Fractional
Fractional
Darren Murph: Talent Mobility and the Rise of Fractional Leadership
In this episode Lance Robins meets with Darren Murph to discuss talent mobility, fractional leadership, and the shifting contract between employers and employees.
Darren is an executive, consultant, and a longtime leader in organizational design. He shares his journey from corporate IPOs to independent work, why every company is now distributed, and how money and time are the two true currencies of work.
They explore the risks of ignoring mental revolts, the opportunities for enterprises to tap into fractional talent, and what it means to design work that respects business goals and human needs.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fractional Podcast. I'm Lance Robbins. My co-host, Joshua Wold, is traveling, doing his thing right now. So not with us, but that's okay because I have somebody here who's a really special guest, Darren Murph. Darren is someone that I met a number of years ago, has been a friend and collaborator and colleague from a distance in the remote workspace. And getting you here, Darren, to talk is fantastic. And so for those of you who don't know Darren, Darren's an executive in the org design space. He's been on the Forbes Future of Work 50. He's spent 20 years in corporate doing things like, I don't know, leading an IPO for the world's first officeless organization at GitLab. He's been publishing case studies for Harvard Business School and INSEAD. But recently, Darren has founded his own consultancy to start working with orgs who are transitioning to distributed work. So Darren, welcome to Fractional. Awesome to to have you here, my friend. Thanks for the opportunity, Lance. I appreciate it. Yeah, totally. So Darren, there's a term that you mentioned pre-show as we were chatting, talent mobility. So people like me in the fractional world who focus a lot on small and mid-sized business, startup world, this is a term that you maybe have heard, but I don't think about a whole lot. How does fractional relate to talent mobility? And if you would just unpack that for us, I think that's a good place for us to start. Yeah, I'm from
SPEAKER_01:I'm familiar with both worlds, and I love what's possible in the fractional universe. But in my time across corporate organizations, I found that the terminology that's used makes it seem like fractional really has no place in mega cap companies. And so if you're not familiar, mega cap refers to market capitalization of a company. And so if you're a small cap, a mid cap, a mega cap, some of these mega cap companies are the names that everyone's heard about. So the Amazons, the Apples, the Microsoft of the world. These are huge organizations that do things a certain way. And so one of the benefits is they have a lot of inbuilt policy and infrastructure. But one of the downsides is, is really hard to get that infrastructure to change. Whereas if you're working with a startup or a small cap company, it's more malleable. There's less bureaucracy, there's fewer people, and there's less opportunity to say, we've always done it this way. And so what I found is that a lot of fractional employees, they tend to go the startup or small cap route because that's where they're most welcome. And a lot of these individuals feel like they'll never be welcome at some of these mega cap names that everyone's heard of. But I think that there is an opportunity if we speak the same language. And so within these organizations, there's a feature called talent mobility. So what this generally looks like is if a life just changed completely. I'm out of here. I want to go be a parent full time. The organization could say, hang on just a second. We actually can work something out that you're able to work part time in some capacity, maybe delegate some of your responsibilities, but keep some others. That's talent mobility. It looks at talent and then it says, how can we enable them to be more mobile, either horizontally within the organization or with a new type of arrangement, as I just mentioned. And so for fractionals, one way to the language of these mega cap companies is to look at, well, what's your talent mobility policy? And I think there's a huge amount of opportunity for these large cap companies to invest in fractionals, to look to the fractional market, to fill skills gaps and role gaps. And I think we're on the cusp of speaking the same language. We're not there yet, but I would say to fractionals who are listening, not all hope is lost. There actually is some infrastructure. It's just on us to make sure that
SPEAKER_00:we get on the same page. Okay. And so if that's your message to the fractional, what's your message to the executive at a place like Ford, Zillow, some of these places where you've worked as an executive, around this concept of talent mobility slash fractional leadership?
