Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 56. Space Robotics to Strategic Advisor with Katie Bedford

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56. Space Robotics to Strategic Advisor with Katie Bedford · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:16
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact
• 0:21
  of the day: Vancouver was incorporated in 1886. That's not that fun. However, it burned
• 0:25
  to the ground completely in the Great Vancouver fire just a few months later. However,
• 0:30
  now it is the largest port of the world. in Canada. So quite the recovery,
• 0:35
  but that is neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Katie Bedford.
• 0:39
  She's the founder of K Bedford Consulting. She's a strategic advisor and a think partner
• 0:44
  for agency leaders. After 15 years in the digital agency world, she actually took a
• 0:48
  little detour, seven years as an aerospace engineer, working on literal space robotics. I mean,
• 0:53
  this is a fascinating background, and then pivoted into the digital product management space. eventually
• 0:58
  operations leader to ship too. So Katie, I am so pumped to talk with you,
• 1:02
  especially with your background, especially with the what I think is some pretty sc scrappy
• 1:07
  routes going on as well. I'm so excited to chat. We know that you're successful,
• 1:11
  but we wanna know, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or
• 1:16
  more on the scrappy side?
• 1:18
  I think I fall more on the scrappy side for sure.
• 1:21
  Okay. Perfect. Let's jump in and see if the data agrees with you. Where'd you
• 1:25
  grow up? and did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:29
  no entrepreneur. Well, sorry, that's not entirely true. So I grew up in Brampton, Ontario,
• 1:33
  which is a suburb of Toronto, so the other side of Canada. my dad was
• 1:38
  a paramedic. My mom kind of jumped around between a bunch of different jobs. I
• 1:43
  was the first person in my family to go to university. So no immediate entrepreneurs
• 1:48
  in my family. However, my grandfather on my dad's side, he ran his own business.
• 1:53
  He ran like a cinder block company in Toronto.
• 1:56
  What is it? What is a cinder like he was making cinder blocks?
• 1:59
  Yeah, making cinder blocks. Yeah. Back in the day when
• 2:01
  No way. Okay. Okay, did you
• 2:04
  when that was a necessary item.
• 2:07
  Totally. Yeah. I'm sure that still exists today. R I don't know what people use
• 2:10
  to build buildings, I guess, but the center blocks have to be a part of
• 2:13
  it, I would think.
• 2:14
  I don't even know. But yeah, that was his his whole thing. He was like
• 2:17
  the cinder block guy for all of Toronto and shipped them all over the place
• 2:21
  and yeah.
• 2:22
  Pretty cool. Did you interact with him? Like did you ever visit him at the
• 2:25
  office, so to speak?
• 2:27
  No, he passed away like long before I was born. So yeah. Yeah. So that
• 2:29
  Okay. Okay. Okay.
• 2:31
  f and and the family business died with him. Like nobody in the family wanted
• 2:34
  to carry that on. All the kids wanted to do their own thing. So that
• 2:38
  business just sort of passed when when he did. so I would say yes, there's
• 2:42
  an entrepreneur in like my my history, but I didn't grow up with entrepreneurs in
• 2:45
  my house, that's for sure.
• 2:47
  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. did you have a lemonade stand as a kid or selling
• 2:51
  candy at school? Anything entrepreneurial like that as a kid?
• 2:55
  So I'm sure I had a Lemon Nightstand, but I don't remember it. What I
• 2:59
  do remember is me and my friends in high school, we used to make jewelry.
• 3:04
  So we would make beads out of FEMO clay and then we would go to
• 3:09
  the markets on Saturday and sell our necklaces to you know, very nice people who
• 3:14
  were willing to buy jewelry from teenagers.
• 3:17
  That's awesome though. Did you make like a couple bucks? Like did you did you
• 3:20
  just use it on kind of like lunch and stuff for the day or did
• 3:23
  you save it?
• 3:24
  You know, what's really funny, like thinking back on it, we were not very entrepreneurial
• 3:27
  in that it was basically just we were making enough money to cover the cost
• 3:31
  of our supplies. So it was like
• 3:33
  Okay.
• 3:34
  you know, socially funded hobby is what it was, rather than a business.
• 3:40
  it's not bad though, especially as a kid. I mean, probably not in terminology,
• 3:43
  Been awful.
• 3:44
  but in practice. You're doing, you know, just revenue equals cost of goods sold and
• 3:47
  you're breaking even. That's right.
• 3:49
  We were gonna sit around and make that jewellery anyways, so why not have the
• 3:52
  cost of all the supplies paid for? Yeah.
• 3:55
  There you go. Yeah. Okay. How long did you do that? Was that just like
• 3:59
  a one summer thing? Was that pretty consistent?
• 4:02
  It was probably like two summers. Like I feel like it was like a good
• 4:05
  two years where we would do this. And you know, we wouldn't go like every
• 4:08
  weekend, but maybe like once or twice a month we'd be like, Yeah, let's go
• 4:11
  down and sell our beads. It was fun.
• 4:13
  Okay. All right. Give me give me thirty seconds on how you would summarize what
• 4:17
  you do today, and then we'll kind of build the bridge from Julia Making to
• 4:21
  today.
• 4:22
  Yeah. so what I do is I am a thinking partner for business owners. And
• 4:26
  so the best way to think about that is if you own a business and
• 4:30
  you don't have a person that you can talk business to that you can be
• 4:34
  completely honest with, I can be that person for you. so it might be that
• 4:38
  an owner, maybe they have a really good leadership team, but they have some questions
• 4:42
  as to whether all the right people are in the right seats. maybe it's a
• 4:46
  you know. a business owner who owns a business on their own and they just
• 4:50
  feel very alone. there's only so many conversations you can have with your spouse or
• 4:54
  your friends. and there's only so much value that they can bring without having lived
• 4:58
  in that space on their own. So kind of value that I bring is even
• 5:02
  though I'm not an owner in your business, I kind of act like I am,
• 5:06
  like I care very much, and I'm willing to have the hard conversations and sort
• 5:10
  of argue with the owners about what I think is right. And I'll be really
• 5:14
  honest if I think they're about to drag their business into the ground.
• 5:18
  They say that you know, ad advising as we'll call it, I suppose, or thinking
• 5:23
  partner, however you want to term it, sometimes you'll find a million dollar opportunity, which
• 5:28
  is awesome, but more frequently you'll prevent them from making a hundred thousand dollar mistake.
