Financial Learning Experiences with Mike Milligan

Speaker A: Experienced designers can feel a lot of pressure to deliver bigger and grander experiences. Grander? Is that a word? Grandiose? Either way, and who doesn't love a grand experience that wows us? At the same time, when we only focus on the wow, we miss more opportunities to create experiences that connect, impress and make people's lives better. This is why I am writing the book the Unwow, your guide to experience designs of all kinds. The Unwow explores how we can focus on everyday experiences to deliver greater impact and value to our, uh, design audiences. The Unwow believes in the idea of keep it simple, finding more opportunities for creating moments that matter. So head over to experiencexdesign.com and submit your email to stay on top of all all the updates regarding the Unwow, your guide to experience designs of all kinds. And there's going to be plenty of updates coming very soon. So join the Unwow community and be on top of all of the UNW news. Now on to the show.

Speaker B: One. Uh, two three.

Speaker A: Hi, I'm Gary David. Welcome to Experience by Design, the podcast where we explore experience designs of all kinds. Hello experience designers and exters everywhere. I hope you are all doing well, having a great day, and have had a great week since the last we checked in with one another. If you are a longtime listener to Experience by Design, you know that I work at a business university that has its foundations as a school for training and in accounting and finance, and since its founding in 1917, not much has changed in terms of that focus. We are still primarily known for our education in accounting finance. When I first started there almost 27 years ago now, I really had no idea why finance was or what was involved in it. I am sorry and a little embarrassed to say that I am only slightly more informed today than I was way back then. I still find finance a bit of a black box, despite my years of service and conversations with my finance department colleagues who are all great. Trust me on that one. I'm definitely not alone in this deficit. As we have discussed in other episodes of Experience by Design, financial literacy is pretty low overall. Repeated surveys have shown that around half of us adults are financially literate. That number drops even further when the topic focuses on things like financial risk. When comparing different generations, it's probably not surprising to any of us that younger generations suffer from a greater lack of financial literacy. It seems that no matter who we are, we all could use some extra help in terms of financial literacy, financial planning, and fiscal responsibility. Today in Experience by Design, I welcome Mike Milligan to the show. Mike grew up being fascinated by money. Today he runs One Oak Financial, which stands for One of a Kind. Get it? Oak of a Kind and then the One One of a Kind. Pretty clever. Along with his work with clients, he also has created a financial planning online course which is offered through Old Dominion University where he also teaches. On top of all of that, he wrote the book the One of a Kind Financial Plan, which provides readers with step by step instructions to creating a financial plan best suited to you. And um, what is really great about Mike's approach and his philosophy is that he tailors his planning and strategy to his client, creating what we can call more of a client centric experience that helps clients break free from traditional approaches that can take advantage of them through things like exorbitant fees and costs and other ways that really don't serve the client's ultimate goals. We talk about generational divides in financial literacy and planning, looking at spending and saving trends among Gen Z and even Gen Alpha. Mike emphasizes the need for a more more holistic approach to understanding clients markets, trends and and financial risk with this changing job market and emerging technology. He shares how he tailors client education to generational characteristics. And that's a goal that I can really appreciate given that I educate a lot of different generations trying to meet clients where they are in order to have the maximum learning impact. Towards this end, we also talk about his new book project Amplify, which explores how podcasting and social media and have become resources for financial literacy. As he emphasizes the microphone is the most powerful tool in the financial industry. Finally, we talk about his favorite mermaid in Norfolk, Virginia where he lives. If you've ever been to Norfolk, you know what I'm talking about in terms of mermaids. He discusses the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States and my how time flies, especially in locations of colonial heritage and. And extensive US history like Boston, Philadelphia and Norfolk. Plus perhaps most importantly, we discuss and share how great sociology truly is, which is a topic I think we all can get behind. So overall, great conversation. I learned a lot, became more financially literate and I hope you do too.

Speaker B: See the blanket.

Speaker C: I was wondering how often you have to correct people from saying Norfolk. Uh, when.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, it's easy like when I, when I fly into or. Right, right. That you just know that person has never been there before.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Because Norfolk is a uh. Norfolk is not phonetically sounded out. Right, right. It is spelled because it is a uh. It's a tough. It's a tough. It's a tough city to, uh, to be a part of both and how you say it and how you live there.

Speaker C: Well, it's. I would. Because I was. Before, when we chatted, I was saying that when I was president of the association for Applied and Clinical Sociology, we had our annual meeting there. So I got to know a bit about the city because I had to do repeated visits there and, you know, had a conference there. It was. It was pretty cool. I mean, it was. It was neat to be around, especially the prominence of the naval history there, which is, you know, the Hampton Roads area. And naval history is just immense.

Speaker B: It is. There was, uh, in downtown Norfolk, there's an old battleship called the USS Wisconsin. Yeah, when it was, uh. It's right by Nauticus, which. Now Nauticus is more of a cruise terminal. Carnival Cruise Lines goes out there every week. But, uh, when the USS Wisconsin was dedicated. This tells you a little bit about the thought process in the seven cities, which makes up the larger area of Norfolk. But the mayors of all the cities were up on the stand up on the podium there. And the mayor of Norfolk gets up, and his name was Paul Frame at the time, and, uh, says that we strategically put this great battleship of the United States in its position for our enemies to the east, the city of Virginia Beach. And it was just a shot fired at another mayor. You know, it's not. It's not a town that is so big, it needs. It needs regional cooperation. But just to take that shot at that moment in time when there's so many military people that come to that area of the world for the first time, they don't know the difference between Suffolk and Chesapeake and Virginia beach and Norvik. It's just one area to them. But if you're from, um, that area, you, um, have. You have an allegiance to one of those places.

