The First 17 Years: Never go alone

Tiffany: When you decide to do something big or feel called to do something big, there's an expense that you don't understand that other people have to pay to. She didn't know what it was yet, but she was really trying to build something meaningful. She just always had these big ideas. There was no fear, no hesitation at all.

Darren: It was like, this is my moment. And I'm gonna take it. I don't know how long it can stay this bad, but it can't really get worse.

Tiffany: This is like an audible book of the people who have helped build my character as I've worked alongside so many to build the company that today is element three. These people, these voices, these experiences, they were my mentors.

They are the people who help build and refine and grow me into the leader that I have the opportunity to be today. This is the first 17 years. Chapter nine, my E three exec team. If you're gonna build a business and you're gonna do it for the long term, there's a point in the journey where you realize you are not gonna be able to go it alone.

And it can't just be support and partners and relationships and mentors from the outside. That make this thing last a really long time, you've got to build a team around you, challenges you that has permission to push back that compliments your own strengths and talents. And that decide at some point to take ownership of the vision of the company for themselves.

And it has literally taken me all of these 17 years to like bring in different people and to understand what it is that I need uniquely as a leader. And how to empower an incredibly talented group of people who not only like from a skills perspective are talented, but also their character is one that cares about the things that I care about, cares about the things that we care about as a company.

And so in this episode, you're gonna hear from some of those people, my team. Here at element three, those individuals who have decided somewhere along the journey to pick up this vision and. For themselves to help us lean into who it is that we see this company can be and who it is that we can become if we choose to do hard things over and over and over again.

So in this season of my life where I'm exploring different ands. Like even this project, having the time to actually document the first 17 years, having the time to continue to explore and understand like, what has life taught me and how can I share those lessons through this scared, confident project.

As I step into those ands, you have to have people who fill the void that you leave when you go and try to learn and explore other things. So as we started this whole series with, you know, the leadership hand off to Kyler, this is his team. This is our team. This is the team. The people that are building us into the future.

Sarah is suspicious and she's gonna laugh when she hears that. That's the word that I used about her. If I picture us as a boat going across the pond. And if Sarah was not there, like the, just the water would be shallower, like she just like keeps trenching down, like more clarity, more clarity, deeper water, deeper water.

She just drills like down and gets more clarity and more understanding and more clarity and more understanding. And everybody follows that. And I mean, there's parts of the business. She understands that nobody else does. And it's crazy. It's incredible.

Sarah: I met Tiffany. I actually really remember it. I had just come out of a meeting with Karen about my like first round interview or something.

I remember Karen giving me this like whole spiel about our company values and the things that they talk about. And I remember really distinctly being like, okay, well, it's nice that they're making an effort. You know, like a lot of people, when you come into job interviews, give you this whole like list of culture, things that are important to them.

And I was like, well, okay, well, I can, I can appreciate the effort that got put in here, but not that it didn't feel real, but like, You've been in a lot of places where they say one thing in the world is a different place. So I went into Tiffany's office and I distinctly remember the Barbie Playhouse. And there are like toys all over the floor and she comes up and she's like out of breath because she'd been walking up and down the stairs because she didn't have enough steps in for the day and was like, I have to get more steps in.

So she's like out of breath and comes and talk to me. And I was just like, What is happening here. she's like, I'm the CEO. And I was like, okay, great. But I remember walking away from that conversation with her and distinctly being like having this feeling that like the culture and the values feels more true here than in most of the other places I was looking at at the time.

And I remember her being very like, larger than life, a little bit when you meet her in this intimidating way, but also like this way that it's clear that being around her pushes you to be better. So. That's the first time

Tiffany: I met her. She's a very seasoned for her age. And she understood, like I'm only gonna understand the dollars and cents and how this thing flows.

If I understand the operations of this place. And so she couldn't help, but get sucked into how does this thing work? How do projects work? How do clients flow? And so now she also runs our like project management team, because it's important that she have like measurement nodes throughout the process of doing work.

So that we know, like, are things profitable? Are they not, is stuff on track? Is it not? And so she really plays this hybrid role between finance and operations. I got

Sarah: hired in 2019, it was definitely kind of a whirlwind of being there. I came into a mess so my role was very much the thing I really liked about coming to element three was in the thing that.

Made it interesting to me was that it was very apparent. There were like lots of places where I could like add value. There was no real person in my role for a minute before. And that was really what I was excited about. It seemed like a really interesting challenge and it was nice that everybody here kind of just were like trusted me and we're just like, okay, go do your

Tiffany: thing.

