My dear friend Andrew Wilder—founder and CEO of NerdPress—reminds us that success is rarely a straight line.

Following a path that has been anything but traditional, Andrew takes us through his surprising journey from lighting designer to food blogger to tech CEO. His story has been about staying curious, trying new things, building resilience, finding joy in the work itself, and most important, leaping even when the goal isn’t clear.

Andrew shares his dad’s advice, to walk different paths and see what you like. He says just showing up and talking with people can lead to unexpected opportunities. Doing this got him to what he is passionate about—empowering people to use complex tech solutions.

One key for Andrew was letting go of the need to define his identity through professional labels. This freed him to measure success by his own standards and metrics. His advice: Target excellence rather than perfection, collaborate with others, and make decisions that align with your values and mission.

Andrew’s story will get you fired up to be bold, take risks, and stay open to possibilities that may lead to your next “It has to be me.”

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS:

• Make decisions from your values.
• Let go of labels and define success your way.
• Strive for excellence, not perfection.
• Try everything you feel like to find where your passion is.
• Just showing up and having conversations leads to opportunities.
• Go with your intrinsic motivation: What gets you up in the morning!
• Reach out for help and collaborate with others to achieve your goals.
• Success isn’t a straight line. Enjoy the messiness and learn from it.

ABOUT ANDREW WILDER

Andrew Wilder is the founder and CEO of NerdPress, a dynamic team renowned for providing exceptional WordPress support, optimization, and maintenance to hundreds of publishers and small businesses. Andrew's first career, in theater lighting design, instilled in him a deep appreciation for collaboration, a principle integrated into the ethos of NerdPress. Andrew’s technical expertise and knack for making complex topics understandable have made him a go-to speaker on web-tech, and a regular contributor on the “SEO for Bloggers” webinar series. Through his Eating Rules food blog, Andrew started the October Unprocessed challenge that inspired more than 30,000 people to adopt healthier eating habits by building community and avoiding processed foods. An Eagle Scout, Andrew serves on several boards and commissions in Los Angeles as part of his commitment to community service.

CONNECT WITH ANDREW  

Website: https://www.nerdpress.net/   

Website: https://eatingrules.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nerdpress.net   

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingrules   

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nerdpressteam   

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjwilder/   

Meet Tess Masters:  

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of The Decadent Detox® and Skinny60® health programs.     

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.   

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.  

Connect With Tess: 

Website: https://tessmasters.com/  

Podcast Website: https://ithastobeme.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblendergirl  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/  

Get Healthy With Tess 

Skinny60®: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Join the 60-Day Reset: https://www.skinny60.com/60-day-reset/ 

The Decadent Detox®: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/  

Join the 14-Day Cleanse: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/14-day-guided-cleanses/ 

The Blender Girl: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

Thanks for listening!  

If you enjoyed this conversation and think others would benefit from listening, share this episode. And, please post your comments or questions below. I’d love to hear what you think.  

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I'm talking to one of my favorite people today, Andrew Wilder, the founder and CEO of nerd press. So in Episode Five, when I talked to Amber Stott, in Episode 16 with Melissa lands, I talked about that fateful day in Los Angeles when I attended that food blogging conference and met some really key people in my life, and Andrew was one of them. And there are a lot of reasons why I love Andrew, namely, his commitment to excellence, his kindness and his integrity. And I've watched Andrew go through a number of iterations of things that he's good at in order to find his it has to be me the thing that he's really passionate about, and his story is such a testament to just showing up. That's his philosophy, showing up and collaborating with others. And when you show up with your truth and your integrity, extraordinary things happen, and incredible people come into your life. So I can't wait to dive inside his story with you. So let's get the skinny from Andrew Wilder, welcome. I am here today with my dear friend and tech genius Andrew Wilder, who is the founder and CEO of nerd press. They're the most amazing collaborative team that provide tech solutions, tech support, optimization and maintenance for people, entrepreneurs, businesses who want to feel safe and thrive online in their businesses, Andrew and his team run all of my websites. And I have to say, on a personal level, I have never worked with a team who offers better customer service. You really feel like you're part of a family and you're really taken care of. So running websites is stressful, and there's so many things that you need to be thinking about, and the rules just change constantly, and I don't want to have to think about that, and that's why I engage Andrew and his team and will for the rest of my life. So Andrew, welcome. Thank you for being Hi.

I'm so glad to be here, and you can be my spokesperson anytime. Oh,

you know, you know, I'm always up for it. I give great testimonials when I really, really believe in something, and I really believe in this, but you've got such an interesting story. So we're going to kind of talk about a lot of things today, because the way that Andrew makes decisions and the way that he has developed his core values with his team and trying a lot of different things in his life to get to the thing that he's the most passionate about and will continue to be passionate about, I think, is really teachable for all of us, right? Which is why I asked him to join us today. So Andrew, can we start with what your dad taught you about going down different paths. You've shared that with me on a number of occasions, and I think it's such a beautiful thing to teach people. I

mean, my dad just encouraged me to try stuff, and he would basically say, there's always going to be a bunch of paths in front of you, and you should try going down and see what sticks and see what you like. So not not rocket science, but it was very helpful to have him encourage me, and he'd sometimes have to goad me, you know, but it was, you know, walking down a path isn't a huge commitment. It sometimes,

and you can always change your mind, right? So the value of having parents, you know, or a parent who encourages you to do that, is so valuable. My parents also encouraged me to do that as well. And you've tried a lot of different things. You really took that advice and you ran with it, and sometimes had to be pushed, and that's fine. So let's start with you getting interested in theater and what that taught you as a high school kid, and then studying theater in college. We're both theater, theater and theater majors. You went to Northwestern I went to UCLA. You talk about, you've told me before about that feeling like the first place where you belonged. Tell me about the value of that.

Yeah. I mean, I was a super nerdy kid in high school. I mean, high school sucks for everybody, right? I mean, it just does every everybody. It's just painful. But I found my community in theater. I started doing sound work, sound design and building sets, and then moved into lighting design, and it was my place. It was my my safe space. And I love the people there, and they valued me. I valued them, and it was just very comfortable. So, you know, it's pretty much the typical, like, high school theater kid stories, like, oh, that's where they fit in,

yeah. And, I mean, you know, being lost in stories too, and being able to talk about story and, you know, feeling like you've, you've found your people. I mean, it's just so important. I think everybody's got one of those stories in high school, right, hopefully. But then you went on to studying in college. So what did you learn there? Like, what did you continue to learn about the value of where you fit in? Or how did it start to help you sort of form your identity?

