Join us on this special episode of "Re-Imagining Work from Within" as we celebrate Within People's 10th year in business. In this reflective conversation, co-founders Jeff Melnyk and Laurie Bennett sit down to share their journey, insights, and lessons as founders of a self-managed organization.

They delve into their vision of creating a 21st century business and how it has shaped their purpose and values. From the early days of envisioning a blueprint for the future to the challenges and triumphs along the way, they discuss the significance of work freedom and its impact on their growth and the company's culture.

Through their conversation, Laurie and Jeff provide valuable insights for aspiring founders, startups, and even established businesses, offering a glimpse into the realities of building and sustaining a purpose-driven organization. They touch on the surprising speed at which 10 years have passed, the importance of holding onto a strong vision, and the power of embodying the feeling of what they aimed to create.

As they reminisce about the rooftop in Barcelona where their dreams took flight, they reflect on the changes they've witnessed and the strides made toward their vision of a 21st century business. The discussion also highlights the balance between growth and sustainability, and how their perspective on growth has evolved over the years.

Join Jeff and Laurie as they share their experiences, challenges, and victories on the path to creating a business that aligns with their purpose and values. Gain insights into the evolving landscape of work, the importance of meaningful work, and the possibilities that lie ahead for entrepreneurs and organizations alike.

Tune in to this episode full of wisdom, reflection, and inspiration, and discover what it means to reimagine work from within.

Learn more about Within People and the work we do here.

Hey everyone.

Welcome back to Re-Imagining Work from Within.

This is kind of a special podcast cuz we're gonna do some reflection time.

I'm here with Laurie my co-founding partner at Within People, it's our 10th

year, so we thought we would get on the metaphorical sofa and have a little

conversation about what it's been like.

But in doing so, we wanted to sort of share some lessons about

what it's like to be a founder, especially through our context.

As you might know, we're a self-managed organization, so we look through

the world a little bit differently.

We wanna talk a little bit about that.

We wanna talk about what it's been like through our purpose and our vision

of growing a 21st century business.

We're gonna riff around what that looks like.

So join us on that journey.

And we're gonna talk about work freedom and what that means and our

vision for that and how that's helped us to navigate the waters, but also

has been a bit bumpy along the way.

So we wanna share a few lessons from that.

Thank you to our producer, Emily, for helping us guide

through this conversation.

But join us, stay with us, and I hope you find something useful in this today.

The beginning is a very good place to start.

Mr.

Bennett, we have been in business now for almost 10 years.

You argue with me around whether or not this is our 10th birthday or not.

My clear argument is, We've been in business for 10 years.

If you count 20 14, 20 15, 20 16, you quickly get to 10.

Yeah.

Your argument is we have to wait as if it was a, a child in

order to become the 10th year.

I

think it's, it is our 10th year, but our birthday

party needs to come next year when we have completed 10 years of business.

We're now starting our time.

I see business You can see the sort of strategic discussions

that we find ourselves engaged with after this long in business.

This is probably this symbol of our growth and security is.

Yeah.

Leaders, this is the level of conflict we usually get into.

I don't, I think we're in alignment, but not in agreement.

Mm-hmm.

And we've been reflecting, this is a time for of reflection for us.

I think 10 is a significant number.

We know that we've got some work to do to think about the next 10 years ahead

and what and where that comes, but, Yeah.

Did we, I don't know.

Like, it's interesting, I'm hoping other listeners will find this

interesting in thinking about like, what is it like at 10?

And if you're just starting your business now and you're a startup thinking

about, oh gosh, am I gonna get that far?

And if you're at year eight thinking, oh, what's it like at 10?

And if you're in year 20, you can be like, yeah, come on boys, we

still got some time to go, but did we think we'd make it this far?

I think so.

I think that kind of.

What does it feel like to be 10?

I would say the main thing is surprising.

I mean, it's, it makes me feel old, but in kind of a good way.

But I think it doesn't felt like that long.