We had an opening in our, it wasn't a VP role at that time, but like a kind of controller, senior accounting role that we were looking to fill. It was like, kind of in that space and we just post a job and she answered it. She was not like an in-network connection. And. She really took a shot on us. She came from a big company that had lots of things that Sarah loves, like consistency and process and, uh, a way of doing things and clarity into cash position.

No, I'm being a little extreme to make the point. And we were this little company and it was like, Hey, you wanna. Take a swing at this. And, you know, she was at a spot where she knew in the next three to five years, like when she started with us, that she wanted to see if she could make her way into an executive team at a company.

And she knew it was probably gonna need to be a smaller organization or it was gonna take her. 25 years to get there. And so she took a bet on us and we took a bet on her.

Sarah: I'm not the person that's like out there taking a bunch of risks. There are people that have this like really grand like view of the world and have all these like big ideas and interesting things.

And my approach to things is much more like I see these problems, how do I get to the next solve? Like, how do I in this like very pragmatic way. I have very, almost no visionary skills whatsoever. It is very much a like I am a doer and a problem solver, and I like complicated, interesting problems. So it kinda makes me a little boring.

It's fine. I've come to terms with it.

Tiffany: My personality. It just starts with trust at a very full bucket. And that can be great when people. Are trustworthy, but when they're not, I'm like the last to know . And so I think that it's a, I think that the pendulum swung a bit and, and it's sort of hilarious, cuz it's still not me.

That brings the discernment to the party. It's Sarah , you know, but I think it proves that that was not part of our team. We didn't have that critical eye. But what's the last question you asked to be sure. And as we were beginning to make the turn from being. Sort of entrepreneurial first to beginning to really build scale and structure and stability.

We had to change some of the ingredients of that and it wasn't just the like hard skills that Sarah brought to the table. But I think it was the cultural piece too, of being brave enough. To ask the questions that sort of seemingly nobody else knows to ask or doesn't want to, or for the sort of sake of progress doesn't or like making me grumpy that we have to go slow, like whatever it is, we didn't have that ingredient in our team.

And Sarah browned that out and it's proven to be a great choice for us. And I think I have learned that there can be a certain. Naive that comes with being too trusting. I think there's something that happens when we come together. When we see situations, cuz I'm like, what could possibly go wrong? And she's like, everything could go wrong.

Here's the launch. She's like what could go. Right. And I think that the shared perspective is what makes things interesting. So as a business, we do open book financials, which I think starts from a place of high trust. Assuming the employees are gonna only do productive things with that information. Was that challenging for you to like step into that environment where it was like, yeah, we share, oh no, I prefer that you prefer that.

Yeah. Okay. Cause you see that as empowering people intellectually. Yeah. Which is also a value of yours, but I think

sarah riggio: it's also like sharing why you should trust me. Like this is my demonstration of why you should trust me in this space and why you should trust us, like as an organizational to like take care of you and like to do right by you.

Tiffany: It is a financial transac. I mean, there's a lot of parts to the relationship with employees, but at the end of the day, it's a financial one. One of the things she's taught me is to just ask her before , before I do things, I do pause more sort of like cheesy to say, like, what would Sarah do? But I, I do think more about, well, but if we do this a hundred times, does it still work?

And things like compliance and our like legal exposure. And if you have an employee. Has something happened? Like my first thing is to be like, I don't know, just like make it right. It's like, but if it happened a hundred times, could you do it? And I think thinking about some of those things more strategically is not naturally.

And part of my exposure is small business. You know, it's like, this is the biggest we've ever been. So this is the most complex it's ever been, you know? And so I just, I just don't know. And Sarah's worked in organizations that. A lot more complexity and a lot more risk. And so her maturity in those areas is just beyond mine.

And so I better have a respect for those pieces that as an early entrepreneur can feel like just distractions, but you start to realize like, no, those are important and you have to have. You need to also mature in your ability. So I think that's a piece of it. I've also seen just a tremendous amount of courage in your growth.

Sarah, as I don't know that when you started here, you like planned on being here a long time. I think it was like, I need a job and they look like they can pay me at least for a little bit. you didn't need a job. You were, but yeah, you were looking for a transition. I was, you know, in some ways we. Have like worked to earn her loyalty of like this.

Isn't just a place that I'm gonna be for a minute, but like, I could actually have a career here. I can have a grow a family here. It can all happen inside of this company. And. She's an important piece of what we're building. And it's sort of hilarious that you are a low trust bucket person, because the trust you have with people here is very tight.