So I between my junior and senior year in high school, I went to an amazing summer program at Northwestern called the National. High School Institute. It was lovingly called the chair of the program, but it was a five week theater intensive training program, and it's like all rising high school seniors, so we're all 17 or so, right? And it was like, life changing, amazing, you know, a year's worth of living in five weeks kind of program. And I fell in love with the campus and the school, and it's, you know, it's the best recruiting tool Northwestern has also,

oh, but, I mean, it's such an incredible school and

and so my senior year, but trying to figure out where to go to college, I didn't know what else to do besides theater. Frankly, I was like, I don't know it's and so I'm like, well, let's go pursue this. And so I never did any stage performance acting. I was horrible actor. I was always behind the scenes or up in the booth. So So I basically,

because we need you, we need you people, you make us look good. That's the

goal. Gotta have good lighting. Yeah. So, yeah. So I went, went to college for theater undergrad, and since I was in the tech program, I had a lot of opportunity there. The student theater program at Northwestern is amazing, and a lot of it is you have to, like, make it what you want. I did a lot of graduate level courses because they have a they have a graduate design program, but not a undergraduate design program. So I was just sort of doing the generic theater program, but then taking graduate classes. So I'm like, sitting doing work next to graduate students and just getting almost a graduate level education. And so I loved it. It was great. And

and this is when you started working on websites. So I was, yeah,

my first website I built was in 1998 and I think it was my senior year in college, and we needed a website for a conference we were doing, so I built this website. So that's where I got into it. I'd always been into computers ever since I took a logo programming class as a kid. I'm totally dating myself now, but there was a computer program that had a thing called the turtle, which is just a triangle, and you gave it instructions, and you could make it like draw a circle. If we really good you could get, like, cool shapes. So, you know, again, that was my parents encouraging me to try stuff, right? So I've always been into computers in tech, and lighting is also a very technical art form. You know, you're programming computers to do the lighting stuff. Now,

this is why I'm never lighting anybody, even with their smartphone. It's not happening. My brain just doesn't work that way. So, you know, I want to, I want to talk about this, this, it has to be me moment where I think part of the it has to be me is realizing what does not have to be me, right? So talk us through that moment. You know, you worked in as a lighting designer, in, you know, in in theater, on cruise ships, for live events for about 10

years. Yeah, so my first career was in lighting. So I finished college and started doing some website support work as like a side gig, because if you're a new Freelancer doing lighting, you have to pick up a whole bunch of work. So I started doing some work on an e commerce website, and simultaneously I'm doing all this lighting work. I ended up getting involved working for Princess Cruises. So I would go out on the ships and set up shows. I started as an assistant, and then I started doing the designs, which was a lot of fun in my 20s, and then started to be really hard in my 30s. Yeah, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. You know, you're working a lot of overnights, and sometimes you get a cool day in Port, but usually we would be working when the ship was in port and and so we're in, like, the Bahamas, and we're in just a dark room working, yeah,

yeah. So what was the I don't want to do this anymore moment, the it does not have to be memo. So over

time, I found myself not really liking the work, like the actual day to day, what I do day in and day out. I didn't like the doing of it. I loved being the lighting designer. I loved the collaboration and working with people, and sort of being in charge of that aspect and, and I loved having done it, you know, and being proud of the work. But I didn't like the actual doing and, but that's what we do, though, right? Like the idea is one thing, but the actual day to day is another.

And while it was and you gotta love the day today, we

are the sum of our days. And if we're miserable each day, we're going to be miserable. That's what I've learned, yes and yeah. So there. So I had sort of this pivotal moment where my best friend and business partner, who we had a lighting company together, he was working to design a Billy Joel concert at the Coliseum in Rome, like the actual Billy Joel, right? He's running lights for Billy Joel, and I'm on a ship remounting a show called piano manifest, I think the seventh time, where I'm doing, like a cruise ship medley version of Billy Joel's songs. And like, it was literally the same week, and I'm just in my cabin, like sobbing. At one point, I just didn't want to do it anymore, and it had never been that clear that I'm like, I have to get the hell out of this. It's time.

Wow, so you listened to that, and then what brought you to this next part of your evolution, where you started a food blog and started talking about healthy living and started your eating rules website. So I

had all. Been interested in healthy eating when I was in high school, I was in the animal rights group, and I was a vegetarian, and I kind of lost my way as I was working, you know, I was eating a cruise ship buffets all the time and eating, you know, lots of fried food. And so around the same time, I ended up out of a three or so year long relationship, and I was starting to date again, and I realized, hey, if I'm going to start dating, I need to get into better shape. And sorry, that's a good motivation, right? It's, you know, this isn't I'm not the first person to tell that story, right? So I start eating better, I start exercising, actually start running, which is, I was the kid who would puke after we had to run in high school. Pe and, yeah, the first, the first time I ran a mile without stopping, I actually, like, involuntarily, swore at my high school coach, like it just came out of me. Some baggage there. Maybe, anyway, I I got really into working out and being healthy and and paying attention to what I was eating and how it affected my body, and I realized that I was passionate about it. And I, you know, everybody always says, Follow your passion of the money will come, right? That's really like so, but I think it is important to follow your passion and see if you can make the money come and and so I decided to become an expert in health and nutrition. And, you know, I took a class or two, you started reading up on it. And then I realized, okay, okay, if I'm going to become an expert, like, how does someone in this was 2009 when I'm figuring this out, how does someone become an expert? Well, okay, you can go to school and, you know, study, get a graduate degree, pay $100,000 and spend three years of real life. Or you can have an audience, and that's a little cynical, but,

yeah, if you have

an audience, you're an expert, right? It's sort of a backwards way to go about. It depends

on the perception, doesn't it? Yeah, and I

wasn't 100% sure I wanted to commit, you know, three more years to study nutrition and and so I wasn't ready to go the grad school route. And so I'm like, Okay, I'll start a blog, and that can be my grad school, and we'll see how that goes. And I started researching and writing a ton, and I published. I started publishing seven days a week when I started it,

yeah, you were prolific when I met you back in 2010 Yeah, that quickly went

to six days a week, and then went to

five days. Yeah, right, because you weren't, you ended up not being as passionate about it, going back to what you were saying about the day to day, we are the sum of our day. Yes, I

was really excited about it for several years, like a good four or five years, and then it started to taper off for me. I mean, early on, also a blog post could be a few paragraphs, and that was it, right? This was before, like SEO, and I was writing, for me, I would like, want to learn about lipids and cholesterol, and I would write, you know, a few paragraphs, like I would research it, synthesize what I learned and and put it into a blog post. So it was great. And

now everyone's just using chat GPT, which is probably wrong, right? Exactly, exactly. That's the problem now, right? So what led you to start October on process? So for those of you that listened to the first episode of the podcast with Amber start, I highly recommend listening to that episode. She talks about Andrew. This is the Andrew she's talking about, right? Where she said she was inspired to start food Literacy Center because Andrew did October on process. So for those of you listening, you just don't know who you're touching, right? So yeah, Andrew, she, she, she really credited you with being one of the main sources of inspiration for this extraordinary thing that's now changing the California Food System. So thank you for that and the report effects of that,

because I honestly did not know that until you told me that yesterday. Like, oh, I

mean, yeah, it's pretty amazing. So at just to give you, you guys listening, some background, we all met on the on the day, right? The day that I met Amber, I met Andrew, I met Anna lease, I met Susie. I met I met so we met so many of the people that we're still very dear friends with. It was a pretty incredible day that changed my life. Meeting Andrew being one of those big things. Why did you start October on prosper so?