Speaker C: And people may not know that NATO headquarters is right there as well.

Speaker B: Every year, every year in April, there's, uh, there's the, uh, there's the Naito Festival that, uh, that culminates with a tattoo, a, uh, traditional military festive parade, and, uh, indoor immersive experience with bagpipers and drummers.

Speaker C: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: And, uh, I mean, it's 100%. It's the North American. Norfolk is the North American home of NATO.

Speaker C: It was really cool. One of the most moving memorials I've seen. Not the Wisconsin per se, but there's a small little memorial right on the water, and it has letters that were written home from M. Every military conflict the United States had. And it's just there on the ground in this kind of like bronze form. And you would miss it if you didn't like. It's not something you can see from a distance away. You got to be right up on it. But then when you see it there, it's hugely impactful because of the words someone's sharing to a loved one at home, usually a mother, about what they're experiencing in war.

Speaker B: And it's, and it's strategically located at a point that you know, you do kind of have to stumble on it or you have to think about the walking history. But if you know the significance of that point where it is, that's like a, it's like the point almost of a pier, right where, where a reunion, like a military reunion would happen. And it's uh, it's, it's not, it's not, you know, they could easily put that in a more highly visible spot, but it's almost a place of reflection for where widows go of, to kind of connect. And it's ah, it's, it was very well thought out when they did that.

Speaker C: Well, someday I hope to have the opportunity to go back and visit because it is a cool, I mean easy airport, um, you know, easy airports, quick downtown. It's got a lot of cool stuff going for it, but it doesn't feel so big that it's overwhelming. You know what I mean? It's just. I really enjoyed being there.

Speaker B: It's, it's going to get a lot of uh, a lot of play over the next uh, over the, over the middle part of 2026 because of the 250th anniversary.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: America and you know, like places like Philadelphia and some of the others.

Speaker C: Big Boston, big.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's going to be huge. Right? But like Norfolk, because Williamsburg is just, it's just uh, is anywhere from a 30 minute to a three hour drive right up the interstate through a couple bridge tunnels. Um, so it just depends on if traffic's back, back or not, backed up or not. But it's going to get a lot of play over the next 6m months.

Speaker C: Are there going to be more mermaids to uh, decorate or are we going to, you know.

Speaker B: Mermaids. That is the uh, that, that is the symbol of Norfolk. And uh, back at the turn of the century when that became the symbol of Norfolk, they created these. I'm sure you saw them while you were there. These, these large busts everywhere, right? And they were so they, so they painted them. Everybody, you know Painted them and then they sold them at auction to kind of redo some artwork and. Or an art gallery there. The interesting part is they've been fine. They found. They found those mermaids everywhere. One of. One of our favorite restaurants in Norfolk, if you ever go back, it's named Blanca. Blanca. Blanca. Just great food.

Speaker A: Food.

Speaker B: But the chef, the, the. The, uh, the primary chef who works the line every day, he is also an artist. And they found one of these mermaids at the bottom of the river. And he's in the middle of. He's in the middle of restoring it right now.

Speaker C: That's hilarious. Yeah, it's. It's quite a spot. Uh, and m. So yeah, when I. When I saw that that's where your business is located and you teaching at Old Dominion, I'm like, oh, yeah, I got to have you on because if for no other reason to do a little, um, Norfolk talk and. Which we've done. Yeah. And the other. The other big news I just found out is Happy. Ah, Financial Literacy Month. April, I guess is funny if you celebrate it. I don't know how you celebrate this month, but. Happy Financial Literacy Month.

Speaker B: Isn't it ironic that Financial Literacy Month is the same month that tax returns are due?

Speaker C: That is interesting. I wonder if anybody thought that out intentionally.

Speaker B: Yes. You know, you know, that was very much. We also celebrate around the end of April or 1 May for most Americans. Tax Freedom Day. It's the day. It's the day where you start, uh, you get to keep what you make versus it all going to federal taxes, state taxes, Medicare taxes, Social Security taxes.

Speaker C: So I need Kid Freedom Day because even though I'm not paying it to taxes, I still can't seem to hold on to any of it because I still have children for the rest of the year.

Speaker B: Do you ever feel like you're just an ATM to your kids?

Speaker C: Always. And it's not even an atm. They don't know what that means. I'm just a Venmo. I'm just like, you know, I feel like, uh, a kind of financial resource, but never gets paid back. If I was the worst financial model possible, that would be what I am with my kids.

Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of like our national debt kinda.

Speaker C: Yeah. Except, you know, the federal government's allows to, uh, run on a national debt. Unfortunately, I've tried.

Speaker A: I'm not.

Speaker B: Gary David is not allowed to strike as many checks as he wants to.

Speaker C: I'm more like. I'm more like a state budget in that respect. I cannot carry a debt forward But

Speaker B: I need to be balanced.

Speaker C: It does. Well, what, what took you into this area of financial wealth management?

Speaker A: I mean, what was the attraction of it?

Speaker B: Um, I loved money.

Speaker C: It's a good reason.