• 5:34
  A hundred percent. A hundred percent. yeah, I feel like so many business owners, you
• 5:38
  know, they they have big decisions to make and there's the cost of making the
• 5:43
  wrong decision. That is a cost, but there's also the cost of the stress when
• 5:47
  you're carrying that decision alone. When you're, you know, maybe you're only in the office
• 5:52
  45, 50 hours a week, but you're spending 20 hours at home on weekends thinking
• 5:57
  through these things on your own and spiraling. and so there's like a an emotional
• 6:01
  cost as well as an actual like dollars cost to the business. Yeah.
• 6:06
  Right. Right, exactly. And like if you look up and a a lot of people
• 6:10
  are in this boat where they look up after whatever three, four, five, ten years
• 6:14
  even, like, hey, like I've got a good business and it's you know, it's still
• 6:19
  working, it's still growing, all that good stuff. But they've like kind of grown in
• 6:23
  business but haven't really grown personally or like whatever it is, and they just don't
• 6:28
  have that outside like trusted advisor, again, however you want to term it, that outside
• 6:32
  reliance on somebody who has their best Whatever, their best goals in mind kind of
• 6:36
  thing. That's so huge.
• 6:38
  Yeah. It is. And I think also like because if you're talking with anybody on
• 6:42
  your team, like they have a vested interest in whatever decision that you make. So
• 6:47
  there is value in having a completely unbiased third party that has no skin in
• 6:51
  the game, right? Like it doesn't matter to me what decision that you make. So
• 6:56
  I'm gonna give you like the full unvarnished truth. Like I'm gonna tell you everything
• 7:00
  that I'm thinking to help you make the best decision possible. And sometimes those decisions
• 7:05
  that they're making, like I would say nine times out of ten, the owner already
• 7:09
  has like an inkling of what the decision should be, but it's a decision that
• 7:14
  they don't want to make, especially if it involves people. Right. Like
• 7:18
  Oof.
• 7:19
  those decisions can carry a lot of grief. They can be really heavy. and I
• 7:22
  think sometimes you just need to have another person there to be like, it it
• 7:27
  is the right decision. Like it might hurt you to make this decision, but it's
• 7:32
  the right decision.
• 7:33
  Do you get how how does your like you don't have to go into super
• 7:36
  details or numbers like that, but does your payment plan is it structured off of
• 7:40
  like how the company does or is it just kinda like flat fee like we're
• 7:43
  always here?
• 7:44
  No, it's just like straight up like there's a cost per quarter. I do two
• 7:48
  one and a half hour calls per month where we talk about whatever the most
• 7:52
  pressing issue is. So every two weeks we're talking about whatever issue is most top
• 7:56
  of mind. And then once a quarter we set one of those meetings aside and
• 8:00
  instead do like a three hour deep dive on like how do we set ourselves
• 8:04
  up for success for the next quarter. So that meeting would like best be served
• 8:08
  like right before like a quarterly planning session. and then the other benefit is you
• 8:12
  know, if Things go sideways, I pick up the phone. So if something happens at
• 8:16
  like 10 o'clock on a Saturday night and you just need somebody to talk to,
• 8:20
  I will pick up the phone. So that that's the model.
• 8:23
  Wow. Okay, very nice. How many of these problems are people problems? Is it is
• 8:28
  it would you say over half?
• 8:30
  I'd say at least half. Yeah. At least half,
• 8:32
  Right.
• 8:33
  but not like dramatically more than half. a lot of them are, you know, structural
• 8:36
  problems, like either the wrong mix of clients or legacy clients that you keep around
• 8:41
  because you really like them and they're good people, even though they might not be
• 8:46
  profitable anymore, or maybe your services have pivoted and they're no longer, you know, really
• 8:50
  you're you're doing this kind of like one off thing for them that just distracts
• 8:55
  the team from the thing that they're supposed to be doing and they're actually trained
• 9:00
  to do. Those types of problems are pretty common. And then yeah, about half of
• 9:04
  them are people related. And sometimes it's you know, you haven't given people the right
• 9:09
  training. Sometimes it's somebody's been promoted into a role that, you know, turns out they're
• 9:14
  not very good at. You should probably demote them back down because they were great
• 9:18
  at what they did before. and then there's like, you know, managing ego with that.
• 9:23
  Like some people wouldn't handle a demotion well, even if they are happier in that
• 9:28
  role and it's in the best interest of not just themselves, but the company. and
• 9:32
  so yeah, a lot of like, you know, tricky people problems, dynamics between members of
• 9:37
  the team, often dynamics between like people in in leadership positions.
• 9:41
  I can see that. And I like the term that you use, develop them back
• 9:47
  down. That is a very sophisticated way to say, let's revert that.
• 9:52
  I mean, I think demotions are like a very underused strategy. And I think there's
• 9:56
  like a real negative connotation that comes with demoting somebody. But like, have you heard
• 10:00
  of the Peter principle? The Peter principle, okay,
• 10:03
  The peak now.
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  people always get promoted to their highest level of incompetence. Meaning people move up the
• 10:09
  chain, right? They're competent, they're competent, they're competent. And so people are like, well, then
• 10:13
  let's give them the next thing. And then eventually they move into a role where
• 10:17
  they're no longer competent. It wasn't a good fit. But because there's such stigma about
• 10:21
  Demoting people, they just languish in this position that they're not good at for all
• 10:25
  of time until they either leave the company or they retire. And it's like, it's
• 10:29
  the worst thing that you can do for the employee themselves because they're not happy
• 10:33
  in the rule. It's hard to be happy in a rule that you're not good
• 10:37
  at. but it's
• 10:38
  Yeah.
• 10:39
  also not good for the company because you don't have the right person in the
• 10:42
  right seat. and so identifying those things and just having frank conversations about moving people
• 10:47
  around and trying to Trying to destigmatize the idea of a demotion. I'm sure there's
• 10:51
  a nicer way to say it, but that's what it is. It's putting you back
• 10:56
  into a role that you can thrive in.
• 10:59
  yeah, like a a right skilling or something like that. I'm sure there's some fancy
• 11:02
  terminology there, but it makes perfect sense. I mean the the classic corporate example is
• 11:06
  the best sales rep on the team gets promoted to manage all the sales reps
• 11:10
  and is a terrible leader of sales reps.