Like you are low trust, but because of that, there's this. Intense interrogation process that takes place when you decide to step into any kind of relationship with people, even work ones. And when there's trust, it's like a very high quality version. and I think there's a, again, there's a lot of confidence that comes knowing that that's her makeup, but when she trusts someone or when she trusts numbers or when she trusts a system or when she trusts something that people know it's been thought about, and she's not perfect, we're not gonna put that on her, but.

I think there's a high sense of confidence that people can trust. It depend on it. And Sarah, I have an enormous amount of trust in her and she sort of helps us be certain and safe. She just has a natural way of, of having productive paranoia and is really, really important. And I am so grateful for that and I hope I give her permission sometimes to stop and be like, yeah, actually we have done a great job, but she also really pushed pressure on me to be like, but have we really done the best we could everywhere.

And is there anything that we're missing? Is secretly lurking inside what looks like good news. And it makes people trust her an extraordinary amount because. She's thought about everything. Darren is creativity under control. He's the executive creative director at element three.

Darren: I wanted to be with an agency or at a place where they were looking forward and not necessarily backwards.

And I felt like everywhere else was kind of stuck looking backwards. The freelance thing for me, I hated chasing the money. I hated getting paid. I had someone that didn't pay me for 12 months after I started here, I was still waiting for money. And so I thought, well, this company's looking for this strategy lead.

I can do strategy. I know what strategy is. And so I applied for the job and came in and it was not what I wanted to

Tiffany: be. I met him when he had left another agency and was trying the world of freelancing. And we were at a place where we just needed high level creative support and some like really strategic thinking and a person connected me to a person connected me to a person, connected me a person that got me to Darren, how big.

And so that really was how I met him on this planet. I

Darren: came in and talked to Karen and she was like, you're not, this is not what you need to be doing. And

Tiffany: she was like, this is not the right job. You are at your new home kind of, you know, she's like, let's figure out a way to work together. That's what happened.

That's right. And it was like basically an account executive role. And what we were trying to say to the market is, but you can't be an order taker. Like you actually have to get into the business and understand what's going on. And so we were trying all these strange titles to like, get that across to the marketplace.

And I think you were wanting a strategic challenge. You were at a place in your career where. You had done a lot of making and you could make really well as a designer, but I think you knew subconsciously or consciously that you were looking for that next challenge for all the stereotypes of creative directors being these like big magnanimous, like ego maniacs that like fill the room monsters.

Darren is not that in all the best possible ways. And so I think my first memories of Darren. And still today, he's just an exceptional listener. And we were asking him to solve some really unsexy problems. And Darren has this just like humble roll my sleeves up. There's nothing that I won't put my mind to and solve with a lot of integrity.

And he's like that today, but those are my earliest memories. Like we were giving him, there was just like these really difficult concepts for the mortgage and data industry. Like not sexy space. That was really important that we helped our client solve how to bring this complexity to life visually. And.

Darren was able to like sit and ask a bajillion questions, listen, like really intently and bring to life. This thing that nobody could see. And he's done that over and over and over. And you know, now his job is to like facilitate other people doing that. He doesn't like make in the same way and his role as an executive creative director, but he is the truest word of a servant leader.

His parents were teachers and they had a lot of people in their house. Their household served people and you see that come to life in who he is as a leader, he just doesn't leave his troops and he sees things the end, and he's a really trusted partner in solving. And that's just Darren.

I remember. Realizing we needed creative leadership. And I, I don't know, you did several projects with us across a couple different clients. It was evident that you had a very strategic lens to the creative process and really understanding and respecting it was, I don't know, learned or intuitive that you had to get the business to be able to think well about how to make the marketplace understand it.

And I think that was really the connection point where. You were not just asking for. Creative standards of the brand to go get ready. You needed to understand how did they make money and what matters and where is their position in the marketplace? And all that kind of stuff was really natural. And we were kind of getting our butts handed to us in two places.

One was our creative product was not good enough. And the second was we couldn't compete for talent in the creative space. I was a total unknown, I think in some level we were kind of a laughing stock, a bit in the creative market that like for creative talent, like they just weren't gonna come here for me.

And I realized that I didn't have inroads. I wasn't aspirational. Or inspirational to that type of talent. And then we were never gonna actually be able to take these smart strategies and make 'em really come to life. If the creative mind, wasn't there to sort of be a partner in it. And I remember offering you the job.

