Today we speak with Andy Culligan, fractional CMO and Marketing Consultant for BaseHQ, and his Executive Assistant, Miranda Berry, who he hired through BaseHQ. Andy is a sales person stuck in a marketer's body. He shares his journey from sales to marketing and entrepreneurship, opening up about how his decade of experience led him first to burnout, which inspired his entrepreneurial venture and led to a partnership with BaseHQ, which ultimately led him to hiring Miranda, even when he was nervous about the risk of investing in help.

Miranda became a virtual assistant through BaseHQ after her own experience with burnout, and explains how finding an Executive that you authentically connect with helps you foster that relationship and understand holistically how they work—both in their professional and private lives.

The episode further discusses the importance of vision alignment between the Executive and the Force Multiplier and the significance of taking risks in business. A valuable takeaway from this episode is the role of strong partnerships in business growth, which aren't necessarily made in person but are built on trust and shared values. Andy and Miranda's story serves as an inspiration for listeners to take that leap in their professional journey.

REFERENCES & RESOURCES:

• AndyCulligan.com
• Base HQ
• Follow Andy on Linkedin
• Follow Miranda on LinkedIn

Welcome to this week's episode of the Founder in the Force Multiplier podcast, where we explore how founders and leaders work together with their right hand partners to turn ideas into action and build wildly successful businesses. Today I'm speaking with Andy Culligan and Miranda Berry. Andy is a salesperson stuck in a marketer's body. He believes the only way to achieve revenue growth is a joined by the hip approach to marketing and sales. His core focus is making sure that marketing goals are 100% aligned to those of the sales organization At AndyCulligancom. He helps fast growing SaaS tech startups reach commercial success through marketing and sales alignment. With close to a decade experience in SaaS MarTech, andy has built teams from the ground up, managed both marketing and sales teams to pipeline success. Andy is your CMO resource at a fraction of the cost of a full-time resource. Miranda has three years of experience working as a virtual assistant and now works as an executive assistant through base to Andy Culligan, founder of AndyCulligancom, who also happens to be the marketing consultant for base. She is passionate about providing maximum impact for Andy's business by prioritizing the protection of his time and believes in leading her support for executives through fostering authentic connections rooted in empathy and compassion.

I loved talking to Andy and Miranda about their partnership and how they make it work without even ever having met in person yet. Hashtag remote work life. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I think, you will then be sure to let us know in all the usual places, such as leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you're listening to this episode. Welcome, andy and Miranda, to the podcast. I am very excited to have you both here today. Thank you, excited to speak with you.

Thanks for having us. Addy, Sorry, I just spoke over you the first time I met them speaking over people. My apologies, but thanks for having us.

That's okay, it'll happen again, it's fine. So I really wanted to start with you, andy, about your career journey, and I met you met you virtually through your work at base. So I'm kind of curious what your background is and kind of share with me a little bit of your career journey and then how you got partnered up with base.

Okay, so, yeah, my career journey is an interesting one. So where do I start? It's always like do I go all the way back or do I just give the past couple of years? So I think it's so much more funny as well, because I don't know how much Miranda knows about all my experience, but I started working when I was 14. So, like I've always been given somewhat of like a strenuous work ethic I would say is probably like the best way to describe Miranda is probably like how about that? Explain a few things?

So, yeah, I spent my summers working and like doing things like merchandising, but also working in offices and things like that, and then worked in department stores. I was selling like I went from like selling gym memberships on the street for commission to selling cutlery and silverware to presidents and things like that, and then I also so there's all my uni jobs and I worked in the States for summer. I did like I worked at a carnival. So I lived in Myrtle Beach for summer when I was younger and I worked at the carnival. So very, very trendy and very, you know, like top class, and so I started my real career. I started my career as a seller, so, but I studied marketing. So I started as a seller, so in an SDR role, which is like a junior seller, like cold calling, basically picking up the phone to people all day to don't want to talk to you. That's how I started my career, which is a joy. And then I went into more like account management, and then I decided that I wanted to earn less money, so I went into marketing, but no like, so I, so I, I, then I, then so I, I, I, I, I, yeah, I went into marketing then because it's what I had studied.