So I just started my food blog, and I was a month or two in, and I saw an ad, an ad or somebody posted on Facebook, something about the international food bloggers conference up in Seattle. And I remember thinking, if I'm serious about this, I should probably go to a conference. I meet people. I meet people. And I will say, just showing up is huge. Like getting out of the house and going to a conference or going to the thing, whatever it is, right, just being there, you never know what's going to happen. And it opens up so many doors.

I love that. Just show up. You don't know what's going to happen,

yeah. So I decided to go for it. I flew up to Seattle, not knowing anybody. Twitter was amazing. Then in 2010 Yes, we had like the farewell. We overloaded Twitter. The conference was fantastic. It was like 100 food bloggers in the back of a chocolate factory. You know, all of us in one room, and. Just so excited to be there, and the energy was just nuts. And we were, we were in a session on specialized diets. And, you know, there's somebody talking about gluten free and somebody talking about vegan, and I don't know what struck me, but I just tweeted with the conference hashtag something like, I'm thinking about making October a month of no processed food. Who wants to join me?

That's it. And you got an overwhelming response.

So many people responded, you know, like, just, they just hit reply. You know, all the people in the room were like, I'm in. I mean, I'm in. And I didn't know what to do. I literally had a pad. I started writing people's handles down. What, what? Like, I just started, yeah, but, you know, there were good 10 or 15 people easily, like, within seconds, who just said, I'm game, let's try it and and

it just became huge, and just inspired so many people. So thank you for that. And look, you really are such an incredible example of just responding, throwing it out there, asking people, getting the feedback, and running with it and providing, deciding you're going to be the solution. You're going to provide the solution. And again, going back to what your dad said, Just go down that path, see where it's going to lead you. What are you going to learn about yourself? You know, how can you contribute? Because I know contribution is, is something that really motivates you in justice, you know, wanting to make the world a better place. So let's talk about the blog tutor thing. Because when you know that was another example of, you know, I know all of us food bloggers and online entrepreneurs freaking out about the tech aspect. And so everybody would be cornering you at all these events, you know, asking you about this. And then you started speaking on panels. You started speaking on webinars that, you know, all of that sort of childhood experience, interest in coding, interest in tech, the lighting design, the building of the websites, all of this sort of stuff started to to merge together, where you could merge a lot of your gifts and talents and interests in this one place. So you started helping bloggers. And in the beginning it was a lot of food bloggers, because that's where you were. Tell us about embracing that and kind of running with that. So

once again, it was one of those things where I, like, I showed up, I'm like, I'm going to try this, and something happens right where there's this pivotal thing where, like, suddenly it sends me down another path, and

the it has to be me moment.

So after that first conference, I got hooked on, like, hanging out with food bloggers, because it's such a great group. So I was going to lots of conferences because we're always eating. I mean, usually there's good food, right? So, so I went to the blogger food conference, you know, and like all these other conferences, and there was a camp blogger way up in the mountains, and I got involved with the food bloggers Los Angeles group, and they asked me to speak on Google Analytics. I think it was, and it was like, some Sunday afternoon in somebody's back porch, right? And I knew there wouldn't be a projector, so I like printed up like, all these handouts for people, so I could have screenshots and all this stuff. So I spent like two hours going through Google Analytics with everybody, and afterwards, they swarmed me with all these tech questions. And someone was like, Hey, will you help me with your site? With my site? What's your rate? And I'm like, no, no, I'm not going to charge you. Like, I'm happy to help you. It's all good. And they're like, No, I insist. How much do you charge? And like, it was like, I felt the light bulb go off or turn on right above my head, right? And I'm like, huh, maybe there's something here that I should say yes to charging before. And it just started to grow from there. And I just started helping people with their sites and fixing their problems. And they would be like, Hey, can you do a redesign, or this thing is broken? Can you fix it? And and so I just, and just got a bunch of great clients out of it. Essentially,

yeah, well, it grew very, very, very quickly, and you became the go to person in the food blogging community for tech support. And let's, let's talk about that transition. Okay, so we have to talk about when you and Ashley. So for those of you that listened to the last episode with Ashley, cough, better, not perfect. Ashley, Andrew and myself, we are friends, and we all drove down to San Diego from Los Angeles, which is about a three and a half hour drive, and we were all, we all were sort of licking ourselves like cats, because Andrew had one of the first Teslas in in California, and we were driving down in our electric car having these great conversations. And so we sort of thought we're going down to this Amy Porterfield business workshop, and we're going to learn all this great stuff. We're going to share this hotel room. Oh gosh, it was a hilarious weekend, and we decided that we were going to make use of our time as we're driving there and back. That was seven hours of productivity, and we're going to help each other with our businesses, right? Because two heads are better than one. Three heads are better than two. Let's, let's do this. And so let's talk about that drive on the way back from San Diego to Los Angeles, where we collectively rebranded blog tutor into nerd press, right? And we will credit Ashley cough with she named nerd press, and we were spitballing back and forth, this name, that name, and you were going, Well, I'm a nerd, and I help with WordPress. Sites, and Ashley goes no press. And, I mean, it was kind of amazing, yeah. So

I yeah, I recently called it blog tutor, because I was going to build courses for people, and I never built a single course, right? And so I had rebrand blog tutor on my to do list for years, and I just hadn't come up with a name, and I'd struggled. I mean, I brainstormed, and yeah, and Ashley, just, like, blurted it out on this car ride, you know. And

now, after three hours of spitballing, right? That was the process, right? And, you know, they value in that process of just going back and forth and coming up with a million things. And, you know, I was in the front seat making notes. She was in the back seat, you were driving, driver, that it was so great, and wow, so great that you were able to secure it. Because what a brilliant, brilliant name. Let's talk about this evolution from one man band and creating this exhaustive, full time job to building this team of 24 people now, and it will. It just continues to grow and grow and grow. Um, I want to ask you about this, this movement from solopreneur to CEO.

