The Crazy One

Ep 31 Listener questions: Setting your salary and showing the value of an in-house team

February 12, 2017 Stephen Gates Episode 31
Ep 31 Listener questions: Setting your salary and showing the value of an in-house team
The Crazy One
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The Crazy One
Ep 31 Listener questions: Setting your salary and showing the value of an in-house team
Feb 12, 2017 Episode 31
Stephen Gates

Answering listener questions about how to figure out what salary you should ask for, and how to show your company the value of an in-house creative team.

SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-31-listener-questions-setting-your-salary-and-showing-the-value-of-an-in-house-team/
 
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
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Show Notes Transcript

Answering listener questions about how to figure out what salary you should ask for, and how to show your company the value of an in-house creative team.

SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-31-listener-questions-setting-your-salary-and-showing-the-value-of-an-in-house-team/
 
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook 

Stephen Gates :

What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 31st episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. Now, at the end of every show, if you actually listen that far, I asked you to go over to the Facebook page, because we're trying to build or I'm trying to build a community around this show. So I ask you to go over there, search for The Crazy One podcast and give that page like, I'm not just doing that for marketing. I'm not just doing it to kind of feed my ego. I do it because I really want to engage with people to listen to this show. I want to make this a living thing. I want to be able to share more to answer more questions to be able to give you the opportunity. So if there's something you want to hear more about, if there's something that you feel like I didn't quite explain, you can go through and you can ask me those questions. And in most cases, I'll do my best to get back to you and answer it right there. Well, on this week's show, I actually want to take on two questions that came in from listeners that I think need a little bit more more attention than just a quick response on Facebook. But this is also an invitation. If there's something that you want to ask if there's something you want to find out more about, go to the Facebook page and ask me because I really like doing these questions shows, I like engaging with people that are out there, because the entire reason why I'm doing this is to try to help people to try to share what I've learned to try to make things maybe a little bit better, a little bit easier for you. But that only happens if we have that conversation. So two questions. Let's jump into the first one. So the first question comes from Jacqueline Barnes and Jacqueline writes Hello, I really enjoyed this podcast I have a question that I'd love to hear you address in more depth. Back in your episode about interviews, you mentioned the importance of negotiating and understanding the business side of things. How would you suggest one go about discovering his or her value to a prospective employer and figuring out how much money they should ask for as a current student. I hope to walk into the job market with a solid understanding of this, I'm entering a relatively small market in Spokane, Washington. And from what I can tell the salaries vary quite a bit from agency to agency making it even harder for me to consider what a fair salary should be. So, Jacqueline, this is a great question. It's one that I wish had a simple answer, but it's probably the reason why I decided to take it on in this show, because it's a little bit more complicated than you'd think. And there's a lot of variables that go into the answer to this question. So let's start with the basics. And I just want to kind of walk through and really help you guys just get a basic understanding of how to companies hire people, and how do they set salaries. This is something that I'm always surprised how few people really understand but I think I'll also explain why this is something that's really important to understand. Whenever you go in and you apply for a job. Every position at a company or an agency basically has a level A tear that it's placed at basically indicating what's the seniority of this. So you know, if you think about the corporate ladder, what rung is it on the ladder? Well, each one of those bands or those tiers then has a corresponding salary range or a salary band that really kind of defines what what are we going to pay people that really are in this particular place or in this position. And honestly, that it makes sense because it creates a quality in the team. It lets you make sure that there is kind of uniformity across what people get paid, especially across different locations or things like that. But it's an important nuance for everybody to understand. And the reason why is because these bands usually have a pretty wide salary range that really let you account for and be able to let the band to hold a lot of different experience levels because if you think about it, if you're hiring for an art director, you can have a junior charger, you can have a senior art director, that may be all sit in the same band, but because of the experience and things like that, well, that you need a salary range there to be able to work inside of. So here's the first piece of advice that I would tell you whenever you're interviewing is that one you need to understand these bands exist. But the other thing that you need to really understand is, where does this position are actually, where does the offer that you're going to get sit in that band? Because the reality is, is that most HR people, most recruiters are going to want to put you somewhere between the very bottom, so I zero, and about the 75th percentile of that band, because that's going to be kind of like the meat of it and the biggest range and the reality is, is that you actually want to be placed somewhere from that zero to 75% range. Because if you're at the very top of that band, then your salary is going to stall. And so I think we'll talk in a little bit more