And then I went on to to get more into marketing tech early days of like marketing automation and so on and I became like very quickly in one company I was working with, which was a global company, I became very quickly they're like global champion for a tool called Marketto, and Marketto is a marketing automation tool and also based on V-Jan and so on. And following that then I I was. That was a very slow moving, like slow paced company which was basically just full of old men. Basically the entire industry was just full. Like you go to an event and it's like, oh, the same 50, 75 year olds are here, you know, and they're all white old men and it was super boring right? So then I, I, I then somebody was looking at my LinkedIn profile one day and I just wrote back. I wrote to him and said like why are you looking at my LinkedIn profile? And this is actually funny because it's come back around, cause this guy is now actually one of my clients now, like 12 years later.

But, so then I went into the tech space. So that was my first like been in the techs. Because he wrote back to me being like, oh, that's cool that you're regionating. I was like, well, you were looking at my LinkedIn profile, so what do you want? And he was like we have a job. Would you be interested in coming on board of being like a marketing automation expert at this company? And it was this company was. Was was a fast paced tech company. I've never been in tech before.

And I got into tech then and my like immediately it was just like a complete change of pace. Like my head nearly spun off my shoulders. Right, the tech space is wild, right. And from then, like I just went, like it just kept on going up and up from there. Like I, I I worked hard, right, but I I made some clever moves, like I'm of the opinion that like you need to. Not just it was a work clever Instead of working hard, you need to both right, but there are some things you can do in order to get noticed and to help you progress in your career, and I did a lot of those things. You can get into that later if you're interested. But then I went through.

I then started leading a global team and then, following leading a global team, I was poached by a competitor and then I let a global team of the competitors a CMO role, and then I went to another CMO role and at the same time, like all this stuff was happening in the background, family I had it, my wife had a kid, we were married at this point and we were moving house, we were renovating a house Like, and throughout this, I was building my career at the same time, and it was just a wild time and I was jumping from, like, one wild position to the next wild position, crazy growth, like like requests coming in Like I'm based in Europe, right, request coming in like I need you to go to a dinner in San Francisco the day after tomorrow and then I need you to be back the next day in the office to to have this meeting, right. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll have to sit in this 14 hour flight. So, like these times that that was normal. So, and this went on for years. And then pandemic happened. I was already at another company. I was a CMO there, a small team.

We were seeing great results, but it was super exhausting and I got to a stage where, where I was, I was very close to burning out. If I wasn't, if I wasn't careful, because I was trying to control everything and the team were just, it wasn't possible to manage the team effectively and that, paired with, I didn't enjoy. I didn't like the way that the company was moving and it was very much on my shoulders to make sure that the revenue was going to go in the right direction and I didn't agree to the vision. So with that, I just said to the founder I had a lot of respect for it, by the way, huge amount of respect I said hey, look, I'm out. Like I'm exhausted. If I keep going this way, I'll 100% burnt out.

Spoke with a therapist and everything at the time Wasn't, wasn't the right, wasn't the right thing for me. So I I quit, like with nothing, Like for the first time I was like I don't know what the heck I'm going to do, but we'll figure it out. Right, and if my wife says that to me like you're going to be fine, then like she's like the most risk averse person ever, like she, she will not like, she won't be like. Like, do it because I think it's a great idea and like super spontaneous, she's like no, like way up all the odds, see what's going to work. So then I quit and then immediately people started reaching out to me, being like I do want a full time position. I was like, no, thank you, but I'll help.