Speaker B: Uh, it's, uh, and it comes to, it comes back to like a childhood story. And I'm not going to tell it, I'm not going to tell it in detail here because it's more of a. I mean I've told it so many times and if you want to hear that, you can just, just Google Mike Milligan cfp. It's everywhere on Google. But, um, I grew up in a, in a home where I did not know I was poor. I thought I was. I thought I was like every kid out there lived in a small town in uh, middle, in the middle of North Carolina. Uh, but my grandmother, when I was young, would take out the Texas Pete sauce and pennies and say, help me clean them. And I literally, I literally was taking decades of dirt and grime off of copper pennies and just that, that little act of like putting a penny in the middle of a saucer and putting some Tabasco sauce on it and then turning it over and seeing it made new again was, was a dramatic thing for, you know, me. It was really formula for it really helped formulate who I was going to be. Then when I got into my teens, my grandmother started a college sandwich business out of desperation. Not really because she had to, but because my grandfather, who was, owned a construction company, uh, got cancer and he can all work. So she had to start selling these things. Well, guess who was there to count Those dollar bills? $5 bills, $10, 20.

Speaker C: I was right.

Speaker B: And so I got fascinated with money. And then as I moved on through high school, I just knew I thought I was going to be a bank manager. Gary, to be honest with you, thought I was going to wear a suit and work in a bank. And I actually went to college with that in mind. But then, then I discovered what investments were. I discovered estate planning, I discovered what insurance was and this whole concept of retirement. And I'm like, I got to do that. So I literally, I went to college five years, got a master degree and uh, and then got some specialty degrees while I was, I was practicing. But I, I wanted to work with money and help people along that way. So that's how I ended up doing this.

Speaker C: It's uh. I just had this conversation with my sociology class today when we were talking about, um, one of the chapters they were coving had to do with global inequality and other forms of inequality. And I was talking about, you know, how much money do you need to actually be financially stable or secure? And I wasn't giving them a number, but I was just talking about in the abstract. And one of the things I mentioned was, for instance, how much do you think child care costs? Because we're talking about incentivizing having children. And you know, different countries have different incentivizations to help, you know, defray the cost or make it seem advantageous to have children. I said, the government can give me $1000, $2000, $5000 to have a kid. It's not going to pay for a kid. And then how much do you think it costs to have childcare? And they were shocked that at least in Boston it was around per year, 25 to $35,000 for childcare.

Speaker B: And yet they still all want to have 2.3 kids. Yeah.

Speaker C: Well, I do wonder about this generation. I'm kind, uh, of curious what your thoughts are about this since you teach at old DU and have your practice. Does this generation today, given the amount of debt that they might be taking on from college and the financial uncertainty of the prospective job market, do you see them thinking about their relationship with money differently or hopefulness this, or are they optimistic about saving or, or are they not thinking about it?

Speaker B: I, I don't think Gen Z's life goals are the same as what baby boomers life goals.

Speaker C: Right. That's what I was wondering.

Speaker B: And this is, and this is a, uh, it's fascinating, right, because there's, there, there's so many, there's so many parallels to like, how people get advice to how they, uh, to how they didn't live. And so we, if you look at like the generation before, like, what they did, generally the next generation will take it to the extreme. So like this whole idea of like, I don't know, repopulating the earth, you kind of knew that baby boomers, like, they're considered, they're baby boomers because the greatest generation, the generation before them, lived through two wars. And like, they, there was this whole concept that we had to put more humans on because we just killed all these humans.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: We are at a point in time where now, you know, we're peak 65. There's more people turning 65 in the US right now every day than there ever will be again, or at least in our lifetime. And actually the numbers will start going down in 2027. But you know, you know, where there's also a population shift that's occurring that's in our school systems.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Like there were, there were more kid in school. There were more, more kids in schools 20 years ago than there are today.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I mean, I mean look, look what's happening in the college environment. Right?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: I mean we see colleges shutting down because there's not enough kids.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And then when you put the AI element to it and then you put the debt element to it, like the, the changing economics. Um, that's a long answer to say is I think people like I have three kids and they're 28, 24 and 20. Uh, the 28 year old, when he got married five years ago, I believe they said, we'd like to have four or five kids. Well, here they are five years later and they have one and there's no conversation about a second one.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: There's definitely not a conversation about five anymore.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: My middle child, um, I mean she obviously is going slower than my generation did. As far as the dating scene she's had since she's 24 years old, she's had one boyfriend her whole life.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's just not, it's not a priority. Like to her, if she gets married by 40, she'll be happy.

Speaker C: It is wild. And as a sociologist, it's interesting, but also the impacts it has on, on financial markets and the economy because it's going to. And I. We do not have a plan in place. And no. Are, uh, there seem to be serious discussions as a country about what are we going to be doing about this? Because it's coming whether we talk about it or not. And we gotta start formulating some kind of response to what these changes are going to mean to our society as a whole.

Speaker B: Well, there's two areas where this like demographic change, right. These actual numbers of people are, it's, it impacts, uh, the oldest generations there. See, there's a. Social Security is a, is a system that's funded by current tax rates.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And right now, you know, we have like 2.7 or something like that. My data may be a little old, but we have like 2.7 workers. For every one person collecting Social Security by the year 2035 or 2034, it's going to be like one for one. The, the problem with that one for one model is somebody's earning, you know, $50,000 a year of Social Security. I'm not. That one is not paying $50,000 of Social Security tax. Well, that's a big problem. Well, the second problem is, is we got all these people with these huge McMansions and houses who, who are in their 60s and 70s, they're going to expect one day, or at least their kids are going to expect one day to sell those off. Well, you know, who's not going to be uh, able to buy their 20s and 30s.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And they're just going to be coming out of student loan debt and they're like, I'm not doing that again.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker B: I'm not going to get that big of debt. So there's some, couple big shifts that are going to happen in the U.S. um, and it's all going to be around money, but it's really around like demographics. One of the, one of the economic economists I follow is, uh, a guy named Harry Dent. Have you ever heard of Harry Dent?