detail in a minute about negotiating But I think that it's one of these things where as you go through and try to figure out some of this value, it's just it's an important construct to keep in mind that these sorts of bands exist. And it's a question that you're going to want to ask. But there's a little bit more to this as well, because the problem is that not only do you need to kind of understand what salary what's the value that you have right now, but you need to think about past the job offer you need to think about, okay, well, how long till I get promoted? When can I get promoted? What are the other problems that can be out there? This is why I said you want to be between the zero and 75th percentile whenever you get hired in one of these bands, because if you put at the very top, your salary gets stuck. Yes, you got hired for a great amount, but you don't have the possibility of getting a raise anytime in the near future until you're actually promoted to the next band up. And that's a real problem. But you also need to understand how many bands are there. Because this is an organizational problem that could also help really kind of just be a blocker or a problem in the way of you getting promoted. Because the problem is, if there are too few bands, then it's going to get really, really hard to get promoted. Think about it if you have a big design organization, and they're only three or four bands, well, that's a problem. Because now I have kind of like somebody who would be on the team, somebody who leads the team, somebody who leads the studio, and then somebody who kind of like leads the organization, we just say those are kind of like the four bands. That's a problem, because now all of a sudden, it gets really hard to be able to get promoted to be able to get more money, unless they're able to kind of somehow put differentiators inside of those bands. But the other problem that you'll find is if there are too many of them, if there are too many tears, then the responsibilities just all start to blur together that Yeah, you can get a ton of promotions, but maybe the money is not that good. Or maybe you know your role doesn't actually really change. So it's just sort of like a basic organizing construct to think about about just kind of understanding those two things to get your bearings to your position. And to get the bearings to the organization to kind of think about your future a little bit. Let's start to dig in to this a little bit deeper. And let's actually start to get into the question of, Okay, how do you actually determine what should you ask for what are you worth? And this is where it starts to get a little bit more complicated, because there are a lot of variables that come into play here. And I think, you know, Jacqueline, you were kind of saying the already seeing a really wide variance between all these different kind of agencies and things like that will probably to the biggest things are going to drive kind of salary differences. One is just going to be the city that you work in and you had said that like Spokane is not going to have the same requirements for again, let's use an art director. If I look at what people are going to want in terms of talent from an art director in terms of what people are going to want to pay an art director in Spokane, that's gonna be very different than New York City. So I think that, you know, part of it is that the market that you work in is going to drive a lot of the salary differences and a lot of the different job requirements, and a bigger kind of amount of that variation between those things. So that, you know, your head's already in the right place that if you're in a smaller market, that is a bit of a challenge. The other thing that you're going to see and I think you started to allude this to to this a little bit, is that there also there is a variance that happens between big companies or agencies versus small companies and agencies. And the logic behind this almost gets a little bit backwards. Because one of the things that you'll see is that if you go work for a small agency or a small company, you might actually be able to be paid more than a similar position and a big brand or a big agency. Well, let's think about this. Why does this happen? Well, if I'm working at a small agency or a small company, I'm an art director, my responsibilities and the impact that I'm going to have on the company are probably going to be much bigger than if I was at a really big agency, just because of just the sheer amount of work that comes through. Now the trade off here usually is is that even a small company or a small agency that usually comes with a small brand or a small client base so that the work usually isn't as notable. It's not recognizable, you're not working on brands that when you go to the family reunion, and tell people about it, they say, oh, I've heard of that. Well, the inverse then is that with bigger agencies and bigger brands, sometimes the salaries maybe a little bit lower, but obviously, the work is more visible. So it's a trade off. But I've seen this in a lot of cases where I'll find a really good creative, who maybe was working at a small company or working at a small agency, and they're actually making significantly more than what the equivalent position would be on one of my teams. And so there's always a little bit of a push and pull or a little bit of a variance. You're going to see between that between kind of what is the size of the agency the size of the client and the Kind of just get a variance between that. All of that just lays the groundwork. So how do you still figure out what the hell do you write on the line whenever they ask you for what your salary requirements are going to be? Because with all these variables, you do have to find a starting point, right? The best one that I know of the best one that I could recommend that I think seems to be the most accurate is glassdoor.com. They don't pay me any money, not a sponsorship, not plugging them or anything like that. It's just I've gone through and I've looked at a lot of different places. hga used to do a survey for designers. I think they stopped in 2014. Not entirely sure why, no, that some of the headhunter places like acorn and things like that do them. They don't tend to be published with great