SPEAKER_01:I think the companies that are progressive enough to leverage this quickly will snap up all of the world's best talent that are currently sitting on the sidelines because the conventional way of employing them in a full-time, all or nothing type of approach doesn't work for their lifestyle. And so you have people that have spent decades earning experience. They've seen so much. They have so much to contribute. But they're off building their own thing because these big corporates don't have a way to fit them into the mold. And I've also seen that as budgets are shrinking, everything's being more scrutinized, it's harder and harder to get full-time headcount. And so what I would posit to these executives is, do you really need that full headcount? There's actually a lot of people who are sitting just outside of your purview that would love to contribute to your organization in a fractional or part-time capacity. And what an amazing time that we're in with AI being able to assist a lot of these workers in doing ancillary parts of the admin work. You can bring someone in in a fractional capacity and really tap into their zone of genius, really hone in on what is their superpower and plug it into the organization in a way that It's more agile, more nimble, more flexible for the company. And it also speaks the language of a fractional. They don't want full-time employment and all of the things that come with that. They're at a very different season of their life. And so instead of losing access to that talent entirely, shifting the way that you think about talent mobility to bring them in and plug them in opens up a huge amount of opportunity for whoever leaps first.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. So you're setting up something here that we also want to talk about, whether you're doing it intentionally or not. Yeah. You mentioned that there are people who have invested in all this experience. They have expertise in their area, but they're sitting on the sidelines. Now, in some cases, the market has forced that. We talk about people who've been forced fractional because they bring all this expertise and it's really competitive to go in and get another W-2 there. But I think there's a lot of people who are intentionally choosing to not go back and try to get the W-2. They're on the sideline. What happens for people when they've just kind of had enough?
SPEAKER_01:I heard this story recently. of someone who was full-time for over 20 years and doing the W-2 9-5 thing. And in that season, it served them well. It allowed them to build a phenomenal life. So they had no regrets or no negative things to say about that season. But they began to feel a tug that they needed to take a different approach. Their season of life had changed. Their child had grown up a bit. And they kind of realized it's kind of now or never for me to invest in these moments. And the conventional employment just doesn't make that possible in the way that they wanted to. And so they began that journey and things were going really well. And then about nine months later, they got a call from a former colleague who had moved to a new company with an amazing offer to come back full-time at a different company. And they hemmed and hawed on it for a while. And eventually they went back and they said on the second day of training, sitting in a room that they had to travel to, so they had to fly across the country to be into this training session, they had what they described as a mental revolt. They said every Everything in their mind said, I must get out of here. This is not for me. And he shared that story to hopefully get ahead of the curve for anyone else that's in a similar situation where you're kind of feeling the tug and you think maybe I've got one more round of this in me. He said it's a cautionary tale. If you are feeling greatly satisfied in that new journey, don't go into a place where it's it's counter to that. It's incongruent with that because willpower only gets you so far. And And you will most likely run into what they described as a mental revolt. The way that I would describe that is listen to your soul, listen to your mind, listen to your heart. The body keeps score and it's okay for seasons to change. Even if you're an executive leader that you've been doing this for your whole career and you can say, well, why would I change this up? Why would I not just keep doing this? Seasons change and you're needed in different capacities throughout your life. And so The mental revolt, I think, is real and it's worth listening to. Now, I would say it's not worth making a knee-jerk reaction, but it is worth pausing and recognizing when those feelings arise and then unpacking what does it mean? What does the future look like? What are some options? Put some planning in place and then take it one step at a time from there.
SPEAKER_00:So for you personally, right, and not a reflection on your previous employers, but were you working to to prevent the mental revolt? Or were you responding to one that you were starting to feel after a 20-year career in the corporate world?
SPEAKER_01:So for me, it probably began about four years ago, coinciding with becoming a father for the first time. And so my wife and I adopted our son just over six years now, and that made me a first-time parent. And you'll hear these kind of cliche things like becoming a parent changes everything. It's difficult to really know what that means until it happens to you. But it wasn't right away for me. So it was a couple of years into the parental journey, I began to see that what we were doing as new parents was essentially helping this precious human to survive. But you look far enough ahead and you think, well, soon I'm going to be doing something much closer to stewardship, where it's going to be very important for me to be more engaged and more present to steward the life of a gift that was given to us. Coinciding with 15 plus years of corporate experience in the organizational design space. And I also felt this tug that I was going from one company to the next, helping them build the infrastructure, but I could really only do it with one company at a time. And I think this is a common theme amongst fractionals, which is I want to be able to help a more diverse array of people, teams, and companies. You'll find that these people, they're excited about one project at a time, but they're really excited about helping And so I do think that while my personal story is useful, what I would offer to listeners is that I think it has something to do with personality as well. If you're the type of person that hears that and you think, yeah, that's me. I want to be involved in lots of things at once. I prefer something that's dynamic, something with more change and turnover. I'm a builder. Then you may be able to align with something that I'm saying. And I would say typical mega cap corporates don't have a lot of personality. systems in place that really enable that type of personality to thrive yet. But I do think through the talent mobility window that we talked about earlier, there are opportunities for it to evolve and improve.