It's come fast.

Yeah.

And 10 years goes by much quicker than you.

Imagine it will when you set your vision at the beginning and imagine yourself,

your business 10 years into the future.

You imagine that being a very long time away.

And doesn't feel like that.

Yeah, a decade.

And of course we had the pandemic in the right, thrown into the midst of

it, which of course made time stop and speed up in very weird ways.

No time to talk about that today.

But when we started the business, we quickly had a thought about

the vision of the future.

And I think you and I quickly aligned on.

We need to start creating a blueprint for 21st century business.

That was something that was in our desire, our ethos.

We had our purpose of helping people find purpose and grow.

That was came very quickly to us, but this idea of 21st century business.

Was something that was quite foggy at the time.

I would say.

I think we had some ingredients of what we knew it was gonna be.

Do you, are we getting closer to knowing what 21st century business is?

I hope so.

Cuz one of the things we said we'd do is try to be one, so 10 years in.

Hopefully we can talk a little bit about what that's like.

And I think that's the Yeah, that's the, that's been our story.

Hey.

Is that it's, it wasn't just, let's grow a business that.

There's a kind of traditional consulting business that helps

other companies with their cultures.

It was, how do we really think about what 21st century business needs to be like?

How do we help people step into that and how do we design from the

very beginning our business to be shaped on certain kind of principles

that we saw underpinning that.

You know that the context on which we founded within, which we talk about a

lot is, was around freedom, was around the idea that people should be able to

love what they do and who they are in their work, that we should extend to

people the freedom to be able to find the work they're most meaningful about

and deliver it in the ways they get most joy out of doing and get out there

and be able to make the an impact.

In the world they wanna make whilst being treated like grownups inside

the business where they work.

And I think starting to imagine.

The sorts of shifts that we wanted to see in businesses then that I

think we really are seeing now.

Like if I jump to now and we start thinking, especially post pandemic

about distributed workforces, people with a totally different relationship

to when, how, where they work.

The, the importance of meaningful work for, for people.

We're really starting to see a lot of the stuff that we sat dreaming

about on a Barcelona rooftop coming into the zeitgeist today.

Which is kind of cool to see.

Yeah.

And even thinking that some of those things that we saw on this mythical

rooftop which I hope we will make even more mythical in a second.

Some of the things that we started to imagine, I sometimes thought they

would happen a little bit faster, and I think sometimes we forget that

change does take a while to happen.

I think the pace of change has been accelerated because of the pandemic

and certainly things like flexibility, which we've always built into our

model and our dream based around that vision is something we've

held onto as being very important to the idea of freedom, but that.

Really didn't come into fruition into 21st century business until most recently.

A lot of that's also being rolled back.

So it's like this vision of, of the, the kind of world of work that we wanna

be part of creating isn't something that is just gonna come overnight.

I think it is.

I think one reflection on the 10 years is, like you said, is like it's gone by.

Fast, but yet at the same time, there's still so much more.

It's that

classic like, yeah, when are the hover boards

finally going to be here?

You know?

Yes.

We've been waiting for them for 50 years and they're still not here, but.

I feel like sometimes in San Francisco you think

you're gonna see a hoverboard.

There was a guy walking down the Castro on stilts yesterday

wearing some butterfly wings.

I think he thought he was on a hover board, but not quite.

Sounds like a great, a great alternative.

But what was, let me ask you like.

Let's go to that, that rooftop in Barcelona where you and I,

in a flurry of Post-It notes and dreams kind of hatched what we

thought this business was gonna be.

What?

What do you remember from that conversation that kind

of still sticks with us today?

I think it's important for everyone to remember that really you can

only run a business off of Post-it notes.

True.

I think that's one thing that people should take away as a truth

that is held true in our decade.

And that we should have bought stock in 3M years ago, cuz we

would've been bajillionaire by now.

But I, well, I remember the feeling.