• 11:13
  Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
• 11:17
  yeah, I think I think Michael Jordan as the player was amazing record. As an
• 11:22
  owner was a terrible record. And like it applies in every single facet of whatever
• 11:27
  business industry you're in.
• 11:29
  Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with taking your shot, right? Like there's nothing wrong with
• 11:31
  going
• 11:32
  Worse.
• 11:33
  and trying the thing. But I would also like to say, like, I would like
• 11:35
  to normalize the idea that there's also nothing wrong with saying, I tried it. It's
• 11:39
  not for me. Put me back
• 11:41
  Yeah.
• 11:42
  down to where I'm good. Yeah.
• 11:44
  Right. They could probably make more, they'll be happier. Like there's there's a lot of
• 11:46
  good to that. Okay. I like it. I like it. How
• 11:49
  Yeah. I I think people get really untitled and that's why it's hard to do
• 11:54
  that.
• 11:55
  Do you find that's even true in like a very small company? Yeah, interesting. Okay.
• 11:58
  100%. I think have you ever seen like a small company, like I'm talking like
• 12:02
  a 20 person company and everybody's a VP? That's what's happened.
• 12:06
  Yeah yeah.
• 12:08
  Right. It started off as like five people and they hired more and then they're
• 12:11
  like, well, like I was here first. So like I want to be like a
• 12:15
  director, then they move from director to VP, and all of a sudden everybody's a
• 12:18
  VP or director, and nobody's an employee. so yeah,
• 12:21
  Yeah.
• 12:22
  I think people care very much about titles, even in small companies.
• 12:26
  It's actually such a good point too, because a lot of people I shouldn't say
• 12:29
  a lot of people, some people certainly, even in small businesses, when they give raises,
• 12:33
  when they do any sort of compensation, they'll take the market average for geography for
• 12:37
  role, all that stuff. The most telling piece of that is the title of the
• 12:41
  role. If they're VP of
• 12:43
  Exactly.
• 12:44
  operations, that could be a $300,000 thing in the corporate world, but they're getting paid
• 12:48
  as a operations specialist or something like that. That's $80,000 or you know, whatever it
• 12:53
  is. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so small businesses are probably worse at
• 12:58
  titling than corporations.
• 12:59
  I think so. Because I think when you grow to a certain level, you you
• 13:03
  need to have a much firmer structure, right? You need to have like a better
• 13:07
  hierarchy in place. You need to have better just even like job definitions. and so
• 13:12
  it really forces you, and I've seen that a lot actually, like a company grows
• 13:16
  to a certain size and then they say, Halt, we need to redo the org
• 13:21
  chart, redesign all the job descriptions, retitle people, because we've gotten to a place where
• 13:25
  like people have titles. that are more based on seniority than they are based on
• 13:30
  the actual work that they're doing day to day. Yeah,
• 13:33
  Eight.
• 13:34
  so that that's a pretty common issue actually. And that I would say that happens
• 13:38
  around like the 30 person mark.
• 13:40
  Okay, okay. How the heck do you get here? So you're making jewel jewelry as
• 13:44
  a kid, you go to university and then you work in some agency for a
• 13:48
  while. Tell us about like, did you know that this is the area that you
• 13:52
  wanted to be in? Like tell us about that first job out of college.
• 13:56
  No, I mean definitely. So I went went to school for aerospace engineering. And that
• 14:00
  was sort of I would say like every step of my journey has been influenced
• 14:04
  by somebody in my world. So like when I was in grade one, so like
• 14:08
  age seven, my teacher sent home extra homework for me with a note to my
• 14:13
  mom that said, Katie will not stop talking about space. I think we should encourage
• 14:17
  her. Here's extra homework on space. And then when I got to grade six, my
• 14:21
  grade six teacher said, also sent a note home and said, Katie won't stop talking
• 14:25
  about airplanes. Have you heard about this program, Air Cadets? You might want to put
• 14:30
  her into it. So my mom put me into Air Cadets. And then through that,
• 14:34
  that's a great organization. And I ended up getting like two pilots' licenses before I
• 14:38
  ever had a driver's license.
• 14:40
  That's awesome.
• 14:41
  and through that, I got to spend my weekends flying and I met all these
• 14:45
  other pilots and cadets who were older than me in university. And they were the
• 14:49
  ones that said, Hey, have you thought about aerospace engineering? You're really passionate about this
• 14:53
  topic. Like, Why don't you join us? And so all these people sort of influenced
• 14:58
  my decision. I ended up in aerospace engineering. I loved it. and like for me,
• 15:02
  the moment when I knew that I wanted to be an aerospace engineer was when
• 15:06
  I was watching Apollo 13, not the astronaut side of things, but when all of
• 15:10
  those engineers were given a box full of random things and they said you need
• 15:15
  to make an air filter and you only have the things in this box, I
• 15:19
  was like, yeah, like that's that's
• 15:21
  Ha ha ha.
• 15:22
  what I want to do. I want to solve problems like that. And so I
• 15:25
  did the whole aerospace engineering degree. And about third year, I started having a bit
• 15:29
  of like a like a crisis. I was like, I don't know if I actually
• 15:32
  do want to do this. Like, this is quite hard. and so I took a
• 15:36
  year off between third and fourth year, and I went and I traveled the world
• 15:40
  and I worked and got some experience. I'm very stubborn. So I came back and
• 15:43
  I finished the degree. and then I got a job in the aerospace industry, and
• 15:47
  it was great. I was working for MDA, which builds the robotic arms for the
• 15:51
  Canada arm. Like the Canada Arm the Space Shuttle and space station. I got to
• 15:54
  do a stint down in NASA in Houston, got to go work down there for
• 15:58
  six months.
• 15:59
  Cool.
• 16:00
  meet the astronauts, be in the like mission control room during a flight, all of
• 16:03
  that. and it was really great and it was really interesting. but over time I
• 16:07
  started to get a bit bored. Like it is, you know, like a any sort
• 16:12
  of space project, whether it be a shuttle, a satellite, they're like seven to fifteen
• 16:16
  year long projects. It's a very long time from beginning to end. And so you
• 16:21
  could spend almost your entire career working on just one or two things. so I'd
• 16:25
  been in the industry for like seven years, was starting to not love it. And
• 16:30
  then there was this massive round of layoffs right after I came back from maternity
• 16:34
  leave. I got laid off, which should have made me angry, but it felt like
• 16:39
  a get out of jail free card. I was just like, my gosh,
• 16:43
  Okay.
