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Welcome back to lead the team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer, Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders, and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there, everybody.

Welcome back to lead the team.

I have Angie Hicks, who is the co founder of Angie, formerly known as Angie's List.

Yes, y'all, Angie's List.

She started Angie's List back in 1995, which has grown over nearly 30 years, from supporting just a few cities to the first national digital directory for home improvement through an IPO and acquisition and even a rebrand.

And she's worn many different hats during her time at Angie.

But today, she's focused on getting back to basics and being directly with hundreds of customers to understand their needs.

Ensuring their feedback shapes Angie's future.

Angie, welcome to lead the team.

Welcome.

People are not going to believe today when I, after we finished this interview that I got to interview the Angie of Angie's list.

So I got to start out, what is it like being the Angie of Angie's list?

Is it like.

It's like Madonna, right?

There's one name, Angie.

People know it.

What's it like?

It's.

Quite honestly, it's.

It's a privilege.

I enjoy interacting with people out and about.

I I would not say I was a person that was likely to have a business named after them and so when the team said, hey, do you wanna be in the tv commercials?

And I was like, I guess I said, let's just make sure it's really authentic.

The person that they meet at the grocery store needs to feel like the same person they see on tv.

So I'm like, you have to work within those boundaries.

I'm not gonna be something different.

So I'm not a character, I'm a person.

So you gotta live with that.

And that's been super important, but it's also made it work really well.

So I've had tons of delightful conversations with people that have stopped me kind of over the years and chance to interact.

I actually tell the team I get to interact with, I get this special chance to interact with people.

So I'm like, how do I take all of this information that I gather and all these stories that I hear, and how do I get them packaged back up for the team so that they can enjoy that same experience?

I like a lot of what you just said, and what's really coming up for me right now is a lot of leaders, when they are doing a commercial or they're the front of the brand, they feel like they need to present something almost superhuman or a version of themselves.

And we spent a lot of time on lead the team.

Right?

Hey, we want to.

This is a chance to be authentic and be who you are, and you really humanize the brand.

You had the wherewithal early on to say, hey, I'm going to be me showing up on these ads on the other side of this.

And we've done a lot of research.

Right.

You talk about being shy or being introverted, and so what are the pros and cons of being on the shire side or introverted side yet?

Being the face and name of a mega brand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

It doesn't, it doesn't quite go together.

Right.

So.

So for me, I personally just really work to balance things.

So I was, I was doing a tv shoot earlier this week for a couple of days, which was just exhausting by the end of the day.

Right.

And then, so the back half of the week, I'm going to be on spreadsheets and doing emails and kind of being in my own little space.

I think it's knowing what you need to kind of stay kind of balanced and happy.

So I do consciously kind of think about those types of things and try not to create a schedule that depletes me too much.

Right.

And I think I also just kind of think about ways when my kids were little, we used to go to Disney World for vacations.

A lot of, and the only reason why is because there's so much going on there, people don't notice.

There's so many people.

There's so many people that people don't notice.

It was a time to kind of, yeah, you're out of context, too overstimulated there, that you're just like, I don't know what I'm seeing.

So.

So sometimes you kind of go the opposite direction.

No matter how big Angie is, she's never going to be bigger than Mickey Mouse.

That is 100% true.

Everybody's chasing their kids around, so they're so distracted.

Exactly.

Everyone is just so frazzled and having a great time that they don't have.

Time to absorb or really, really so cool.

And I think it's great.

You seem like a leader who really, you had done maybe self reflection, and early on to sort of know who you are.

Know thyself, I think was one of the Socrates's famous sayings was, was there a certain thing that you reflection activities that you did early on, or have a coach, or was there, is there some way that you sort of understood, hey, I'm going to be this executive, but I'm going to do it my way, and I know my way because I've sort of done the work there.

Yeah.

I mean, I think part of it is just kind of figuring out what I was comfortable with.

I was thrown into the deep end.

