E44: Creating Inclusive Office Spaces: Coaching Strategies with Stephanie Warlick

In this episode of the United in Accessibility podcast, Stephanie Warlick discusses the importance of inclusive communication and digital accessibility in small businesses. She shares insights from her book, "The Dark and Silent Office," and outlines actionable strategies for fostering workplace equity and effective communication practices to bridge operational gaps.

Transcript

00:03 Speaker

Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast. Today, we are excited to welcome Stephanie Warlick, Founder and CEO of 5FT View Consulting, LLC, author of "The Dark and Silent Office", a digital accessibility guidebook for inclusive communication, and creator of the “Stand in the Gap” method, coaching program. Stephanie brings over 30 years of experience in HR, finance and operations, empowering small and medium business owners to create inclusive, efficient workplaces. With her unique blend of hands-on consulting and a commitment to workplace equity, Stephanie supports teams in building sustainable operations while advocating for accessible, meaningful communication practices. Tune in as we dive into Stephanie's insights on fostering inclusive workplace communication strategies for addressing digital document accessibility and actionable steps to close operational gaps for long term success on the United in Accessibility podcast.

01:05 Christopher Michael Lee  

Welcome everyone. My name is Christopher Lee, and I'm here with Stephanie Warlick and Stephanie, welcome.

01:11 Stephanie Warlick  

Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

01:13 Christopher Michael Lee  

Excellent. So, tell us a little bit about 5FT View as well as yourself and your background. 

01:18 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, 5FT View is the company that I started about a year ago when I left the corporate world, and I just decided I needed to go back into small business. 5FT View is an organization that serves, where I serve as a fractional COO sometimes that is called integrator in EOS world. So, I do that as well, and I'm certified as a senior professional in HR, so I work with a lot of companies in their HR realm also. So, I've got 30 years of business experience. I grew up in small businesses with family-owned businesses. When I got married, my husband and I had a business together. And over the years, the last 30 years, I've served in HR Finance ops, recruiting all of the back-office side of things, except for marketing. And I love it. I love serving small businesses. 

02:06 Christopher Michael Lee  

So, HR, it's not usually the easiest area of a business, large, medium or small. Right? 

02:14 Stephanie Warlick  

Yes, correct.

02:15 Christopher Michael Lee  

And tell me a little bit about what you do with the companies, and we're going to drill down on some of these questions, but just curious, why HR? What really excites you about it and the impact that you can make on medium to small size businesses?

02:29 Stephanie Warlick  

I fell into HR to be honest with you, I was always fascinated in high school and college with organizational development and running a small business, but my parents had a small business, and it's a growing nonprofit that required a lot of HR work. There was a lot of paperwork. We interviewed hundreds of people a week to fill many positions for this growing organization. So, I sort of fell in that because I needed a job, and that looked like a possible career path as a psychology major. And when I moved to Washington, DC, I continued in HR. I did get out of that field for just a little bit, because it had some disciplinary and, you know, some of the unpleasant sides of HR that burnt me out pretty quickly as a young person, but I really stumbled into it. But that said, throughout my career, I kept finding my way back there because I love recruiting. I love the people’s side. I love organizational development. I love developing individual strengths and abilities for the betterment of them, as well as the organization. And that's really why I love it. I know that an organization is not successful without great people, and that really is the only differentiator the company has, is they're great people, so taking care of people as their greatest asset is critical for a small business success, and how that helps small businesses is, many small businesses and startups can afford an HR dedicated person, so they might just hand it off to an admin person, and it really needs to be a little bit more than a person that doesn't really know how to handle those things, most importantly and critically, right now, the compliance side of HR, with all the changing laws and multi state laws and benefits and things like that that are required, a small business does need to be competitive, and I want to help small businesses be as successful as possible.

