Borja Cuan - Retention Is a Relationship

Retention is a relationship.

In this episode of the People/AI Strategy Forum, Sam Reeve speaks with Borja Kwan, Founder of Four15 Digital, about the leadership habits that keep top talent engaged, connected, and committed long before retention becomes a problem.

As organizations navigate remote work, AI adoption, and rising performance pressure, many leaders focus heavily on productivity systems and operational efficiency. But Borja argues that retention is ultimately shaped by relationships, consistency, trust, recognition, and human connection.

Drawing from decades of experience leading high-performance marketing teams, Borja shares practical insights on balancing accountability with empathy, creating meaningful employee relationships, and building cultures where people genuinely want to stay.

If your organization is struggling with disengagement, turnover, remote team culture, or leadership consistency, this conversation offers a grounded and highly practical perspective on what keeps teams connected over the long term.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why retention problems often begin long before employees resign
• The leadership habits that strengthen employee loyalty and engagement
• How performance-driven organizations can balance accountability and empathy
• Why relationships matter more than perks when retaining top talent
• The challenges of maintaining culture with remote teams
• Why intentional in-person connection still matters in a hybrid world
• How recognition and consistent communication improve engagement
• The opportunities and risks AI introduces into creative and client-facing work
• Why leaders must remain authentic as AI tools become more common
• The importance of building environments where employees feel heard and supported

Key takeaway

Retention is not just a compensation strategy.

It is a leadership behavior.

When employees feel trusted, recognized, supported, and connected to leadership, organizations create cultures where top performers are far more likely to stay and grow.

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Guest

Borja Kwan
Founder of Four15 Digital, specializing in performance marketing, leadership development, and client growth strategies.

Learn more:
https://www.four15digital.com/

Connect on LinkedIn:
  / borjakuan 

#PeopleStrategy #Leadership #EmployeeRetention #FutureOfWork #RemoteLeadership #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeEngagement #AILeadership

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About the People/AI Strategy Forum
The People/AI Strategy Forum explores how leaders navigate the intersection of people strategy, leadership, and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Sam Reeve, Founder & CEO of CompTeam, the Forum features conversations with executives, practitioners, and experts shaping the future of work.

Learn more about CompTeam and the People/AI Strategy Forum at compteam.net.

Transcript

Sam 0:00

If your top people are not leaving for more money, but because their relationship with leadership quietly broke long before the resignation letter. Welcome to the People Strategy Forum. I'm Sam Reeve, your host, and CEO of comp team, where we've helped organizations design people centered systems that attract and keep top performers. And today's topic is retention is a relationship, the leadership habits that keep top talent from walking. And our guest today is Boha Kwan of four 15 Digital, a leader who has built his career around strategic business growth, long-term client experience, and stable and successful experiences for their organizations. Recent interviews and company materials consistently point to Borjas approach. If you have disciplined leadership that provides human connection. And the belief that leaders treat their teams with dignity and that directly shapes their retention and growth for the long-term success. So let's welcome Bora. How you doing today? Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 1:13

How are you?

Sam 1:14

Great. So let, let's kind of jump right into things and, and first I would love to just to know a little bit more about, you know, how you got into your business. what, what really drove your passion and, and marketing and, and leadership. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 1:32

Yeah, my, journey started right outta school. I started working for an internet startup, back in 1998. Joined them very early, at the time the company had. 28 employees. I was number 29 and, that was really my introduction to internet marketing. I had no prior experience. Again, this is 1998, so the concept of internet marketing was nascent. I ended up working for that company, staying with that company for eight years in total, which is quite a bit of time. Not many people today, 2026, are staying at a company for eight years. But that was my, experience and that company went through an immense amount of transformation and growth over those eight years. We had been public when I joined. We went private. We went through the dot, boom. In the dot

Sam 2:21

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 2:22

So seeing kind of the highs and lows of, of things was absolutely, impactful for me, and I learned a lot, having been a part of a company that experienced all of that. We also went through a bunch of m and a activity we acquired. We were acquired, then we, acquired our largest competitor at the time. So kind of being part of that integration process was super interesting. So I learned a lot in those years. Met a lot of great people who were smart, who helped sort of teach me. And so that, outside of starting my own business was probably the most fulfilling professional experience I had. and after leaving that company on my own terms, I was sort of interested in moving out to the west coast. I was working on the east coast in Boston and I said, oh, let me try something new. I had traveled to the West coast for business to visit customers. kind of liked, liked it,