I don't know if I did that in person, but I remember sort of my phone call close.

Darren: You offered me the job as we were getting in the elevator to leave. Oh, and you handed me my offer letter and you said, I need you to go do this thing. and then we got in our cars and you called me and we kept talking about it.

Tiffany: Yeah. So I, I remember standing in the corner of my office, looking out over the world, talking to Darren and saying, I need you to know that I know like your friends will probably make fun of you for taking this job. And I know we're a, nobody. I know that we're unproven. I know that we haven't been in the marketplace for 20 years.

But I will stay outta your way and I will let you do it the way that you think a creative team is supposed to be built. And that's the thing I can give you that maybe nobody else can in the market, because. they all had believed they'd figured it out. And I was sure we hadn't. And so that was really the opening.

I knew he was risking his reputation in a lot of ways. I knew that he was taking a big risk in his career joining me because we were still really unproven and, and he said, yes,

Darren: And that's exactly how, what the, the word you said. I think that's the thing that gave me that I had been given a lot of promises in my career and been told a lot of things.

But when you said it, I believed it and you've kept your word

Tiffany: the whole time. Yeah. And you've delivered your side of it when the stakes are the highest and the like options. Look, the fewest that is when Darren is at his absolute best. I've never seen him lose his cool I've learned from Darren that there's always a solution.

There's always a solution. It might not be your first choice, but there's always a solution. And. Creativity and the way that he just like his mind does not shut down in a panic moment. All lights are on and he is incredibly focused. I've also seen, Darren will say that. I have said to him, like you have to stop doing the work.

He will go in and do anything. And that is awesome. Cuz he serves his team that way. But sometimes he spends his time, not on the things he's uniquely qualified to do. He's so much better at it now, but just the fact that. Like again, in the best way, just like egoless, he will do whatever. And that doesn't mean that he doesn't have an enormous amount of pride in the work that he does and the enormous amount of just ownership and making sure that the work that we put out is a very high level, but he doesn't have an ego in who gets the credit, who does it.

He really releases that piece of it in a way that I think allows the team to perform. He understands the heart of a creative. He understands the importance of them feeling like they're building their portfolio. And some of it's because they're probably not gonna retire from element three, but some of it's just as a maker, you need to be able to see an inventory of like your own growth and what you know, how to make and how you're.

Craft is developing. And he understands that ethos of a creative person that was very foreign to me. You know, I don't have like a shelf of the strategies I've created. That would be strange to me, but he understands the ethos of a creative person and how that's an important marker in their career and in their journey of growth and develop.

Darren: One of the things that you've taught me was the business side of all of this. I remember the first, I remember you explaining to me what EBITDA was like in one of our first couple meetings. And I had never even heard that term before I walked in the door here. I think that was, that was huge. I mean, just, I had always seen what I did is, I mean sure.

People explained the business side of it. It's an important part of what we do here and seeing how creative. Connects into that. And I remember when we were growing like crazy and you came to me and you said, uh, don't open Photoshop again for the rest of the year ever. Like you're done. And you know how hard that was for me.

Like we talked about it a lot and I, I think that. But at that time, that's not what I needed to be doing. And you helped me see that and it helped me grow. And if you wouldn't have come and been that direct with me, like I would've stayed up till two o'clock in the morning, the rest of my life, killing myself, trying to help everybody get the things done.

And so. That's always been something that you've been really good at is seeing when someone is hitting a ceiling or when they just, aren't always working the smartest and being very transparent about what you see and helping them get around that.

Tiffany: And through that, I've observed this pattern in my own life, which is why I think it's easier for me to see it in other people's is in times of high stress, which usually comes in growth with business.

We go to the thing that we're best at, because it gives us confidence because we feel so out of our league, in the thing we're being asked to do. And I do it too. It's like, I wanna go do brand work cuz I know I'm already good at. But that's the last place I need to be spending my time. And then when you don't have the thing to do that you love and you know, you're good at, you're sort of like scared about, well, what am I supposed to spend my time on all the things I don't know.

And it's like, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. And so you were a great sport and me sort of like forcing those lights to shut off of, you've gotta let your people do this stuff and you wouldn't even take the cool work you would. The stuff that was sort of left over, cuz you wanted to serve your team that way.

And we've talked a lot about times when you need to serve your team from the front of the room and times when you need to serve the team from the back of the room. And I think for each leader, one is more natural than the other and you are most natural leading them from the back of the room. And there's times where I was like, they need to hear from you as.