I mean, I was 22 when I started the business.

I was a manager at 23, and I was a horrible manager.

I didn't know how to manage people.

So there's a lot of kind of self learning, and I listened to kind of other executives, other leaders, and kind of things that they do.

I mean, one of the things that I just loved about the business, especially in the early days, is I loved working in a small business.

I loved actually knowing the team and kind of like, chatting with them.

We did.

We go to lunch on Fridays, the whole team, and everybody had to go.

And there was, work was not as.

Not an excuse, but it was a great way to connect personally.

But as the business got bigger and the day I realized I had to read people's name badges to know who they were, I was really sad because it was like, how do I go and get to know people?

It's not my thing.

I'm not going to go and just be like, hey, ben, how are you?

What's going on?

What do you do?

Just wasn't my style.

So I had heard of an executive that had done office hours with their team, and I was like, the person had been a professor at one point and carried office hours over into the business world.

And I really liked the idea, so I just put out an offer.

So I dedicated 1 hour a week, and people could sign up for a 15 minutes session for office hours on Fridays.

Anybody in the company could come, you come talk about anything you wanted to talk about.

And my promise was that I'd help you along at the end of the conversation.

So whether it's giving career advice, making a connection, making an introduction, whatever it was, I did those selfishly for me to get to know people in the team and get to understand the team.

But what I didn't realize was how that impacted the culture of the organization, too.

I mean, there's one thing to say.

A company has an open door policy.

There's another thing to kind of pour a cup of coffee, bring people in and say, let's just chat.

And what were the results of those office hours?

Yeah, I mean, it was great.

I mean, people.

I mean, I think, for one, people, I think the offer of office hours was valuable.

Even if someone never came.

Right.

They just knew they could.

And then I had people that would come on repeat, and I became their coach.

Right.

Which was great.

I was like, now we're friends.

Come over on Friday, we're gonna chat.

And it was just a chance to get to know people and just to be connected better.

And for me, it was a good lesson in kind of how to make kind of an evolving role.

Still have some of the great things that I loved about a small business.

Yeah, there's so many great things about buffer leaders.

Hey, make your team, make your workday work for you.

Right.

You can still do it in service of others, but you strike me as a leader who's playing the long game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

It's a situation where kind of people, people quit.

People, they don't quit company.

I mean, the leaders are what keep you there and keep you excited, who you work for.

I mean, I tell young people all the time, you could do marketing anywhere.

It's not going to be dramatically different, but if you find someone, if you find a place where you can go to work for someone that really takes an interest in your career, it's going to make a huge difference in how much you enjoy your job and how much you, how much you excel and things like that.

So it's, it's really about the person, and it's not the actual job slash company.

When I, when I think of, when I encourage people to think about those things, because that's the experience I had.

I hope that's the experience that I've kind of created for other people.

I mean, but that's what it is for me.

It's really about the.

About people.

I could sell shoes.

I could sell connections to contractors.

I could sell a lot of things.

But your passion comes from doing it with a team you like.

I love that.

And, yeah, I love.

I mean, that's how you get.

Keep people right.

And our legacy is less is ultimately left through the people that we interact with, the people we lead to, the people in our communities, and how those interactions go.

Yeah, I mean, I had a story one time.

I was, I'd gotten off a flight here in Indianapolis.

It was late in the evening, and I was walking out to my car, and a young man came up and was start was coming out at the same time.

And he stopped me.

And he's like, hey, angie, I just wanted to, want to say hi.

He's like, I worked for you a few years ago when I was first out of college, and I've since gone off and done something, went off to another company, done another career, and he's like, I just wanted to thank you for helping me get my career started.

Right.

Like, it's comments like that when people ask, hey, what are the greatest accomplishments you think about over your career?

It's conversations like that where we created an environment that helped that young man kind of set off on his career the way he wanted.

And that's pretty exciting, Jeff.

Well, you seem to be an expert in trust.