Of it, and I think that's the importance of visioning is like the embodied

feeling of what you're trying to create is often much more important than the

actual strategy that comes from it.

I think we had multiple tracks of work that that then came off of it

strategically from that rooftop.

I remember the feeling, I remember that idea of that optimism that something could

change, that we could be the creators of that change and that our purpose

could be the North Star that guided us.

Was, was really critical.

I remember some of the artifacts that to this day are so integral to our, to

our product and our business, like a business based around joy and impact and,

and profitability through collaboration.

All of those things were on the rooftop and but that feeling of the sunshine

being in Barcelona, creating it together, knowing that's where we're going.

I think that's the power of visioning that's so important to

creating 21st century business.

We can't create 21st century business off of the dreams of the past.

We have to get into the visioning mindset to create it going forward.

Yeah.

What do you remember?

It was also cold.

I remember it being cold cuz it was February,

but not as cold as London.

We had to, right.

That's why we were there.

I think there's been a theme over 10 years of seeking out warm and

beautiful places in which to work.

I think, although here I am in Vancouver, which fulfills at least half

of that brief, I guess at most times.

Yeah, no, I, I, I remember that, that feeling too.

And I remember the sort of abandon with which we would casually say

things like, we're not gonna employ anybody and we're only gonna work

with people who wanna do this work.

And all of these kind of whimsical, borderline naive thoughts about business

can work in a way that it's never done before and we're gonna change

it all, which is, which is amazing.

And I think sort of starting to think about now, What it felt like immediately

after we came down from the rooftop saying that to people and them looking

at us with a kind of polite raised eyebrow, and they're like, mm-hmm.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Was an interesting kind of come down.

But I think with the, the strength of that vision and what it's felt like and

what we set ourselves to then largely has.

Been what's guided, how we've grown and what's brought us to

where we find ourselves today.

And we've, we've done pretty well on not compromising on that vision.

I think what you say about change happening slower than we imagine has,

has caused us to kind of maybe ramp back some of the ambitious enthusiasm

about this can all be happening already.

But the, the truth is it is happening and some of those things that felt

straight up weird to folks when we were talking about it back then feels

straight up normal to them now, and feels like a good discussion to be having.

Oh, the problems of being vision raised.

Yeah, you've gotta get a bit crazy, don't you?

Because , if your dream is something that can happen

tomorrow, it's not really a dream.

You're just kind of planting the seeds of a strategy.

I think that was the power of that experience was to create something

that what quite out of reach to, to do and, yeah, I'm proud that we've held

true to some of those principles and.

And I know that we've had to let go of some things that didn't serve us.

Mm-hmm.

That maybe they weren't, they might have been getting in the way of

us growing, but our purpose is to help people find purpose and grow.

Growth was important.

I remember we also said like growth is a dirty word to many people.

We'd come outta the sustainability movement and growth is bad.

And that wasn't our perspective.

That actually, if you wanna grow, Your business, growing it through your people,

through impact and by doing it in a way that was sustainable was really important.

Yeah.

Have we grown, what does growth mean now?

Gray

grayer maybe?

Yeah.

To yourself.

Literally.

That is the truth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think we, we really have, I think we, you know, growth took a really funny.

Shape for us.

We were an international business within a year, even though there were only

four of us in the team, we had opened up in South Africa and we're doing

work kind of all around the world.

So there was some aspects of kind of the traditional understanding of growth.

When you say that word in the context of.

Being a startup or a, an entrepreneur or beginning your business, you tend

to think about quantities of things, of clients, of revenue, of markets,

of employees and other things.

And I think growth has never really taken that shape for us.

It's been about a, as much as it's been about an expansion in that way, it's

been about a, a depth, a deepening of.

Understanding, I think more about what it means to, to drive that vision of

21st century business, starting , to really experience and feel out what it

means to try to build a wholehearted business that's largely self-managed.

And , doesn't look at the same growth drivers as, as other.

Consultancies who look like us might.