regularity. And a lot of times the information tends to vary wildly because here again, it makes it really hard for me to go in and look at a very specific market or a very specific position and understand what it should be. I think that the thing that goes last door does, right is that it lets you actually go in. So if you go to the site, you'll see there's a app in the main navigation, there's a thing, it's actually called salaries, you can go into that section, you can enter the job title. And it'll start to pull up kind of equivalent ones from a, like a little Smart Search sort of a thing. And you can put in your actual city. So if you want to search our directory, Spokane, Washington, it will actually search by that market. And then it shows you a couple different things. It'll show you a national average, and then an average for that city. As well as if people have put it in salaries for that position at specific companies. Obviously, they're not listing names or things like that. But it gives you the ability to go in and say, okay, like if I'm in New York City, what what is the salary of a creative director at RGA or bbdo, or these kind of different places and see what the variant is? Spokane I think you have to go in and look, I didn't go in and do the search for there for that city. I'll be honest, but I think if you go in and take a look gets at, it'll at least give you a good starting point to be able to kind of look at that and say, okay, what's the ballpark? What's the average that I should start to do? Now from there, again, this is this is where this is all probably more of an art than a science because it gives you the starting point. But what you want to ask for against that average may vary up or down, depending on your experience. If you're somebody who is coming out of college, and you are absolutely killing it in experience design, if you are incredible at coding, if you want a bunch of student awards or things like that, well, then you know, your salary may be a little bit higher than somebody that will say graduated at the bottom of their class, because their book isn't going to be as strong, their ideas aren't going to be as good they're not going to be as recognized. Again, this may only be the swing of a few thousand dollars in a market like that. But a few thousand dollars makes a difference. So I think it not only is the ability to take this average, but to then just kind of how do you realistically step back and look at yourself and say, Okay, how do I fit into this sort of continuum? Now the other thing that I'll tell you about setting value and this is a mistake that I see a lot It is a really common problem is a lot of cases, maybe when you're in college, maybe when you get out of college at some point, you freelance, and what you see is then great, you're going along, you're freelance to this position, you're having a really good time, they say, hey, look, we would love to make you a part of this team. Now I have to go through and set my value from that. The problem that I see is that when creatives go from freelancing to full time, and they try to figure out their salary, they get it really, really wrong. And I think there are so many people who quite honestly just take themselves out of the running for a job because they don't understand the economics of how this stuff works. A very brief economics lesson from a guy who draws so you know, put an asterisk on it take with a grain of salt, but, okay, you're a freelancer, which means that you're getting paid an hourly rate. So you most cases, what mistake I see is they take that hourly rate, and they multiply it times 4440 hours a week. And then they take that number and multiply it either by 50, or by 52. It depends on if you take two weeks off a year or not, we'll say 52 for round math, so 52 weeks in a year, so that then gives them whatever the number is. And it's always this incredibly attractive number. It's a great looking number. But there's a couple challenges with this. One is that whatever the company is actually paying on the hourly rate, the agency that is placed you with them will often take somewhere in the neighborhood between 30 to 60% of that rate, so that you know, that's not the take home rate. You should obviously know this because if the company is paying $75 an hour and you're only seeing 40. You understand what the difference is in terms of what they're taking their cut out of this from. But the other problem is that whenever you just do that multiplication, full time salaries include A lot of other stuff that freelance rates don't freelancers don't get benefits, they don't get insurance, they don't get 401k. They don't get a lot of these other things that cost the company money. So that that's why in a lot of cases, whenever you come in, you know, the the freelance rate and the full time rate and that salary difference are going to be pretty big. So what I would tell you to do is to not calculate your value by looking at your hourly rate to go in do the Glassdoor technique, look at what should somebody in your market in your position with your experience level? What's the average that they should be getting paid? And this is the case this is the crapshoot, that is freelancing, right? Because in some cases, you may be able to get a company that will drive a real premium on what they're willing to pay you. That's great. But the challenge is that it comes with uncertainty, that if all of a sudden they don't need you, they realize they're paying too much. Then all of a sudden that goes away. So it's the balance between salary and stability that I think is something that you're going to need to think through. As we talked about, how do you figure out your value? You go into this job interview, you need to know, why are you special? Why are you different? Why are you better for the job than anybody else? This was the whole purpose behind Episode Six, which was the ability to try to get you guys to understand how and why do you build your own personal brand, and what's the value in it? Well, the value in it is for moments like this. Because the other part of this that's a little bit of the trick is that you actually have to be able to be different enough, be valuable enough that you can actually get a job offer. And that's a bit of the trick because I think a lot