That's what I was telling my daughter this morning.

We're talking about you.

Talking about.

Because, and this is just an example with your employees, people that work for you, but also your whole organization and focus in terms of building trust between consumers and the service providers.

Right.

How does trust scale from your perspective?

Because you had that powerful one on one conversation on this guy's career, and potentially it sounds like it was transformational.

But when you're doing it across how many, how many subscribers now?

I don't know.

How many?

We help millions of homeowners every year on their projects.

Yeah, millions.

I mean, that's a big scale.

And so how do you think about scalability when it comes to trust?

Well, I mean, I think it comes down to kind of like, hey, does.

Do we deliver on the promises that we make?

And I think that's really important for a business to make sure that the promises they are making are things that they control and things that they can live up to.

Not saying you're ever perfect.

No one's perfect.

I actually have this conversation with pros all the time.

Right.

They get a bad review and there's.

Yeah.

Which can be business ending or maybe not ending, but it can be really damaging.

But oftentimes what I find is it's.

It's.

It's more ego bruising than business ending, if handled well.

Okay.

I actually believe that kind of seeing a place where people only rave about someone, it makes me suspect.

Having a complaint now and then gives you a chance to show what's going to happen when things don't go perfectly, because they don't always go perfectly.

So how you handle things when the chips are down, I think, matters.

So in that regard, that's what I think about.

So how do you build trust?

You kind of make sure your promises kind of align with what you're good at.

And then when.

When they fail, because sometimes they fail, you've got a system in place to take care of it.

You fix what you can, you apologize, and you move on.

I don't think anyone expects perfection on anything.

It's just, do I know I'm in a good relationship where we're going to take care of each other?

Are you sure you don't have a background in pr?

Because really, it's a different thing where, hey, I'm going to get a better review.

I need to file a complaint with the organization that's showing the call and.

Yell at me about a bad review.

And I have had plenty of conversations like that.

Don't worry.

I'm just like, look, go have a cup of coffee.

Go get your coffee.

And then you come back and then we're going to talk about it.

Jeff.

Well, leaders need to.

Need to hear this, y'all.

And no one knows this better than Angie, because your whole business is based on reviews, right?

Ultimately, well, the relationships.

But people want to see.

And how you.

How do you deal with a bad review?

Well, you got a cup of coffee first.

Right.

And get some perspective.

Yeah.

I mean, because the great thing about reviews is people are talking about you, whether there's reviews on you or not.

The great thing about reviews is you can actually listen in on the conversation, learn from it, and improve.

Yes.

All right.

So they're already talking about you.

So don't worry that conversations already happening.

So if you have a bad job and you don't get a review, don't assume there's not people talking about it, because they are.

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Go to benleads.com apply to fill out a quick form where you can let us know a little bit about yourself.

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Let's add a little bit of gasoline on the fire here and add social media, influencer marketing, which was not really a thing, right?

When Angie's list came about, the Internet wasn't a thing.

When Angie's list started, y'all, she was doing it right.

And you signed up.

She signed up her 1st 1000 subscribers in her first year.

Not using the Internet, that's using the phone.

Right door to door.

I read all this stuff.

I'm like, he's blowing my mind.

Because you're, you know, you've seen so much change in how all this stuff, this stuff works.

So then we come in with reviews, okay?

Then we come out.

Now we have influencer marketing that happens at the speed of light.

Literally.

People could go have a bad experience, put up their phone, say a bunch of stuff, true or not, one sided, positive or negative.

And really, you know, who knows?

How are you experienced as a leader?

How is this changing things?

I think you have to, I mean, you, you must always be aware of what's being said so that you can understand.

Because if you don't know, it's back to my comment about, they're talking about you.

Whether you hear it or not, we get the privilege of being able to hear it.

So make sure that you're tracking and understanding these things and then think about how have your plan for how you fix things.

And it could be simple.

It's like, oh, the plumber that we sent didn't fix the toilet correctly.