Yeah, so

has that been like?

So it wasn't that clear that it's that's what I was doing. I was just like, I gotta hire help. That's where I was, right. And so it was 2017 I went to another conference called Word camp. I'm big on conferences, like meeting in person is just so good.

I love conferences.

So I'm at word camp, Los Angeles, and I end up sitting next to this guy, Sergio, during a session on the WordPress command line interface, and super, super wonky. I don't know anything about it, but Sergio is sitting there with his laptop, and I literally just happened to sit next to this guy, and he's showing me stuff on his laptop, and he's like, willing to email me all these command line tricks and stuff, and he's just really generous with sharing his knowledge, and

as are you, so you found your spirit. And

since word camps are like, hyper local, so it's like everybody, almost everybody there was in the Los Angeles area. So, you know, I'm coming from Santa Monica. Sergio was in Topanga at the time, and so we went out to lunch the following Friday. Had a three hour long lunch. Sergio didn't realize it was a job interview till the end, and answered him a job. And he went, Yeah, okay, let's do it. And so he was, he was in play number one. He's still working at Nerd press. And yeah. So going from one person to two people was really, really hard, because it was all up here. And so learning how to document processes and, you know, teach him, and, like, I knew every client by their name and what their kids names were, and their dogs. Like, you know, it was so personal, and so trying to get all that out of my head and document it, and it's still hard to do, but learning how to process, process that ties things, because we're a service based business, so scaling that was really hard, and standardizing that is hard. And you mentioned also growing and growing and growing. I'm not trying to grow really fast. I know growth is like the American business. The for American business growth is like considered the metric for success, and that's not the metric I want for us. What's your

metric? Oh, happiness,

freedom, satisfaction,

yeah. Let's talk about these, these core values of yours, yeah. Let's talk about you building your mission statement for the company, living that mission statement, being the leader, you know, because the fish rots from the head. And the reason why your company culture is so amazing is because it just embodies who you are as a human being. And you very much hire people that are on board with that way of moving through the world, very generous of spirit, very kind striving for excellence, all of these things that you do so well, how did that come about? And why is that so important to you these core values. So

I think the company culture is so important. You know, I can't control 24 people, right? Nor would I want to try. But if we have a culture that is resilient and has a shared set of common values, as long as somebody on my team is trying to live those values, I'm going to back them 100% right? And it's clear for everyone. It took us a year to develop our core values.

I remember each project, messages and emails. This was

a few years before we did tackle the mission and vision. My Yeah, my friend Jeff, was like, you really need to do core values and and my thing is, if we're going to do something, I want to do it right. I'm not going to do something just for lip service, or because everybody else does core values. You know, I feel like I see core values on so many company websites, on their about page, and you just get the feeling like they did that to, like, check off a box of, okay, we've got our core values now. And for us, it went from, kind of, my team kind of jokingly said, Well, what would Andrew do? That's how. They, like, tackle the stuff.

Oh, that was a hashtag. Yeah, I'm sure it deletes. What would Andre do? Like, that was

their decision making process. What I was like, not there. They would say, Well, what would Andrew do? And to me, like, yeah, totally flattering. But that's not what I want our culture to be, right? I want to figure out what, defines that? How do we get to those values? And so we just spit, balled on tons and tons and tons of things. What could that be? And we were just five people at the time, and we went to the word camp US Conference in St Louis that year, 2019, and we were in an Airbnb, and we were in the kitchen with this huge island, and the previous Airbnb guests had left a whole bunch of booze at one night where we just broke into the whiskey and you were lubed up for some brainstorming. I didn't have an HR person yet, so,

so Johnny Walker was your age office.

So the five of us kind of hash it out, narrowed it down, and eventually we got to five core values, and we've tweaked one of them slightly since, and but that's it, and it works so well, not only to guide us internally, but it also helps with hiring, like we put this front and center and say, Hey, this is what we're about. And when we're looking for job applicants, right? And we're hiring, we say, Hey, this is us. And we mean it, it's and it's so useful as a tool. And if I'm ever struggling with how to make a decision, like, if I'm like, Oh, I really, I don't know if I want to give someone the day off or whatever it is, right? Something, it can be something totally banal. I just have to look at our core values and go, Okay, take good care. That's one of our core values. You know, what that person should have the day off, or whatever the question is, yeah,

yeah. Share with me some other ways that it's so useful.

I think it's just this common vocabulary and sensibility. And

I like what you said about the coach of being resilient. I

I don't want to get to 100 person company. I mean, maybe we will, but that's not something I'm seeking. But if we do, I want to make sure that if I'm not there, the company culture carries it forward and keeps doing that, and I don't know, I think culture does company. Culture does carry through, right? Either companies that have been around for decades, and either they've been great for decades, or they've been kind of terrible for decades. And you know, it, like you said, the fish stinks from the head, right? And culture does stick and and once it's set, it's really hard to change. I think that's the other thing. Very

true, very true. So as a as a leader, very, very tied and anchored to your core mission and values that you have collectively created because you are inclusive. How do you empower your team to think about not, what would Andrew do? What would we do as a team? So you are an entity.

We we tell them, we want them to do that first of all, like we actually just say that. You know, we talk a lot about our team culture and how we're supportive of each other. You know, there are a lot of companies where they pit employees against each other, and it's very competitive and like it, there is no place for that in nerd press. I mean, we have our key performance indicators on our quarterly employee reviews are a little unconventional. We have one that actually I stole from you, Tess. It's celebrates others success.

Oh, it's a big one. It's a bit I live my life by that. I live my life by celebrating and elevating others. Thank you. I'm so thrilled to hear that. And you know, you sent me your core values and mission as you were, as you as it was evolving. So I'm very much inside of of what it is, and it's so wonderful. So tell us about some of the other unconvention.

I mean, it's, you know, another core values, teach and empower. And I think part of it is the core values and the mission we wanted to apply externally and internally. So we struggled writing the mission statement, and this was more recent, but a lot of companies have a mission statement that, like, is there to serve the company, and when you read it, it's really just marketing. And I wanted a mission statement that would work for our clients, but also for us. So, you know, we're all about helping people do what they love. And so for our clients, they want to do something else that like they don't want to do the tech stuff. We love the tech stuff, right? So it can apply both ways. So we're freeing up our clients to do what the other things that they love while we do the things we love, in order to empower them to do that right. So I think just trying to, whenever we do something, I want to do it right, and I want to make it meaningful and impactful, and not lip service. I'm going back to that idea, because I think that's it's really. Hard, but long term, it makes things a lot easier, and and that it does.