Sam 3:16

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 3:17

and so I ended up, deciding to move and, and change jobs after eight years and a good run. Leaving on my own terms, and on good terms was very satisfying. So ended up moving out to the West coast where continued my career in digital advertising, working for another. Advertising company. At the time, this was one of the largest advertising networks in the world and was there for six years. brought in to help build out their performance marketing division. From there I did a little bit more sort of consulting affiliate marketing, uh, then ended up client side. Sort of buying media, managing, a large budget for a client, about $120 million a year in advertising.

Sam 3:58

Oh well, yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 3:58

Then, from there, ended up starting my agency.

Sam 4:02

So, so Bora, I mean, since you have a experience in managing teams that are on both coasts, have you noticed a different type of management style that is the most successful in one coast versus the other? or is it pretty much the same approach?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 4:17

Yeah, I mean, you can't say one is more successful than the other. There's a lot of success, New York, Boston, there's a lot of success in the Bay Area, so I think it's just, a different geographic location. I did observe differences in terms of, I would say culture and sort of way of doing business. When I was working for a Boston based company that had an office in Santa Barbara, I was, you know, you could tell there was differences in the way I think we, I. Thought of business or maybe the intensity, that, that we had versus maybe the west coast, east coast versus west coast. But ultimately it wasn't sort of one way was right, one way was wrong.

Sam 4:55

Right.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 4:56

just different

Sam 4:56

Sure.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 4:57

to, doing things.

Sam 4:59

I think that's the nuance I was talking about is just maybe different approaches, different styles, you know, both can be equally successful, but in making sure that we're, resonating with the people that we're working with is important, Which, kind of brings me to the next step here is that I know that You've had decades of helping stable organizations grow and become deeply committed to client experience and so forth. and what was the, the secrets that you found and, and ensuring that you, you really had that good employee experience for your people that made them real good team members.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 5:32

Yeah, I mean, I think we are in a professional services environment that is, you know, the business we're in. We provide a service to the end customer. And, we are also in a very competitive environment.

Sam 5:45

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 5:46

only, uh, industry or, or business that competes with other people, but it's hyper competitive. Uh, we're working with large businesses. the folks that we're working with on a daily basis have a lot of pressure drive growth and performance. And that, pressure trickles down to us as the service provider. We are a growth, business. We help businesses scale. That is really why we are hired.

Sam 6:11

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 6:12

and so we're in that environment where we are being measured numerically.

Sam 6:17

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 6:17

matter how much someone likes me or likes a member of my team and enjoys their company, um, at the end of the day, that won't be sufficient to retain them as a customer. We have to really drive. growth, IE re results for them, and that's very easily measured, especially with digital marketing. It's very easily measured, so I think. Because of that, we have to understand our role in delivering that service, what the expectations are. and that means, we have to have a really good team to deliver that service. Without a good team, we're not gonna be able to retain our customers. And so it's a lot in our business around. Attracting and retaining really good talent. which by the way, even today is not something I've mastered. It's a very difficult thing to do.

Sam 7:09

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 7:10

you try to get better, you try to evolve, you try to find new ways. but at the end of the day. no matter what you do, there are things that you won't control, that you can't really worry about. so my POV on retention and sort of employee development, and building relationships is to focus. On the areas that you can control and influence and do an expert level job there. so my, my, my background before even joining the internet space back in 1998 was in hospitality.

Sam 7:44

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 7:45

growing up, as soon as I was legally able to work, at 16, I think it was, started working.