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: He, he is a, um, Harry is, thinks the world is falling any day and he's one of these guys that the stock market needs to go down 97% today. Like it just needs to go down 97% if we're ever going to fix our country, the stock market needs to go down 97%. And he'll lay out all these reasons for doing them. But one hit, one of his core reasons for doing this, of him saying that we need a Great Depression is what he's saying is we need a great reset is what he's saying. I mean, we're obviously, our government is not going to let us fall into a Great Depression because they can print any money they want to.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So the time of having like a Great Depression is probably over. But what he's saying is we need a great reset because millennials have not had a chance to catch up to where their parents were at the same point in time and age. And like the generations that come after that Gen Z, I mean, they're struggling because they're holding on to some of the old concepts of borrow as much as you can for student loans. Yet the job market is now being replaced by AI. Some parts of the job markets are. And so there's, there needs to be at some point a great reset. We just don't know. We don't know when it's going to be.

Speaker C: What I love about this conversation is that, ah, it just continuously underlines for me the importance of people in finance and economics to know sociology. Because everything you're talking about is what we talked about in class today. I mean, not in all the specific details, but the higher level of demographics, population shifts, global inequality, you know, uh, you know, impacts of sustainability and climate change. All those topics were in my introduction to sociology class today.

Speaker B: Oh, and like my, and one of my favorite classes in college was sociology. Not necessarily. I mean the topic was interesting.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: The professor made it even more interesting. And, and that, and that, that is, and it's, it's a part, it's a, uh, the uh, thing about sociology is what people will say is that doesn't, that doesn't impact me. It's not me.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I'm different than that. Those stats over there, I am different. And it's true about any large scale movement that's out there. You can be different than all that. Right. If you know AI is going to impact us all, it's not going to impact me because I don't use AI. That's what somebody could say. I'm a plumber, it doesn't impact me. I'm an electrician, it doesn't impact me. Well, guess what, it's going to impact you. Right? Because the people who pay your bills are may all of a sudden for one, they find their own job. Right. Uh, as a kid, you know, not having more kids. I'll be 50 years old this year. Right. Uh, you know, the 20, 30 year old population not having kids. Well, that doesn't impact me. Well guess what? It does if I ever want Social Security, right?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Because if there's not enough people working and making taxes, well, the Social Security system's busted without their, them paying taxes. So like the, the, the, the, the, the, the overarching themes that occur, like when you understand society, they have a bigger impact on us than, especially in how we especially probably more so now than at any point in the past because we're so connected.

Speaker C: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, the more people see this from a systems perspective, all the interconnectedness of things, as is evidenced by the fact that as we record this, you know, the Strait of Hormuz is closed. Ish. And you know, I don't use the Strait of Hormuz, I don't live there. It just still impacts you because it's a globalized economy in which all these things are interconnected and what happens over there is going to likely have an impact over here.

Speaker B: And one of the, one of the things that came out on that today, which is interesting, is that airlines are going to start canceling flights because they could potentially run out of jet fuel in three weeks.

Speaker C: Well, thankfully I'm going to Florence, Italy in two days, so I should uh, make it under the wire.

Speaker B: What happens if you get stuck there? Think about that.

Speaker C: Well, would be worse places to get stuck. But I am supposed to go to London uh, in three weeks. So we'll see. I might have to start swimming or taking a freighter of some kind. But it goes to this point of. Because of the way that the world is globalized and interconnected, which is something that was being striven for or strove for that now we have to deal with the ramifications of that. That you just can't pull back and be isolated because the, you know, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Financial markets are already integrated, society is already integrated. And those, those macro level impacts are going to have uh, an effect on your micro level living.

Speaker B: Do you know what I think? You know what? I think all this really came into play. In my, my opinion. It was the day that two all beef patties, special sauce, pickles, lettuce, cheese on a sesame seed seed bun became a thing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because when that, when you, when you, when you made it so that everybody knew exactly the ingredients, you were putting on a burger and you still went and bought more of them. Billions and billions of them sold around the world. We basically just change marketing, change sociology. Right. We became even more connected. And so it's a, uh, and we're not going the other way. We're not going to disconnect and say societies again. We're not going to decentralize banks. We're not going to you know, uh, a barter system again unless there is this huge reset that occurs.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: In the world somewhere.

Speaker C: Well, it'll be interesting to see if and when that happens. But it says the stressors are there, let's put it that way. Where you know, and just hoping is not going to alleviate those stressors. It's going to take action. Which seems kind of hard right now, uh, given the state of things. But on things that we can control. I did want to talk about, I was very fascinated with your company's website because number one, there was dancing people on there on the One Oak Financial website, people looking happy. But then I scroll down and I see people in various states of anxiety. And I thought that I was kind of curious about that juxtaposition of as I scroll down, it's kind of like, you know, are you dismissed? Are you unprepared? Are you stressed? So can you walk me through how you envisioned that and who was speaking to.