I want to talk about this, this, this quest for perfection, because I know that this is something that you have struggled with in your life, and I want to do it right, and I want to do it right, and I want to do it right, and I want to be an expert. And I, you know, wonderful this drive for excellence all the time, and I can completely meet you there. But you know, our superpower can be our Achilles heel. We're not held in balance. So I want to go back to this question I was asking earlier about identity, because I know that, you know you, you had been firmly, sort of chasing static goals. We've talked about this in our friendship, and I'm a vegetarian. I'm a lighting designer. I do everything you know on time, or whatever the labels might be. Can you share with us how you've been able to let go of this desperate need to strive for perfection or define yourself by label, yeah, so we can steal some of this from

you. Thanks for calling me desperate first of all. But oh, my goodness. Oh,

I should take that back, shouldn't I? Well, maybe, maybe I was projecting on you, because my quest for perfection feels desperate. Actually, I apologize.

You said use the word excellence there. And I think I, you know, I often have the phrase, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, right? Which is kind of cliche,

but I'm stealing that for me. I didn't

make it up, so I can't claim it, but I mean, I was always I'm not going to let go of excellence, but it doesn't have to be perfect, right? There's a difference.

Well, they're not the same thing, are they? And

so, yeah. So, yeah, growing up, you know, I was a vegetarian, I was a lighting designer, right? And these were, I latched onto these as key identities for myself. And when I stopped being a vegetarian, you know, eating that bite of fish was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. And it wasn't because I had to pick up a fork and put it in my mouth. Physically, it was easy, right? But Emotionally, it was changing my identity where, oh, boom, I'm not a vegetarian anymore. And what does that mean? And then letting go of being the lighting designer, I'm no longer the lighting designer, and hey, I'm still here, you know, and now, and you're still fabulous, and now I don't define myself as CEO like that feels weird, like I don't, I don't know. I guess maybe just some of this is getting older and being more mature and having more experience where it's like, I don't need to label things the same way. It doesn't really matter. Whereas I think when we're younger, it's much easier to latch that stuff as you're figuring it out. Well,

it just seems tangible when you're younger, doesn't it? You can talking going back to what we were saying earlier about fitting in, like feeling like you've got to conform or fit in or belong somewhere, or, you know, it just feels much more secure, at least, that's been my experience. So share with this how you feel about identity now, what, what informs that that association for you now, it's funny. I

feel like until we started talking about it, I haven't been thinking about identity in a long time.

I love I love that. This is what you're saying. So let's dive into that, because I'm really experiencing this at the moment, you know, and I think we do in our 40s and 50s, where I am becoming less interested in the Persona construction and more interested in the sense of self. And every experience is an invitation to return to self, and not in a narcissistic, self absorbed way, but just in a Yeah, I want to know myself and how I want to move through the world and feel good about that. So let me rephrase that. How are you feeling about how you want to move through the world, and what are your yardsticks for? Just checking in with yourself about that.

Well, I feel like I've had the same goals for about four years that I haven't done a great job on.

Oh, tell me about that. Basically,

I've been wanting to be able to step away from Nerd press for three months, or, you know, take an actual proper vacation. I actually haven't made progress, but it's we're not quite there yet, but and the pandemic slowed us down, and, well, slowed that goal down because we were so busy during the pandemic, we were very, very lucky, and because

everyone was at home on their computers, starting

businesses websites did particularly well during the exploded. Yeah, yeah. So

everybody was, you know, doing their sourdough startup and making bread, you know,

had we, had we been a company supporting travel websites, it would have been a very different story. So, oh, I can't take any credit for that. We just got lucky. You know, I feel for everybody else who didn't. And I. One of the so basically, there's like, three potential goals. One is I sell nerd press someday. Another is I take a really long vacation. Well, I guess the last one isn't the goal, but it's a possibility. Is that I'm no longer here. I get, well, we used to say Andrew get hit, get hit by a bus. My team didn't like that. So now we say Andrew, if Andrew gets abducted by aliens. So all three of those are basically the same thing, though, like, I'm not here running the company anymore, right? And the stakes are really high. Now. We've got 24 families who like payroll is supporting them, right? The business is supporting these people's livelihoods, and all of our clients, we've got hundreds of publishers that we're supporting, and if we just disappear, that's a problem for them. So the stakes are very high, and it should not be dependent on me. There should be nothing where I'm a bottleneck or I'm the only one with the one password or the one login to access the thing. And what we do is so touches so many different areas that it's really hard to do that. On the technical side of things, we've done a very good job. Heather is our COO, and she, she's wonderful. And Jamison, our support team leader, and the rest of our support team, like,

also wonderful. Let's give a big shout out to everybody. So

on a tech on the technical side and the operation side, we're actually doing a really great job. Like I actually, in February, we went on vacation. It was my first real vacation in five years, and I didn't work. I showed up in Slack one day just to say, to say hi and like, say how it's going, and they chased me away.

Oh, isn't that wonderful. So, so let's I want to talk. I want to ask you about this a little bit more, because you have this amazing company culture and this extraordinary team of very capable, very committed, very proficient people. So is that a mindset shift for you to actually mindfully disconnect and trust that you have put the infrastructure in place and hired this incredible team of people that can actually continue to steer this ship if you step away for a little bit. So is that internal work for you, rather than actually having to do any more work in the company at present, with that particular thing you're struggling?

I think this actually goes back to excellence. So I I've had to learn how to delegate because I've been kind of a control freak, because I want things to be perfect, but I what I've realized recently is if I trust someone on my team to do a good job, or ideally a better job than what I could do, that I don't worry about it like there are people on my team who know things and are better at things than I am and and I can't I, like, every time we have somebody whose skills surpass mine, I'm thrilled. Like, there's no ego here. Like, that's exactly what I want. I don't want to be the best person in all this stuff. I don't want to be the control freak. Because we're all stronger if all of us are are better at the jobs, right? So where was I going with that excellence? So as long as I know someone who's going to do an excellent job, awesome, right? And then my job is maybe to course correct a little bit as we go. But so I'm still working on learning out of how to get out of people's way. You know? I want, I want to hire good people, I want to empower them to do a good job, and I need to get the hell out of their

way. Yeah. How are you working on that within yourself?