Let's send out another plumber.

Let's get it fixed.

Learn how to de escalate things and solve problems in a very kind of, don't, don't make it an emergency, make it kind of your common workplace.

Then you won't get, then, then I think you'll kind of attack that in a not attack, but you'll go out solving those in a different way.

Having a plan.

I don't like kind of working in life as an emergency.

I tell the team all the time, I mean, this is not the erde we're not saving lives.

And that's okay.

I didn't.

I'm good with that.

I didn't want to.

That's why you're not in the ER.

Yeah, exactly.

So let's kind of keep things in perspective.

And what's the logic?

Here's our promise.

If we broke the promise or the promise fell through, how do we fix it?

And what do we do to fix it?

Go do it.

And the sooner you get these things, because I also find, I think sometimes people often forget as well, that a lot of times people complain to you directly before they go to social media.

So there's been smoke before.

They're inspired by empowering your front line to solve problems and to escalate appropriately, because it's rare that problems go externally before they come internally.

Yeah, I've seen that a lot of times.

They're reviewing.

I didn't sense that you understand how these things come, but kind of having very intuitive people that are kind of good at conversations and kind of understanding things and flagging things and escalating things on the front end can be a really good tool, I think, and not being afraid to talk to people.

I think we live in a world where we kind of hide behind technology sometimes.

I think technology is great.

Don't get me wrong.

I love technology, and it's got us a place and a purpose, something really quick that needs solved.

Chat works beautifully.

I love it, et cetera.

But if you're the chat agent and you see something that's nothing going to kind of translate well in a message or isn't going to get that escalated up, maybe you got to need a customer service person to call them.

So figuring out when you need to kind of take the exit, pull the exit, shoot on kind of a different type of channel is an important thing for teams to kind of learn and to think about, because every once in a while, it's amazing.

The power of a phone call sometimes.

Yeah.

Do you have an idea?

Do you have an example of that?

When it seemed like things were running off the track and a phone call?

Yeah, I mean, I'll do that.

Occasionally we get an escalation.

I don't.

I don't mind just getting on the phone.

So I believe it's you like Angie from Angie?

Yeah.

What?

No.

I called a homeowner out on the east coast not that long ago.

We had a delightful conversation.

I walked through his problem, kind of.

I took all his feedback.

We discussed it.

He gave me suggestions and a lovely conversation.

I actually took the office hours idea a couple of years ago and turned that external facing so now customers can sign up and talk to me for any reason, for anything in a 15 minutes.

Okay, grab a 15 minutes slot and we'll talk about whatever you want to talk about.

What's been one of the more memorable ones where you open it up to the outside, someone's schedule.

I mean, we do a zoom.

It's awesome.

I get face to face.

I get a chat, oh, my gosh, it's awesome.

And it'll run the spectrum from, I didn't think this was actually going to be you, so I signed up because I was intrigued to something's wrong with my account, and I'm really mad.

Will you fix this to why don't you guys do this or that?

I'm like, sure.

It's about kind of being willing and making yourself accessible to the feedback.

I like that.

I think it's bold, and it says a lot in your busy schedule that you're making time for it.

Yeah.

Because again, back to my point.

If you're willing to take feedback and take things internally, they want to come internally first, give people access.

Yeah.

Great.

And I'm not, and I don't promise to solve everything.

I've actually got one of our customer service managers that sits in on those calls with me because I get stumped sometimes.

I don't always know all the details.

So I've got a trusted customer service manager that then kind of makes sure that they follow through on things coming out of those conversations.

So it's a process that works well.

And my view is, if it's coming, if I'm hearing about it, it's not the only person having this problem or this situation.

Right.

It might be something we need to go fix systematically, and then I can go talk to a product or the care organization and help to kind of get the ball moving.

On.

A different note, in my research, I found that you, after launching Angie's list and becoming, having a successful business, you decided, hey, I'm going to go to business school.