And then what happened was so the same company, that or base is funded by by, by a private or another private equity company, a venture capitalist company called I alpha, and their base at Indianapolis. The company that I worked with has headquarters in Indianapolis. So I know a lot of people in Indy. Right, indianapolis is super small place as well, right, it's. It's like it's more of a town or a village than a than than a city, right, so everybody sort of knows everybody. And one of the other portfolio companies from from high alpha is a company called cast at that IO, and it's one by a lady called Lindsay Chapkema and myself and Lindsay used to work together at a Marces she's, in the meantime, a very good friend and Paige she was a CEO at base. She, she, she had an issue with their current head of marketing. This somebody stepped down or whatever, and quit and went on somewhere else and they needed, they needed a quick fix. And I just said, hey look. Or Lindsay said, I know somebody, maybe he's interested in giving you guys a hand. And that's how the relationship with base started.

And at that point in time I didn't know what I was going to do. I was like let's see. And then with that, then very quickly, more and more just started coming in and I was like I don't even have a website, what am I going to do? So, like it was very much like just like okay, this is a thing. Now, now I'm a business owner, now I've started like my own business, and now I have Andy Culligancom, which I didn't want to call Andy Culligancom. Just put it out there. Hate the name, but I was advised to do that because I was like everybody knows you, they don't know if you're creating a company, whatever. Yeah, why did you not want to do it? Because it's an ego trip. I don't want to like you know, that's the.

But it works Like it's fine, like it's driving business, so it's fine. But look, I've gone on a massive model out there for like five minutes. So, yeah, I, it's okay.

Now I have a lot to pull from. So we have a bunch of questions here. Well, one of the common threads that I think is really interesting, that I think we'll get into when we talk a little bit with Miranda here as well is that the importance of the vision, of the alignment of vision between you and I don't know what was the CEO or the founder, but of that particular that company before you left, that you were not in alignment with the vision anymore of where it was going. And that's one of the things that I talked to so much when I'm talking to executive assistants or chiefs of staff or force multipliers that that alignment of vision has to be that we as force multipliers, as force multipliers, need to be in alignment with the vision of our leaders as well. Or it can create a contentious situation, or it just doesn't. It's not as motivating anymore.

So I think it's interesting that you mentioned that, because I think it's so true in so many different roles. And then so when you started your own business, are you now doing? Are you like what? Do you consider yourself a fractional CMO? Do you consider yourself a consultant? Like, how do you position the work that you do?

Never mention a C word around me. Roundable note I never call me a consultant.

Oh, oh consultant.

To C word to dirty word in these parts. No no no, so, so, so, no I. So I see myself very much as a fractional CMO. I, I, I never want to be seen as a consultant, because consultants normally come in, kick over tables and point out things and then run away and say I'm not going to help you implement right, that's not what I do, that's against, that's against everything that I do actually.

So, yeah, fractional CMO, it basically it's. It's. I've seen, I've seen that most companies don't actually, or it's not 100% necessary for certain size companies to have a full time CMO. They need somebody that knows what the right decisions to make, our base and experience that they have. Because the thing about marketing is it's just one long test, right, and you're placing a lot of bets all the time and hoping that one of your bets is going to pay off.

And I've been relatively lucky that I've been in a number of organizations that have had like a lot of funding, okay, and I've made a massive amount of mistakes within a huge amount of money, which is not not something to be very proud of, but as a marketer, it's very helpful, right.

So I I've got a general idea of what works and what doesn't work, and with that I'm not afraid to make quick decisions, and that's that's the thing for me is, I find most companies that have like these small marketing teams they're just taking orders from the CEO to CEO doesn't really have any clue about marketing or what like. What way is open it comes to market. They'll typically, they'll typically acknowledge that. But the the person that they've hired from a marketing perspective doesn't know themselves what the right thing to do is. And I come in and say, hey look, do this, do that, do this, this and this and that. And then we, we see where we go after that and the CEO is like, thank God, somebody's here to actually tell them what to do. That's the right right.