I think it just takes time and training and no and again, it comes back to, like, trusting that they're going to do a great job. And

do you redirect yourself in the moment? Do you remind yourself, like, what? What tangible tool are you using? Or we document

a lot of things. That's a big part of it. We have, we use a knowledge based tool called guru for an internal knowledge base, and you create cards. It's like micro blog posts. It's a great tool with a great search engine, though. So it's really easy to create, like, a little knowledge card. We have hundreds of these cards now, and so when we have a little piece of knowledge, we document it. I'm not usually the one documenting it anymore, but we know all of it's there. And what we're working on now is we have all these different tools trying to tie them all together, so it's actually where we work. So we're looking at building internal tools to work smarter, not harder, and and I want everybody on the team to be able to share a brain and kind of work as one. So like Tess, when you email for support, it doesn't matter whether it's pat or Taj or crystal, emailing you back, you're going to get an amazing answer, right and a consistent answer, yes, we don't want to

be and very quickly, like mind blowing. It's extraordinary, like I said, the most exceptional customer service I've ever received with any company that I've ever worked with, and also the people that you have suggested that I go to equally do that, right? So let's talk about that.

Let's talk about collaboration. We should definitely do that. Let's talk

about collaboration, because I think it really is such a key. To Success, and I want to talk about success. Go back to success in just a minute. But yeah, let's talk about collaboration. So we've,

over the last few years, really developed great relationships with collaborative partners. So hosting companies, theme designers, other designers, right? All these people, people who focus on email stuff that's like, outside our skill set, or outside of our focus, where we're not competing. We have just great referrals and great recommendations. The thing that's, I think, been most pivotal, pivotal in this is slack connect. So we're in Slack right our workspace, but all these other companies use Slack also, and with Slack Connect, you can have a shared channel. So we work with big scoots hosting and so

amazing customer service too. Let's give a shout out to Justin and his team.

So we have a big scoops channel, but in their slack, it says nerd press, right? So we can ping them all day long, and we collaborate on behalf of our mutual clients. And we're, we're lifting all of everybody up, right? So it's, it's just this collaborative orbit, and then when you as a client come into this orbit, right? You're surrounded by all these people who work well together, who do a really good job, and it just runs, and it's seamless, seamless. Absolutely. It feels

like I'm going from my family to the extended family, and everybody shares the same kind of goals and warmth and, you know, yumminess. It just, it's just so easy, and

somebody asked me once recently about my theater background and like, how that relates to this. And I thought for a minute I went, Oh, collaboration. Because what are you doing as a theater designer, as a theater artist, it's a collaborative art firm. I had to learn how to work with the director and the costume designer and the actors and right and the crew. And my theater degree wasn't really a degree in theater. For me, it was a degree in collaboration.

Oh, I love that. I love that. And this idea that every experience gives us the tools for the next exactly,

and you have no idea what it's going to be,

yes, going back to what you said, just show up and you don't know what's going to happen, right? It's so amazing. I want to ask you about success, because we all define success differently, and I think that we start to redefine it or rethink it or embrace it differently as we age and in different parts of our lives and in different situations, you always share that amazing sort of diagram example. So can you share that with everybody? It's so illustrative.

I don't know. I can't credit the artist, but there's a really cute cartoon, and it's like two panes, and on one side it says what success, what people think success is. And it's just a graph, and like a straight diagonal line going up right with an arrow, and then the next pain is what success really looks like. And it's like squiggly line going all the way around until you finally get to the top corner. And it's messy, messy. And you know, if you're constantly comparing yourself to others, you're only seeing that straight line, and I might look tremendously successful to somebody right now, right? Who's just starting out, but they don't see the 15 years of work and trials and tribulations and sleepless nights and all of those things like none of that is visible, right? All you see is me in this moment

and the course correction and the getting lost and the freaking out and the triumphs, the sadness, the mistakes, or whatever you what words we want to use to it, but it's, it's just a it's an ever changing beast of it. I

mean, if you want to label me, you could call me a failed lighting designer and a failed vegetarian and a failed food blogger, right? So

listen, you know, for me again, we define failure differently, right? I love the definition of for me, it's just not trying, or maybe you would say just not showing up, right? Like there is no such thing as failure, in my opinion. I mean, it's just learning. I my one of my favorite quotes is the Nelson Mandela thing, which I know those of you listening to every episode have heard me say a lot, but I never lose. I either win or I learn. And what a beautiful way to move through the world. You know. So in terms of your just nerd press, evolving, growing, expanding, learning, whatever words we want to use, you are very much in a phase where let's talk about scalability. You've been talking about this a little bit and moving more into software, like you acquired some two plugins right now.

So you know, who knows what's going to happen with AI? It's really scary right now. I think we're going to be very at least in the next few years. I'm not too worried. But 10 years from now, and I'm bad at predicting the future. I think everybody's bad at predicting the future, but I feel, I feel that I'm not confident trying to predict the future, but what I can do is try to take some guesses and make sure that whatever future comes, we're prepared for it, right? And so that's part of my job now. Is like trying to figure out, okay, which direction should we head, and how are we all going to stay successful? What does that look like? You know, right now, we're basically a service based business, and scaling service is hard. It takes a lot of work, a lot of training. When we hire a new person, it takes six months before they're really ready to fly on their own, because there's just so much that they have to learn, and they probably come with certain information that's not necessarily wrong, but it's not necessarily the way nerd Press Does it right with tech, there's there can be 10 correct answers, and we want the standard answer over here for us. So, yeah, we acquired a plug in last December, and a plug in is a piece of software that lets you expand what WordPress does. So this particular plug in, add social sharing buttons so you can add like pin on Pinterest or share on Facebook, that kind of stuff. You

just displayed. One of your superpowers, by the way, which is Andrew helps distill complex technical things in to one or two sentences that you can just understand. That's one of your superpowers. Yeah? Sorry. Keep going.

No, it's funny, we teach, like, analytical reading as at our as part of our training. It's like, okay, we just use the word plug in. Well, I'm thinking somebody listening to this probably may not know what a plug in is, right? If they don't have a WordPress site, they'll have no idea. And the point, though, is that we bought some software.

And is that scary theme

a little bit, and I'll tell you, I would have been in way over my head had we not found Colin, or had Colin not found us. And this is another like Sarah. I think serendipity may be the theme. I love the word so. So in October, one of my longest employees gave her notice, and she decided to move on, and that was heartbreaking. And we're all good now. We're still friends. She's actually in our collaborators channel, in Slack still, but we had to open up her job, and so we did a job posting, and we ended up one of the people who applied for her position. I immediately saw this guy's not right for this job. Like, he's been a WordPress developer for 20 years. Like, what is going on? Like, why is he applying for this? What is he really after by applying for this job? Like, What's he looking for? And, long story short, like, halfway through our interview, I'm like, Hey, you're not right for this, but I get this other thing going on, and he just lit up. He was so excited. And it was literally, he was the perfect person in the on the planet, literally the most qualified, perfect person on the planet to come take on this software project.