And I found that fascinating because it seems like you were already on this incredible business journey, and of course, you did go to Harvard, so that was probably a good move with that incredible brand.

But so what?

What things did you learn specifically?

I mean, or maybe at a high level, did you learn during your NBA that you think that, hey, I wouldn't have gotten through taking huge business risk, putting in the hours, learning the business from the ground up, all that rapid stuff?

Because there's kind of two schools of thought competing out there now, they're like, hey, don't go to business school because you just need to launch a business.

Or, hey, you need to get the.

Go get your business degree first, then launch your business.

And I think both can work.

But I'm curious, from your perspective, what's your take on it?

Yeah, I mean, my decision to go Washington was, quite honestly, I was super burnt out.

I mean, remember, I was 22 when I started this.

I had no business experience.

I was seeing so many things for the first time.

I was just worn out.

And had I not taken that break to go to school, I probably wouldn't have stayed with the business.

That's kind of, I was kind of at.

Probably at appointment, which is fine.

I think that's common.

That's.

That's normal.

Yeah.

So what did business school do for me?

And I am not a proponent of, in fact, I encourage people not to have their five year plan and to be more flexible and kind of let their career take them where they might.

Okay.

But I think business school's good.

Like, I don't, I don't disagree with business school, and I'm happy I went, et cetera.

For me, it was a time to kind of step away from the business.

I had been exposed to so many things without training.

I had fundraising, starting businesses, opening markets, acquisitions, hiring people, firing people.

I exposed all of that stuff.

Yeah, but I didn't literally did it all.

Nowhere, to put it.

Right.

What do you do with that if you're kind of exposed but you don't understand?

My co founder was kind of leading the way.

I mean, he was consulting at that point with us, and.

But it wasn't.

I was kind of.

Kind of understanding, but not terribly understanding.

So, in many ways, business school was a time for me to kind of take all that learning and kind of absorb, reflect, and kind of put it into a place where I kind of could access it and use it.

I think the other thing that you end up getting out of business school is kind of good problem solving, good problem solving skills.

And I think that when it comes down to being a good leader is an important trait.

It's kind of like, hey, I see a problem, I can think through it, come up with the solution, versus see a problem.

It's a roadblock.

I don't know what to do.

It's kind of like the bad review, right?

It's like, how do I step back?

Like I said, think through this?

Well, you're also known, and I know you're passionate about having people earlier in their careers to consider the trades, which is not a traditional path as it's been maybe recently, maybe it was.

Maybe it was the ultimate traditional path.

Right.

Or maybe it was the original career path.

It absolutely was.

Right.

You're seeing this play out on macro levels from Angie's list, or now it's Angie, but you're also seeing it out, seeing it play out with the contractors, where how do people like, I've got a 13 year old daughter, as I mentioned, and other people have children and they're thinking about their own careers.

And what's the advice that you're giving people now when it comes to not their five year path, but maybe they're one or two year path on this front.

Yeah.

And I think it's about making sure that you are exposing young people to as many career paths as possible, because I think a lot of times we're like, look, college is expensive.

Am I going to, like, what I'm going to do is college for me?

I mean, there's a lot of questions about kind of that education path and is it the right time?

I think we've kind of patterned ourselves in this traditional graduate from high school, go to college, get my four year degree, go and get my job, etcetera.

That's considered success from a lot of people's perspective.

Now, hey, that's what you do.

And what we're seeing is we, we survey pros.

I mean, their job satisfaction is 90%, which you don't see that in other industries.

A pro being like, what?

Like, what are some electrician, a contractor?

90%.

Yeah.

And the biggest thing.

That's the biggest thing.

Yeah.

It's.

They love, a lot of them are entrepreneurs.

They're running their own small business.

I think a lot of times we think, I've got to start a tech business to be an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur?

No, you can start a plumbing company and be an entrepreneur and be a huge savior.

Huge, a huge deal in your local community.