04:20 Christopher Michael Lee  

You know it's interesting. You and I have a lot in common, particularly in the area of all degrees. Psychology is where I come from, as well as growing up in a small business family. Yeah, that around the kitchen table every night. It was mostly HR, It and Finance. 

04:35 Stephanie Warlick  

That's great, right?

04:36 Christopher Michael Lee  

So "Executive Doer" tell me about that phrase. What exactly encompasses that in the work that you do?

04:44 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, thank you for asking. I said that once, and that has stuck. I keep thinking, "Should I, should I keep using that phrase?" Because I don't know if it downplays the work that I do, but I think, what does it mean to me? It means that I roll up my sleeves, and I get, I even rolled up my sleeves today. That's I usually have my sleeves rolled up because I'm a kind of get to action kind of person, right? And it also was where I developed the name 5FT View. So, you know, many consultants work at a strategic level, and they say this is what you should do. And then they drop off a three-inch binder to a small business owner visionary and say, "Now execute." And the small business owner visionaries looking at them going, "Okay, well, I'll do that right after I eat and pee". And they don't have either the capacity or the skills to be able to execute those strategic level things. What small business owner visionaries try to do is get all the daily operations done and then hope that they can go home and see their family. But a growing and successful small business, just your hair is on fire all the time. So, with my breath of experience in finance, in operations, in recruiting, all of the back office, I come in and I can act like the COO, the executive doer, I can take things right off the plate of a small business owner with very little guidance. I need guard roles and parameters about what can be spent not spent, and some basic rules, but otherwise, I just do, and I find that my small business owners feel that really helpful, that they don't have to look back. I just get it done.

06:19 Christopher Michael Lee  

I absolutely love that. I mean COO. So having that ask expertise with the finance and all the HR aspect is so important, and that communication piece is so critical, and investing in that organizations need to invest that is so important. So glad you're doing what you're doing. So, drilling down a little bit into disability and inclusion. I have to tell you, as much as I like executives to do, as a phrase, I love the title of your book, that you should also an author that you didn't mention in your intro. I don't believe "Dark and Silence Office", and I think that is just, it's a beautiful phrase that I have not heard before. It just, I thought, so, what is that about?

07:04 Stephanie Warlick  

Thank you. So exciting. I so glad you asked. I didn't mention it. I guess it's, it's relatively new. I launched it for GAAD in May. "Dark and Silent Office" came out of my identifying a gap in my work skills and my organization. So I did work for a digital accessibility company a couple of years ago, and I was the chief administrative officer and sitting there running contracts and operations, sales, operations, finance, recruiting, all of the back office thanks again, I had no idea how to communicate with my peers that were Blind and Deaf, and I was so ashamed and embarrassed, and I really reflected, and I thought, how is that possible that I got to be a 30 year professional? I finally made it to the C suite, and I am close to getting my senior HR certification. I didn't have it when I started, but I have since then, and I had no idea how to communicate with all of the individuals that I needed to serve. So, after I left that organization, and combining that with my HR skills, combining it also with my coaching methodology, which is about standing in the gap, seeing problems, identifying problems, solving them, which is how I think one excels in business and as an individual and in spaces for business I wrote the book. I said, if I am this experienced in HR and have been in this long, I know that all of the other HR professionals out there have limited knowledge and experience. The other thing that I identified was as a small business owner, and serving small business owners, a lot of digital accessibility companies are not affordable. So, if a small business wants to do better, be better in terms of digital accessibility and content accessibility, how are they going to get there when they can't afford $100,000 customized website. In addition, as an HR person, my communication with my peers is through email, documents, websites, PDFs, not through the website, maybe an intranet. But if I want to have inclusive communication with my peers, it's got to be on the content side. And I experienced that like, "Hey, can you fill out this benefits package application? Oh, sure. Can you give me a remediated PDF? No, I actually can't. I'll see if there's somebody that can get that to us in about two weeks." So, kind of pulling all of those concepts together, I just said, I've got to solve this. I felt such a strong pull with having the knowledge that I couldn't walk away from it, I had to do something about it. So, I wrote the book as a really simple, easy guide digital accessibility guide book for inclusive communication so that peers could be more inclusive with and allowing an organization to have. Additional diversity through that knowledge.