• 16:44
  like I have not been liking this for the last two years. This is my
• 16:47
  my chance. And so what I want to do is I want to do something
• 16:51
  where I could take my engineering skills and creative problem solving, but blend it with
• 16:56
  something more creative because like the jewelry making and all the other hobbies I have,
• 17:00
  I like to do creative things. So I found this job at an agency that
• 17:04
  builds interactives for museums, art galleries, all sorts of like interactive displays. It's called NGX
• 17:09
  Interactive here in Vancouver. And so I worked there for I think like seven years.
• 17:13
  And I loved it. Like I love the agency life. I love the quick project
• 17:18
  cycles. I love how, you know, from the time that a client says we want
• 17:22
  to build this thing to the time that you're like in the museum installing it
• 17:26
  and testing it with users is like a year tops. And so I just really
• 17:31
  kind of fell in love with that space. And then I went from project manager
• 17:35
  to the person managing the other project managers to doing ops. And then I eventually
• 17:40
  broke out on my own. And then I've done ops for five years. And then
• 17:44
  that was just a very natural segue into Like in doing ops and spending all
• 17:48
  my time with business owners advising them on the business. and as I started getting
• 17:53
  bored with it, because I do tend to get bored about every seven years, I'm
• 17:57
  like, it's time for a career change. and so I went to all my clients
• 18:01
  and I said, Okay, I'm I'm getting bored of doing just ops before I make
• 18:06
  a decision on what I'm gonna do. Where do I provide the most value to
• 18:10
  you? Like, why do you continue to keep me around? And they all came back
• 18:15
  with the exact same answer, which was basically. You are our sounding board. You're my
• 18:19
  security blanket. You're the person that I go to before I make hard decisions. What
• 18:23
  I value most is our one on one conversations where I could just be very
• 18:28
  frank. And I was like, Well, fantastic, because that's the thing that I like best
• 18:32
  too.
• 18:33
  A perfect market fit and a perfect ideal skill. Okay. So you've got this 10,
• 18:37
  you've got this like background of and even just inherent in you. Very detailed engineering,
• 18:42
  I'll call it, I'm a nerd as well, nerdy stuff. And you've got the other
• 18:47
  side that is the entirely creative stuff. And yet you can also find the middle
• 18:52
  ground between those and say, here's a really complex project, or here's a really complex
• 18:57
  design, and here's why it matters. And so you're able to
• 19:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:02
  kind of funnel all of this into one conversation with a client. this is fascinating.
• 19:07
  Okay. And so are you still working with those first clients that you got? when
• 19:12
  you asked them, Hey, where's the most value here?
• 19:15
  Yeah, yeah, I am. So I'm I'm not still working with the very first clients
• 19:19
  that I got because when I first started, I was just doing project management. I
• 19:23
  was like a hired gun project manager. And my very first client that I got
• 19:28
  came to me and he was just like, Listen, you're a great project manager. He's
• 19:32
  like, but the value that you actually added was you told me all the other
• 19:36
  areas in my business that are broken and showed me how to fix them. He's
• 19:41
  like, that's actually more valuable than just managing one or two projects. And I was
• 19:45
  like, okay. So he was the one that kind of encouraged me to get into
• 19:49
  ops. and then yeah, I mean I love I love the operation side of things.
• 19:54
  Like I'm a real data nerd, so getting to like look at detailed data about
• 19:58
  like, you know, team utilization or profit or the you know, how many clients do
• 20:02
  we have? Which ones are profitable, which ones are not? Why? What are the differences
• 20:07
  and the similarities between those clients? Like I love that stuff. Give me a dashboard
• 20:11
  and I'm like happy for hours. but I find that increasingly that as much as
• 20:15
  I love the op side. What I love more is like the higher level conversation,
• 20:20
  the stuff that comes before ops. What are like the real decisions impacting the business
• 20:24
  and what's actually going to make an impact in terms of like, yes, the bottom
• 20:28
  line, but also team happiness, owner happiness, health of the business. Like all that stuff
• 20:33
  is very interesting and just challenging. So it's it's fun.
• 20:36
  Do you find, and this is this is something I'm coming across in my in
• 20:40
  my data in my dashboard world as well. do you think in the world of
• 20:44
  AI, let's say a year from now, five years from now, what still exists in
• 20:49
  terms of like professional service industry? What still exists in that time frame?
• 20:53
  Yeah.
• 20:54
  It does it skew totally to just advising? Is it execution and advising? What does
• 20:58
  that mix look like in your opinion?
• 21:01
  Such a great question. It's changing so fast that I feel like the answer I'd
• 21:05
  give you today would be completely different from like a year ago. And and probably
• 21:09
  if we replay this in two years, we're gonna be like, wow, she was very
• 21:14
  wrong. but I think like what's showing up again and again is current state AI,
• 21:18
  and even though it's gonna get better, it's great at recognizing patterns, but it's not
• 21:23
  great at judgment. And it's not great at being able to like in a business,
• 21:27
  when you're making a decision. Let's say you're looking at financial data. The AI might
• 21:32
  be great at helping you see patterns within the data and surface those patterns and
• 21:36
  things to think about. But it's not going to have all the nuance about like,
• 21:40
  well, who all is working on these projects and what is our history with this
• 21:45
  client? And like all of that, like, you know, emotional baggage that we carry with
• 21:49
  us, as well as just like instinct. Sometimes you're like, you know, this client might
• 21:54
  not be the most profitable, but like we want to keep them because The team
• 21:58
  loves working with them and it motivates them and keeps them happy in a way
• 22:03
  that the other clients don't. And so it still makes sense to keep this client
• 22:07
  because we can make more profit with other clients and and carry this one. Like
• 22:11
  there, I don't think AI is ever going to be good at doing that sort
• 22:16
  of thing.
• 22:17
  Or on the other side of that too, having the conversation of, Hey, that's a
• 22:20
  dumb idea. We should like do this instead.
• 22:23
  Yes, because AI is so sycophantic. Like every idea that you have is the best
• 22:26
  idea it's ever heard. Like you're a genius. We should totally do that.