And I think, you know, if, if I reflect now 10 years on of , what growth I've

noticed it's been more about the, the depth and impact of the product that

we've built, the way that we're able to shape and help cultures around the world

in different organizations to flourish and grow and kind of be at a, be at a

pointy end of a movement that feels.

Super important for how business sees itself, how people are working in

businesses see themselves, and how that influences the way society works.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think , we never wanted what we were

doing to just be about.

A European model or a Western model of working, and that's been something that's

been really interesting to experiment with over the last decade is, is there

one blueprint for 21st century business?

Our, reflection is, yes, there is, and that can work in all these

different contexts around the world.

So to me, being able to work in every market we've done work in every

continent, apart from Antarctica I, which I didn't have to say that every time.

Yet soon.

And to really understand what it is that we do that helps people in all

of those different places, those different cultures within cultures.

That to me is, is where I feel like we've experienced growth, the depth of our work.

We've always had revenue growth year on year.

That's always been great, but really to me it's the product

and the way it's helped people.

That's been.

The story of our growth more so than the number of people we have

or the, you know, what, how, well, we don't never have offices, but the

number of geographical locations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, I think that's true.

I think , for us, people has been a route to impact, like being able

to deliver the kind of change that we wanna make in organizations.

As a business, primarily based on coaching and consulting.

You need, you need people to help you to work with that.

And I think we've been, you know, we've been navigating a, a world where that

work has been reasonably , not , the main thing that people have been doing.

It's been.

, a kind of group of leaders and we've been very careful to be

looking for kind of what we call them, leaders committed to change.

So people who, who it matters less, what sector they're in, what stage of business

they're at, what size of business they are, but matters much more about what

they want their culture to look like and how invested in change for themselves

and growth for themselves, they are in guiding their organizations that way.

And at the same time working on a model for our own business that.

That looks really weird in the, in the, in the general landscape

of consulting businesses.

You know, a place where it, you are afforded a totally different

degree of freedom, but with that comes a level of self responsibility

Yeah, I think that's every c e o we're working with now is like, I.

How do I get people to understand what accountability is?

And my response to that is you have to get them to understand what responsibility is.

They can't be held accountable if they don't know responsibility, and

they have to be self responsible.

And yet, every day, every human being goes about their day, buying their

coffee, paying their mortgage, taking their kids to school, driving cars,

and yet at work, that sense of self responsibility becomes very difficult.

And I think there's a lot of unlearning.

To put around that that that comes, and I think, I still feel to this,

to this very moment that we can't have 21st century business until

we understand self responsibility and we understand accountability.

If the world of work is moving away, it is to become automated for the tasks that

no longer require any sense of creativity.

The creative tasks only come through.

Responsibility and coming from a creative background, like as an artist, you don't

have a boss to tell you to make your art.

You make it and you make it because You've been driven

through your passion to do it.

If you had a boss telling you to make the art, you wouldn't do it.

And so it's a paradox, isn't

it?

Yeah, yeah, for you, what kind of keeps fueling you to

keep us aligned to that context?

Like why, why put up with the, the challenges you've just described?

Beyond my 5:00 PM cocktail hour.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think that when we come back to our vision and our purpose and what

it is that we're here to do, and when we get out of our own way of the kind

of business we're trying to create and begin to focus on what we're here for, I

think all of us are much more energized by the impact that we're creating for our

clients than what it is that we're doing.

Within our business, , we have to hold an integrity.

What we're doing within our business, our values are important to us,

and the checks and balances that our business infrastructure put

in place is, to me very important.

But we are not here just to create our own business, just like no business is.

Purpose is just to create itself.

We are here in service of our clients and that to me is the fuel.

when I.

Get out of my own way and I go, what is this for?

And I connect to the impact we've made through the past decade of working with

amazing brands and amazing leaders.

That's when I, that's when I'm fueled.

And, and I feel that in the moment, of course now too, like, get me

working, coaching with a leader.