10:02 Christopher Michael Lee  

You know, I wonder not having read the book, which I will read the book, because we're dealing with the same thing as a small organization. You know, hiring a diverse group of employees, making sure that the healthcare systems are accessible in their backing, is challenging making sure our employee handbook is accessible. You know, those things come naturally to us because of the staff we hire at what, but you have to have resources to do that. And you mentioned earlier, as an executive doer that just take the cuffs off and let me go do my thing. You know, put some boundaries, right? So, I'm curious, you know, in the sense of, do you find the companies that you work for when you walk in the door, any resistance to do that? I mean, is it when you come to them and say, well, this is the way that you communicate. You need to communicate my recommendation, and these are the resources that are needed to do that. Because it shifts the organization.

11:02 Stephanie Warlick  

From the visionary owner, I don't really get a lot of challenges. As you said, they've brought me in. They are usually in some level of desperation to solve problems that they don't have the bandwidth or the skills to solve without someone else. And sometimes that's the visionary, because they don't know how to lead or manage. They're just too high level. Sometimes it is a bandwidth issue. Sometimes the visionary is just so all over the place that they drive the team crazy, and somebody needs to be that filter. So usually, I don't get pushback from a visionary. Again, sometimes the staff are excited that I'm there because, again, a small organization, everybody's wearing multiple hats. Oh gosh, somebody else is here to do work for us that actually knows what they're doing, and we don't even need to train them. That's wonderful. Every once in a while, there's no worry by existing staff that I might be there to take their job, and I'll remind them I'm not here, I'm a consultant, I own my own business. I'm just here to help and let me know how I can help you. So really little pushback that I can think of. Sometimes small businesses like to do things, everybody's friends, everybody hangs out together on weekends. Sometimes they like to have little policy and process because they just want it to be easy going and feel comfortable and not a lot of rules. I get that. But in order to scale a small business, yeah, you have to have some guard rails again, right in order. And I'll give you a great example of that. So, one of my and love all my clients, but one in particular that I've worked with for a while now, when the storms just occurred in South Carolina, there was the question, what do we do these people around work for a week? Do we not pay them? Do we have them use their PTO, or do we pay them? And I said, well, I know you're always very generous, and the fact that you're asking means you're open to paying them. And I think we could do that. We could also not pay them, or we could pay them partial. They just decided to pay them. I gave them all of the different options. I, frankly, did actually advise that we not pay them because there was another person in another area that lost internet for a day unrelated to the storm, that they weren't going to pay because that person wasn't it wasn't because of the storm or an emergency situation. I said, that looks a little disparate to me. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. They chose to pay the team. The week later, we had five more people lose their power or internet and not be able to work, and they were like, oh gosh, now we've lost two weeks of productivity, and we're going to pay them, and we won't be able to sustain this, which was the reason I suggested this. I said once you, once you give and give, there was an expectation by employees that you continue that generosity, and they won't understand, and you've got to be very careful about who you pick and choose. That gets it, it's kind of an all or none. We don't want to be discriminatory in any way or peer discriminatory. So anyway, they came back to me, and they said, Okay, well, we're going to go back and qualify for this. This is a one-time thing. Then it's like, yeah, that's a great idea. So sometimes they want to be kind of generous and really don't look far enough ahead to see the future ramifications of the decisions that they're making and that's what I help them do.

14:19 Christopher Michael Lee  

So, to drill down the digital accessibility side, because it's good to hear that example, you know, because that plays into it, and not getting a lot of pushbacks even the digital accessibility side of mid-size to small corporation, I just mentioned HR systems and so on. What are some of the lessons that you learned and working with organizations of how maybe to approach them, that this may need to be done finance wise. You need to put this money towards this resource or internal training. I don't know. Go wherever you want to go with that, but what are some things that maybe were aha moments like I should have thought that you know.