of people go in very much focused on the money. It's a big company. It's a brand that I'm heard of, I'm gonna make a lot of money. That's great. But the pitfall that I'll tell you that I've seen is that time and time again, I've watched way too many people decide that they want to chase a salary number, decide that they want to chase a title. And you can do that. Look, I mean, it's it's your life, do whatever you want. The mistake that I've seen too many times is that when that is the only thing that you're taking into account is what is the title on LinkedIn? Or what's the number on my check? Don't get me wrong, those are important. Those are really important things. But if they're the only things, then the thing that I see too many times happening is that you go and you get that salary number, you get that title. But you trade something in to do that is that a lot of cases, the companies that are paying that much money or are giving you that title, most of the time aren't necessarily doing the best work. They aren't the best clients. And so you'll get the good salary, you'll get the good title, but the problem is, is that in three, four, maybe five years, you suddenly realize that your portfolio is pretty irrelevant. The work that you've been putting out there, you're not proud of. And so now you have to go through and Trying to figure out how do I rebuild or reboot my career because now I'm five years down the road. Now I'm ready, or I want that next tier the next step in that process. But the problem is at this point, my work won't get me there. I'm overpriced in the market, so people won't hire me for that position. Or it's just, I can't necessarily get to that next step. And I feel trapped. So I would just caution against that understand the value of your brand, but also just understand that happiness plays a part in this. Your team plays a part in this, there's more than just money that should go into things like this. Because if it's just purely a business transaction, then you need to be able to prepare it for what that means. But let's say you go through that, you know what your brand is you can articulate why you're different from everybody else, you get that job offer. The other thing that I'll tell you is whenever you get that and I see not and not nearly enough students know to do this, is that this is a negotiation A dance. This is again, why it's a bit more art than science. Because the reality is, is that you're going to try to get the most money you can, while the company is trying to hire you is going to try to get you for the least amount of money that they can. This is just basic economics, right is how do you be able to go through and do this, but it is a negotiation. So remember to negotiate. You can counter their offer to get more of what you want. But a word of warning here is that also don't fall in love with the first offer you get, because this is a negotiation. And I see this with too many young designers with too many young students who they just simply the first number that comes along, they've never had a salary before they've never had that sort of money before and that the thought of the independence that that will bring the first step in their career that they can actually start is such a great draw to them and is so appealing, that they don't negotiate. Because again, you know, most of the time when you make an offer very few places are going to come in and make you a max offer, then this won't be like that. The best and final sort of thing. But at the same point, don't be a diva. Because you've got to be realistic about kind of every phase of this job interview. Because how you act says something about you. And it says something about you due to that potential future employer. Because if you come in, and you're like I said, you know, you want $50,000 over what this position should pay or 80,000, like something crazy, that's not a negotiation like that. There's not a way that I'm going to come back and be able to be able to kind of negotiate from that. Or if all of a sudden, you know, you get really cocky and you're because if the company says, hey, look, we're gonna make you an offer. And all of a sudden, you have these crazy demands. It's like, hey, come chase me and do this kind of thing. I want all this crazy stuff. You know what every stage is a negotiation. every stage says something about you. And until the paper is signed, honestly, until you've actually started that job. People can pull the offer back. They can change their mind because you know, for me It's one of those things where if all of a sudden, I see somebody who starts acting crazy, who turns into a diva who starts making all these demands, I'm more than likely probably gonna pull the offer back. Because I think it says something about them. And I don't want somebody like that is going to act like a fool on my team, because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take this very compressed window, this interview window, and to be able to look at that and project that out and say, Okay, what are you gonna be like to actually work with? If you're reasonable if you're willing to negotiate if you were gonna have a conversation, and we can work through the problem that bodes incredibly well, for what's going to happen wherever we work together. If when there's a problem, you suddenly become a diva, you become irrational you all of a sudden one of these demands and you won't be part of a conversation. Well, again, I'm looking at that and thinking, What's this person going to be like to work with, if this is the way they react to a problem. But the other thing that I'll say here is that negotiating is incredibly critical if you're going into a leadership position. Because I think one of the things that I've done right over the last few jobs that I've had is to realize that I can get a huge amount done a huge amount set up to be successful. Before the first day I even start working. Because again, if you're gonna make me an offer, if this is something you want me to come in and lead, I need to set myself up to be successful. So there are certain things that I may ask for that I may push on beyond the salary. There are times whenever it's been organizational structure, there are times it's been team structure, sometimes it's even just been equipment