And you know, I will say, though, Andrew, what I'm going to say is about serendipity. I think you're being very generous in choosing to see it that way. Right? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the way I see it, if I may, offer my insight just watching from the outside and you and I speak You know often about about business and about life, just as friends, that I see that another one of your superpowers is that you are able to see people's skill sets, Strength and heart song desires, and you're able to empower them and give them opportunities that are going to allow them to swim and fly and move and grow in their zone of genius. And I know that you ask your team members that a lot, what would you like to be doing? What do you enjoy doing? You know, that's another part of building a happy, harmonious team, right? One of my one

of the things I look for when hiring is intrinsic motivation. It's if somebody said, you know, I when I say, Why are you looking for this job? And they say, Oh, well, I need the money. No way. Am I hiring them? Right? Yeah, because they're not going to last. They're not going to be excited about coming to work every day. One of my favorite interview questions is, what gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning? I love hearing how people answer that question.

Yeah, well, it tells a lot about somebody doesn't it about what motivates them.

What motivates you solving problems and learning and being challenged, I Yeah, and all those things go together, and that's why I really leaned into doing nerd press. You know, I was wearing lots of different hats, and I wasn't mid in the mid ooze. I wasn't from, I guess, mid teens. I just wanted to say who's 2016 I was. I was still doing theater on the side. I was still doing that other e commerce website. I was doing blog tutor. Oh yeah, we didn't even talk about it. I started an ad network in the middle of all of that. And so I'm wearing all these different hats and not excelling at any of them. And I wasn't really until I said, Okay, what am I going to be excited about long term, and what's going to keep me excited to get out of bed in the morning? And that was the technical stuff. You know, I felt like I had already said what I wanted to say about healthy eating. I was just starting to kind of repeat myself. And but the tech is always evolving. It's always changing, and I'm always learning something new, and and that part's exciting to me, and it's going to be like that till I probably never. Bit,

yeah, it's, it's just constantly changing. And, I mean, you know, we talk about this a lot, our our hearts are this, you know, a similar shape, and that's why we're friends. But our brains just work so differently, you know, and that's what makes relationship and talking to people so exciting. So what are you what are you scared of when you said, yeah, that was scary before. What? What? What do you what are you scared or afraid of or worried about? Or, how does that work in your Yeah, so

I don't know if scared is the right word.

What is the right word? What

do I worry about? I guess,

yeah. Are you a worrier?

I not in like, the outward sense, but I'm constantly mulling things over and trying to make the best possible decisions.

And how do you do you think about it a lot.

I talk to my team, I talk to people. I talk it out. You know,

yeah, you do. I love that about I'll

be texting you and be like, hey, what do you think about this mission statement? And you're like, nope, not

good enough. Oh, gosh, was I like that? Well, because I know that the excellence thing was there. I'm like, Well, I did I say not good enough, or did I say I kind of like that, but we're not quite there yet. I think with the phrase, which

translates to Tess hates it.

Oh, you know me, well, I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it, but because I love you so much and I know that you strive for excellence, I wanted it to be and really, you know, be gonna

ask for opinions from people who I know are gonna do that. I don't want the Yes, man, yes, sir, people around me. I want people who are gonna push back, you know, maybe not too much like once I make a decision after taking all the input, I want us all do that. That's my job now, but I want, like, if I'm asking someone for feedback, it's because I want their feedback. It's not because I'm looking for someone to say, oh, yeah, that's great.

You know, yeah. I mean, we just need so many people on our team, don't we? You know, Ashley said on the last episode, you know, Steph Carter taught her to assemble your cabinet and a variety of people that can counsel you in different ways and put up different mirrors to help you expand into the best parts of yourself. And that's that, that what I'm hearing is you describing a version. Yeah,

I think I've been I really love building a team. You know, when I I really struggled going from freelancer to CEO, and I didn't want to be the CEO, like, I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to solve all the tech problems. And I really resisted for a couple of years, and now I've totally flipped. I'm like, I love this. I love building a team, and like getting cool people in the room together and seeing what they create. You know, it's like, so we go to a couple of conferences every year, and we were just at the tastemaker conference in Chicago, and we brought 13 of us from the team. And there's one point where I just look around the room, and we have this room where we help a lot of the attendees, and people are doing all these one on ones, and I'm just like, standing in the corner, like, such a proud papa, and I'm just like, watching everybody do their thing. And like, I'm not, I'm just standing there, right? I'm not doing it. They're just, they're just sharing and doing all of it. And I'm just, I just, I'm beaming when I think about

it. What's your dream? What's your dream for nerd press? As we move forward,

I think keep doing what we're doing, but ideally in a more scalable way that's less stressful. You know, I used to think, oh, as we grow, we're going to be safer, we're going to be more secure. And now, part of the emotional roller coaster for me has been Oh no, it's just further default. That's been my response, because there's more pressure and more responsibility, and I'm kind of, I feel like I'm kind of cresting that, and we I think we need to just mature, and this is partly why I want to become a software company. I think this is the direction to take it, where we can scale and we can have more products, we can diversify, and ultimately, we can serve our mission better. We can help more people, right?

Yeah, what's your biggest obstacle to being

better, being myself, 100% me,

meaning, what do you mean? I

still, I still don't let go as much as I probably sound like I'm saying today. And

so give us some tools that you use, like, what are some, some tools you pull out of your toolbox to remind yourself and check in with yourself about, about letting go. I mean, I struggle with that

too. I've been working on, like, the 8020 principle, thinking about that a

lot. What's your, what's your interpretation of the 8020 because everyone interprets that a lot,

even though it's actual numbers, right? I want to maximize the amount of gain with the least amount of work, or whatever the thing is, right. So if we have a problem where we're spending 80% of our effort and only getting 20% return, that's out of balance, and then obviously, the numbers don't really matter. But good example, earlier this week, I was working with two of my. Team on customer retention emails, where someone emails it in and says, Hey, I think of canceling, right? And we were spending a lot of time going back and forth trying to convince them to stay. And sometimes we're successful, sometimes we're not, and I'm like, hey, look, let's think about like, why? What are the reasons somebody might cancel? And it's these days, everyone's like, I love you, but I can't afford it anymore, right? That's by far the most common. Like, I love nerd press, but traffic's down, which is a real thing. People are struggling. So like, Okay, well, if we can give them a solution to that, like, you know, lower the price, give them a reduced plan, you know, they can downgrade their plan. Let's offer that and move on. Like, we don't have to spend months trying to convince them to stay let's streamline this process so we're not spending so much effort for very little return, because most people at this point like what, they've made up their mind. They've made up their mind, and teaching my team how to recognize when they haven't made up their mind. So we can say, hey, but we've still got this. And then the person may come back and say, oh, yeah, okay, great, you know,

right? And with money, you know, people really are struggling, you're not going to magically find the money, you know, and so

why? Why string that along and spend a lot of effort on our side, if you know? And and if we aren't able to retain or help one more person, you know, we lose one person more than we would have otherwise, but we're saving in hours and hours and hours of time. That's sort of that, what I'm talking about. And that's just a recent example, but trying to be excellent, but not perfect. And where do you brother? Well,

going back to right, Ashley's better, not perfect, right, from the last, the last episode, right? Yeah, if you could bottle anything, what would it be? Bottle

anything? Oh, your energy would be helpful.