14:56 Stephanie Warlick  

The aha moments that I've had are continue. You to be where I was a few years ago, and that awareness is absolutely number one. There are a lot of folks in this world that have never been exposed to anyone with a hearing or vision challenge, and therefore they don't even know that digital accessibility is a thing. I remember when I first started working with a digital accessibility company that I referenced, and I'd been in government contracting for 12 years, and they were very excited that it was my first week. I probably shouldn't have opened my mouth, but they were very excited about the progress that they had made over the last year and all the doors they were opening. And I said I was in government contracting for 12 years, and this like maybe came up once, like I heard someone say 508, C3, in a meeting one time. So, I'm not saying that to criticize the effort and the and the volume of progress that has been made. I'm saying that because there's still a ton of green space out there, of awareness and education, and that continues to be wherever I go, the learning for me and for companies. If I extend that just a little bit further, when I talk to companies about coming in and teaching them the basic skills of the book, which are really at a grass roots people level, not an organizational level, that can be very impactful, because that has The opportunity to spread significantly without cost by the company, with very little effort by individuals and not eating tech skills. They think that they're more accessible than they are. Of course, our website's accessible. And I'll, you know, just a free accessibility checker on and it's 50% accessible. And then they'll say, of course, we're using a CRM tool that's accessible. And I'll say, okay, well, what about the documents in the that you've uploaded into the tool? Oh, no, we didn't make those documents accessible. Like, okay, well, it’s kind of all built on each other. So, there's a lot of awareness and education and that continues to be just an aha moment for me and my clients. 

16:59 Christopher Michael Lee  

It's amazing. You know how to connect the dots? You know that people don't do it.

17:05 Stephanie Warlick  

It is and it's complex and daunting when you think about digital accessibility at the high level. And again, that's why the book is so simple. Any person that knows how to use a computer can pick this book up and apply content accessibility every day. Here's what use. This font. Turn on closed captions for your meetings. If you're going to host an event, make sure there's physical accessibility. Try and send out your documents in advance. Really basic concepts, color contrast, those kinds of things that make impact and have ripple effects. I've been speaking a lot over the last two months at events called Disrupt HR. They're a worldwide set of events, and it is speaking to the HR folks out there. And it's a really cool format. It's 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide for five minutes. And so, I just ramble through some of those quick concepts that I've had people come up to me after everyone and say, "You taught me more in that five minutes than I've learned in the last six months."

18:12 Speaker

The IAAP Certified Professional and Accessibility Core Competencies, CPACC credential is IAAP foundational certification representing broad cross disciplinary conceptual knowledge about thoughtful design, policy and management to be inclusive of all. The CPACC is the ideal credential for those who manage and support accessibility, but who may not personally design, implement or evaluate the technical details of accessible solutions. Check out the exam content outline on our website. 

18:49 Christopher Michael Lee  

You know. I think a lot of times in the accessibility bowl space that we stay in this bubble, you know, and I'd love to hear that you went to an event that you can make such a big impact with, you know, five minutes.

19:02 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah.

19:03 Christopher Michael Lee  

So, I'm guessing, and maybe jump in a little bit, but I'm guessing that some of the discussion we just had is really a method that you use when you go into organizations, and it's more of a coaching type method. And I know that you kind of coined a method, "Stand in the Gap" method. Am I on track with that, or am I way off? 