• 22:30
  Right. Exactly. Which brings more light to the value that you pre provide of like
• 22:36
  in some ways complete anti-AI of true objective fact, knowing the entire business, knowing the
• 22:42
  personalities, knowing the state of the world, knowing all of this other stuff, that I
• 22:48
  maybe AI eventually gets to a portion of that, but I just I don't think
• 22:54
  it ever takes over that human to human connection and understanding piece.
• 22:59
  I agree. And I love AI. Like I use it
• 23:01
  Me too, yeah.
• 23:02
  all the time. It helps me, you know, I'm pretty good with data analysis, but
• 23:06
  there have th been things that I've missed that it has picked up and been
• 23:10
  like, actually, there's like a pattern here that you're not seeing. especially if you have
• 23:14
  like a lot of different data sources, all of which are tracking different things, and
• 23:18
  you want to add them all together and be like, is there a connection between,
• 23:23
  you know, this data that we're tracking and that data that we're tracking? It's it's
• 23:27
  gonna find things that I think a human just take way too long to ever
• 23:31
  find. so I mean it has its uses for sure. you know
• 23:35
  Absolutely. Yeah, this I mean that's the for sure the world that I live in
• 23:39
  as well of multiple different data sources, get them into one place, make some dashboards
• 23:44
  analysis, all that stuff. I have definitely found that sometimes it has the classic like,
• 23:48
  well, in the summer months it's hotter and therefore people buy cinder blocks more. And
• 23:53
  like that's not how that works.
• 23:55
  Yeah. Yeah, it's just making something up. You're like, I don't think that makes sense
• 23:59
  at all.
• 24:00
  Yeah. But again, the the value of the human oversight there.
• 24:04
  Yeah, I think one of the the biggest unlocks with AI is that people can
• 24:08
  make their own software in ways that they couldn't do before. So for me personally,
• 24:13
  I've I've created two pieces of software for myself that I would have never done
• 24:18
  before. One is my own CRM, because I find things like pipe drive and HubSpot
• 24:22
  are just way overkill for a business of my size, but I still needed a
• 24:27
  CRM that worked well for me. And so I just built it using. Claude and
• 24:32
  it works fantastic. It's like the it's such a low, like low entry point. and
• 24:37
  you know, probably took me two hours and I got it to like 90% of
• 24:41
  what I wanted to do. And then the other one that I did is I
• 24:46
  use QuickBooks for all of my accounting, but
• 24:49
  Sure.
• 24:50
  I don't find it's great from like a cash flow point of view, meaning it's
• 24:52
  great at looking
• 24:53
  Everyone.
• 24:54
  backwards and telling me what I've spent, but it's not great at showing me. where
• 24:58
  my cash flow is gonna be three months from now, six months from now. So
• 25:02
  I built my own tool using AI and it works fantastically well.
• 25:06
  Yeah, that's awesome. Does it fill in, we're gonna super dirt data nerd out here.
• 25:11
  Does it pull in like accounts receivable and stuff like that and then projects that
• 25:16
  forward or how does it actually build out the cash flow?
• 25:20
  Yeah, so I basically for every month in the calendar year I have put in
• 25:24
  estimates for like how much I think I'm going to earn and how much I
• 25:28
  think I'm going to actually spend. So that's me manually putting that in. But I
• 25:32
  got the numbers by feeding in the data from the last year and being like,
• 25:36
  just tell me what this looks like. And then I went and changed it based
• 25:40
  on what I know to be true. And then in terms of like past information,
• 25:45
  I just download every account from QuickBooks and feed it into Claude and say, run
• 25:49
  my cash flow analysis skill and it comes back and it recategorizes everything and I
• 25:53
  just copy paste that in and then it has a whole bunch of graphs on
• 25:57
  the first tab. So it shows me like where cash flow is going to be
• 26:01
  like you know all all the metrics that you would care about from a profit
• 26:06
  and cash flow point of view and just auto updates. So it's like literally like
• 26:10
  a 20 minute task all in and I have way more data than I have
• 26:14
  in the previous six years of owning this business.
• 26:17
  That's what I'm talking about. I love it, kitty. That's awesome. That's so cool. It's
• 26:20
  we're building a lot of AI dashboards as well, or AI built dashboards, I should
• 26:24
  say. And it's it's
• 26:26
  Yeah.
• 26:27
  a whole new world in a lot of good ways. However, that
• 26:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:31
  plus the strategic thinking partner, if you will, is kind of a gold mine. That's
• 26:38
  perfect.
• 26:39
  Yeah. Yeah. I have one client right now who they want a dashboard. I'm not
• 26:42
  the right person to create the dashboard for them, but they're working with like a
• 26:46
  third party to do it. But they're just having trouble getting that third party to
• 26:50
  understand what they're building. but because I was there in the early days of like
• 26:54
  the conversations of what this could look like. So they like they're bringing me back
• 26:58
  in. This is like a former client that's been like, you know what, we need
• 27:02
  you back in here. We need you to go talk to these people and help
• 27:05
  them. figure this out because I know AI and because I know their business and
• 27:09
  because I understand the specifics of what they're trying to create. So yeah.
• 27:13
  A lot of people don't need another tool. They just need a translator from get
• 27:17
  this done in AI with the actual business goal.
• 27:20
  Yes, exactly.
• 27:23
  Very cool. Okay. Take back to like some of the early days of starting the
• 27:28
  business. Get your first clients kind of thing. anything that you wildly overthought in your
• 27:34
  first few months of business or first year of business.
• 27:38
  probably the website. Like I really wanted to get
• 27:40
  Okay.
• 27:41
  that website perfect, right? And hindsight is like it could have been like a single
• 27:44
  page. Like it did
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:46
  not need to be multiple pages with all this information. Like it just needs to
• 27:50
  be like, here's who I am. Here's my LinkedIn page. This is what I do.
• 27:55
  but I feel like so the website was the one thing that I really built
• 28:00
  before I like quit my day job and launched the business. And so I feel
• 28:04
  like part of that was me. figuring out what my new identity was as a
• 28:09
  business owner. So I don't think it was like a total waste of time because
• 28:14
  I I figured a lot out during that period, but I definitely spent way too
• 28:19
  long building that thing in hindsight.
• 28:21
  how early on did you make business cards?