Get me working on their purpose and their values and that creative spark is the

fuel that, that, that brings me back.

Are you the same?

Yeah.

. Is it still the

people?

I think so.

I think, you know, , that is , the reason we began, and it remains true today.

Like we both started and said we didn't want to spend our time managing an agency.

That's not what we.

Were motivated by, and part of the reason for thinking about self-management and

designing the business the way we did was to allow us the freedom to continue

to do the work that is meaningful to us.

But I think there is something about the integrity of, of having

within operate on our own blueprint for 21st century business.

Like if that's the vision that we hold, we better be doing it too.

And, but I think what's been interesting about that is we've been

able to experience some of the real challenge that comes with going on

that journey for ourselves, which I think has been, has been valuable.

And for me , as well as the kind of, the impact that we get to

translate that into with our clients.

There's a real fascination with solving that challenge with unpicking.

Some of the stuff that we can see.

The whole of society is struggling with and seeing if in the microcosm of our own

small world, what can we do to address some of that and how can we start to

shape other businesses to do the same?

But it's, , it's a rollercoaster.

I found there are moments of feeling of great kind of

payback and reward and joy when.

You know, yesterday we had the partners, some of the partners sharing back their

personal growth plans for the year, which is something we do each year.

And just every time that happens, I'm just blown away by how people

take responsibility for their own growth and inspiration.

And in doing that, inspire everyone around them in the team.

And there have been moments where I've wanted to put my.

Head under a blanket and keep it there for a week because sometimes it

just feels so difficult to reconcile the stuff that we're trying to do

with what it feels like to do it.

And I think the, the, always, the fuel in those moments comes back from,

as you say, kind of remembering why.

We set out to do this in the first place and connecting back to what it actually

does when we get it right in places with our clients and with ourselves too.

Yeah, I think we, we don't get to not be in the same

world of work as everyone else.

So like, we still have to worry about where the bills are gonna get paid.

And like it's 21st century business isn't paid off of like unicorns and rainbows.

Like, we've gotta worry about those things too.

And even things like, When you've been working with someone for years and then

they decide to leave, you still have that pain of someone's leaving the company.

That's something that never goes away for any leader or any manager

is like people leaving is hard.

People joining is exciting and people leaving is hard and and I think

even acknowledging that that's real.

And that's never gonna go away.

But how do you do that in a way that respects the adult organization that

we're trying to create and the notion of freedom And even just being able to, to

notice that like, okay, when people leave, that's not a failure of any company.

That's someone finding their purpose to go and do what they want to do.

It takes quite a bit of like resolve to step into that and be like, I'm

sad about this, but it's good for you.

And have you know, through the years having had people say, like, I've,

that was my journey and thank you.

And here I am now, and I'm now you've helped me find my

purpose , to do something next.

That's also fueling, even though in that moment it is deeply upsetting.

I don't think that's ever gonna go away.

I think that's part of just being human and Yeah.

The, the notion that you hire people and they'll stay with

you forever is a fallacy.

Yeah.

That I don't think any business wants to have, but it doesn't

take the human aspect out of it.

Yeah.

Or the, the impact that it has on your own sense of success or

failure in what you've built.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I think it's kind of, it's hard to detach.

A sense of judgment from the thing you made when people seem to be

kind of accepting or rejecting it somehow in front of you.

Yeah, and I think for, for us, that there's a, there's a trap I think

when you're building a business that.

You are hoping is a, is a kind of space of example around equity and

freedom and the ability for individuals to be able to find themselves here.

When you hear that it doesn't work for them, it just sounds like, well, clearly

it, we didn't do it right, but I think it's funny how to, how we still have to be

quite clear with ourselves on this is not a way of working that works for everybody.

Maybe one day.

That will be closer to the case.

But I think part of the challenge that we've had in growing the number of

people who are partners and within is that not everybody wants this and a

lot of people think they want it and then realize that actually they don't.