SPEAKER_00:And this has been and will it continue to be part of your work in enabling enterprise organizations to build the systems that support this future-oriented workforce?
SPEAKER_01:It will. Future of work involves a lot of things. Talent mobility is certainly included in And so the work that I'm doing now is working with clients that are looking to reinvent or build from scratch an operating model that enables them to thrive as a distributed company. And I would argue that in 2025 and beyond, every company at scale is a distributed company. Those are remote to one another. They still have to figure out 12 or 14 hour time zone differences. And so even if they want to identify as a hybrid or an in-office company, the reality is they're a distributed company. It is imperative for them to understand remote first principles because I believe they're just great business principles. Things like increased transparency, increased rigor around knowledge management and project management. These are things that are essential for officeless companies, but they're still incredibly additive for all companies that work in a multinational capacity. And so for these companies that are trying to be great businesses, and they have to be great distributed businesses, it behooves them to also look at talent mobility. If they're reinventing their operating model, how they incorporate great talent is a part of that. And if they have great knowledge and project management skills, It enables them to bring fractional employees into the fold and into projects in a much more seamless way. I think what you've seen over the past years is that this is difficult for large companies because they don't have the systems that make it easy. And if you go back a few more years than that, it's because technology was the limiting factor, but that's no longer the case. We have phenomenal project management tools like Asana and ClickUp, phenomenal knowledge bases like Notion. The tools are out there. Now it's on the companies to reinvent the operating model, incorporate these tools, upskill the people that are there on how to use them. And that opens the door for bringing talent in in new ways. And so that's what I'm helping clients do. It's an exciting place to be, and I'm thrilled to be doing it.
SPEAKER_00:Very cool. Very fun stuff. For everyone who's listening, you can't see me smiling and nodding as Darren's talking earlier. I find it just so surprising. And I think it's a good reminder. Every time I speak to a group who is maybe in an industry that's traditionally very office bound and I and I say hey you have locations here here and here you are a remote you are a distributor organization and the light bulbs just come on like they never thought about that before and then the wheels start turning and we start making progress but yeah where we are at in 2025 that is the starting point that is kind of the baseline for just about every business that's not operating out of their garage still
SPEAKER_01:yeah and the one last note on that I I will say, look, it's difficult to reinvent your operating model. It is a daunting task. A lot of companies that are kind of trying to revert back to their last known state of coherence are trying to do it because they're choosing that path over the path of evolution and reinvention. But I think doubling down on the fax machine in this moment is probably not the best approach. And the progressive companies know, hey, like this is going to take some effort and some rigor to invent an operating model that that works for the future, but it's going to pay dividends down
SPEAKER_00:the road. The workplace as something very different from what maybe our generation or our parents generation really saw it as. I'm just going to like tee it up that much. But will you take that and kind of unpack it for everybody who's
SPEAKER_01:listening here on this? portfolio career is the path for them. There is a massive upheaval happening in the employee employer social contract. And we have to say the quiet part out loud because I think that they, even though the media narratives around this are quite divisive, I still, I'm an optimist and I believe that we're more alike than we are unalike. And the note that really grabbed my attention a month ago, it was from the CEO of a large telecom company. And I'm reading the quote here, a quote, some of you may And the media commentary from the author who led this story says, quote, And that might be a bit extreme, but I dug into a lot of the comments on this and they said, you know, you could have taken these words out of this CEO's mouth and put it in the CEO's mouth of the company I work for, and it would still be a bit extreme. checkout. This has to be addressed. This has to be recognized. When you're thinking about culture, when you're thinking about employee engagement, when you're thinking about what employees are investing in the companies that they work for, it's worth realizing that this is the type of pressure that a lot of them are under. Not all of them, certainly. But if you're listening to this and this kind of rings