• 28:25
  gosh, I have so many versions of my business card. So
• 28:27
  Yeah.
• 28:28
  many versions. it's ridiculous, actually. like so much so that I was like, what should
• 28:32
  I do with all these business cards that I have printed and only used for
• 28:37
  like one conference? And then, you know, by the time the next conference rolled around,
• 28:42
  I had like a new business card. So it's it's ridiculous. I have like an
• 28:46
  entire box of business cards. but I like the ones I have now, so that's
• 28:51
  something.
• 28:52
  There you go. Okay. I've done the same thing too of like, well maybe I'll
• 28:56
  just save them as like the evolution of pineapple. And then it's just I don't
• 29:00
  need a hundred versions of that. Just I only need one. And I I bought
• 29:04
  a hundred. I used five, then I changed it. And then one I was CEO,
• 29:08
  one I was owner, one I was sales rep. And it's I don't need all
• 29:12
  these.
• 29:13
  Yeah, but maybe I'll like frame them or something. Like maybe there will be like
• 29:16
  an evolution one day of like here's here's everything this business was.
• 29:20
  you go, exactly, exactly. staying in those early days. what was your version of like
• 29:25
  a a scrappy dinner, like a ramen noodle dinner, a peanut butter and jelly over
• 29:30
  the sink? Anything like that in the early days?
• 29:33
  you know what? I feel like I was like very lucky in that. In the
• 29:37
  early days, I had the the sense to save up some money before I started
• 29:41
  the business, knowing that the first few months were gonna be really rough. And my
• 29:45
  husband has a good job. So even though I was scrappy with my business expenses
• 29:50
  for sure, in terms of like, you know, what I was able to eat and
• 29:54
  all that, that that was pretty easygoing. I think my my probably version of like
• 29:58
  the scrappiest thing I had to do was when I went to the bank to
• 30:03
  open up my business account, they refused to give me a business credit card because
• 30:07
  they're like, well, you're an unproven business. And so I had to get like a
• 30:11
  new credit card under my name just so I could like, you know, pay for
• 30:15
  my website and all the other things. And then after about six months or a
• 30:20
  year, they're like, okay, you're you're good. And then they gave me a credit card.
• 30:24
  But I was so angry about it. I was like, are you kidding me? Like,
• 30:28
  I have good credit. You're not gonna trust me to like run this business, this
• 30:33
  one person business. So but anyhow, that was my scrappy, you know, this stupid credit
• 30:37
  card that I had to use for six months. I was so angry.
• 30:41
  man, that is frustrating though, because you're like, look, it personal guarantee, whatever you gotta
• 30:43
  do, but like I just want the business name on it. I'm just trying to
• 30:46
  separate expenses at the end of the day. That's all we're doing.
• 30:49
  Well, and also because I incorporated and so like there's actually like a genuine like
• 30:53
  accounting nightmare that comes with having business
• 30:56
  Right.
• 30:57
  expenses on a personal credit card and now the accountants gotta sort all that out
• 31:02
  like it was just it was stupid for no reason.
• 31:06
  all right, let me let me keep going on this. we'll do some sort of
• 31:10
  lightning round scrappy versus sophisticated questions. So I'm gonna say in those early days, you
• 31:14
  mentioned husbands still got a good job, which is nice as you're starting off. Any
• 31:19
  sort of scrappy birthday gifts, like instead of opting for, you know, a nice gift,
• 31:23
  you do a very well thought out handwritten card or something along those lines.
• 31:28
  yeah, we only do handwritten cards in this family. Like
• 31:30
  Okay.
• 31:31
  ever every card is like hand drawn, like there is no store-bought cards ever. that's
• 31:35
  just like a
• 31:36
  Nice.
• 31:37
  rule in this household. you know, your mileage may vary depending on the quality of
• 31:41
  the artist, but
• 31:42
  Yeah.
• 31:44
  but we all do it. and actually we're a big fan of doing experiences over
• 31:48
  gifts. So we don't tend to
• 31:50
  Okay.
• 31:51
  do a lot of expensive gifts, but we'll do something like, Okay, I got us
• 31:55
  tickets to go see an improv show this weekend or you know, maybe concert tickets
• 31:59
  or something like that. So yeah, we we are scrappy in that way. We keep
• 32:03
  it relatively we keep the expenses relatively low when it comes to gifts.
• 32:07
  There you go. Okay. Very nice. Very nice. anything that you've sold early on or
• 32:12
  even today that you're like, like 100% can totally do it. Absolutely. But you've never
• 32:17
  actually done it before. Just you you're very confident that you can do it, so
• 32:22
  you sell it.
• 32:23
  I mean, definitely when I moved into operations from project management, that that was totally
• 32:27
  the case. Because I was really just like taking that swing based on the fact
• 32:31
  that people were saying, We never hired you to do the sort of like operations,
• 32:35
  but that's kind of what you're already doing. And so I was just like, I
• 32:39
  can do this. And then I just sold
• 32:42
  Yeah.
• 32:43
  myself as an operations specialist and it worked out great. I have lots of very
• 32:47
  happy clients.
• 32:48
  There you go. Okay.
• 32:50
  I love that quote from Tina Faye, which is like say yes and figure out
• 32:53
  the details later or figure out the rest later, whatever she says. But I think
• 32:57
  it's such a great quote because I do think that people are who are successful
• 33:01
  do say yes to a lot of things. even if you're like only like fifty
• 33:05
  percent confident you can do it, you're kinda like, yeah, I can do it. Often
• 33:09
  I look at like somebody and I'm like, well, if that person can do it,
• 33:13
  I can definitely do it.
• 33:15
  Right.
• 33:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:18
  Yeah. They say comparison's the thief of joy, but sometimes comparison works out all right.
• 33:23
  Gives you some confidence there.
• 33:25
  I think I have like the opposite of imposter syndrome.
• 33:29
  Okay.
• 33:30
  Right. Like I have the like, yeah, I can do that. And and like to
• 33:34
  be fair, I have through my life, I've had a lot of hobbies. And so
• 33:38
  I am very good at doing something poorly until I learn to do it well.
• 33:42
  And that doesn't throw me off. It doesn't make me nervous. my favorite hobby is
• 33:46
  finding new hobbies. And so I think like when you build up that muscle memory
• 33:51
  of being like, Well, I'm gonna try something new and I'm gonna suck at it,
• 33:55
  and that's okay because that's just part of the journey. You you just become very
• 33:59
  confident in trying things that you've never done before.