Speaker B: Yeah. So up where, uh, you know, two of my favorite people in the world are dancing up top.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, they have, um, they're right next to a, to our, to our Brand, right? Main saying, a one of a kind financial plan for your one of a kind life. That's what it says at the top. It's a one of a kind financial plan. People happy. But what we find over and over, Gary, are people who are stressed, unprepared, and really anxious about what to do with money. And it's. We find that those people who are in those states are there. They're there intentionally, not because of what they did, but because of what other financial advisors or the system itself put them in. Okay, um, you know, we talked about, I mean, you know, you said it's Financial Literacy month, right? We're recording this, um, the, the chasm that's grown between the sophistication of products in the financial world and the literacy that people have about financial products. It's greater than it's ever been because Wall street, you know, advisors, they have, they're profiting more. Goldman Sachs just announced their earnings again. Most money they've ever made before on, uh, product lines that are more sophisticated than what me being somebody who's been in the industry for 30 years, even knows. I don't even know every way they make money, right? I've been to it. So imagine, you know, you know, my mom, um, and dad who maybe have a million dollars of their 401k, but they did it by putting some money in a 401k every two weeks in a paycheck, right? And now they're expected to know how to all of a sudden quit their job and create an income from. When do I claim Social Security? Well, what about taxes? What's this Medicare thing, right? This whole, this whole idea of we have become an uneducated financial world and that, that, and it shows up in stress and anxiety and fear. And like what we try to do, one OAK actually stands for one of a kind is what we try to do is treat everybody, uh, how they deserve to be treated. We, we try to educate first, then we try to coach. And then if we're, if they, if we are in enough alignment together, we will do all of their planning and implementing over that. And our, our firm doesn't need to work with 20 million Americans, right, like some firms do. We just need to find those who don't fit the mold of traditional financial advice. Those who are, are hidden behind, um, you know, um, you know, they're in their bed scared to death what to do about their future financially, yet they have more money than they ever need to live on. They just don't know what to do. With it. I mean, that's what our firm is there for, is we're there to relieve all those things you see as you scroll down the front page of the website. Because at the end of the day, uh, when someone is educated and they feel like there is a future path for them, uh, it does relieve that fear and stress and anxiety. And that's what we're just trying to do with our firm.

Speaker C: When you have the learning materials that you've created, I'm kind of curious from an educator's perspective, and you've taught in college as well, how much do you have to rethink the ways in which they're delivered to fit the learning styles of different generations, age groups, socioeconomic classes, things like that?

Speaker B: My, my research on this is still evolving. But like, and you know, if we were, if, if the whole ocean was everything I needed to know on the subject, like my toes are just in the water right, on this one. But the I, I believe that generations, generations reveal like how they want to be communicated to. Like for instance, m. Millennials, I think are a community building organization. Right. They want to, they want consensus on something. Right. Uh, that's why Reddit has taken off so much. I believe that, you know, um, Gen Xers are more of a tell me how to do it and I'll do it myself. They're like a Home Depot generation. And uh, Gen Z, I think is they just want to revolt from everybody. I think, you know, like there's studies out there like that say, and it's done by millennials. I mean, it's done by generations. And it says like, you know, if your parents, generation, if your, if your mom or dad passed away, would you retain the same advisors that your parents have? And the answers are overwhelmingly no.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker B: 87% said we would fire our parents advisor, uh, because there's no, there's no connection. They don't speak the same language and they don't, they don't share the same values that, uh.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker B: So we, we, we tried in our firm, we try to talk, we don't try to talk at our clients or our prospects, but we try to be family advisors to the whole generation and understand, to see, understanding from our standpoint is what others are saying about your generation true about you. So like as a 28 year old, are you really lazy? And uh, you're not growing? Because I don't, I don't find that when I speak to 27, 28 years old that they're lazy. I don't feel like what people cast on them as labels. I actually think that like they're trying their best, right, with what they know, just like we did when we were 27 and 28. But the labeling of all this, so we, so at the end we're just, I'm trying to learn like what sparks these generations and what, what engages them, what, what impact do they want to have? And it's uh, it's, it's fascinating what I'm uncovering the more I speak to people.

Speaker C: It is because one of the things that also marks this generation are, are the number of quote unquote influencers vying for their attention. Right. When I was growing up, when you were growing up, an expert was someone that had certain kinds of credentials and experience and that made them an expert because they were educated in a thing or they've been doing the thing for a long time. And today obviously an expert is anybody who creates a pithy TikTok video or YouTube video, regardless of whether or not they know what the hell they're talking about. And so I, I also, I also wonder to what extent for you because I've seen it in my field of just being a college educator. How much are you faced with reckoning with what's available online that passes for quote unquote, financial advice?

Speaker B: Um, it is uh, everything that's online is generally there to sell something.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It's very very product specific or very, very, very. My way is the best way.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, it, it because remember they're not, they're not speaking. It's a one to many marketing strategy. Remember the whole thing of TikTok and Instagram and all that is to get as many followers as possible. And they don't care if their followers are all the exact same in any way. They're just there to try to grow, influence it. So like a one to many marketing strategy is, is where a few people can profit off of it. But most people feel disappointed. They, you know, they're promised a dream and are delivered a nightmare type scenario. And I'm just, I find that, uh, I find that people who go and seek it out there. The reason by the way people go and follow things on TikTok and Instagram and they actually implement those things is because their lack of trust in the system.

Speaker C: Well, exactly right, yeah,

Speaker B: they, and they have, and they have been burned along the way and that's, that's why they go seek that and now they're just seeking an easy fix. I spoke to, I spoke to a guy today who was involved in a, um, in a crypto scheme that his wife lost $2.2 million.

Speaker C: Oh, good Lord.

Speaker B: Do you think they'll ever really trust a financial person ever again in their life? And they shouldn't. They shouldn't. By the way. I literally told them today, I was like, you should never trust me. And I'm fine, I'm fine with that. But what we got to do is we got to work you out of this hole you're in, right? And I will earn your trust, but it's going to be month by quarter, by year to do that. And it's interesting. I mean, I think we'll do some work with them, but that's a big thing to overcome. Is that much loss of trust in a system because of somebody taking money, money from you?