true and you think, oh, that could have been said about our company too, not all hope is lost. There are systems and infrastructure changes that you can make to make it a more seamless and enjoyable experience, a more flexible and adaptable experience to work for your company. Remember that the people working for your company are humans and they want to exchange their time for your money, but they also want to be treated with dignity. I believe Dale Carnegie said that respect is the bedrock of motivation. And for a lot of these organizations, the bar is actually quite low to put systems in place that enable you to show a great deal of respect for your employees, especially when they're able to contribute, giving them more flexibility, more choice on when they contribute throughout the day. Things like putting systems in place so they don't have to have back-to-back meetings, that they're able to use tools that enable them to have more focus time and more asynchronous workflows. These are things that technology enables today. Have to put the cultural guardrails around implementation of those. And then I'd say for employees that are dealing with this, This kind of goes to the mental revolt that we talked about earlier. This is one example of an environment, but it's not everywhere. And I would say, although the job market is what it is in its current state, there are smaller companies, especially that see this as a huge opportunity to take talent from large organizations that don't want to operate under such conditions. And so I think kind of quietly behind the scenes, you're seeing a lot of startups and smaller companies that are really staffing up with great Yeah, when you hear the telecom
SPEAKER_00:exec saying essentially loyalty is dead, the gut reaction is kind of, man, that sucks. But I think in the face of a shift from employers that looks like this, there are a lot of opportunities. You talked about opportunities for talent to maybe move to organizations that value them. that. But I think there's some other opportunities, too, if we if we're looking for, OK, let's do a trade then. And we talked about this a little bit before. All right. If loyalty was something of value that I pursued as an employee from my employer in the past, if we're taking that off the table, then let's negotiate. Right. What are we looking for? What are we going to get in exchange for that? And that's what I'm curious where you see this going. All right. If loyalty is off the table, if that long career is off the table, if job security off the table. What do I get instead? And the numbers prove this
SPEAKER_01:out. The concept of graduating university, starting with a company and retiring with that company, it's extremely difficult to do that now. And arguably, that's probably not even the best approach for anyone's career. And probably not the goal for the employer anymore either. Exactly right. And so instead of building animosity around this, I would say, let's bring both sides to the table and say, how have things changed in your world and in your world? And then where are there opportunities for us to actually link arms and support one another? And I would say for organizations, they are yearning to be faster, more efficient, more productive, more nimble. And so maybe that looks like taking away the year-long apprenticeship just to get someone ramped up. Well, at face value, you may think that's a terrible deal for the employee. How else are they going to learn and onboard and be nurtured and mentored early in their career? But on the employee side, you could say, well, if you you want something to be more efficient more productive more nimble if you build the systems that enable me a fractional or part-time employee to plug in and ramp really quickly without the usual let's have you in 90 meetings to learn via osmosis well then maybe we both win i'm able to plug in in a way that works for me and my family you're able to ramp me up far more quickly than the old-fashioned way of doing that so this is not outlandish this is not rocket science All of this can be done today. There's actually a company called A-Team that works to build essentially fractional cohorts. Think of it as the Ocean's Eleven model, right? When the Ocean's Eleven crew was brought together, they just picked a handful of people that had specialties in certain areas and they were all laser focused on one mission. And then once that mission was done, they all went about their lives and they went and found other projects. And of course, that was a movie, but there's some interesting parallels there of what could actually happen for these large corporations that say, we really need this project done, but how am I going to get 20 headcount? And then how much time is it going to take to ramp these headcount? You actually have a lot of fractional employees out there with hyper-specific skill sets that if you put the system in place to bring them together and plug them into your operating system quickly, they will be able to do some things that I would argue are not as efficient using the old way of onboarding.