That's right To help strategize and implement. Yeah, yeah, that's great. What has been the? What has been your experience so far? How's it felt moving from employee to business owner? Loved.

Loved, Like I, I, I make all my own decisions, you know, more or less like it's, like it's it's. It's become more complex. At the beginning it was always like. This is very simple, you know, the anxiety is still always there, Like I always have this anxiety of being like I need to win more business, because if one drops out and, you know, I need to make sure that they replace this, always just like build a pipeline in my head. I'm always trying to like be like innovative in terms of of how we're pushing forward, you know, and that's always like a constant monkey on my back, Unfortunately. It's just how I am, right. But now there's probably a bit more sleepless nights than before, because I now have a team, you know, and there's there's other people that are reliant that I'm reliant on and also, like they rely on me, right. So that's, that's something, but I try not to overthink it too much. But that's easier said than done, right?

But yeah, and yet you say all that and then, but your first response was that you love it.

Yeah, I love it. I know, I absolutely love it. I've said this many times I'm not going back to full-time employment. If, like, if this doesn't work out for whatever reasons, where can I fair your role right now? But if it doesn't work out, then I'm starting something new. So you, do sorry.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So when and why? Like what was the catalyst for hiring an executive assistant, who, I assume your first? Ea was Miranda or having had in the past.

Sort of sort of I shared an EA with, with other execs, which was a disaster, but first of all because the EA wasn't particularly very good and second of all because, yeah, it was just. It was too much pressure on one person's shoulders, right, to be like organizing everything on behalf of like five people, right? So yeah, you know, it can be complex.

Yeah.

So yeah, so when? When did I make the decision? I made the decision about a year ago and it was. It was down to a couple of things, like my calendar is a mess, like I'm sorry, right, it's not a mess now, my calendar was a mess.

It was my calendar was a mess right.

Like I'm, I'm not like I'm not great at organization, like I'm really good at ideas and pushing people forward and executing and making sure that people are doing the right things. That's where I excel. Organization is not my strong point. Like the amount of arguments that happen in the colleague and household because of stuff that hasn't been organized correctly or or like put in the right drawer or whatever whatever like is insane, right, so?

so, like that, that's just me. I'm just a bit chaotic when it comes to that. So I, I, I got to a point where it's like people like I'm having to turn away business because I'm just not able to like I'm spending week, I'm spending hours a week like trying to manage my calendar, make sure that everything's working out okay, managing my inbox. Like I'm super bad on email, but I'm amazing on Slack. Like email is a disaster, car crash of a channel for me, whereas if you ping me on Slack I'll get back to you immediately, right, that's like that's just how I am.

I guess I have like some form of ADHD or something I don't know. That's like just making me just you know, like I see something and I'm like okay, quick, I need to respond, done, you know that's email. It's easy for me to ignore. So I yeah, I got it got to that point and again it was like myself and my wife actually were talking about it. She said, like you need an assistant, like like you need to, you need to do something here, and again, when she starts giving me like that, like you need to start spend the money on something that's like you know for your business and it's it's like it's a somewhat of a risk. But she's like, wait up all the odds. I'm like, okay, well then it's obviously the right thing to do at this right time, right, so so that's that's when I decided okay. Like I mean, I had the relationship with base already, so base offer EA support, so it was an all brainer. Then it was very easy for me to to to get moving with it really.

And so I believe you work remotely. I'm assuming I don't know where you're located, but I've never met in person before.

I'm based out of Florida and Andy is in Vienna, so we've never met in person. Maybe one day, though.

Yeah, so as a remote EA like, what does, what does your day to day look like and how have you worked on building a relationship and a partnership with with Andy, particularly remotely, which is more of a challenge?

It is. It is a challenge, especially with a time difference. So Andy is six hours ahead. So the order of in which I do my tasks I arrange in a way so that it I can spend the maximum amount of time to be able to communicate with Andy in real time when needed. So when I begin my day in the morning, it's already afternoon for Andy, but that's when we have our Slack communications, that's when we have our weekly calls during that time, and then certain tasks that I don't need, you know, to be in communication with Andy for and voicing, doing certain research, coming up with different documents for him, things like that I I can push in the afternoon.

