I understand the connotations around this, but go with me. I was a child of the 80s and 90s, and I awed at the confidence of these women. And I I sat and listened in awe at the things that they wanted to do and accomplish. And the I remember the careers that they were pursuing. I remember hearing them talk about the careers that they were gonna be launching into certain industries, and they were so unique and so different. And it was it was an exposure outside of my bubble that I just I needed as a kid to see other women um talking about being in leadership and flying airplanes and going into the military, just everything. It I'm gonna say this, and again, please don't judge me. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I played with Barbies, but it was almost like like the mindset of Barbie that she could be anything, and all the career Barbies that came out. And so I may have to edit that part out because you all may hate the whole idea of Barbies and Miss USA pageants, which or Miss America pageants, which again, I understand. Believe me, I understand. But those exposures exposed me to thinking about myself and seeing myself in something as an adult. And there was a moment in time where I also thought, wow, I can't imagine walking a runway in a gown with just such poise and confidence. And my dad said to me, like, you could do that one day, and I remember thinking there is no way. Number one, I did not see myself as um, you know, having the beauty to be on that stage, and I had a really bad understanding of beauty um at that age, anyways. So fast forward to 2024, and my very dear friend, Dr. Christina Rom, who um owns Root Brand and has she and her husband Clayton have uh multiple companies, a coffee coffee company I highly recommend, Rom Roast, R-A-H-N Rom Roast, a uh supplement wellness brand, root brand, with incredible supplements, which hopefully we'll talk about at some point. Um, but not to this is not an advertisement for her. This is an advertisement for wellness, which I deeply research. Um she also has a clothing line called Mercy Dupree, and she does a philanthropic fashion show in New York City in the during fashion week in September, and one of the most famous uh, I guess what what are they called? Auditoriums. Um gosh, the name of the place is gonna escape me, and I'll I'll come back and put it in the show notes. But anyway, um she was doing a fashion show and fashion week in one of the most well-known places um in Times Square area, and she asked me when I was guest appearing on her podcast, which was also a crazy experience, because we were the 12th most downloaded podcast on the day that it went out. Um she asked me to walk in her fashion show, and I thought she was joking. I I literally thought she was just being funny when she was like, You need to walk in my fashion show. No, she was dead serious, and she said to me, I want you in my fashion show, which still is like I can't I cannot process, honestly. I just yeah, and so um she knew very little about this experience of watching the Miss USA America pageant that I told you about. But in in my little girl dreams, um I I was in a beautiful gown and I was involved in fashion in some way in my future. And I'm so grateful that that that my purpose is mental health. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't have turned down at a young age the idea of fashion. I just thought it was so far from me. Um and and again, it wasn't my purpose, so it's it's not something I pursued. Um but she brought me in for a fitting, and I really had no idea what what I'd be wearing. And she chose such a beautiful black gown, and I was just like, this is a childhood dream coming true for me. And I um, long story short, got to take an incredible trip to New York with my daughter and walk in a fashion show during New York Fashion Week. And we were staying in Times Square. I was out with my daughter going to um the theater, and there was a guy on the sidewalk holding signs saying, Get your tickets, get your tickets, get your tickets to New York Fashion Week tomorrow. And he named the time. And I I said, he looked right at me. He was like, You need tickets? And I said, No, man, I'm I'm gonna be there. And he goes, Oh, you already got your tickets? And I said, I'm walking in the show. And he was like, Oh my god, which for me, like again, these are not unbelievable experiences. There were models there, half my age, who have done a million of these shows. But at uh it was actually really close to my birthday. So I was 43 at the time, 44 now, but as a 43-year-old who had a little girl dream of walking with confidence on a runway in a gown, it was full circle moment. And I got to walk sitting there looking at my daughter, looking at me. And I remember thinking, is she is she that 13-year-old me looking on a stage and saying, wow, I can be whatever I want to be, I can do whatever I want to do. My mom is a CEO in mental health, and here she is, walking with confidence. What's really cool about the show, the fashion show is a philanthropic-focused uh show that raises money for causes, uh various causes across the board, mostly uh animal related and across the country in different organizations. And so I was walking for um my friend's uh Christina's foundation, the Rom Foundation. And I got to carry the cutest little dog named Einstein. He was part of um my look, but he was also part of the show. And he's a little white Pomeranian who I thought was going to chew my arm off right before the show started. Luckily, we made it down the runway without anything, without any incident. But I was so nervous he was going to come after me in front of everybody and I was gonna react and drop him or something because he was probably like a pound and a half, that I and I really didn't know this because I've never walked in a runway, but I didn't make the stop at the at the end at the finishing point of my walk and turn back around to the audience. And so everyone kind of laughed because, well, Einstein, the Pomeranian, and I just jetted right off the runway and um didn't really like quote, say goodbye, in other words, turn around and nod