SPEAKER_00:this negotiating table, the employer gains speed, efficiency, agility, and the contributor I think gains autonomy, choice, probably premium compensation because they're delivering more value in a compressed amount of time. So there are trade-offs. So if you're like hearing the quote from the exec thinking, oh shoot, man, I was right. I can't count on a job anymore. Shifting the mindset here a little bit is there's probably some neat opportunity to have walk here for the next, you know, five, 10 years.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. And I look, I think it's worth pointing out here that we're not talking about a binary shift. We're not saying let's get rid of full time employment or the conventional way of bringing people on. What I'm arguing is let's add another way to bring people on in a different capacity. For some people in certain seasons of their life, that conventional way of doing things is absolutely best for the company and absolutely best for the person. So don't get rid of that. But if you can modify talent mobility and ad systems that enable you to tap into this other layer of talent that is sitting on the sidelines right now. It enables your company to be more nimble, more adaptable. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so it goes, but it is worth thinking about how can we expand our talent mobility practices so that we can plug people in that are on the sidelines in new and unique ways.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think Joshua, who isn't here to defend himself, is a good case in point of this, right, as As a story format, Joshua, as a career, as a product designer, has designed at a very high level for a number of different startups and tech companies. And he builds himself as an independent because he can come and bring all that experience. He onboards quick because he's seen this so many times. And he's an expert at onboarding workflows and building those for the consumer coming into your app. And he can build an onboarding workflow for you as a startup so much faster than your FTE will, who is doing this as maybe their second or third job out of college or self-taught, you know, whatever. But, you know, Joshua's done this 20, 30, 40 times and he will deliver a tremendous amount of value in a very compressed amount of time and get you, which, I mean, in startup land, speed to market is the currency, right? And so he will do that and he might spend two months on a project, you know, and it will be worth what six months Yeah. And
SPEAKER_01:again, all of this is doable now. It's just going to require a re-architecting of how we onboard people. Now, if you go look at a job posting on LinkedIn or Indeed, you can see a few fields, things like if there's a location or if it's hybrid or if it's remote, you could see if it's maybe full-time or part-time, and maybe you can see there are years of experience that you want required. But that's basically it. And that really hasn't changed in many, many decades. I think there are a lot of other variables in the proverbial dropdown chart that we could add in there of how can we bring somebody in in a more efficient and condensed fashion such that you have these amazing independents that would look at a job description and say, that's actually built for me. Because almost nothing out there currently is built for them. And so you have independents that either have to contort themselves to be something they're not to plug into your company culture, or you miss out on
SPEAKER_00:their gifts entirely. I see this all the time. I see job ads that I'm like, oh, that's me. But to go through the interview and hiring process and try to convert that from a we're looking for an FTE to look, I could solve this for you in a three month scope. A is way less efficient than the way I want to work as an independent business owner and be a really hard sell when you're working with someone that doesn't have two things, the power to make that decision or the mindset to understand that it has a level of value that you're not going to get from the FTE that you're hunting.
SPEAKER_01:There's also something else here when you think about compensation philosophy. We talked a lot about talent mobility, but there's There's entire departments within these large cap companies where they think about how do we compensate people. And they don't really pull many levers. It's generally cash and stock-based compensation. And then there's the ancillary fringe benefits, things like perhaps a gym benefit or paid time off. But I really believe you can only compensate someone two ways, money or time. And I think the time aspect is massively underestimated. It is massively under the radar. There's huge amounts of opportunity here. This reminds me of a Future Forum survey that the team at Slack ran, I believe it was in 2022. And they asked people how many people wanted geographic flexibility, so the ability to work from wherever they wanted to work. And then they also asked them, how many of you want time flexibility so that you have control over when during the day you work? And it was over 90% that answered yes to that second question. And to me, this is eye-opening. and earth shattering that if you can build systems where people don't have to be on back to back calls from a rigid nine to five, but you have systems where they can contribute their gifts in a more nonlinear fashion, you are giving them the gift of time. And this is accessible and available today for any organization that will leverage the technology that will integrate it into their both tool stack and culture stack. And it's it's not overly difficult. It just requires taking a beat and saying, this is what innovation looks like to us. We want to give people the gift of time and then leverage that to get better talent, to be more efficient, to be more productive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And speaking from one parent to another, I'm counting the summers I have left. My oldest is turning 14 in a couple of weeks. I'm thinking about myself when I was 14 and how much quickly I was headed away from home. The time that an independent path gives me, that I I have control over the time more. Not that there's not a tremendous amount of work to do. There's a lot of work to do. And being a fractional, an independent is not easy or less hard in a lot of ways. But I do have control and choice over time. And so that means Friday, we're going to leave early and go to the mountain bike race over in Kalispell and have a weekend. And I'm not going to stress about that. And I don't need to ask. And that's tremendously valuable for me.
SPEAKER_01:And this is another opportunity for us to bridge the chasm. If you ask any leader at a large cap company, time is what they're focused on. Their next quarter is coming up where they have to report to the market. It's an unrelenting pace where results are expected every quarter in perpetuity forever. Time matters to them. Well, on the employee side, as you pointed out, you only have a certain amount of summers left with your children. So it's a different type of urgency, but it's urgency nonetheless. And I think bringing these two sides together and saying, if you enable me, the person who values the time of summers, to plug into your organization and do great work more efficiently, I will enable you to drive greater results for the urgency that matters to you, which is your next quarterly earnings report. And I think this is where we have to bring the two sides together. They both want the same thing, which is a greater urgency around time. It's just that the focal point of time is different. And I think we're hopefully on the cusp of building more systems that enables employers and employees who want to place a similar value on time to be able to maybe speak it in a different language, but accomplish the same goals.