So that's kind of how my day is structured. It does afford me a lot of flexibility, though being remote. So you know, when things come up with my family, I don't need to leave an office. It's definitely beneficial in that way, you know, and in terms of building a relationship with Andy, it honestly hasn't been too big of a challenge. To be honest, we have been able to meet in person, but throughout our weekly calls we catch up on not only you know what's going on in his business, but little bits and sprinkles of what's going on in his personal life and just having that open dialogue really does help build that relationship with him.

Yeah, so do you support Andy on the personal side as well as business? I mean?

to a certain extent, his personal calendar is his personal calendar. I don't really do much scheduling and things like that on the personal land, but I think it really helps to know what's going on in his personal life to an extent, you know, just so that I can really protect that time for him, like if he has family time. You know there's certain blocks in the evenings that I protect for him because, because he's a fractional CMO as well, he has people in the US Eastern time as well as all the way in Pacific time that he has to communicate with. So scheduling meetings for him, that doesn't to make sure that doesn't interfere with his family time, you know. And also just it helps you be more connected to somebody when you know there what's going on in their personal lives as well, and not just business. They. It's humanizing, so it's not just business.

Andy shares that side of his life as well, which really helps. And when you're remote you really need to build a connection with somebody. So you have that I think you mentioned earlier, like having that motivation to want to support somebody. It helps when the other person is more human and they're just not a workaholic robot, right? So I think that's where we succeed is that we see that aspect of our lives and we kind of respect it and we don't block it off when we don't really try to hide anything like that is either.

And are you? Do you share just as much of your personal life, too, with Andy, is it like you know it's?

funny. Andy is a much more open person than I am. For the longest time on my Slack I didn't have a profile picture and so when I would message people and he would joke that I was Miranda bought. But no, he does know about my family is sometimes I work from home, so if my kids are home they kind of poke their heads in and any chats with them and so we do. Yeah, I'd say so. Probably not as much. Andy shares a lot. I usually enjoy his stories more probably than I share my own, but yeah we do.

You know you mentioned that it kind of was maybe you build a relationship quickly or it was easy to build a relationship quickly. I'm just wondering if you, either of you, have any advice on, like, how do EAs and executives go about finding somebody that they can, that they connect with that quickly? Is it that because there's kind of there was match like the proper matching done on the front end, or is it just based on your personalities that you connected so well? Like, how does somebody really find that person that they mesh with?

I think both Andy and I have gone through experiences where we were not matched properly. So I have worked for executives where I it was not a match and I think vice versa Andy has as well. So it's Partly that screening process right where you really kind of, when you interview them, when you speak to them for the first time, you Part of it is kind of instinctual, like you know if you will be a working match, whether you kind of align on the same values when it comes to your work and your life. Those things are really important and I think it's really important to listen to that instinct. And then there's that other part where you as an EA, you do mold yourself and your working style so that it can best support the executive. So there has to be a balance of that. I don't know what do you think Andy Like? What made our relationship work from the get-go? It was pretty seamless, honestly.

Yeah, I think well, for me, whenever I hire anybody, there needs to be like a chemistry.

It's just something anyway.

I can normally tell if it's a definite no from the very beginning, like from the first moment I chat with somebody I can say whether or not I'm going to hire them.

Now, that's probably there's some form of bias in that. That's probably not fair. But I can always say, like from a chemistry perspective, from how you guys, if you're on the same wavelength or not, and that's a feeling that I've had anyway, not just with the EA's but just across the board when hiring and I've hired at this point, or I've been in a hiring process for hundreds of roles and I've interviewed probably over a thousand people actually in the past, whatever amount of years, because I've been at a fast-growing company I've grown teams from five people up to a hundred people, you know, and for that to grow to a hundred people in a team or something like that, you need to be interviewing I don't know 20 people you know, and you can very easily just say this is definitely not going to work. From the first moment that you have this, like from after five minutes of small talk, you can tell whether or not, it's going to work right.