Sam 7:52

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 7:52

and my first job was in a hotel. And at that hotel I ended up working there for many years because it was a summer job. And then When I could work during this, the school year I did, and then when I was in college, I came back and worked in the summer. So I got a lot of exposure to the hotel industry or hospitality industry, which. Benefited me a lot in terms of serving the client

Sam 8:16

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 8:16

Working at a hotel is very demanding, not only in terms of the hours that you're expected to work, but also in terms of the type of clientele that you're working with or dealing with or, or interacting with on a daily basis and, and problem solving and dealing with angry customers and frustrated customers so that. Even though there's no correlation with internet marketing, a lot of those skills that I developed or was exposed to really helped as I became an agency owner. And some of those were transferable in terms of service delivery. So say that's sort of important, for me, especially in terms of my evolution because while at the time I didn't think any of this would be useful when I started an agency, 25, 30 years later,

Sam 9:02

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 9:03

it ended up helping me.

Sam 9:05

So one of the things that you mentioned and you kind of, went through, I mean, the importance Of really understanding how employment and talent is in different industries. You mentioned hospitality versus marketing and so forth and one of the things I wanted, the point or the nuance I want to get into is really the performance driven, elements and then also the traditional creative of around marketing. Usually, you know, the creativity of marketing people really lends to. giving time to be creative and, and not so Dr. Driven by the numbers. But then in the digital world, as you mentioned, I mean, you have these hard metrics that you have to accomplish. So when you're balancing these things between, being creative and then also driving the numbers and performance, how do you kind of communicate that to your people?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 9:55

You mean the employees? How do I get them to drive performance?

Sam 9:59

I mean if you're, of course you have these numbers you have to achieve, but then also you have this creative talent that you're dealing with as well. I mean, is there,

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 10:07

Yep.

Sam 10:08

ever a rub there?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 10:10

Yeah, I mean, I think we hire and we. Communicate to the team that in order to be a Media buying professional or paid media strategist, you need to have a combination of skill sets. if we're talking about hard skills and separating soft skills for a moment, you have to have both the ability to be analytical but also creative. The numbers don't lie. And the numbers are the true metric. in our North Star. Like we, we sit down with a customer on day one when we're having a kickoff call, and we'll sit down and say, Hey, Sam, you've hired us to be your performance marketing agency. How are you evaluated by management? What is your success metric? How do you evaluate us as a vendor? What do we need to do in order for you to be a raving fan or for you to feel like we have done a very good job? Right? And there's maybe some quantitative stuff or qualitative stuff, but it's mostly quantitative. It's mostly, Hey, we need to acquire a customer at this cost. We need to, increase sales by this percentage or this dollar amount. need to drive more qualified leads and build sales pipeline for our team. there's a variety of metrics. It could be singular, it could be, plural, but at the end of the day, it's being very crystal clear on what those metrics are and how we're being evaluated so that we always know how we're doing without even asking you. But really to be good at what you do, you need to give people autonomy. And flexibility so that they feel like they can be creative because yes, numbers are one thing, but in order to get those numbers, we need to drive. Performance. And the only way we drive performance is if we, if we tap into those creative sort of, juices,

Sam 12:05

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:06

we're not being creative, if we're not testing and experimenting, if we're not trying new ads, if we're not trying new messaging, if we're not pushing, the boundaries, Coming up with new ways to hook the customer, lead magnets, things of that nature, not gonna do well.

Sam 12:23

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:23

a direct correlation with being creative in the job and allowing yourself to spend time being creative So if it's not one or the other, you have to be able to do both or you're not gonna be successful.

Sam 12:34

Yeah, it makes sense. But then what happens when you have a person that is a great team member, but they're really not driving the numbers, to get client satisfaction.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:46

if they're great at the numbers, but they're not driving client satisfaction.

Sam 12:50

No. So if, if they're a great team member,

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:52

Yep.

Sam 12:53

you know, but

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:53

driving client satisfaction, right?

Sam 12:56

I,

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 12:56

answer is, Sam, you're a great team member, but you're not driving client satisfaction. And at the end of the day, client satisfaction matters

Sam 13:02

yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 13:03

Accomplishing the ultimate goal we have, right? means that either we need to do something better as leaders and, and, and support you better, right? And understand what your, your, your road, what the roadblocks are, or what training you need, or how we can develop you. But ultimately, Sam, you have to. Clients have to be happy,