SPEAKER_00:I'm watching our time and I could probably talk with you about things like this for hours and we won't put our listeners through it. But a couple of questions that are coming to mind here as we're getting closer to the end. Are there experiences you've had so far or are anticipating that are valuable for you to share with other fractionals or people who are considering taking this step into the fractional world or independent world or portfolio world, however we want to position it, right? The talent mobility world. What would be your message to someone who's in an early stage or early thought process of this experience?
SPEAKER_01:I would say make a plan, like consider this like any other life goal, whether it's a one or three or five year plan and put the right pieces in place. What do I mean by pieces? As an independent, your net work is your net worth. And so the people Thank you. When you find great people and you realize that you mesh well together and you build well together, keep those people in mind. Those are really, really key relationships that'll be important as you go forward. I would also say be very intentional about what a North Star looks like. And so my wife and I, many years ago in our marriage, we began this simple process of writing down what we wanted our future to look like in five-year increments, starting from 90 and then backing all the way down to where we were now. And not all of them were professional based. I believe that everybody has a purpose portfolio and work is a component of your overall portfolio. But when you put that on paper, it forces clarity on what good looks like for you and what your non-negotiables are and what your North Star is. And I'd say the third thing is don't get too rigid in how you get there. It is very valuable to make a plan. It's very valuable to have the non-negotiables and the North star. But the world is changing really fast. If we had had this conversation even five years ago, some of the technology names I was able to mention today didn't even exist. AI, of course, is changing how companies are thinking about CapEx spending and headcount planning and compensation planning. It's all evolving very, very quickly. So be okay with the path to getting there, maybe looking more like a roller coaster ride than a hockey stick up and to the right. I think the more nimble, the more adaptable, the more The learner mindset here is going to win out over the fixed mindset on how to reach the end goal.
SPEAKER_00:As someone who's a few years into this, I can absolutely attest to the roller coaster method versus the hockey stick method. In fact, recently I've launched Keel, which has been informed by my last three years as an independent HR leader. What do organizations really need? Here's what I thought they would need, but finding that service market fit rather than product market fit takes some time and research and experience. Yeah. It's a
SPEAKER_01:great proof point. Three years ago, you could have never forecast launching this. But three years of experience gives you deep conviction in being able to launch it and build it in a way that works for your life.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Absolutely. Any question that I didn't ask you that you wish I did? Man, that's a great question. What's my favorite passport stamp? How about that? Okay. Yeah. What's your favorite passport
SPEAKER_01:stamp, Darren? I think it's tied. Can I tie one? Can I have two? Yeah, give us two. French Polynesia and the Maldives. I love beaches. I love islands. And those are the two places in the world where I've landed. Opened my eyes and thought, are we sure we're still on planet Earth? Are we sure we haven't experienced planetary travel in getting to these locales? Those are my favorites. But you know what? Even passport stamps are becoming something of a thing of the past. I'm hearing now that the paper stamps are kind of going away and they'll just scan them and log them into systems. Hold on to the ones you've got. They're quickly becoming
SPEAKER_00:the cassette tape of travel. Something to tell your grandchildren about someday. Awesome. And so as you're getting your consultancy up and running, where can people find out about you? Where could a customer reach out to you and say, Darren, we need your help? What's the best way to find you and follow along?
SPEAKER_01:Man, I'd love to build with your audience, whether that's speaking, whether that's a transformational operational project, whether that's an advisory seat, reach out. DarrenMurph.com is where you can find me. And please follow me on LinkedIn. in. I'm Darren Murph there and you can send me a message. I'd love to touch base with your listenership and help them build.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And final one to close out. What's the most exciting adventure coming up for the Murph family?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, man. I'm really excited about winter 2026. And if you know me, I like islands. I like beaches. And so winter doesn't really coincide with that. But it turns out you actually can go to some places of the world in the North American winter. And so we're going to spend some time on islands and on beaches as a family. We're being really intentional about winter travel this year, which I think is going to be fun. It's a bit of a new slow travel experiment that we're going into, so I'm excited to see where that takes us.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'll be jealous of your islands and beaches here in North Idaho during the long winter. Thanks again, Darren. Strap the skis on. I do miss skiing in Whitefish. That's a real gem. Schweitzer Mountain is represented here behind me on the wall, so we'll be getting up there a few times. But Matt, great to have you, Darren. Thank you for joining us and can't wait to share this with our audience. Absolutely. Thanks,
SPEAKER_01:Lance.