• 34:02
  We heard the I think it's Steve Martin, obviously like famous comedic actor. He he
• 34:05
  started to play the violin and the first like month or whatever he had a
• 34:08
  trainer or whatever it was, and he was like, Yeah, I'm terrible at this, it's
• 34:12
  great. And he had the mindset of like in twenty years, this is just something
• 34:15
  I'm doing on the side. In twenty years, I'm gonna be really good at this.
• 34:19
  So like I'm pretty excited to be terrible for the first year, two years. It
• 34:22
  doesn't really matter, because in twenty years I'm gonna be good. And then he like
• 34:26
  won, I don't know what the equivalent of like a Grammy is for violinists or
• 34:29
  whatever it is, but like he had that outlook and it totally works. And you've
• 34:33
  got the same mindset of like, yeah, it's gonna be bad, I'm gonna figure it
• 34:36
  out.
• 34:37
  Yeah. Yeah. Kind of figure it out. Like yeah, I'm relatively clever. If other people
• 34:41
  have figured this out, I will be able to figure it out. Doesn't mean it's
• 34:45
  gonna be easy. I just know that I'll be able to figure it out.
• 34:50
  Exactly. All right. Now we gotta ask, what were some of those hobbies back in
• 34:54
  the day?
• 34:55
  gosh. Well, all the art that you see behind me, I started illustration during COVID.
• 34:58
  That became a a hobby. So I started illustrating. But before that I went through
• 35:02
  the phase where I was like, I'm only gonna wear clothes that I make myself.
• 35:06
  So I went through like my sewing phase
• 35:09
  Okay.
• 35:10
  and made all my own clothes. I went through a phase where I learned the
• 35:14
  ukulele. I went through a phase where I went through jewelry design, not the crappy
• 35:19
  beads that we made in high school, but like actual nice jewellery. what else have
• 35:24
  I done? Like my kids are like, What now? Like what could you possibly be
• 35:28
  doing now? It's always something like crazy and different. You know, paddleboarding, sailing, skiing. Yeah,
• 35:33
  kinda like you name it. Like I'm just I'm always curious to try the new
• 35:38
  thing. I did animation for a little while. Yeah.
• 35:41
  Okay. So from full creative to the water to the snow to simple jewelry to
• 35:46
  complex jewelry. You got it all.
• 35:48
  I don't know. Yeah, like, you know, I'm just the type of person that like
• 35:52
  I see somebody do something and I'm like, well, that looks fun. I'm gonna figure
• 35:56
  out how to do that.
• 35:58
  Okay, so business wise, that tells me that your initial like ideal client persona was
• 36:02
  probably really difficult to figure it out if you're like, Hey, I can do it
• 36:07
  all.
• 36:08
  Yeah, yeah. well I think in the very beginning it was actually easy because I
• 36:12
  had been doing project management. I love project management. So I'm like, I'm just gonna
• 36:17
  do that. And I'm looking for at that time, this is like pre-COVID days when
• 36:22
  you know I was going into offices. So it was actually kind of easy because
• 36:27
  I was like, I'm looking for businesses in Vancouver of a certain size that run
• 36:32
  digital agencies that are looking for project managers. So it's fairly specific.
• 36:36
  Okay.
• 36:37
  Now that I'm moving from like strictly operations into this thinking partner role, I I
• 36:41
  do kind of see it broadening a little bit. Like I've talked to a number
• 36:46
  of like friends and peers, and they're like, you know, like you've been in the
• 36:50
  digital space for so long, but I think the service might be even more beneficial
• 36:55
  to other industries outside of digital services, like engineering. Perhaps, which would be like a
• 36:59
  very natural fit given that I used to work in engineering.
• 37:03
  Yeah.
• 37:04
  So I'm kind of looking at like broadening and being like, well, what other industries
• 37:08
  could I be helpful to?
• 37:10
  Very cool. Okay, but that's like a strategic that's a I'll use the word sophisticated
• 37:14
  approach to like, okay, this part makes sense. We got a niche. Now we're gonna
• 37:19
  layer onto it. Okay, this makes sense. Okay. Take me inside the office. How many
• 37:23
  monitors do you use on your desk?
• 37:26
  Mm. So just two. So I have like a laptop and then I have my
• 37:29
  monitor, but it's a big monitor. It's like a double wide thing. So kind of
• 37:32
  like three, two and a half maybe. Yep. yes. A lot of
• 37:35
  Okay. Are you doing a lot of split screen action where it just takes up,
• 37:38
  you know, one okay, all right, okay. Cause I've had some people that are like,
• 37:41
  yeah, it's just the full thing, one one Excel sheet for the whole thing.
• 37:45
  No, no. I've always got like at least three, sometimes four windows open at the
• 37:51
  same time.
• 37:52
  Nice. Okay. No, I respect it. I like it. speaking of business cards from earlier,
• 37:57
  any business cards currently on your desk?
• 38:00
  no, actually I'm really good at keeping my desk tidy. I feel like I think
• 38:04
  I have ADHD. undiagnosed. I'm never gonna get diagnosed. It doesn't matter. But the point
• 38:09
  is a clean desk helps me focus. So I have like very little on my
• 38:14
  desk. It's very Spartan.
• 38:16
  Okay. Okay. with that same mentality then in your browser, do you have the bookmarks
• 38:21
  bar? within that are there folders that hold all the links or do you have
• 38:27
  individual links as bookmarks?
• 38:29
  No, I have many, many folders within my books marks. And within those folders, there
• 38:32
  are some folders. So there are
• 38:34
  Yep, there it is.
• 38:36
  but you know what I found? Okay, so this is my like, I'm very proud
• 38:39
  of this. I used to have a million tabs open because not everything deserves to
• 38:43
  actually be on your bookmarks, let's be honest, right? Sometimes you're opening something up and
• 38:47
  you're just like, I just need to read this later. And it was driving me
• 38:51
  crazy how many tabs I had open. So I cre I used Claude, I think
• 38:55
  it was, to create an app. like a Chrome extension where anytime I have a
• 38:59
  tab open, if I know like I don't need to do this right now, but
• 39:03
  I need to look at it at some point, I just hit my little extension
• 39:07
  and it pops up and I I choose a date and it adds a task
• 39:11
  to my calendar on the date that I want to go back to that and
• 39:14
  it automatically includes the URL. And then I just close it out and it's off
• 39:18
  my browser and I know that I'll go back to it when that notification pops
• 39:22
  up.