Sam 13:26

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 13:26

And we have to deliver performance. And I'm not blaming you if we're not, because maybe you're doing a very good job and it's a function of the business. We're not in the business of making miracles. And maybe this is just not a good business, or we don't have what we need from them to be successful. maybe the price point is too high. So we are trying to do everything we can. To make no excuses as to why it's not working, but there are some things that we will rely on the customer for in order for us to be successful. So our goal is to take control and ownership over as much as we can, but in the absence of the things that we can't control, we must, You know, really challenge the team to push the client to get those things to us. Because from day one, we're very good about expectation setting and defining roles and responsibilities and saying, okay, this is what we own and this is what you own. And for this to be a good partnership, both of us have to come to the table and deliver on what those expectations are. And we actually do that in the sales process. So before even taking a new customer on, we're very clear on defining this is what we do and this is what you do. We can't do it all, even if we wanted to, because there are some things that are just not things that we can do.

Sam 14:41

and I like the idea what you're saying is that there's a performance problem. It really diagnosing and finding out where it's happening and then, and then. Trying to, to fix that. And it could be on the client side, it could be on, on, the employee side, you know, and so making sure that, you know, where the, is the performance issue is, is important.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 14:59

Yep,

Sam 15:00

Yeah. So, and now when you, you mentioned as far as, when we're talking about retaining your top performers, I mean, what is the, the, what do you, you found has been the secret sauce in really ensuring that you retain your top team members?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 15:17

It's really recognizing that you need to invest time in building those connections. Like anything else, relationships thrive. if you invest time and you put the effort in. The, the, the, the way to explain it is quite easy, but to execute on that is actually more difficult because it requires time. And a lot of leaders, founders, owners, executives, they're so busy that they often forget the team

Sam 15:45

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 15:45

Right? They don't make it a priority. They say, I have this presentation, I have this meeting. I have to solve this problem. they're sort of trying to. through all the things on their to-do list that they often forget that the team is the most important thing and should be their number one priority. So for me, what I found that helps retention most is ultimately building connection with your team. What does that mean? Well, that means, hey, getting to know them, understanding. From the beginning, what they wanna get out of this journey, working at your organization,

Sam 16:19

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 16:20

The same way I have goals and objectives I want them to accomplish. It's like a value exchange. I want to get something out of you and you want to get something out of me. Let's be clear on what those things are, and then let's work together to make sure that we're getting those from each other. Right? what is it that's important to them? it financial? Is it professional? Is it flexibility? Whatever it is. And then really being, there to make sure that you're giving them those things and you're checking in with them periodically, and it's not always about work. I took one of my teammates out to golf,

Sam 16:54

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 16:54

We're actually gonna spend two and a half hours on a golf course. and we're gonna talk about family and you're expecting a third child and, your trips and what books you're reading or what movies you're watching. Like it's really not gonna be about business. It's gonna be about you and I connecting on a more personal level because I'm interested in that. And that's not to say that. I need to be best friends and we need to travel together and I need to take interest in their personal matters. But I do it genuinely because I'm interested and that's how you build relationships. It's, it's because, hey, I wanna know what's going on with your life outside of work. You got two young kids, you got a third on the way, you're not sleeping a lot. That's a big deal.

Sam 17:35

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 17:36

make sure you're doing okay. So again, It's kind of like, are you willing to put in the time to do what I did yesterday, which is time, four hours with an employee and put work to the side? There's plenty of things that, that we could be doing work-wise that were important. Proposals and meetings and things. I said, no, this has to be prioritized today. We're doing this.

Sam 17:58

Right. Nice. And so do you have remote employees as well?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 18:04

We do, we have

Sam 18:05

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 18:05

employees.

Sam 18:06

and so how do you keep connected with those remote employees? I mean, is it, difficult to kind of get together and play golf? I mean, is there other ways that you utilize.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 18:15

remote is nonsense. you and I, it's not gonna replace being in person. So you can do remote, but you're never building deep connections remotely. It's just not a possibility.

Sam 18:25

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 18:26

so no one's gonna convince me it is. It's, it, it would be impossible. I could debate this for hours and it's very simple when you date someone and you meet them on the dating app, and I wasn't part of that generation. I'm married, have kids. You meet them on dating app, but how do you cement a relationship? It doesn't happen on a dating app. It happens in person, right? We know this. So what people do is they come up with convenient reasons on happy hours over Zoom, which are a complete waste of time, games on Zoom, and that's a complete waste of time. And I'm taking a very, kind of aggressive approach to that. I mean, there's some value, but. It's not gonna be the same as me sitting in a room with you or sit playing golf with you or going to happy hour, going for a walk or spending time together. So what we try to do is. In the absence of being together, which happens, we'll do this, we'll have conversation, we'll communicate as often as we can.