19:27 Stephanie Warlick  

You're not way off. I use Stand in the Gap method and developed a methodology. That is how I coach individuals, and that's how I operated when I was in the corporate world outside of my own small business, I kind of said I was really successful, and I got raises and promotions. And guess what, I don't have an MBA, and for someone to have gotten to where I am in my career, it's pretty uncommon not to have a higher education degree, and that always was a concern that I hindered myself by not doing that. But what I did instead, because I didn't, was I continued to look for gaps in the workplace that needed to be solved, and I had free reign by my beautiful and amazing former CEO named Michelle. And I'd say, Michelle, that is not being done and that's impacting my success. Can I go take care of that? And she'd say, Steph, if you want to stand in the gap, have at it. I've got your back all day long. And that's, that's how it was coined for me. I do think it's a biblical term and used in other areas as well, but that it was really by Michelle saying that to me. And so, I apply that in all areas of my life. When I when again, I reflected, I've written a children's book, and it was because I couldn't find a book to talk to my toddlers about scary noises and how to use your imagination to overcome your fears. I wrote a book. The same with "The Dark and Silent Office". And then when I coach, whether I'm using the EOS methodology or just serving as a fractional COO. I go into organizations and I look for the gaps, the problems that need to be solved, because really, that's about what cause analysis to me, often say, this is the problem. How are we going to solve it? Let's take care of it. And I do use that, as you said, to coach individuals and say, this is how you keep your ear to the ground and listen for problems in different organizations. I would just assume departments, because they'd say, you look like you know this and you can do it, you're ready. And I'd say, "Sure, I'd love to learn something new". And my coworkers would say, "You're crazy taking on that blank show of a department because it's a wreck. Say, Well, it seems to me there's no better time to take something on than when it's a wreck, because I got nowhere to go but up." So, I teach people how to do that to find success in business or as an individual. 

21:54 Christopher Michael Lee  

So, I'm curious about the name of your company and how you came up with it, because it probably reflects a little bit how you walk into an organization, so you have a 5FT View. How'd you come up with that?

22:06 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, right. It does reflect what I do. So, I started with what I don't do. And as I mentioned when you asked me about executive doer, I'm not a strategy person. I'm, frankly, ADHD, so I'm kind of a quick start and go and sit down and plan something out, like, it's like, poke my eyeballs out, painful. So, I'd rather just do when I assemble things, I don't read directions, I just go. I don't do strategy, I don't create. I don't love to do that. I can. I don't love it. And that's the 30,000-foot view. So, what's the opposite of 30,000-foot view? And it's the 5FT View, and it really has nothing to do with the fact that I'm five foot five. That's a coincidence, but it is down to the roots, tactical, operational, in the weeds, detail oriented. Get this stuff done and check it off the list kind of view.

23:03 Christopher Michael Lee  

That makes a lot of sense. You know, I love the fact that the name of the organization, name of the company that you have, is so clear about standing in there and looking face to face and not being that far away. And let's not get way up here. I'm here to actually make a change, right? 

23:19 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, yeah. 

23:20 Christopher Michael Lee  

That's wonderful. 

23:22 Stephanie Warlick  

Thank you. 

23:23 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, no, I think it's just awesome. And I love your approach, and I like the experience, actually, that you have with digital accessibility, bringing that into these organizations, with the finance and HR piece on top of that, it's, you don't get that too often. Actually, you really don't. So, leadership models, you know, because, I mean, a lot of times those are kind of very, you know, high strategic aspects. So how do you come into an organization and influence them from a leadership standpoint? I'm curious to talk to you a little bit more about that.