I agree completely yeah.

So, but with myself and Miranda like I think first off it was, she was able to get like time to value happened very quickly, right. So it was a noticeable impact for me personally in terms of how I could work and how her being with the team now actually helped me and freed up a lot of time. But that happened basically within the first week, right. So I was always like, oh God, this could take forever and it might be more work for me to hold somebody's hand to show them everything. But like Miranda was just like, oh, it's fine, I got it, like and it was, I knew I could trust her from the start and that just worked really well. And like, yeah, it just started working very quickly.

So from my side, like that, that was the most important thing. Like show time to value quickly and prove to me that it's going to be able. It is going to be something that's not just not an additional time suck for me and not just a waste of money for me, right, that's also like that's the other thing, right, that it's like it's a business thing at the same time as well. I need to be careful that I'm not wasting money on things that are not making sense. And this like when I look at what, like the investments that have made from the business for Miranda to be within the business it's enabled me to win more and more business. Like the amount of investment that I've put in has paid itself off like tenfold based on the work that Miranda does right.

It's great to witness that as well, because I came in towards the beginning of Andy's business and to see it grow has been really exciting. Like it's very satisfying to see that effect.

I love that you both mentioned that for different reasons, but I think, andy, when you were talking about that I mean I know we're talking about businesses like that return on investment, it is so important but I think you nailed it when you said you too often I think executives, entrepreneurs, think of hiring an executive assistant as this burden and this expense, but really it's this huge investment into the business and you, you know, you just gave us some more proof that your business was able to grow by making this one higher, and that's the whole point. Not just, not just the business is going to grow, but you're probably not doing a bunch of stuff that you didn't enjoy doing anyway.

Miranda gets the opportunity 100%, like the 10 hours or 15 hours a week I was doing on schedule meetings and managing my calendar and doing all that stuff and making sure it was probably more actually like. All of that is now solved. All travel booked, all my like, all of the bits and pieces around travel that are booked and like little things you know that are also nice as well. When you show up at the airport, she's like oh, I've got you, like I've made sure that that's looked after, getting it, getting like your parking sort of the airport. Because I arrived at the airport I was like, oh, shoot, I forgot. And then I got the message from Miranda saying here's your parking. I didn't even tell you to do it Like, but it's, that's a nice little thing.

But at the same time, though, by those hours that I'm saving that Miranda is now doing, I'm able to close more business like the. So the time that I've saved I'm able to put towards new business. So my, my, the issue with my business is very hard to scale it because you can't scale my time. So how do you scale me? Like? It's not possible, right? So like the time, my time is my money, right? That's like time is money. Everyone says that, but it really for my business it is, and by freeing up those hours during the week that I would spend on a lot of. For example, miranda does all my taxation, which is great fun for her, because she has to do it all through German, which is also great fun.

But I do it in English. I don't, I don't do the German part, but yeah, there is a language barrier. Yeah, yeah, tiny bit, speak German. I do not know. No, I do.

I do. But so, but even like that, time savings massive, because then I again, organization stuff is not my strong point anyway. I hate it just generally because it makes me miserable but at the same time but also a huge time. So that time that I would have spent on that stuff I can win two new clients and spend the time with them, Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, and that's what I just yeah, that's the beauty, I think, of having a great, you know executive assistant, executive business partner. You're both working in your strength zones and collectively creating more opportunity, more growth for the business. It's a beautiful thing. A couple last questions here. Andy will start with you. What do you think that leaders often get wrong when they're first partnering with an executive assistant?