Sam 19:24

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 19:25

two, three times a year where we really spend quality intentional time together. And that really brings us closer. I've never left a, a team offsite where people felt. More disconnected than reconnected. Everybody felt and motivated, inspired on the same page. Really happy, lot of good stories. So we try to, you know, sprinkle those in, at least three, four times a year. So we have distributed offices, so we're trying to bring people together. And then in the meantime, we are doing what most people do, which is Google meets or Zoom calls, check-ins, things like that, just to make sure we're all sort of. Connected as much as we can being in different parts of the country or world.

Sam 20:07

so for your remote team, you make sure that you get together periodically, two or three times a year to really develop that connection.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 20:14

yep, yep.

Sam 20:15

Now, when you think about the, the single most, impactful thing that you do for retention and engagement of your people. Is there, you know, you mentioned developing relationships is is the, the big one. What else? Is there something else?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 20:32

Developing relationships, Not just making the gen general statement, what does developing a relationship with someone mean? Right. It just doesn't mean like, Hey, we, we see each other, we say hi. It's really building

Sam 20:44

Mm-hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 20:45

But it's really all about the execution. I would also say is being empathetic and understanding and providing flexibility. Really just, making sure that you're providing an environment in which they can thrive. They feel supported, they feel safe, they feel heard, they have an opportunity to, push back or give feedback. Right. you know, all of these things are what I, what I mean by building deep connection and building an environment or creating an environment in which people can thrive,

Sam 21:16

Right.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 21:16

And so a lot of that requires a lot of effort. Really being consistent in that area is really the differentiator,

Sam 21:25

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 21:26

You can't just pop in there and have a, these things happen and then just disappear for eight months. You really have to be consistent with building relationships.

Sam 21:35

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 21:35

I reach out to people constantly. I'm just thinking about, you haven't seen you hope you're well. Right. put a call in, right? Like all these little ways of just connecting with people that makes them feel like you haven't forgotten about them and that you're thinking about them goes a very long way. And then lastly, I'll say, that's important one, thanking them, thanking people for the contribution and the impact. And I do this often when my team goes above and beyond, sending an email on a Saturday, working on an assignment on a Saturday, expected, but appreciated. And it's kind of part of the job, but you can't really ask someone to do it or demand them to do it. But when they do it, it shows me that they're serious and committed, and I wanna recognize that, and I want them to know that I'm paying attention and that that will not go. Unnoticed.

Sam 22:25

Now, now the other thing that you mentioned is, is that, sometimes when you have a performance driven organization and people are missing their metrics, you have to really look into the reason and then try to rep and try to fix that. Right. And right now there is, you know, we have a lot of new technologies that are coming into the, the, and marketing specifically, you know, artificial intelligence driven type of solutions, and people are required to really step up and upscale. are you seeing any challenges there with, new technologies coming into your business?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 22:58

I'll focus on things that I'm worried about, which is the overuse or abuse of it.

Sam 23:02

Hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 23:03

I think we need to be, embracing a lot of these technologies or tools that are available to us. And, I view them more as tools, not things that are displacing or replacing. The people that we have. But these are additive tools that are being introduced that we can build into our systems or workflows that allow us to be more efficient or provide a better experience or service to our customers. So I think what we have to be cautious with is how, when, and what we use these tools for and know that they can be dangerous and they can have an adverse effect if improperly used. example, when you're designing ads. you really have to make sure you're giving the tool the right input.

Sam 23:47

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 23:48

and you're looking at what the output is and really making sure that that's what you wanted it to be. Because the last thing you wanna do is put out an ad, for a client that we're working with that was AI generated that we just relied on AI to do, and that misrepresents the brand or it's not tasteful, or whatever. Like we have to be careful with, and, you know, it's still evolving and, and, and so that means that we just have to be really good at quality control and being good with the inputs and things like that. And then also when it comes to building authentic relationships, I, I don't want my team. Not writing their own emails. I want them to build authentic relationships with our customers, and customers will start paying attention if these are all AI generated, if we're using Claude or Chat GPT and we're not using our own sort of personal voice or brand.