Speaker C: Did they get exposed to that from a financial planner that was, that was online? Was it a reputable person? It was just like, hey, buy, buy board 8nfts or something like that?

Speaker B: No, it was a person that was shown that. Okay, reputable because of like some tick tock, a Good website, a YouTube channel that had a ton of followers on it.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker B: And see, that's the thing about, right, like Gary, if I want to go out and start a YouTube channel right now and get a million followers, I could do that with a couple thousand dollars.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Like, I mean, you got to like, I can go out and get YouTube followers in India and Pakistan and Georgia and South Africa and it would look like I'm a YouTube sensation. Right? But uh, that's like the level of, the level of sophistication scammers go to today. Because scamming right now is, is a profession in and of itself.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's just, just where we are in, in the history of our world. But it's a, uh, I mean, people have been stealing from people for, for, since, since there was light on the world, but it's just become a, it's been, it's become, it's become the. One of the biggest professions that we. That's, that's out there right now.

Speaker C: It, yeah. And the, uh, it does raise that interesting question about, well, if I don't know who to trust, a safe option is to just trust nobody.

Speaker B: Correct the mattress theory.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Put everything under the mattress.

Speaker C: Yeah. And just, you know, that's why I asked the question about, you know, savings and I can work at a business school. So these kids are financially inclined and they all have finance classes. But I just wonder to what extent are they jaded even more than Gen Xs and I'm Gen X. And we were pretty jaded because of the circumstances in which they are emerging are so much more dire than even the ones that we had in the nineteen, late nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, remember the early nineteen nineties. There was. There was. You couldn't get a job.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I, uh, know it, but it's different, right? We. It. I mean, we. The educators who were educating them almost need to. We needed to do almost a better job of telling them how bad it was for us trying to get a job. Now, they won't believe us.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: They won't believe us. But. But, I mean, could you imagine, like, trying to get a job? Like, right now, somebody coming out of college right now can go on to. Indeed. Or LinkedIn or whatever, and they could find it. I mean, my daughter, when she came out of college, she's 24 years old, she graduated number one in her business school for the University of Lynchburg, where she played four years of college soccer. She had one job opportunity when she came out of school, and it was in Birmingham, Alabama, that crazy.

Speaker C: Good Lord.

Speaker B: Lynchburg, Virginia, to Birmingham, Alabama. And, uh, and she took it because she knew she needed to start somewhere. Well, she loves Birmingham, Alabama. Like, loves it. I don't know if she'll ever move there.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: That means got to be something magical that takes her out of there. But, like, that's an advantage that this generation has that we did not have. We were looking in, you know, the back of a newspaper.

Speaker C: Right, Right.

Speaker B: You know, trying to send out emails. Right. Because we didn't even know how emails really worked, trying to send them out. Right. We were mailing resumes out, different play. There's. There's opportunity today. You just got to know that there's more opportunity. But sometimes where there's more opportunity, there's also more confusion.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: That's. That. That's kind of what's happening in this generation of college students right now is, um, you know, like we told you what we talked about, where there's lack of trust in a system, you'll just put money up under a mattress. Mattress. Where there's. Where there's too many options. The brain cannot process them, and you'll just go to the default. I have no opportunities.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, one. In terms of the opportunities, one of the things I was interested in our previous conversation, I was just kind of wreck. I don't know why I didn't have this realization before today.

Speaker A: I kind of did, but it didn't stick.

Speaker C: So much of college is predicated on studying what has happened already or what is happening now. There's almost nothing about futures insights and strategy. There's almost nothing about not predicting, but just trying to imagine different alternative futures and what might happen in the future.

Speaker A: I wonder why we failed in that capacity of teaching people how to have

Speaker C: these kinds of foresights and future strategies, perspectives.

Speaker B: Well, the people who come out with, uh, with um, futuristic ideas on this, they're looked at weird.

Speaker C: Oh, for sure, right.

Speaker B: And so, um. And what. The thing that we've tried, we've normalized in college is to take the weird out of it. We tried to. Right. Well, we have to, I mean, being bold, right, in saying this is, these are some possible outcomes here for the future. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, uh, if I was dealing, if I was working in a, in a college advisory department right now and somebody came in and said, I want to be pre law, I would say, can we really think about this?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I mean, look at what AI is doing. I mean, if somebody came in and said, I wanted to be a cpa, a tax preparer, I'd be like, can we look at this? And just by the time you graduate college and get your master's degree or get your law degree, what will AI have evolved into?

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker B: By that standpoint. Now, I'm not, I'm not. I wouldn't tell people this from a standpoint to try to scare them from following and doing that. I would just want to give them some caution. Right? Because I mean, imagine, you know, four years undergrad, three years of law school, $400,000 of college, total debt later, and you can't get an entry level degree in law, uh, at uh, a law firm.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Because it's all done. That would be, that'd be awful. And so I just think it's about having the conversation. I don't think there's anything wrong with, you know, looking out to the future and maybe, you know, telling people what they could see, what's on the horizon. Remember, most, most freshmen, if they're going to get some level of advanced degree, it's a decade away before they're really making money.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: There's nothing wrong with telling them what it's going to look like a year, 10 years. The problem is you could end up turning off potential students.