Lieutenant as their captain, as their commander. And you've been such, I mean, I feel like we've had such a great partnership in learning through that process. And, and many times you were one of the first people I hired who had so much more experience in the industry than I did. And you could have, I think, used that as a weapon.

To not hear me or to like, make my perspective irrelevant in your career. And you never did that. Well, that's not the way it's done or I've been at this a lot longer than you have. And you're always just very respectful of that. And I really appreciate that you created the room. For me to be able to help you grow in this leg of your life professionally, cuz I think it could have been easy or to not

Darren: there's the flip side of that is that you've helped me look at things differently too.

Or challenge me to look at things differently. Like what if we didn't do it that way or does it need to keep being done that way? And it was easier to do it the other way sometimes, but just seeing a different perspective on it and being challenged like that, it has helped me. My team grow and do things in a way that we probably would've never tried.

Tiffany: I've seen Darren grow so much, element three, he has stayed in the discomfort of learning. What's it like to work for a business person and not somebody who comes from advertising or the marketing business? What does it mean to work in an environment that's gonna be like, have so much discipline and so much accountability and like, what's it gonna look like to do that?

And he. Stayed in the discomfort of that. And I really appreciate that he's trusted each of those. Turns and when he starts to believe it, his team follows him because they trust him so much. And I think that that relationship that he has, that trust that he has with his team is a real gift to our leadership team because they will follow him.

And that's important. Danielle is strategic performance. Her title element three is VP of strategy. Her role is to do all hard. Danielle definitely does this complex solving on client accounts. And then there's usually a team that comes in behind her that helps execute, but she's a huge guiding force in our own growth and brand strategy.

And the way that we create clarity to the marketplace about like who is element three and what good do we seek to do in the world? And what are we trying to be the best in the world at?

Danielle: Are you familiar with Kevin bacon and the six degrees of Kevin bacon? Why jokingly talk about the six degrees of Darren Haig, who is our executive creative director.

He knows every person in the creative, and it seems marketing world across Indiana. He and I worked together many moons ago and in my previous job, I started getting recruited by other agencies who were saying to me, are you ready to come back to agency life free board yet? And one of those agencies is an agency that Darren had worked with early in his career.

So I reached out to him and said, Hey, I get this call from such and such agency. Can I give you a call on your drive home sometime? And just talk about your experience there. So he and I had a great conversation. He was like, it's a great firm. Here's my experience. And then a week later he texts me and says, so would you be interested in a brand strategy job at element three?

And would you be interested in talking with our CEO? Tiffany, I

Tiffany: cannot think of a single thing that Danielle has done that had just simply tactical face value. She thinks about the strategic aspect of literally. Everything in her life. And the performance piece is that in the way that she presents herself, she does that in the way that she communicates.

She does that in the way that her work product. She does that in the way that she celebrates life, our executive team,

Danielle: it's just extraordinary humans to a person, the people on the executive team, they're just really good humans. We push each other while we have decorum and respect for each other. Simon Sinek says.

Trust is like being in love. Both parties have to feel it in order for it to exist. And I believe that that is the environment. There is a mutual love. It goes both ways and

Tiffany: it is palpable Danielle's title element three is VP of strategy. That her role is to do all hard things because the things she solves have a marketing aspect to them, a brand aspect to them, a story aspect to them.

But oftentimes it's very complex change management. What I remember

Danielle Falconer: about Tiffany is I remember in our very first conversation, both of us belly laughing, like the kind of laugh when you laugh with your whole body, like in your whole body feels good. That happened in our very first conversation. It was like, I had known her my whole life.

It was an early indicator for me, that being around her. Was permission to be completely myself. I did not have to put up appearances. I didn't have to pretend I wasn't silly. Um, I didn't have to pretend I didn't have a personality. I think I told her some like, really outrageous, true story about me in our very first conversation, because it was the, how did you get to where you live now?

Conversation, which comes with a really dramatic story behind it. And I just felt like I revealed. Myself to her and was very comfortable

Tiffany: doing it. I met Danielle because we were at a place in the business. I had done brand strategy alongside Marsha for, you know, almost 10 years, eight, 10 years, and then Marsha retired and left.

And I was really the brand strategy department. Anything that came in that had brand sort of capital B brand on it. I was the lead subject matter expert. I. Doing the discovery sessions and facilitations and running those projects. And it became clear as we were getting to a certain size that my capacity was becoming a ceiling to our growth as a business, my own growth as like becoming president versus a subject matter.

