Dream Big & Believe; Guest - Kelly Damphousse, President Texas State

This episode focuses one of the pillars of Competitive Kindness, vision that builds belief. Dr. Clark hosts guest Dr. Kelly Damphousse, President of Texas State University.  Dr. Damphousse is a highly respected President that has led to the move to Research 1 status and PAC-12 Conference membership at Texas State. 

Kelly offers incredible insights on the perspective of university presidents, how vision builds belief, how to build buy-in, why adding Gymnastics was so impactful, and how to lead the right way.  He even has a brief shout out to Michael Scott from The Office. The inspiring thoughts he shares  demonstrate why he is so highly revered as a national leader in higher education.

The movement continues…

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Clark. What if the way you lead could change lives, not just results? We're building a movement, proving you can compete relentlessly for championships while elevating everyone around you. This is your competitive edge. Each episode will share stories and strategies to help you make an impact that lasts. So, if you're ready to win the right way, you're in the right place. Now let's get rolling. Let's talk about one of the greatest gifts we can give another person or organization. Helping them see their potential. Most people are already aware of their shortcomings. They know where they failed, they know where they're struggling and where they feel inadequate. What they often need is someone who can see beyond where they are and help them envision who they can become. That's what great leaders do. A mentor once told me that leadership is the transfer of belief. Before people can achieve something, they often need someone to believe in them before they believe in themselves. This principle doesn't just apply to coaches, teachers, and managers. It starts in our homes. As parents, one of our most important responsibilities is helping our children to see who they can become. My wife Emily and I are trying to do that with our two daughters and our son. We often talk about their strengths, their gifts, the impact they can have on others. We want them to know that their worth isn't determined by a scoreboard, a grade, a social media post, how much money's in your bank account, a job, or someone else's opinion. We want them to see themselves as capable, resilient, resourceful, kind, and able to do hard things. The same principle applies to every organization and every community. When leaders help people see their potential, they create hope. And hope changes behavior. People tend to move toward the picture they hold of themselves. And that's why competitive kindness is so powerful. It's about helping people become the best version of themselves because you care enough to challenge them, support them, and believe in them. So here's my challenge for you today. Think of a person who may not yet fully see their own potential. Tell them what strengths you see in them. Encourage them. Help them to see what's possible. Your words may become the belief they borrow until they develop their own. And sometimes, the greatest act of leadership is helping someone believe in the greatness that is already in them. Today's guest is Dr. Kelly Dampfis, president of Texas State University. A native of Northern Canada and a first generation college student, Kelly's journey to university leadership is anything but traditional. Before entering higher education, he worked as a prison guard and later earned degrees from Sam Houston State and Texas AM University. Prior to Texas State he served as Chancellor of Arkansas State University and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, where he was also a nationally recognized sociology professor and researcher. He serves on the NCAA Division I Board of Directors and is widely respected for his authentic people-centered leadership style. Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast, Dr. Danfus. It's great to be here, Rob. I really am looking forward to it. Everyone has a story. So what are one or two moments that have shaped who you are and how you lead?