Speaker C: And this kind of makes me think about what there's in common between financial advising and education is that we're both trying to prepare people for the future and there needs to be a certain level of Honesty about what that future might be. So that if a person comes in and says, I want to go to law school, you're like, eh, uh, or I want to be a cpa. It's not to at least be honest and not just, yeah, yeah, come on in. There'll be plenty of jobs in the future. This is one of the issues about PhD programs. Why are you accepting more people for academic jobs when there are fewer and fewer academic jobs? Because then they end up graduating people who can't find jobs. The ethics of helping them see a future that is possible.

Speaker B: And if we were to do that, right. I don't want to get you in trouble.

Speaker C: You can get me in trouble. I'm always in trouble.

Speaker B: It's okay if we did that, if we told the truth, right? If we did things that were in the best interest of the future generations, we could change future generations instead of staying in the status quo. And so, I mean, I, I, the people that, you know, there's a reason there's very few Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, right. Uh, there's a, there's, there's very few of them because of, like, the risk they had to take because of what they saw in the future. I mean, Jeff Bezos wasn't going out to try to create the biggest online retailer in the world. He just wanted to be the best bookseller online.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker B: That, you know, Steve Jobs was just trying to get the MacBook. Right. You gotta remember when he was, when they were developing all this, there were companies called Compaq, Hewlett, Packer, IBM, Dell. Right. The list can go on. You know, Apple was way below them in the list.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: He just wanted to innovate. He wanted to create something better through technology. He wanted to think differently. If you remember their campaign from the.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker B: They just want to see that, that level of radical thinking. Right. For every Steve Jobs, there's a, uh, thousand people who failed trying to do what he did. Right. For every Bezos, right. There's an eToys.com. right. That failed along the way. For every Elon Musk, right. There's thousands and thousands of people with arrows in their back. Right? But, you know, at the university, we have to, we have to try to promote that level of thought. Right? Because the world being the problems facing the world, you know, this because of what you teach, the problems facing the world need solutions. And this is the generation that's going to start providing many of those solutions. Because if we don't get solutions soon the world's world's going to continue going down a path, that it's going to become more and more unrecognizable.

Speaker C: I definitely think that going to this point, the idea of doing things business as usual in a world that is no longer as usual is a, uh, very failed strategy. And this is one of the frustrations I have with academia, is let's continue to do things as we have always done them and then wonder why people don't view us as being more relevant. Well, that's because you're living in the past and not living in the future.

Speaker B: That's right. That's exactly right.

Speaker C: And that actually raises the thing I want to talk to you about, about your future book on podcasting. What drew you to be interested in trying to develop a book about the power of this medium and why people should pay more attention to it as a force rather than just as a hobby?

Speaker B: It is, um, this thing that is in front of us right now, these microphones, these are the most powerful tools in, for my sake, the financial industry, for your sake, teaching and education. This is the most powerful tool. Now, the interesting part about podcast is, um, AI has consumed a ton of information, websites, printed material. But what it has not consumed yet is our mind, our ability to think. And one of the things that podcasting allows us to do and I, and I, I don't view AI as this great is it's like us versus them, us versus it.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Um, I think AI is probably the solution, not the problem for the future. I think it eventually will create jobs and create new mediums and do things that we've never thought about, possibly because it could take our thoughts that we put out in the open and it can combine those of other people and it's going to put people together in the future to solve problems. And so podcasting is a mechanism to help solve problems. Because there's a lot of people I've met over times, like being guest on podcast. You know, there's people that maybe listen to your podcast and say, I'd like to talk to that guy about, right? I have literally had hundreds of conversations, maybe getting close to a thousand over my three years of guesting on podcasts. I also host a podcast, but over three years of guesting on podcasts, I may have had close to a thousand conversations with people. Some are 15, some are 30, some have become clients, some that we have collaborated. Bigger picture on things. But this is a podcast to where, uh, podcasting is a way to socialize, right. Or to Start an interaction that we used to do at a bar.

Speaker C: Right. It's a third. It's a third place. Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And this, this is also. This is also an attraction mechanism also too, by the. By the way, you know, you could, you could. Pretty clearly, in the context of listening to podcasts, we are, we are all doing multiple things at one time, right. I'm running on the treadmill. I'm listening to a podcast. I'm also, you know, watching the news, the ticker tape on the news, on the tv while I'm all on working now. But the podcast is where I can hear interesting thoughts and perspectives of really powerful people.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: We're in a world now where we don't have to have this one central figure telling us what to do. We can learn as a collective by. From many people learning different thoughts. I think podcasting is where we're also going to come together in the future.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, there are podcasts on every topic imaginable, and I've been on most of them. Right. I've been on a, ah, veterinarian. A veterinarian's life coaching podcast.

Speaker C: Okay. Is that life coaching for dogs or other veterinarians or just, uh, for people in general that you.

Speaker B: It's all three of those.

Speaker C: Okay, great.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: I need that.

Speaker B: I've been on. I've been on a podcast called for the Love of Chiropractic.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: He's a great host, by the way. But you know who he talks to? Chiropractors.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: Right. And I mean, and they need to be around each other because they're learning. I've been on. Yeah, I've been on. I've been on a yoga podcast, right. Where it's a podcast that we talk very slow, that people listen to while they're doing yoga. Intriguing, right? But there's, there's as much as. We are all one of a kind, we're unique out there. Podcasting is our form of entertainment. It's also our form of education. It's a form of continuing to build on the skills that we know we need. That's why I think it's that, that. That's why I think it is going to be. I, I think it's growing. There's more podcasts growing now, but I think it's going to continue to grow over the next decade or so.