There's a lot of, a lot of those same elements.

And then, and then they also like to do meaningful work.

I was talking to a pro a while ago, and he told me how he and his crew would drive.

As they were driving from job to job, they might drive past a previous job they had done, and they go, hey, we did that.

We built that.

Like, they're building the community so that meaningful work can be amazing.

So the point is, we need to expose young people to the traits I think we've pulled back from kind of, some of the trade elements of kind of high schools, we need to bring those back, and we need parents thinking about kind of a fuller, rounder, kind of, hey, do I want to be a teacher?

Do I want to be a landscaper?

Do I want to be.

Do I run a business?

I mean, there's lots of things that you could do, and I think sometimes we take a narrow, narrow path to it.

Wow.

Okay.

So what are you seeing as successful ways to expose young people?

Because they're in school, they're busy, they're doing after school sports.

They've got all kinds of stuff.

When and how is our ways we can expose them in a way to see if it's a thing.

Yeah.

I mean, we're starting to see some of the schools start to bring some of the trade skills and trade classes back into high schools, I think is fantastic.

I would encourage.

I would encourage parents to think about summer jobs.

The tradespeople, like the lawn care companies, the landscaping.

A lot of these, the painting companies, they're super busy in the summer.

I mean, those could be some great summer jobs.

My kids worked at a lawn care company a couple of summers ago, and they loved it.

I mean, my one daughter wants to go off and be a teacher.

It wouldn't surprise me if she didn't do something lawn care related in the summers.

All right.

I.

So, I mean, kind of broadening that exposure of opportunity and thinking about kind of those things, whether it's summer jobs or things like that, too.

Yeah.

I think it's so easy to get tunnel vision and be like, hey, my kids going to do coding camp all summer.

Yeah.

Okay, do some coding.

But also maybe try this or get.

Or get them involved in some way.

And I think for a lot of people having that meaningful kind of work, people don't have because they do it online.

And it is sometimes hard to see the results of your labor, but it is meaningful.

I love the idea, what you said, like, hey, I'm going to the community.

I did that house, that house, that house and that house.

That's all my work.

Yeah, yeah.

And good from that standpoint.

So, starting to wind this.

I got a toughie for you.

If you could be in a contractor in any aspect of the home world.

Yeah.

Based on what you know yourself, which one would you select?

If you weren't that roman juice asking.

You to pick your children, right?

Oh, well, it's not just based on ability of what it is.

You have your own preferences, too.

Actually, I would probably enjoy landscaping or something.

That would be my guess.

So I've got.

I've got a.

I'm trying my hand at a little apple orchard right now.

I just.

I have a pumpkin.

Apples harvested all of my pumpkins.

I got 40 this year, so that's pretty excited.

Wow.

So maybe something along that lines.

I'm not good, but.

But I do.

I do find it relaxing and enjoying.

So there's probably something there, so Angie's apples.

Angie's apple pie.

Yeah.

Angie's apple orchard, right?

Yeah.

This could be a good business if Angie's list doesn't work out.

To do that, I'm going to have.

A little farmers market.

So one.

One of the things is, what is like, one of your gonna wind this up?

But I gotta ask.

It is about this idea.

You talk a lot about perseverance and resilience, and your careers had that.

What is your advice for people to keep going to make it through the struggles, especially when early on, you didn't necessarily know what this was gonna become, right.

But you knew, hey, I'm gonna keep doing it.

You could have quit and maybe it.

You might have become an astronaut or there might have been something else if you hadn't quit.

Like, Godin talks about the cul de.

Sac versus the just to dip before you become great.

How do you think about quitting versus persevering and making that decision for ourselves?

And I think for me, I think it's important, no matter what you're doing, that you understand how you're gonna count the wins, because you need to count the wins every day.

And the wins can't be things that are kind of ten years down the road.

The wins need to be today.

So if you go back to my door to door times, it was like, if I could just sell one membership a day, it was a great day.