Oh, that's a very kind, oh, my goodness. Well, let me tell you, you can draft off my energy when you're feeling, you know, like you need some any day, right? I mean, don't we do that as human beings? Right? Like this is why we're in relationship with people, and why it's so rich and rewarding, why connection is what we crave, right? Because we're not supposed to do this thing called life on our own, right? And so what I love is, you know, the things that I am the worst at, you're the best at, right? So that's why I love, I love talking to you for so many reasons, but, but you hold up mirrors to me to see possibilities in myself that I didn't even know were possible, or paths, you know, where my brain does immediate doesn't immediately go there, right? So if you want to take some of my my energy, Oh, happy to share it any day of the week, right? Anything you'd wish you'd done sooner, raise prices.

Tell me about that. It's that came from another conference. It was Melissa's conference, or the subscription lab, right?

Okay, so Melissa, everybody. That was episode three of the podcast. Oh, yeah. Oh, I called in all my besties to start,

because you're all so amazing, of amazing people as well. I called you I

do. I do very hard. So we were, I don't, I don't need

to blurb the story. But there was a point where I'm in a room full of entrepreneurs at Melissa's conference, and Melissa needed a volunteer to, like, volunteer their pricing structure. So I'm like, and this is, like, very early on the conference, and nobody's, like, chatty. So I'm like, Okay, I'll help Melissa out. I'll stand up and volunteer. I

was in the room, by the way, I remember this, and by the way, you're never boring us with your stories,

yeah. So I laid out the pricing, and a bunch of people responded basically saying, I wouldn't sign up with you. You're too cheap. I wouldn't trust that. You're a good service. Yeah? And I was like,

because I was it was a live pricing

my services based on what the competition was charging, not based on the value we were providing.

And yes, and you provide so much more than anybody else I've ever said

that night, I raised our prices a little bit, but a week later I I'd bump the prices like significantly, like from 39 a month to 99 a month at the time, right? It was like, terrifying, absolutely terrifying. Doing that right? Because I'm like, will people? Will people, Will anybody still sign up? Right? And, yeah, if you look at our our graph of growth, it is the classic hockey stick where it's like, and then there's an inflection point, and it starts, it changes. That's, yeah, raise prices. People

value what they pay the most for, what they pay more for. She teaches it all the time. Melissa, doesn't I really struggle with that too. Andrew, it's you're not alone in that. Certainly, you know, if I, if I could give everything away for free, I would, you know, with health programs and stuff, just because I believe health is a birthright, right? And I want everybody to have access to it. But we're, we're like you. We demand excellence and provide a very personalized solutions, and it costs a lot of money to facilitate that kind of service. So, yeah, wow. So for somebody, I close every episode with the same thing, which is, for somebody out there who's, I mean, everybody out there, we've all got a dream in our heart, right, and something we want to be doing or dreaming about, but we're. Scared of starting. We don't know if we've got the chops to make it happen. What would you say to

them? Be bold, take a risk. I think it's so easy these days to reach out to somebody, and if you are genuine about it, people will respond to it and show up if you go to that conference, right? I mean, I can't understate how valuable all of those things are, and like, where I am now is a result of all these little interactions. I absolutely never could have predicted any of it. Like you can't sit in your room and decide to do it. It doesn't work that way. You have to show up and run into tests and become friends with tests and then ended up in a car ride going to a conference, right? Like all these serendipitous moments, but you have to be there for them to happen.

Yeah, you know, let's close with a theater analogy, seeing as this is two theater animals talking to each other. You know, the golden rule of improvisation is yes, and you don't block anything. You say yes and and you stay open to all possibilities. And really, if I'm thinking about the overall, arching, warm, fuzzy ball of light and possibility that's in my heart right now from our conversation, it's just show up and you don't know what's going to happen. So to Andrew's Daddy, I say, thank you for raising this spectacular human and helping him believe that he could do anything, and by extension, the ripple effects of you enabling me to do what I do with your zone of genius, right? And that is really what makes the world such a thrilling, exciting place to be in, is that we all bring our gifts and skills and talents and magnificence to the world and in communion, we do extraordinary things together. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story, and you can learn more about nerd press@nerdpress.net for those of you that have got a website or a business, I honestly just cannot recommend Andrew and his team and their services enough, so much so that you will see me on their website. I couldn't do what I what I do, and not have stress about it if it wasn't for Andrew and his team. So thank you so much. Isn't he beautiful? Ah, so many lovely things from that conversation. Try everything, find what you love to do, and give yourself permission to find where you belong. Isn't it lovely that he had a father that modeled that and encouraged that in him? I loved what he was talking about, the intrinsic motivation. What gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning that we are the sum of our days. The idea is one thing, but you have to love the day to day. If you don't love that, then you're going to be miserable and just showing up. You know, you can't decide that in a vacuum. You gotta get out there in the world. You don't know what's going to happen, but it could be amazing. So go and meet people in person. I mean, look at what happened to him by doing that, and the value of collaboration. Don't ask, don't get that. It's so easy to reach out for help and that we all bring our gifts and and do extraordinary things together. Decide that you're going to be the solution. How can you contribute and have impact? I love his metrics for success, that he gives himself permission to work from his core values in order to find his own definition, and that success is messy. When he was talking about those diagrams, that if you're constantly comparing yourself to others, you're only seeing that straight line, not getting inside the messiness of everything that it took for that person to get there, and then it's it's the same for you, and allowing it to be messy, and celebrating that and all of the lessons along the way, and that we're striving for excellence, not perfection, and that you can't predict the future, but you can take steps to be prepared, or as prepared as you can be. And the value of building your team, whether you run a company or not, you know, building your team and having really good people around you that are going to tell you the truth. They're going to want the best for you. They're going to support you and hold up mirrors that help you expand into the best parts of yourself and being bold and just taking a risk, you can always clean it up no matter what happens, and it may be bigger and better and more amazing than you ever possibly imagined. So just put yourself out there. And again, I if you do have a website or a business, I honestly cannot recommend him more highly. I literally could not do what I do without him and his team. They really are that incredible. So you can learn more about Andrew and his team at Nerd press.net. Do.