And I think that's to, to be able to take people on that journey is, Is kind of

a privilege and at the same time it can be hard to watch as people kind of come

in with enthusiasm and sometimes seem to leave without the same enthusiasm for

the, the thing that is so important to us.

I don't know.

Don't really know where I'm going with this, but there's,

there's something there.

Yeah, I think what resonated for me.

From what you're saying, Lori, was sometimes people think they're gonna

thrive somewhere and it takes a while for them to figure out that that's not gonna

be the place that's gonna work for them.

But can they learn along the way?

Can they take something from there?

Yeah.

How are you creating the conditions for learning, always for people to

come in, get what they need to know about themselves and about what they

want, and are you willing to make that investment as a leader and as a

business to take people on that journey?

And I think that's been something that I'm proud of, is we've opened the door today.

All sorts of different people to come and thrive.

And we've learned from them as much as they've learned from us, and I

think we're getting better at that and we're not perfect at it, and I

hope we continue to learn around that.

I don't think that we can ever be perfect with that

I think , it's an interesting place to reflect now as you

do, as you click into your 10th year.

, what success are we feeling?

What does success look like for us as we stand here and look back , what

are you seeing as being the things that you would hold as success for us over

the 10 years that we've been at this?

I think you said something last year around, oh, it's been 10 years,

but we are kind of just getting started, which I think at the time made me feel

a deep sense of dread inside my body.

But is the truth like, oh, we're just getting going and I really feel it's

that kind of idea of the seeds are planted and everything is ready to grow.

I feel like.

The work we do now is at such a deeper level with our clients to actually

help them see what needs to change to grow in the way that they want to.

That idea of creating the business that they love so that people can

love themselves and love , who they're and what they do.

That really still holds true to me, and I think the.

The work we're doing now around employee experience and in ensuring we're

embedding equity into everything that people do, but always bringing it back

to purpose and values and cultural d n a.

That to me makes me feel really proud.

And so the depth of our work, I think is only gonna continue

to grow and, and just, I.

You know, we've just moved into Asia.

That was a very nascent market for us.

We weren't sure how people would perceive the notion of purposeful business there.

Meanwhile, Singapore has now mandated it as being like a thing,

like are they gonna jump the curve?

Are we needed even more than ever?

Do we need to reconsider?

What, what purposeful business looks like in that context?

That is, A feeling of success for me and also just one of

those challenges to step into.

What about you?

Ah, certainly all of that, and I think just, over 10 years, there's

a quality of relationship that I have.

Can kind of look back and think of the different partners who have been

a part of the journey with us and where many of them find themselves

now if they're not still here.

And , the joy that has been had and the impact that has been made collectively

by us and on us, us as the kind of, all of us as partners, that feels like

that it's it's less about the kind of destination we find ourselves at here,

but the quality of the journey that we've been on over that last 10 years.

If I look at it in those terms, then I, I really take success from, that and , I

believe that unfortunately we probably are just getting started, but I think we'll

always sort of just be getting started with the kinds of things that we're

working on, and there's always gonna be more world that that needs what we do.

So the more we can start to see our success in what it feels like

day-to-day to be running this business than any kind of milestone that we're

aiming at, there's something to that

for me.

So when we were on the rooftop in Barcelona, we outlined some feelings

of success that were important.

We call that our lifestyle vision, but you and I check in on that all the time.

Mm-hmm.

Is the feeling of success more important than the measure in terms of

like quantitative metrics of size of business people, revenue market share?

Yeah.

I think for a, for you and me, it al it always has been.

I think that's the key, like different things matter to different people.

Every client that we work with has to answer the question of what success

means for them and what growth means for them, because that's what's important

is like, what does it mean for you?

To be successful and like in our case, for us to be successful.

And that has been a more of a feeling.

I think we're getting to a point now where we're wondering maybe it would be helpful

to have some more of those other success measures start to get a bit more clarity.

Cuz we've now got, because we're getting started again because we've got

the foundation, I think we both feel that we need the idea of scaling up.