or who will partner with or just kind of basic things like that. But it's understanding that I do have leverage before I come through the door, because if they're trying to close that deal, that may be a time for me to be able to act on this so that I can set myself up to be a really successful leader whenever I come through the door, instead of just starting from zero and trying to get it done once on there. So it's just something to think about. How do you negotiate and how do you think about setting yourself up for success? Before you sign that deal, and this, again goes back to understanding things like salary bands to where you're being put in that band, how many bands there are yet because again, it's not just that current offer that's going to make the difference. It's how do you set yourself up to be successful over the long term. The other part of this as I would kind of honestly give you this advice is because I think as you're new to this industry, is that don't underestimate again, how critical this last part of the process is. I talked about it before from a creative directors perspective about you know, if it's one of those things where I see people suddenly acting crazy, I'm trying to extrapolate this out into how they're going to be on their on my team. But I think you should also turn that around and look at it from the other perspective. Because I think, you know, though, I've always felt like the way that a company treats you during the interview process is really indicative of what is it going to be like to work for them. But if they're really unorganized if they take a long time to get back to you, if you Know You aren't being treated fairly if they're playing games, a lot of that, for me really signals Well, what are these people going to be like to work with. So pay attention to that too. And like I said, Don't fall too much in love. Because there's been more than once in my career where I've made it to the final stage of an interview, I've made it to an offer. And I've walked away, because I just had a bad feeling I the way that something was being done, I didn't like something fell off, because it's like I said, I really think that the way that they treat you in the interview process says a lot about how they'll be as an employer. I don't know that I could say that there is a scientific reason why I did this outside of just the gut feeling that something was off that it wasn't clicking, that there wasn't something that was right. I've been very lucky in that. Every time I've done that it was the right thing to do. Because shortly after the company went under the studio closed, the boss left the the thing that I thought that felt wrong, did manifest itself. So just take the time to pay attention to that. To go through figure out again, use Glassdoor figure out like what's kind of the base where you think you want to be on that average, take a look at your book, and use that as a starting point. But the other thing that I would tell you to do is, you know, whenever you have the interview, when you talk to HR, ask them what the salary ranges, I think it's a real simple thing. I think a lot of people get a little gun shy to ask about money and kind of the opening rounds. But I would tell you to do it. Because I think that that way, if you have an expectation of I want to be at a particular place. And that doesn't begin to align with where they're at. I'd rather save the interviews, I'd rather save the time, I'm sure they would as well, if we're going to get to the end of this and each one of us are going to fall in love with each other only to realize that this is something that actually is never going to work. So don't be afraid, like I said that just kind of say, you know, what's the range of you guys are looking at to pay for this role. They may come back and say, well, you tell us what you want, and you can go through and negotiate that dance, but it's just one of those things where these are hopefully all different Some things to think about the different things to pay attention to, and to just kind of try to figure out what that value is. And like I said, I, I wish it was easier. But you know, the good news is, the spot that you're in right now is as hard as it's going to be. Because once you get that first job, you can set a value, you can start to understand what that is and start to build on that. It's just trying to figure out where do you jump in at the first point? That's really the challenge. So hopefully, that helped. If not, hey, go back on Facebook and ask me to elaborate on whatever else you want to know more about, and I'll be happy to do that. So the second question comes from Phil. And Phil writes me and he says, Hi, Steven, thank you so much for sharing your experience in your knowledge. I'm a digital design slash development leader in a large corporate environment. And my recent discovery of your podcast has been a spectacular fine for me, Episode 30, in particular, wasn't inspiring that I actually listened to it twice. Now in that episode, you mentioned monetizing the value of your team in tangible ways to show their value. to an organization, I'm planning on comparing the cost of outsourcing creative work compared to keeping it in house to my boss and leadership here soon. I was wondering if you had any advice on the best way to do that any guidance you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again. How do you show the value of your team? And so I would tell you a couple things here, Phil, I think that where you're starting is probably a pretty good place. Because if you're trying to actually show the value of your team to an organization, dollars and cents speaks really loudly. And if you're going to actually start by doing the dollar and cents way of kind of looking at this, the general way that I would tell you to do it is you should be able to go through and find out what is the general blended rate that your team has. If you don't know this, go talk to your finance person or something like that. But there should be an actual hourly rate that your team charges at and you may have to extrapolate the math back based on salaries or other things, but try to get to what is that kind of general blended number Now it's usually much easier to find what that actual number is for an agency because they work