one more time to the audience. But I just remember thinking I've never seen this many cameras ever in front of me before. And then as as I thought the show was over, I was headed downstairs to go change and grab my daughter and go find a bakery or coffee shop. There were photographers all over the stairwell, and they were stopping me for photos in the stairwell and photos in the hallway, and it was just a bizarre experience, and I was I was like so exhausted, so exhausted. I I can't, I really can't imagine how people do this for a living. It's like every facial expression, every you know, poor-looking posture or whatever, they're capturing it all. And I I was thinking, man, you have to be on at all times. And reflecting on that, I thought, this isn't a whole lot different. It's physically different, but like emotionally, mentally not much different than being a CEO. And it certainly isn't much different than being a CEO who has to lead people through major change, like a business combination, like a union of two organizations. And by that I mean um anything I say about it is something that people want to hear. My staff in particular want to hear. Anything that I um reflect about the work or the challenge of the work or the the the organizations or the people is incredible, incredibly impactful and powerful. And I had to become very aware, I've never been one that minces words, and I've never been one that speaks sort of loosely. I I've always had words, positive words. Um, and what's true is true, is it's been an incredible opportunity, it's an incredible experience, it's a great organization, and the and the union is exactly what we needed to do for now and forever. And also there were moments that were hard, and I had to keep smiling. And I I know that my I know that Kristen had to do the same. And there were moments that challenged us to come up with answers to questions we hadn't pondered, and that was hard, and we had to be positive in thinking through, and we had to be fair, and we had to be um cautious and all of that, and be poised in the midst of it all. And that runway experience was exactly that. Uh, I thought I was gonna fall several times on that runway. I had on four-inch platforms, seven-inch heels. Um, I was holding a dog that was trying to gnaw at me, and I was afraid he was gonna bite me while we were making our way down the runway. And I didn't, I really didn't want to make a weird face on camera when I get bit by a dog and have that on the news. We were in Forbes magazine. My photo was in Forbes magazine from the from the show. It was highlighting the philanthropic aspect of the show, and I had no control over that picture. It was taken, it was good, thank God. But similar to this whole experience of leading through change, there were moments when I thought my arm was gonna get gnawed off. But I had to stay poised under pressure, and um I made friends with that dog, by the way. It never came after me. But a person approached the dog while it was in my arms, and I got really nervous because I was like, oh, this is not gonna be good if she upsets this dog right before I go on stage, and the dog gave her the you better back off of me growl. And she's she she sort of was like, Oh wow. And um I remember thinking, like, I am holding this little vulnerable thing, and anything could happen, anything could happen right now, and it will all be caught on camera. And the same has been true about the merge. I've been holding this vulnerable thing that is absolutely perfect for our future, and this cute little dog you would have never thought, by the way, would have ever bitten anyone. But I'm holding this vulnerable opportunity to bring us together, and stuff will happen, and I have to be prepared that it won't be perfect and that it will upset someone, or that it won't be as easy as we thought it would. And I've got to stay poised under pressure. Here's the great thing about all of this is very few things happened that were hard. It was just a stinking lot of to-doos. But I had a wonderful partner to help me carry this thing. And Kristin has just been such a good thinking partner, such a good celebration partner. When things are going great, we're encouraging each other. And when things are um maybe heavy, we are encouraging each other. And we're leaning on each other and saying, Well, you know what? Whatever question comes up that hasn't been answered that needs to be answered, we are certain we can figure out the best answer. Because if we believe in this opportunity, then there's nothing we can't we can't figure out. And we've held that mantra. And we neither one of us have ever gone through a business combination with this many people, and we uh have a lot of experts in our corner helping us, but we never pretended we knew every single answer and that it was gonna be easy. We accepted from the beginning that this was a big, big undertaking, and that no matter what, we would continue to stay committed because we knew it was right for the people we served well into the future. As you audit your year, as you go through your year and your months, take a quick summary, jot it all down. Enjoy the process of processing or auditing your year. Don't neglect to write down a list of the hardest parts, but here's what's amazing in a year that I thought was just hard. When I did this process, I ended up with three pages of notes from my camera roll, month to month, of the highlights of my year, the things that brought me incredible joy. And then I did the hardest parts list, and it was less than one page. It was less than one page, didn't even fill up the whole page, and I gave it so much space in my mind, in my thoughts. So, part one, step one, if you're embarking on this journey of planning, visioning, or setting intentions for 2025, this is my encouragement to you. Start here, do a highlight reel from your camera roll, do a list of what was hard, and process the difference. And I guarantee you, your mind will be set to start working on your vision for 2025. And with that, I hope you all have had an incredible 24. And I look forward to re engaging with you in 25. See you soon.