• 39:23
  Wow, that's pretty good. That's really cool. You could sell that.
• 39:25
  Thanks. I'm pretty proud. I know if everybody says it, I'm like, that sounds like
• 39:30
  so much work to like package that and make it a sellable thing.
• 39:35
  Yeah, the business model around that's probably tough, but that's awesome. Good for you.
• 39:38
  I mean, I feel like there would be like a hundred people that would buy
• 39:41
  it for like fifty cents each. Like the juice has to be worth the squeeze
• 39:44
  here.
• 39:45
  That's true. That's true. That's true. Okay. I'm guessing the inbox is pretty tidy as
• 39:50
  well. Probably not too many unread emails.
• 39:53
  Yeah, I like to have very few unread emails. and I do auto filter a
• 39:58
  whole bunch of stuff for sure.
• 40:01
  Okay.
• 40:02
  so a lot of stuff never even I never even look at because if I
• 40:05
  know it's just like, I don't know, like a bank statement or something. Yes, I
• 40:09
  want to be able to find it down the road, but no, I don't need
• 40:13
  to read it. so yeah, I try to keep it as tidy as possible, but
• 40:17
  probably probably fewer folders than I should have. And definitely I'm subscribed to more newsletters
• 40:20
  than I should be.
• 40:22
  Yes, absolutely. I'm a big fan of the unsubscribe.
• 40:26
  Yeah, me too.
• 40:28
  When you're emailing people, do you email that, hey, we can totally do this, but
• 40:33
  knowing it's just you that's doing it?
• 40:36
  No, I'm an I person.
• 40:38
  Okay.
• 40:39
  Yeah. And you know what? I went through a phase. Like there was a phase
• 40:41
  where everything on my website was we. And then I just there was a point
• 40:44
  that I was like, this just feels disingenuous. Like it is just
• 40:47
  Okay.
• 40:48
  me. It's always gonna be just me. It just feels weird. And so I went
• 40:52
  and I actually updated everything, the website, the whole nine yards to say I everywhere.
• 40:57
  Okay. Wow. All right. This is looking pretty good. what does the next twelve months
• 41:01
  look like for ya? What's what's going on that's big, exciting, of the next year
• 41:06
  ish for ya?
• 41:07
  Yeah, so I mean the main thing is just trying to fully move into this
• 41:10
  thinking partner service. I would love to have three to five clients at a time.
• 41:14
  and I'm still trying to get like a foothold in that and really find the
• 41:18
  right fit clients to to make that wildly successful. At this point, I'm still like
• 41:22
  pressure testing it. It's it's a new service that I'm offering. but I feel really
• 41:26
  strongly about it. Like if it doesn't work out, I don't know how I would
• 41:30
  pivot, to be honest. Like, I'm like, this is This is what I'm gonna do.
• 41:34
  So I'm just gonna find the right people who are willing to pay for this
• 41:38
  service because I don't think I really wanna pivot to anything else. I feel really
• 41:42
  strongly that it's good value. I feel really strongly that it's needed. and so I
• 41:46
  know that the right people are out there and I just need to find them.
• 41:50
  I mean, hey, show that clawed extension on on Chrome and be like, hey, I
• 41:54
  can do this for your entire business.
• 41:57
  I can make all the problems go away.
• 42:01
  I gotta say equal foot feats in scrappy and sophisticated here. I I was gonna
• 42:06
  say we're
• 42:07
  Okay.
• 42:08
  just gonna be full sophistic or sorry, full scrappiness, but you live a pretty sophisticated
• 42:13
  business, Katie. I love it.
• 42:15
  Yeah, I mean, it I suppose it is sophisticated. I think it's hard to feel
• 42:18
  sophisticated when it's just a one-person company.
• 42:20
  Fair.
• 42:21
  Because the reality is like there's a lot of tools and processes that you would
• 42:25
  use for a large company that you really have to scale down and and right
• 42:29
  size it for a one-person company. because I think like, well, process is good, too
• 42:34
  much process is just like a killer of everything. and so yeah, I feel like
• 42:38
  there's a lot that I do that's like pretty scrappy, like my homemade tools for
• 42:42
  you know, cash flow analysis. But I guess you could argue it's a pretty sophisticated
• 42:47
  tool that I built, even though I built it scrappily.
• 42:50
  Right. A very scrappy build to a sophisticated result. Katie Bedford.
• 42:56
  Yeah, I like that.
• 42:58
  there you go. I love it. this is fantastic. Thank you so much for coming
• 43:01
  on. what what do you want to promote? anything you want the folks out there
• 43:05
  to know, other than obviously the the thinking partner that we were just talking about?
• 43:09
  Yeah, so so really that's what I want people to know about the Thinking Partner
• 43:12
  service. so I have a page on my website that is an ROI calculator. So
• 43:16
  if you're considering this service, you go to it and it's basically going to look
• 43:20
  at like, you know, how many hours you work, how many hours as an owner
• 43:24
  you're spending alone spinning your wheels thinking about issues, and what the cost of a
• 43:28
  bad decision is. And then it's going to honestly tell you whether or not my
• 43:32
  service would be worth the money to you. And it's actually on the conservative side,
• 43:36
  like It would have to really be worth it in order for this tool to
• 43:39
  say, yes, this this makes sense for you. so it's an easy way for people
• 43:43
  to kind of like determine whether or not they would even want to have a
• 43:47
  conversation before booking a conversation with me. So that's where I would love people to
• 43:51
  go. Check out that tool. you know, if it feels like it's a good fit,
• 43:55
  then set up a call and we can get started.
• 43:58
  Perfect. There you go. I love a quantification of a qualified question. There we go.
• 44:03
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 44:05
  Katie, thank you so much for coming on. Equally scrappy and sophisticated. Go check her
• 44:09
  out at her website. Link will be in the description, everybody. And Katie, thank you
• 44:13
  so much again for coming on.
• 44:15
  Thank you. It's been fun.
• 44:16
  Thanks. Stay data driven, everybody.