23:56 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, there's really two primary methodologies that I base a lot of my work on. One of them is EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Again, I do serve as a Fractional Integrator and an HR specialist in that realm. Many people know the book "Traction" that is the basis of that model and that, gosh, I wish I had that when I was a small business 30 years ago, but it's a really great methodology to get the visionary and the integrator on the same page. Make sure that you're solving problems, moving through issues. You establish goals. Everyone focuses on core values. I love that. So whether an organization is fully implemented in EOS or not, I use that as a framework for a lot of the work that I do, sometimes a small business isn't ready to take on the implementation costs, but I love it, and love to speak to that the other methodology or concepts that I use in terms of leadership is Strengths Based Leadership. I absolutely without a doubt think that individuals will be happier and more successful, and companies will be more successful and have better retention if individuals can focus on what they're great at. It's not just about what you love. I love singing, but I am absolutely the worst singer in the world. In fact, my music teacher in fifth grade told me not to sing too loud. It's not just me saying that. I say I'm really bad, but it's about doing what you're great at and optimizing those skills and strengths and then finding how you can apply them to your purpose, and if people and organizations can identify those strengths, like strengths-based leadership and strengths Finder. If you can apply those concepts to your work, I just find that there's the greatest success, and with that, the best teams are well rounded teams where not everyone is the same. There's a variety of strengths and abilities and diversity where we can optimize successes. 

26:06 Christopher Michael Lee  

Do you ever use this because of your background, academically, from the psychology standpoint, do you ever use just different personality tests when you go in? Because, I mean, a lot of psychologists, when they go into an organization, do that in Myers Brigg, or whatever it may be, is that something that you'd play around with, because communication is so vital, right?

26:26 Stephanie Warlick  

I don't usually, there's different business consultants that do that. I don't often hand them to the group to do. But like EOS uses the Colby index, and that's a set of terms and communication that are often used. So, I have my Colby score. Of course, I've done the Myers Brigg, a new organization that I'm working with, their management consultant uses people best. I think that's what it's called, people best, and that's a really comprehensive analysis of the person's innate way of performing. So, I think it’s all great information to get to know individuals and how they might best communicate with each other. But it doesn't need to be complicated if a small business doesn't have that, I mean, to understand if someone is an introvert versus an extrovert can optimize communication, and I learned that from my amazing coach, Andorra. She said, Steph, do you know that when you, I worked on a lot of engineers and attorneys and things like that, and I'm like, "Good morning, how are you? Did I really have a great weekend?" It goes off an extrovert and they're like: "Fine". And she said, that's because they don't need it, you need that interaction. Because you're an extrovert, they don't need that interaction. And you really need to tailor your communication to each person. So, modifying leadership and communication to each individual and scenario really does optimize communication. So, it could be as simple as just really understanding introvert versus extrovert and why someone just says, "Fine", they're not mad at you. That's just the way they communicate, right? That took me a lot of years to realize their own they're not mad at me.

28:18 Christopher Michael Lee

So, before we have one final question. But I want to kind of circle back around and then, because the audience of this, of this podcast, was there a, you know, you talked about the very beginning, about, you know, just how much you open your eyes when, when you started working with a diverse group and including people with disabilities. And obviously, you took what you know, and you put it into a guide. Thank you for that and thank you for reaching out to conferences that need to be heard, so that people can learn about it. I'm curious, were there any aha moments in the sense of, you know, wow, you know, I did it this way that really worked. I mean, maybe it's something you guys that tip that you can share with us right now, that maybe will help get people out there to buy it.

29:02 Stephanie Warlick  

I think that the aha moments that I had in creating that book were, again, we're better with diversity. We're stronger with diversity. I think that a lot of companies say that they're inclusive and diverse, but they might do something like making sure that their website application process is diverse, but then again, like the situation that I was in, the individual HR people and recruiters didn't know how to communicate and reach out in an inclusive way. So, it's like we said, "hey, we're welcoming everyone." And then as soon as we arrived to our doormat, we locked the door and slammed it because, really we didn't know how. So, we can say we are being inclusive, but we didn't follow that thread all the way through. And I think that's really the key to this. Is that we need to take, we could take little actions that are inexpensive, low effort and be more inclusive and do better. I've coined the phrase through this process, let's take random acts of kindness and move toward intentional acts of inclusion, because I do think it is an intentional effort. I do believe that people with awareness want to be better, but we have to bring them that awareness first.