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Well, you know, I think we're all products of our environment and our past. And I've been, as I get older, and you'll this will happen to you someday, I tend to look back and be pretty reflexive of things that have happened in the past and think about key moments in my life that affected me and that really left a mark in a good way or a bad way. And I can trace this back to the five people that changed my life, but I'll start with the first one and I'll end with the last one. And so the first one was a school teacher who I was in his class in the 11th grade and uh was doing great. And then in grade 12, I was in his class again. But I was just acting up in the first day of class and he kind of called me out and said, Mr. Dampfus, what happened over the summer that turned your brain to mush? And kind of called me out, it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit. And uh, so I was gonna drop the class and as the bell rang, and as I was leaving, he called me over and he said, uh, hey, I can tell I kind of hurt your feelings a little bit, but the truth is if you keep acting like you were acting today and hanging out with those boys you're hanging out with, you're not gonna reach your full potential. And it was the first time in my life that someone had who's not contractually obligated, like my mom and dad, to say something nice about me, kind of did. He said, So you can really make something of yourself if you would apply yourself. And that moment, I think about that almost every single day. But then I track down this teacher a few years later, and he has no memory of that moment at all. And for me, this is like a defining moment of my youth. And I think about it every day, and he doesn't have any memory at all. It reminds me that I'm always affecting people around me. And if I'm affecting people around me, I gotta watch what I say and how I say it, how I do it, because something negative coming from me can really kind of weigh on someone. And as I've grown in my leadership journey, now that I'm a president, I know that what I say and what I do has huge impacts on other people. And even if I don't mean it, or if I had an off day and I just blow somebody off, I now realize when I reflect about this, how that can really affect someone else. So that was like a first moment. A second moment is the last story about the person changed my life. I had this major professor in graduate school who I just loved. And this guy, I don't know why, but he took me out of his wing. And he and I were chatting one day, and I was about to have my first child, and he was like talking about, you know, you're gonna have a boy or a girl, and he stops in the middle of it and says, Hey, do you know the difference between being a dad and a father? And to me, those sound like synonyms. And he said, No, they're not. He said, biologically, anyone can be a father, but sociologically, it takes work to be a dad. And you're gonna be great at this. But and then and he starts talking to me and mentoring me through the difference between between being a father and a dad. And at the end of it, I said, like, I couldn't figure out why he would invest all this time and energy he has in me and why he would spend time sharing like this really crucial insight in me. And I said, Dr. Crouch, how can I ever repay you for what you've done for me? And he said, Kelly, you can't repay me because you don't have anything I want. But someday you'll be in a position of power. I don't know where you'll be. And I was probably like 30 years old. I was just a grad student at the time. He said, You'll be in a position of authority, and there'll be someone else asking you for advice or asking you for help. And when you do that for that person, that's how you pay me back. And this was before the movie Paid Forward came out and so on. But those two lessons about how we're always impacting other people and how you should try to be positive when you can and encouraging, and also the fact that I didn't get here on my own, and I have to take advantage of those opportunities to help people get from here to there, have both kind of influenced how I am as a leader because they've shown me that being the leader doesn't mean being the boss, it means helping people become the best versions of themselves they can be, and you can do that just by how you engage with them.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Incredible. You've become a university president. So, how do you determine what your institution can become rather than what assembly it is today? Well, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