They hold back things that they don't, they don't give the, they don't hand the keys over. You know, for me, like I just I like, as Miranda said, I'm a very open person, right, I'm, but I knew as well that I needed to hand the keys over because otherwise I knew it was never going to work. So, like Miranda's free reign over my, my email, like Whatever, whatever she needs, I just give here you go, whatever you need. You know, like whatever, whatever's gonna make my life easier. And I think executives probably want to keep a certain element of control and maybe don't have that element of trust. If you don't have that element of control, or if you don't have that element of trust, sorry, you're still gonna be trying to control on all the things and spin all the plates. So your investment is actually not gonna work for you because you're not gonna allow it to work.

So yeah, it's so true because I've had that reversed, where I was in a position where I I didn't feel that trust, and so it cannot be a successful relationship if there's no Mutual trust, because if they don't trust you to handle it which Andy does he'll just like from the get-go he's just this is what I need and I did it, and it just builds on that and and. When that's not there, it is very difficult to have a successful EA exact relationship.

Or even for you, I mean the trusting for sure, but even for an EA to even be able to do their job if they don't have right that act, that level of access.

So yeah, it's also. It's also sometimes like I think you do need to take a bit of a leap, especially in the beginning, like if I think back on, like giving over all my passwords, everything, my credit card, everything to somebody that I've never met, like here's my passport, here's my credit card, here's all my identification, here's a, here's my entire digital identification. You know, on this as well, that's like it's not an easy thing to do, you know, especially, especially if you don't know the person. You didn't get to meet this person in person. Like it's, I get it right because I also had the same thing. I was like, I mean, yeah, it's not that easy, yeah 100%, 100%, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah and that. Yet Andy said that like that little, that leap of faith, just I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this next step and and give me in trusting Miranda with your life really. But then you also mentioned how very quickly, even within that first week, you immediately started to see the value. You probably were able to see that you could count on her, trust her. So, even though it's given, you have to. If it's given to you, you really need to make sure you grab it and Are careful with that trust and and step up to that.

Well, yeah she has, she hasn't she hasn't flown to Barbados yet on Irish passport, so you know there's always time for a push.

Yeah.

That's awesome. Miranda, just wanted to ask you one thing that you mentioned earlier about the right, the right matches and that you had mentioned that In previous roles maybe you hadn't had the right match with an executive. Could you maybe give us a couple of examples of what that looked like and how you really just wasn't the right fit?

Yeah, I think. One example so as an EA, you are managing the inbox and all the communications right that the executive is doing. One thing I can recall for sure was Very early in the beginning. I noticed the way they would communicate to like a client Would be different than the way they communicated with me and that, like with Andy, what you see in here is what you get and that True with everybody that he speaks with. So it's very authentic and that authenticity you can kind of tell right away whether you're meeting someone in person or working with them virtually, like this. So you know, that's one thing that I kind of knew because I value that authenticity very much.

Like in my working life I want there to be that like sincere, kind of open, communicative, communicative relationship.

If I don't have that in my working life, like I'm not, people have different comfort levels right when it comes to like work is work and this is my personal life. For me I want things to be well rounded and authentic and that's just a key word that I live by in all of my life and I didn't sense that and so that was kind of a red flag for myself personally. Other EA's like it really does depend on the EA and their comfort level, but for myself I wanted a very real relationship like somebody that I could, in my personal life, be friends with If I wasn't working for them. And that's yeah I. I think for EA's it's important to not settle because I was in that mindset like, okay, what could I do? What could I change? How can I be doing this differently? To an extent, I think that's really important to have a successful working relationship, but only to an extent like you don't want to be changing yourself entirely to fit the exact like it has to be a good match, right.

Right, because then you would be out. You would have been out of alignment with your own values Right, if you had to. Right because you would no longer have been that authentic person. And when I'm hearing these studies, just how important alignment of values is in general in these partnerships and from what I know so far of Andy seems like a very authentic individual. So there's that, certainly that alignment of amount of values, which is really important.