You've got to figure out ways, and that kind of mentality can carry out in everything you do.

I just need to write one great line today.

I need to do, like, how do you kind of celebrate those and kind of create wins?

Because then you feel progress versus kind of feeling, oh, my gosh, it took me a year to get to a thousand members.

I was.

Well, actually one every single day.

That was a great year because my goal was one.

And some days you got more than one, obviously.

Exactly my goal.

So I think that's part of it.

And then for me, I.

The thing that I always kind of, the questions I always ask myself, do I like the people I'm working with?

And am I learning new things?

And if I say yes to those two things, the light is green.

And I'm going, and I think that's pretty, I'm a very simplistic person when it comes to things.

It's kind of like, what makes me happy in a career is I like the people I work with and I'm learning new things.

Wow.

And that's something that kind of works in any industry in any career.

And you can ask yourself that question, and if you, if you find yourself saying no, I was interviewed in an article one time and I was like, and they kind of truncated my quote.

And my quote at the end of the article was, if you're not happy, you should quit.

End of story.

And, you know, I mean, it was it actually there, but it is simple and it is actually quite true.

Right.

If you're not happy in your job, and I'm not saying happy every single day, but kind of netted out you're more happy in a week than you are unhappy or more happy in a month than you're unhappy, then it's good.

If you're not.

You're probably not doing good work, and you spend way too many hours doing work in your life that you should go find something else.

I know it kind of change is hard, but you should just go ahead and quit.

Angie, I like what you said there.

Yes.

That line, that one line says it all.

But before that, you're like, you took the time to understand what is real happiness for you.

And you didn't say the paycheck.

You didn't say Disney world, although you probably were happy there when you visited your family.

It's am I working?

People I really enjoy working with and am I learning new things?

And that, that to me, and I got a chill just saying that to me, that is happiness for me, the people you're with matters.

If you go to Disney World with people that really don't like being around, Disney World's not going to be that much fun.

And you can probably be in a complete crisis situation and be with people you do enjoy and you're having the time of your life.

Right?

You feel, we're going to make it through this storm together, we're going to make it.

And then this idea about learning, learning can be fun.

Learning can be painful sometimes.

That's the biggest learning.

But the day to day stuff, I think in our learning, if we're developing and we can look back over our shoulder, we can say, yeah, this is where I was and this is what I've learned from since then.

There's a lot of joy and happiness in that oh, I just feel good talking to Angie from Angie.

Angie Rabbit, I'm going to turn the mic officially over to you right now.

What's your parting thought for our listeners to lead the team?

Find good people that think about the team you're going to be with and make sure that you're finding people that are invested in you and that because you will work harder and want to perform more in that environment.

And for those people, leaders out there, I mean, if you have someone that's just not a fit for your team, I think sometimes times we are quick to hire, slow to fire, and if you've got someone with a bad attitude, probably need to part ways quicker than you might think.

So, I mean, that might not be the most positive way to end, but it's just one of those where it's like kind of the people and how they interact on the team matters a ton.

I'll take someone who knew back in the day, I would take someone who knew nothing about marketing, that had a good attitude and was smart, that I could teach.

Yeah, it makes a difference.

And the people we hire oftentimes are the people we end up becoming like, because we are the, like that Jim Rohn quote of we become the leader.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, we're.

Yeah, what, what are we creating around ourselves?

The, the people matter.

And so I love it.

It's a great note to end on and for leaders to really sit with.

Right.

Who are the people you're surrounding yourself with?

You can't always choose, but when you can choose, choose proactively.

Be picky and be picky and bring some of this Angie wisdom.

And if she runs those office hours again for external people, I'm going to beat you to it, listeners.

I'll be on there.

So don't even try to get.

You'll be one of my repeat customers, won't you?

I'll be there.

Getting life advice from Angie.

Angie, thanks for coming on the team today, my friend.

Thank you.

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