This is the end of my fourth year here at Texas State, and I remember going through the application process a little over four years ago, and I was actually at a different school in the same conference, and I confess, like I didn't know much about this school. And it wasn't until I started applying for it and started digging around in the internet and looking at strategic plans and reports that were being developed. And I said, holy cow, there's a lot here, and it's a lot bigger school than I've ever been at before. It's one of the, I think it's the 20th largest university in the country with undergraduate population. That may have seem kind of daunting, but I thought the fact that I don't know much about it means that there's something that I could play a role in if I became the president that I would work really hard on changing the state and national reputation of the university and to encourage it to go beyond what it's been doing. So that really that's been a big part of my leadership journey here at Texas State is first trying to raise the national profile so people understand what's going on in Texas State, but also to encourage the folks, the faculty and staff, and even the students who are here to say, hey, yeah, I know you're at a school where people haven't really given you much thought before. People aren't thinking about, hey, what's going on at Texas State? But this is a great school. And it could be greater if we did a couple of things. Let's dream about what those things should be, and then let's actually find the resources and go do it. And that's been the fun part of my job since I've gotten here is kind of like waking people up a little bit to the reality of the place that they're at, and then encouraging them to move forward and then finding the resources for them to actually make those dreams come true. That's the best part of this job is realizing you don't have to do it all. You just have to unleash the power of the people that are working with you and to encourage them. And then the biggest part of my job is to cheer them on and to find the resources that are out there. And here's part of the difficult part of this is it all sounds polyannish to say it that way, but you know, the resources are finite. So that means at some point you have to say, you know, this thing we're doing over here that's not working, we need to stop doing that. So we can put the resources that are there over here, because this is the future of the university. And that means making hard choices sometimes. But that's been the funnest part of this job is awakening this huge beast of the university, both on the national presence, but also on the campus itself.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, it's incredible getting people to dream. And many leaders can articulate a vision, and fewer can actually create genuine belief in that vision. How do you move people from understanding the vision to owning it? Well, it's a great thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I'll give one example. When I was hired, they created this profile for the next president, and they had these bullet points on it. One of the bullet points was someone who can raise the national profile of the university. And that has become the mantra for me. And there's another bullet point. This is pretty common, someone who's focused on student success and someone who can diversify the revenue stream. And there was a bullet point in there for athletics, the university president who understands the value of athletics. And I think they really meant someone who can fix the football team and so on. But there was one bullet in there that was pretty interesting to me when I was reading it. It was we want someone who can lead us to become an R1 institution. So R1 is a designation about the kind of work that is done at the university, and R1 is the highest research designation. And Texas State is currently R2, and it'd been R2 for a while. But they want someone who could bring them to the R1 status. And during my interview, and then the first day on campus where I met with everyone, and then for the next two or three years after that, I said, this is a dream that you have, and I have a vision for how we get there. But this was your idea. And so if you want to get there, here's how we do it. And by the way, being R1 doesn't make you better than R2. They're both great schools, whether or not they're R1 or R2, but it means being a different school. So here's how you get there. But the buy-in that I got from them was that this was their idea in the first place. And then I created a commission called the Commission on the Run to R1. I brought faculty and staff and administrators together and said, here's the goal that you created. So that's part of the buy-in. This is your goal. And then giving them the authority to decide how we're going to do it. I said, come up with ideas and don't be hamstrung by the fact that, oh, we probably can't afford to do this or can't afford to do that. Pretend money is no issue. And now I did tell them money is an issue. So it's not a bottomless pit. But if there was no financial restraint, what would you do? And so that allowed them as members of the commission to go out and talk to their peers, come back and create a report that here's how we want to do it. Here's a list of 20 things we want to do. And if we had to, here's like the top five we must do. And it had to do with growing the graduate program, creating new PhD programs, stipends for graduate students, research dollars for faculty members, standing up a better research infrastructure behind the research faculty and so on. If we do these five things among all the 20 that we think need to be done, we think we can move the DNA. And so I said, okay, well, I'm going to go find the money to make that happen. I go to the CFO and he says, Well, you know, we were going to spend money over here, but if you prefer to spend it over there, we can do that. So I found the resources, I gave it back to the faculty and said, here's what you're going to do. I appointed someone to become the vice president for research. We didn't have that title before. But that person took the ball and ran with it. And I don't want to say like I was co-opting the faculty, but I was empowering the faculty to do something that they wanted to do, but they've wanted to do for years and couldn't figure out how to get there. And so if I take any pride in what we did to get us to become an R1 by the one, by the way, we'll qualify for R1 at the end of 2027. So we're going to get there. The run to R1 is basically cooked now. All I did was really inspire them to really focus on the things that allow them to accomplish their goals. And then I found the resources for it. And by the way, we had to say no to some things that we were thinking about doing in the past. I said, well, we're just not going to do that. We'll focus over here. And to a person, if you mention run to R1 on our campus, everyone knows what that is. We talked about it all the time the first three or four years. Ad nauseum. If you go to the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce, they know what run to R1 was. So we talked about it all the time. But when we talked about it, we said, this is what our faculty want. And here's how they're going to make this happen. And at a university structure that believes in shared governance, like I do, that's the only way this could have happened. If I would have gone in there and said, this is what Kelly wants to do, I'm not sure it would be where we are today.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, when you brought everyone together, how did you create alignment when you have competing priorities amongst groups? And how do you bring them around that shared purpose?