off of a rate card. And you know, the the comparison that I've seen on this is that in general and agency will be about anywhere from about 40% to 250% per hour more expensive than an in house team. So I think that one of the easy plays to do whenever you come in and you start working on an internal team, is just to be able to say, Okay, look, just on a year over year cost savings, just base operating costs, that an in house design team will actually save us money, because you know, we can cut our budget in half or we can get twice the work or twice the people out of it just by switching to this sort of a model. That does come with a catch though, because again, I think that the the inverse is that you know what you're going to need to sign up to do then is to produce work is to create a model that is just as smart, just as responsive, just as hungry as what an agent See would be because I think this is the place where I see a lot of internal agencies or internal design teams fall down, is that they've started to lose the forest for the trees. Because when you work in an agency, there is an inherent, I guess we'll call it a threat, that if you don't do good work, then you're gonna get fired. Internal design teams don't have that. And so that that sense of drive that sense of how do we keep the knife sharp? I, you know, a lot of cases will start to fade. But I think that it's one of those things where the other advice I would give you is start with the dollars and cents. I think it's it's an easy place to have a conversation needs an easy way in, but don't end with $1 and cents, because I think that a big part of it also then becomes about really how do you show the value of your team in other ways. Part of it is just the basic operating model. How can we provide more transparency, how can we be more reactive? How can we be more involved? How can we be more invested in the work than an agency would And again, I think that's a pretty easy argument to be able to make. Because we can say that like, Look, this is a team that is living and breathing that is on the same payroll as the rest of the company that doesn't have that two or three degrees of separation that an agency would. But at the same point, we're going to set this up so that we're basically going to operate like an internal agency with a client who just can't fire us. They may with a fire son as an individual, but not as a team. Because you need the mindset, you need the hunger you need the drive, so that you don't become the in house team. When that is said in a bad way. You need to be able to do it so that you really viewed as a critical asset, talked in a lot of these episodes about, you know, positioning the group Episode 30, in particular, talked about positioning that group, as a critical asset that really looks at ideas over deliverables. These are the other ways that you're going to have to monetize the group. So it's like I said, I think that the dollars and cents is a great place to be able to show the start of that, but it does have to answer for more Because ultimately, the thing that you need to understand that the thing that you need to deliver is that yes, I can deliver cost savings, yes, I can deliver work faster, yes, I may even be able to deliver it better. But for me also to have the team to create an impact, it needs to be about showing the value in the way that you can bring creativity into your company. I've talked about this before that, you know, for me that the product that I really want to bring in is creativity. Design is a byproduct, creativity, meaning that I can teach people the importance of thinking through a problem because for me, that's what creativity is. It's taking a need and solving it and to be able to then have the design give a visual shape to that. But it's solving that problem, but it's also then teaching other people how do you solve those problems. And then I think the other important part is then getting those solutions out the door in a way that still people give a shit about. Because great ideas are incredibly fragile, especially inside of companies that aren't used to doing this. People are gonna want to tear it down in New York. make it smaller and safer and easier to digest. To the point when it goes out the door, it doesn't really have an impact, it's a shell of the original idea that you had. So the ability to be able to have that courage to stand up for that to shepherd those ideas out the door to teach people, you know that it's okay to be creative. That is probably the best way to be able to monetize your group, because it's an intangible that every company needs, but so few know how to actually deliver on. So it's, like I said, I think that the money can be a good way into starting the conversation. But it's really kind of how you take it and build it from there. That's really gonna make all the difference. So that's going to be the two questions for this show. And it's like I said before, this is hopefully helpful, but it's also hopefully an invitation because I think that if you have questions that you've been wanting to ask if there are things you want me to elaborate on, go to the Facebook page, like it and get in on the conversation because it's like I said, I want this to be a living, kind of ongoing conversation. If you want to find out More about the show, look at some related articles, other things that I've written. Look at the show notes for this show or any other show, you can always head over to podcast, Stephen Gates calm, put in a lot of work to help really kind of help beef up those show notes. If you'd like to show here again, the only payment I ever asked for is head over to iTunes head on over to one of these different platforms and leave a review makes a big difference helps get more people to the show. It's the only currency I ever asked for. As always, the boys down illegal want me to remind you that all the views here are my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And And lastly, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I know the time is truly the only real commodity and luxury that we have. And I'm always incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. Hopefully we'll get some more questions. If nothing else, I'm sure that we will talk again soon. And until that happens, stay crazy.