30:20 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Just curious, you know, with 5FT View, I mean, is it a specific sector or industry that you seem to lean towards, or that you see you experience? I know what the DEI movement and some of the changes that has happened over the over the last year, several years, it You seem in particular sector or sectors that really are embracing this differently just because of the work that you're doing from a consulting standpoint?

30:48 Stephanie Warlick  

Honestly, no, and I think that is because the work that I do, whether it's recruiting or HR or finance or sales operations, pretty agnostic to all industries. I mean, I'm not in there cooking the soup, and frankly, nobody wants me cooking anything I can. You know, those things are very agnostic, and people are the same and creating process and asking the right questions to get people to document process are pretty much the same. I've had my younger staff say to me, you know, the 10 years of HR experience, I said, "Listen, this is the way this is going to play out." And a situation occurred, and I remember my coworker saying to me, step "How did you How did you know that was going to happen?" And I said, "Listen, this is just, frankly, a different circus in a different state," like people are essentially the same, and you get to recognize, after years of experience, patterns that people tend to follow with certain behaviors. And I find that to be applicable across all industries and sectors.

31:56 Christopher Michael Lee  

You know, I have one other question, but I do want to say that what I love about your personality is the fact that you know, with your kids, you know they have trouble with something, and you jumped in or the children's book. Your experience with companies, going, wow, you know they don't really know about accessibility from a diversity standpoint. You just went in and did a guide. So, you're very proactive. I like that of you a lot. So, the cooking, I think you could handle yourself to do.

 
32:26 Stephanie Warlick  

No, no, I know. We leave that to my sweet husband, or my girls definitely don't want me to. I mean, I can, I can mess up rice. That's pretty hard to do, but I can do it if I know what my skills and abilities are, and cooking is not one of them.

32:43 Christopher Michael Lee  

So last question, looking forward, what's next? What other projects do you have?

32:48 Stephanie Warlick  

I have a couple projects thanks to my ADD. I never really have one thing going on at a time, but I am growing my EOS integrator work, and I love that. I am working on another book called "Owner Mindset, how to foster an entrepreneurial spirit throughout all phases of work." And that's really taking the stand in the gap method and really taking those teachings and putting them into a book. And then I'm really loving the speaking, so focused on getting speaking engagements at within organizations or conferences to spread this word about how easy digital content accessibility can be and doing some workshops around those. So, and all my new clients bring new super interesting things to my plate every day. So, I just love new things. I love being at this point in my life where I get to still learn and try new things and travel, and it's I'm having a great time.

33:48 Christopher Michael Lee  

Well, I Stephanie, I don't think we've had you on webinar with IAAP yet, maybe wrong, but we'd love to have you come back and maybe break down that guide. Maybe we can get one. We'll buy a course, we'll get one free to somebody, because it's, there's, there's a lot there that I think is needed to be told in a way that people get it. And, and I love the fact that you, like I said earlier, come from that Finance and HR aspect. It brings a unique perspective. And so thank you for today and thank you for joining us.

34:22 Stephanie Warlick  

Thank you for having me. You know, I got my CPACC through you guys a couple months ago.

34:27 Christopher Michael Lee  

That's awesome. Congratulations. 

34:29 Stephanie Warlick  

Thank you. Thank you. So, you guys have been I haven't added it to the front cover of the book, but I thought, jeez, if I'm going to write a book about this, maybe I should actually have somebody that's experienced in this industry, really believe that I kind of know what I'm talking about now. Yeah, 

34:47 Christopher Michael Lee  

I'm so glad I saw that on LinkedIn, when I looked at it, I should have, I should have looked a little bit deeper. Maybe it wasn't there, but I'm so glad that you hold one of our certifications, and that means a lot.

34:56 Stephanie Warlick  

Yeah, thank you. I love it. I've loved working with you. It's great education. Training, and I really encourage anyone to take that base level certification for digital accessibility. So, thank you for having me today.

35:08 Christopher Michael Lee  

Thank you.

35:10 Speaker  

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