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah, so that's a great point because there are finite resources. And when you decide to take resources away from one area and put it in another area, that means there's winners, but there's also losers. And I don't want to say losers, but there's people that have had resources taken away from them or resources that have been promised to them that are now not coming to them. And so you have to go back to them and say, hey, what you're doing is also valuable. It's not the most valuable thing we're doing right now, but let's think about how we can get you closer to what you want to do without the same resource investment that we were considering before. Or let's think about how we can grow the resources. In fact, that's one of the biggest things we did here is we I mentioned one of the things they wanted in the presidential profile was someone who could diversify revenue. And so we said, hey, can we get more tuition dollars if we expand our online programming? What if we partner with community colleges to increase our enrollment there? And what if we worked really hard to increase the enrollment overall? The tuition dollars are coming in. Can we use those monies now to direct towards these other projects that otherwise will be funded? And so we went back to all of the groups and said, okay, all of you have things that you want to accomplish. We have a finite amount of resources. We're going to focus on the run to R1 right now. But if there's something you want to do, let's partner on a strategy to increase the revenue that we have available so we can funnel those resources to you. For example, working with department heads that weren't really involved in the run to R1, but who wanted to have resources for this project or that project. We said, hey, let's look at summer school, what we're doing there with winter session and May Mester and online enrollment and partnerships with our Round Rock campus and partnerships with community colleges. If you work with the Provost Office to develop programs to expand enrollment, which will help us and generate our tuition revenue, we'll share some of that with you that'll help you accomplish the projects that you have. Or we'll go to foundations and apply for grants from them to help fund your projects, or we'll go to private donors and try to encourage them to fund the projects that you want. So we'll work with the development team to provide other resources for you. And so that is really what we did. We got a lot of buy-in from people who discovered that their goals were valuable, but the only way to make them happen is that they partner with the university and with the administration to figure out ways to generate the revenue to help pay for them. Because once they understood how the budget works, and that's a big thing at a university, it's very complicated. And everyone thinks that there's just an unending amount of money that you can just spend wherever you want to. Once they realize that we have to generate more resources to be able to fund more things, that really created an incentive for them to understand where money comes from and understands the role that they could play in either saving money or generating more revenue. And then there has to be a promise on my part that when we do that, that money goes back to the places who are helping generate the more revenue or saving more funding so that we can invest in the things that they want to do.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

You have led one of the most incredible transformations in college athletics at Texas State with the move to the Pac 12. From your perspective, why is athletics worth investing in? And what does this Pac 12 opportunity represent for the entire institution? You know, Rob, it's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a college president say athletics is the front porch of the university, I would have so much money. I wish I'd have so much NIL money and revenue share money, I wouldn't have to do any more fundraising work. But if I had a if I had a million dollars for every time I saw a president act on that belief, I'd be in debt probably. Because the fact is, we all know how important athletics is, but if sometimes it's treated as if it's this cost center. And you see things like universities loaning money to an athletics department to, or talking about how much they're costing the university, or talking about the cost center, not talking about the revenue part or the reputational part. And I spent 20 years at the University of Oklahoma, and I saw what happened at OU, by the way, who was an R2 institution that became R1 while I was there. But I saw the impact that athletics has, especially when Joe Siglione became the athletics director there, and saw the impact that he had and how winning the national championship in 2020 and Bob Stoops' second year, seeing what the softball coach did to win the national championships and what KJ Kindler did with women's gymnastics and so on, what those championships accomplished for the reputation of the university that just dwarfed what anything the academics and student success folks and every other university could do to bring pride to the university. There was a famous quote by one of the former presidents at OEU who said, I want to build a university that the football team can be proud of. And so I just believe that investing in athletics can really have a big influence in the perception and the reputation of the university. So join the Pac-12, how the national media response to joining the Pac-12 was unbelievable. I couldn't pay for that kind of media access, media attention. And the stories were overwhelmingly positive too, because we have such a great story to tell. And we had to take advantage of that opportunity. Every time I talk to someone about joining the Pac-12, I say, yeah, our athletics program is great, but let me also tell you about these other things that are going on at Texas State. So I think athletics plays a huge role in representing the university. And I think that universities would do well to invest in them as if they believed that was true. I think most people do believe it's true, but I'm not sure everyone believes in investing in them as the way they should.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