What we do feels really.

Timely for us now.

And to do that, I think you need to have some of those other measures.

But that's a, that's a slightly different view of success than we had on the roof,

I think.

Yeah, and I think that, yeah, I certainly feel that that's necessary.

I do also think that that's something that our clients are asking, like,

what is the next five or 10 years?

Because we're in such a period of uncertainty, the world is constantly

asking what's gonna happen next.

It's the big question, isn't it?

And I, I think it's, it's human nature.

As part of our mortality to try to figure that out.

And, and I, I think it's interesting for the notion of 21st century business

that if you're playing a long game, that's a never ending one, and you really

wanna make something that's gonna last.

Noticing the outcomes you're looking for, but the feeling you want on the journey,

I think is critical , for founders that just wanna create a business to

exit it so that they can make money.

I think question yourself if you're purposeful or not,

because that's just about.

An outcome that you're seeing for yourself.

That's never been our what we want to see.

And I think the businesses that last, the ones that are playing the long game

have been the ones that have created the balance between the outcomes and the

feelings that are gonna take them there.

But what would we tell ourselves on the rooftop of Barcelo if we were

gonna go back into Christmas past be the Ghost of Christmas Past.

I think I used that on another podcast recently.

Yeah.

Time Travel is my jam right now.

Stick now if we were gonna be able to go back Yeah, go back into, into 10 years

from now, what advice would you give our.

Younger but less, better looking.

I feel like we've matured with age very well, Mr.

Bennett.

Certainly.

What would

you tell us?

What would I tell us?

This is one of the ones I should have thought about before we

started recording the podcast.

I think probably just a, a doubling down on.

Kind of what I've just said about the journey and the, the confidence

that you need to sustain you doesn't, doesn't come from necessarily kind

of getting much better or much more kind of outwardly successful.

It comes from committing to the things that you believe in and

finding a way to try to make those.

Real in the way that you want your business to grow and in the

way that you want it to serve.

And that just that, I think that reassurance that people will come, people

will go, clients will come, clients will go, and through all of that, we

will grow together because of those things, not kind of in spite of them.

Yeah.

Wisdom.

What about you?

I think, I think I would say feel the sunshine, cuz I think that is like, know

the sunshine fuels you, which I know is metaphorical but is also not metaphorical

because it is very true of us.

We need sun.

And that the sun goes to sleep at night and comes back every

day, the sun will rise again.

Is a good metaphor for that.

And that like, it doesn't always have to be rosy, but know that the next bout

of sunshine is around the corner is, is is a truth in life and that like,

There's the, the dips and troughs of running a business just don't go away.

So you've gotta kind of have some acceptance around shit

gets real and get into it.

And also know that there's joy around every corner.

I think we've always tried to infuse joy into stuff that we do, and that's one

of our pillars and, and any strategic work that we do, that joy doesn't

mean that everything needs to be.

Unicorns and rainbows all the time, but sometimes it is.

And that's okay.

I think we thought had a concept of that on the rooftop, but I don't

think we had a lived reality of it.

And I think that's part of just, it's the wisdom of , of the ages.

Yeah.

Takes

10 years to realize.

But you get there eventually.

I agree.

And I think, well, I just think that.

I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, the job of doing this by yourself.

And I think getting to have been on that rooftop with you and having

spent this last 10 years doing this alongside you, has made this

possible and joyful and workable.

And that's a thing I celebrate.

Every day.

Aw.

I celebrate it too.

And I agree and I think that being creative can be a lonely game.

And that's why Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon, McCartney, Ben and

Melnick, we are it's important to have your partner with you.

And I think that's, this business has been a partnership and it

starts from our connection.

And that's what, that is the fuel.

So, love you.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

We hope you enjoyed learning about our journey over the last 10 years.

You can tune into our podcast every other week for more episodes on what's happening

in the culture and leadership space.

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Re-imagining work from Within is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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