Yeah, and I noticed that with the people that he's bringing on to his team too. I've never been able to meet them, but when I communicate with them it's kind of a web right, like when you meet a best friend or like a partner of a best friend you're like immediately connect with them because you have that mutual person in between and you're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've known you. That's kind of the sense you get and you can just tell that the people Andy works with that he's personally picked out. It's just kind of like on the same wavelength and that's really really nice.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's just such a great estimate to upholding values and culture and then making sure the people that you bring into your world and organization and partner with are also of the same culture and value in mind that Right, yeah, that's quite cool. So what are you both working on next? What's next for you?

Well for myself. So Andy would ask me this question from time to time be like Randa, what do you want to do? Like, what are you up to next? And so see, he inspired me one day when I was like rambling on about what I'm good at, what I like doing, and he was like project management, like that's, that's what you would do, and so I was like huh, so that's kind of what I've been looking into recently is being certified, you know, in project management and looking at different courses online. Right now. I don't have the time in my personal life with three little kids to go back to school at the moment, but I have them researching that, and so I think that might be my next step, as well as just the boarding. Andy. He said you know, his, he can't really. He can only scale his business to an extent because it's his time, but to be able to support him in a bigger role would be really interesting. To travel to Vienna one day and meet the guys that he works with would also be awesome one day that's.

I love that so much. It's very cool yeah.

So I think as well like I yeah, I need somebody anyway on the team. So it's funny because, just as we've been having this conversation, my mind is always thinking, okay, what's happening next? And I've just been thinking like I need a, I need somebody that's going to be project manager for basically all the projects that we're working on anyway. So I was like, oh, maybe Miranda could do that at some point, and I just talked about that like five minutes ago, by the way, while we were talking about something else so so.

So yeah, I think like I, I'm going to make sure, by all means, that Miranda stays on the team regardless. So, like, if she, if Miranda, decides I want to be a project manager, then we'll figure out a way for her to be a project manager and Nicole at dot com, that's the most important thing. Yeah, like Miranda put it that way, I think, from from my perspective with the business right now, I'm trying to really because I've grown the team from me to others, so there's other people on the team. Now I need to, I need to make it a real business. It's not really. It is a real business, but it's not.

As I said to you, from the beginning, it was like I was the biggest, I was the most shocked at everybody that this thing was working, like I was like oh, I have a business. Now, look at this and that happens very quickly, right, and I need to now make it into something that is, it is professional, but it needs to be more professional, needs to be better organized. I'm not the guy for organizing it. So there you go. Miranda might be an opportunity there, but so so I'm doing things like now I I'm doing, I'm bringing the other guys that are on the team they're both based close enough by like they're not by us in Vienna, but not far. That's the beauty of being in Europe that people can travel very easily. Like they're hours away, like not very far. I'm going to bring them over to Vienna in the next couple of weeks. Make sure we do a proper photo shoot, make sure that the website is updated.

With everybody on us, we're going to be sitting down and really mapping out the future of anti-collegingcom and what that will look like. Like what's our mission, what's our vision. I know what that is already and from my side, like is to like from. From my side, it's, it's, it's removing this consultancy thing and being like undeniable. I want to make sure that, like, whatever we do, we do it undeniably and people can never point the finger and say it's because you didn't work hard enough or because you didn't do XYZ. So that's what. That's what I always make sure that we're doing on all projects. But we need to like translate that into how we present ourselves to the world and that's, that's the next thing for me, for the businesses to really make it into that, and there's so many other things going on at the minute. Like it's, it's, it's like it's the stuff that's closer to home is always the stuff that struggles, because we're putting the effort into, into our clients, right so but yeah that is very, very exciting.

I'm excited to see, to see the growth and see the the website remanth and to keep watching what you both are doing because it's very, very cool and I love seeing the dynamic between between both of you. It's very it's very awesome for me to see that, to see another you know partnership really have that great vibe and thank you both so much thank you sure.