You've led through periods of tremendous change and growth. How do you balance high expectations and accountability while still creating a culture where people feel valued, seen, heard, and supported?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Wow, it's really interesting. I was telling someone the other day I'm watching this TV series, and one of the main characters has a very demanding boss. And he'll call her up and he'll be yelling at her on the phone, and then he hangs up, he slams the phone in the receiver, and she goes, Well, I guess I better get stuff done. And I thought, man, maybe that's how you're supposed to be a leader, right? You're supposed to yell at people and hang up the phone and demand them to do certain things, but it's just never been my leadership style. And I think it would come across very disingenuously if I tried to do it that way. And so the way I try to do it is to make sure people understand my vision and my dream for the university and keep them focused on what is the big thing we're trying to accomplish here. Ultimately, we're trying to do is to create a university where people will want to come to, that when they come to it, they have a great experience, they learn something, they learn something about themselves, they grow as a person, then they leave here and their lives are better because they've been here. And then for the faculty and staff who come here, they could go anywhere in the world to come. But for those who come here, that they enjoy their time here, they feel like they're making a difference, they're paid at a certain level, and they're and they feel like they've got the capacity to dream and to accomplish great things as well. And so if I can keep Keep people focused on why they're doing what they're doing, make sure that when they get there, that I'm not gonna take the credit for it. And we will make sure that they have the resources to get there. Now, it may be that they want to do something that just doesn't match our vision, then I have to explain that as well, why we're not gonna go down that road. But for those whose plans and goals are aligned with the mission of the university, if it makes sense to us, like if I think we can do this, then let's go all in on it. Let's hold ourselves accountable. Let's aim for excellence. Let's not just aim for good enough. Let's try to be the best at this we can possibly be, and maybe even the best in the state or the best in the country in this area, and then set ourselves up as an example so that when people are reading about those things and say, hey, there's great things happening at Texas State. Just for example, we announced that we're starting the very first women's gymnastics program in the state of Texas. And so that will mean we'll be the best Division I program in the state of Texas, at least until someone else does it. But being first was very important. But it was also an opportunity for us to say, hey, we are risk takers. We're willing to take a chance on something we think is important, and we are marshalling our resources around this kind of complicated new world of Rev Share and NIL and athletics and so on. But we're doing something we think is important, expanding women's athletics, opportunities for women to get athletic scholarship, expanding our support for Olympic sports in the state that develops more women gymnasts than any other state in the country. Let's do this important thing and let's use that to shine the light on what is happening at Texas State. And I think that's what we saw in the coverage of the news of us starting women's gymnastics, was actually received very positively. And I think people are saying, like, man, of all the schools that were going to start it, I wasn't thinking to be this school. I thought it'd be this or this school. But man, there must be something going on at Texas State that they're willing to do this. And so again, trying to build on these small successes to lead to the big ultimate overall goal to raise the national profile of the university, but also to make sure that people who come to Texas State leave here better than when they came.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Having served on the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Committee, thank you for growing the sport. It's really incredible. I did not know that I did not know your connection. So uh that was that that was just that was not gratuitous.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

It's just really what happened.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

That's incredible. Way down the road, when your presidency is ultimately evaluated years from now, what do you hope people will say about the culture you built and the people you developed?

SPEAKER_01 24:36

You know, it's interesting you say that because this is my second presidency. So I was the chancellor of Arkansas State, and I was looking for a picture the other day for something that happened back then, and I was scrolling through some old pictures, and I saw these pictures and Facebook posts from that era, and there's a couple moments I'm really proud of. It really actually asked me the question now because this just happened yesterday. And I was thinking, man, I hope people remember that about me. Like there was someone who's sick and I went and visited in the hospital, or there was someone who needed something and I helped them get there. And I hope that people remember that I lived out the admonition that Dr. Crouch gave me back in 1991 when he said, When you do this for someone else, you'll be doing this for me, that I've genuinely cared about my service to others, and that I look for ways to help people get from here to there, and that I use my position to make their life better and to make the institutions I served at better and to make this world I live in better. When you have a lot of authority to say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, when you have authority, there's almost a natural inclination to use it to benefit yourself. And I hope that people will see that I use it to benefit others. I that's what I want to do. And I maybe I miss the mark sometimes, but if I can do that, I hope people see it.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

We are going to shift gears here to one of our listeners' favorite segments called the Fast and Friendly Five. I'm gonna ask five quick questions, no long pauses, just get answers.