Sam 24:36

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 24:37

So I've seen emails come to me from my team where I go, you didn't write this, and the reason I know this is I've known you for two years and you've never used a vocabulary word like this.

Sam 24:46

Yeah.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 24:46

range in terms of vocabulary is not represented here. Like it's way too formal. It doesn't sound like you, it's totally against you and who you represent. So be careful not to do that with the customer because they're gonna start questioning like, what is you versus ai?

Sam 25:04

And so are, are you offering training to your, your people and, and setting these expectations with them?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 25:09

we have documents that they have to review

Sam 25:11

Mm-hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 25:12

in terms of what our, sort of POV is on AI and the use of ai. we are definitely having training with them and we're talking about it. We're saying, Hey, let's use this. Let's make sure we use it in the right way. We're making our clients aware of the fact that we are on the AI train. We, we don't wanna be an agency that's like, oh no, this is AI thing is just a fad. It's going away. and we're being very sort of transparent with how we're using it. so they know it's part of our sort of process. And we recognize though that we're not sort of just. you know, using it without being very diligent about, like I said, the outputs.

Sam 25:50

thank you for sharing a lot of your perspective here on leadership and engagement. I think that brings a lot of our listeners. I mean a lot of our listeners out there are new founders of organizations. Some are more established, but, but, being reminded about the importance of developing relationships and then recognizing people is critical. So thank you on that. So, I know Boha, you have a lot of things that are going on, this year. what are you really excited about?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 26:20

I'm excited about the opportunity to make this business, more than what it is in terms of size, in terms of offerings, providing more to our customers, helping them solve more problems. It's plenty challenging right now, in particular, given the economic climate, everything that's going on politically, businesses are challenged, yet they're also under a lot of pressure to grow. So I feel like there's always going to be a need for the services we pre provide, we need to continue to get better. We need to evolve, we need to, expand service offerings, in a way that that provides more value to clients. We need to get better at the existing service offerings that we've deliver and provide clients. So for me. we're just scratching the surface.

Sam 27:06

Mm-hmm.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 27:06

and so for me, I'm always trying to become better, you know, get better at what we do, find other ways to, to build our business. So I think that's what I'm most excited about, continuing to hire great people. I love working with our team, hiring more people that are kind of like-minded, and expanding.

Sam 27:26

I know many leaders out there that are listening in are thinking about their own marketing and approach and their people, and they're saying, you know, we need to do something different this year. so how can some of our listeners get a hold of you for some of your services?

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 27:40

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. if you want to, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Borja Kwan, B-O-R-J-A-C-U-A-N. I also do a lot of sort of posts on LinkedIn about agency life and leadership. also you can visit our website, four 15 digital.com. There's a contact us, button on our website, short form. If you fill it out, we'll be to respond. You could also learn more about our service offerings on our website, more about sort of the culture of the agency, case studies, et cetera.

Sam 28:12

Great. Thanks, Bora. Now I know we covered a lot of good material here, for our listeners out there, we've talked about. Building those effective relationships with your people. You know, and sometimes this can be more challenging when you're with remote employees and you need to make extra steps to ensure that people get together and have that, more of a physical presence is important as Bohan mentioned. And then the big key piece of recognition on this, really making sure that you take the time as leaders to ensure that your people know when they're doing a good job. having that communication and, making sure that they know that they're being noticed for what they do. And 'cause of course what is observed gets repeated, right. But thank you so much Boha for your wisdom and, I really appreciate your time today.

Borja Cuan - Four15 Digital 28:57

Thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam 28:59

Great. And for our listeners out there, if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure that you subscribe, rate, and share with, one of your fellow leaders. Uh, you're, you're probably, uh, know of many people that need, uh, Boras help you know that he has a wonderful team, and so I, I, I encourage you to reach out to him as soon as possible and, before he gets booked up. All right, for everyone, we'll see you next week on the People Strategy Forum. Take care.