Who's executing work day to day for the business and for clients. And so I needed to find somebody that. Believed the same things that I did about brand. So in that pursuit of talking to people and just beginning to cast a wider net, instead of networks, Darren connected me to Danielle. And I remember very vividly that first conversation with Danielle.

I remember like in my office, how I was sitting, like just the whole thing. And I was just like, I found her. I've

Danielle Falconer: said to people before I get to work with people who have superpowers, I mean the best of the best strategically creatively business acumen. I mean, I literally get to work with superheroes every single day.

I now I, I really have been through lots of environments. I know me. I know the environment that fits well on me. It's the environment where I can bring my entire self to work every single day and it's valued and appreciated. And I can't imagine I'd been in wrong environments before, and I knew what that felt like.

And so to be in this environment and know just like what it feels like to breathe and be at ease every day and just be completely in my skin, completely bringing my gifts.

Tiffany: It is a. What Danielle does is sort of fantastically abstract in the sense of like, she literally just helps bring clarity to a complex ball of chaos.

You know, you think about like a big ball of yarn and nobody can find the starting point. Where does the thread begin? And that's what she's exceptional at. Throw her a big hairball. She'll find where it starts and she'll start pulling the thread. So. All other resources can begin to align on what do we do and in what order and how does this work and who are the stakeholders and all that kind of stuff.

She's, she's brilliant at that.

Danielle: The most important thing I've learned from Tiffany is her ability to accept feedback

gracefully. You can say the hardest,

what feels like the most devastating words as they're coming out of your own. And, you know, they're about to land on her ears and she'll say, thank you.

That's really great feedback. I needed to hear that. And it's like, oh my gosh, what an example to me. Who just continues to be on that journey of accepting feedback, really gracefully and to all of us, she immediately set permission to take the hard things and know that when someone is kind enough to give you feedback, it is a gift and you should treat it like a gift.

And so I really do see us giving each other feedback. Little doses of love that happen all the time. And you can see it within my first year. I had a conversation with Tiffany and I'm pretty sure I had a visual aid for this

conversation. I

Danielle Falconer: believe least in my memory. I brought out a small strainer and I said to her, Tiffany, this strainer is our business.

You are an amazing sales person, as fast as you sell things in and they come into the strainer. Half of it is coming out the bottom. We have to fix our performance in the work. We have to change how new business lands inside of the company. And I said to her, do you wanna make some real money? And she was like, yeah, I do.

I was like, let's do this thing. And it was, I mean, my conversation alone, wasn't the steering of the ship. I think there were enough of us kind of saying to her, Hey, let me give you some field intelligence of what I'm seeing from where I'm sitting. And in that moment, I was just an additional data point for her.

Soon thereafter, we started baking in new discipline into our organization and Tiffany will tell you, and I think she's probably even talked about it on the podcast. Discipline is not always something that comes supernaturally for her. I will say it. Normally comfortably

to me,

the boring rigor of getting up in the morning.

If five have 30 to work out every day. I mean, it's just like, I'm kind of boring in my habits. Discipline is just like nature for me. So it was fun to see her say the next way I'm going to grow as a leader.

Is

to step fully into this concept of discipline, which required new restraint for her. She's such a dynamic human and leader, and she knew I can't just cheer and excite people to the answer.

It's going to take a reservedness. And a discipline to say, we're gonna do the hard things over and over and over and over again until they're so routine.

Tiffany: As I've led longer, you start to understand more that who your leaders are, is the lid of the organization. Nobody will, overperform the standard and expectation that you're setting across your leadership team.

And so having people of high character, having people who. Expect excellence, having people who are natural. Learners is another piece of it. And that natural learner aspect, I think is a key piece to our industry, into our culture and across Sarah, Darren, and Danielle, they were those things before they got to element three, we have an environment where.

I think they have a chance to be those things more fully, but they brought that and you know, the competency of our individual roles, we're all gonna grow in those as we continue to advance in our professional careers, but the character piece, the intrinsic demand for excellence and the authentic excitement to help other people grow.

Like you can't teach that part. I hope each of these conversations are a reminder to stop and thank the mentors in your own life.

The people who have helped us each unpack life and just live the journey much more fully. If you want more of this content, please subscribe to scared, confident, and share it with a friend. And if you want more sort of inside track follow along on Instagram, we share a lot there. Thanks for listening.

This is the first 17 years a production in partnership with Share your Genius.

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