unknown 26:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

You ready? Yep, far away. All right, number one, your go-to hype music, artist, or song when you need a boost. Tom Petty, I won't back down. Love it. You gotta sing along that one every time. Yeah, absolutely. All right, number two, your go-to movie when you need inspiration.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Oh gosh. I love for some reason the Top Gun movie pops my mind. Um, I think about the original Top Gun movie. I love that one. Yeah, so I'll go with Top Gun. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Highway to the danger zone. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

All right, number three. All right, number three. One or two books that have impacted who you are.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

I love reading presidential biographies right now. That's kind of my where my head is. I'll say one from the ancient past and one new. So when I was a young kid growing up in northern Canada, I didn't know much about American culture, and I had to write a book report. And I found this book in the library called Black Like Me. It's about this young man in growing up in the 60s who painted his skin dark, like he lived life as a white man, and then he went and lived as a black man in the same area. He talked about how different his life was because of that. So that that's a book that stuck with me. I also love Doris Kern's Goodwin's Band of Rivals. It's about the cabinet that Lincoln created based on the people who opposed him when he ran for president, but he had them on his cabinet. What I love about that was he didn't want people who always agree with him to be on his cabinet. And I think that's a useful thing for a leader to have. Number four, best leadership advice you've received. Boy, when I became associate dean, I was getting the mail out of my mailbox in the sociology department of one of my fellow faculty members who I really looked up to a lot. He's an older gentleman. And he said to me, Hey, congratulations. And he he kind of jokes. He said, I hear you're going over the dark side. That's a natural inclination for faculty to be suspicious about anyone who goes in administration. He was actually a very kind person. And he said, Kelly, just remember you manage things, but you lead people. Be a leader, not a manager. So that's a great that's stuck with me for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Number five, who's a leader or a coach who shaped you and why?

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Well, I thought about a lot about Coach KJ Kindler a lot in the past couple of days leading up to having women's gymnastics to Texas State. She's somebody I look up to a lot because I love watching her at competitions because she is standing right next to whatever device they're on, the beam or the bars or whatever. And when they get off that device, they run over to her and she acts as if she did the routine herself. But I love how much they love her. I love this line from Michael Scott in the office. He said, Would you rather have someone your people love you or hate you or fear you? And he said, I want them to fear how much they love me. I think that's a great line. But I love how much her student athletes love her and how much they seek her approval.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Excellent. And you're even able to drop in an office quote too. So extra bonus points to you. Dr. Danfish, congratulations. You have successfully passed the fast and friendly five.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

No, that's right. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

All right, we're coming to a close here, but before we do, could you please offer advice to our listeners on how to lead the right way?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Here's the thing that I always try to remember that it's not about me. And here's an example. I use social media a lot. At the end of the day, I'll be posting about all the things I did during the day. And people say, Man, you you're always so busy. You're everywhere all the time. There must be two of you, and so on. And I am in a lot of places. When I'm on campus, if someone ever invites me, I never say no. I try to get everywhere I can. But I remind myself is that when people invite me, they're not inviting Kelly, they're inviting the president. And if I can keep that distinction clear in my head, I can keep my job clear in my head. I can keep the context of my life clear. Because if I start to think that, man, people think Kelly is hilarious, and people think Kelly is so great, and everyone wants Kelly at their events, I can start to get a big head about this and I start acting the wrong way, I think. But if I can remember that people want the president, people think it's important when the president shows up. People want the president's input, and people want the president to know what they're doing. That's different from Kelly. And so if I can keep that distinction in mind between who I am as a person versus what I do for a living, then I think I can be a better president. Stop thinking about how I'm trying to draw attention to myself, but trying to attract the attention to the people I serve. And that if I can add value by my presence, I'm doing it not because Kelly's important, but because the presidency is important.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Thank you so much for your time. This was so insightful and such a wonderful opportunity to visit with you. We really appreciate having you on the Competitive Kindness Podcast. Thanks, Rob. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for tuning in. If today's episode got you fired up, please check out the book Competitive Kindness, Winning the Right Way. Available on Amazon. Join the competitive kindness movement by sharing this with your friends, family, and colleagues. Also, I would love to connect with you, so please share your thoughts or stories with me on LinkedIn or on X. My handle there is at Rob Clark10. Remember, dare to lead differently. Dare to be kind of