Speaker C: Well, it's a good time to have this conversation after I was just told by someone today that, uh, you know, the 52 podcast episodes I launch a year, um, are not as necessarily as impactful as one or two academic articles published a year. And I went, that's insane. But okay, you know, because again, it's that old kind of outdated thinking that, you know, somehow the one or two academic articles have greater impact than having podcast conversations. And it's just living in the past and not reckoning with the current moment and what the needs are to stay relevant.

Speaker B: I mean, where's somebody going to go hear you? Are they going to go to scholar.google.com

Speaker C: no, they can't go to Apple, and they can't even. They can't even get those articles because they're buying a paywall that might cost, like, you know, 50 bucks to download one article, and then they're going to have to find the time to read it. And so. But going back to the point of future thinking and being innovative, uh, you know, what's the phrase? A, uh, profit is never appreciated in their homeland. You know, it's. You got. It's outside of that space where people can appreciate what innovative ideas one has because in one's homeland, in one's home discipline, home industry, it's hard to be accepted for being different.

Speaker B: Um, I think, I think Duke University was probably recognized as one of the more echelon of universities.

Speaker C: It's a good one.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. Uh, I got a friend down there, and his name's Campbell Harvey. He's a. He's a finance. He's a. He's. I don't know if he's the chair of finance or he's just a finance professor. One of the two genius, by the way. Uh, he just launched a podcast, right? And at. At Duke, it was, it was like, frowned upon until. Until numbers started rolling in.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: On how many people actually wanted to hear him talk about his economic theory of what's going on in China, what's going on with crypto, what's going on with gold. And now, you know what they want to do. They're like, oh, we need to get somebody here to write, to produce this and do this. And the answer to that is no. Meet people where they are and give them the information they need. It doesn't have to be overly produced to do that. This is, by the way, a form of sharing academic insight. Podcasting is in my industry, right. In the financial services industry. My primary industry, financial services is, um, you used to have to walk down the street to find a financial advisor or a financial planner. Now I can literally from Puerto Rico or Norfolk. When I'm there, I could talk to somebody in Seattle or Montana or Hawaii, Alaska. This tool, the microphone, is the most powerful tool to get information out, to educate people and coach people, but it's also the most most powerful tool for actually helping people get major life decisions met. And uh, the influence of podcasts is only going to grow, right? It's not going to get smaller.

Speaker C: How do you think? One of the last questions I have is the challenge of discoverability. Um, if more podcasts are coming out and all these information channels are available and they're accessible to everybody, what do you see as the challenge and the solution to being able to stand out amongst all of those conversations?

Speaker B: You know, whatever you think, like let's say for instance, your podcast, whatever you think, like your major topic is, you should go to AI, like probably one of the AI aggregators too, by the way. Maybe like Perplexity. Not necessarily going direct to what, like Gemini or. And just say, uh, I have a podcast on. And whatever your major topics are and saying, how do I gain more visibility from you, from you, the AI search engine.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And see what they say. Right? Because the, the whole idea of like, I mean, you see numbers all the time on people's, you know, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest podcasting platform. M. You know what that is?

Speaker C: What's that?

Speaker B: YouTube.

Speaker A: Oh, right, right.

Speaker B: Yeah. Most people, I mean, like, see, see how, See, when I say it, it's just like common sense. Right?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: But like in your head you're thinking, is it Spotify, is it Apple, iHeart, whatever? It's YouTube. Right? Because that's where people go to learn how to get stuff done. And they typically go there, by the way, when their life is in crisis. They, they, they typically don't go there like just to learn. They go when they're in crisis and they're trying to find, but they're trying to find an answer to a problem they have. But the, the interesting thing about YouTube is it's just an algorithm that leads people to you. So if you search in Google, YouTube comes up as well. The solution. So the, the how you, how you get found is, you know, we all say at the end of a podcast, if you liked what you heard today, please subscribe and like, and share your share with your friends. Right? But the, the number, the reason we all say that is because very few people do that.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: So I mean like how we get there is you build an audience or you collaborate on audiences. Right? So I mean, that's one of the reasons I Google podcast is so I can help people's profile go up because when this goes live, we're going to share it to our followers. Our 18,000 people on Instagram, all of our people on YouTube, our Facebook, our 30,000 people on LinkedIn. And they. And you know what I've done with there is I have a lot of people say thank you. They start listening to new podcasts that will help them in life. You know, my podcast is not for everybody, right? It's not because we have conversations about money. And that's not for everybody because it freaks some people out. But other people love the podcast I've been on. And just the. You know what it's about, like some, some life coaching, some yoga, some's dogs, right? Subscribe, practicing all these different topics that are there.

Speaker C: This should be a podcast that combined all of them together. So a, uh, yoga, chiropractic podcast for dogs to save money.

Speaker B: Don't give my ideas out.

Speaker C: Ah, uh, sorry, I can edit that out.

Speaker B: Oh, thanks. Well, actually, you can't, because you know what the name of my podcast is? It's Ideas by Mike.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: That's what those are things that we talk about in our podcast. We talk about crazy ideas that people have.

Speaker C: I love that.

Speaker B: I mean, we talk about real stories. But then, like, I always generally ask a guest, like, you know, what's. Like, I'll ask you, like, what's the craziest idea you've ever had in your life that you never did?

Speaker C: Well, I had a crazy idea today. I was talking with my students about the fact that society, the American society, have more older people at the top than younger people at the bottom. I said, so there's two solutions to this. One is to try to get more younger people in through immigration. The other solution is just to start killing older people. And they couldn't, they couldn't argue with that logic because the logic's pretty sad.

Speaker B: Both are very controversial topics.

Speaker C: I think so, but. But both would achieve the same goal. Then I tell them about the movie Logan's Run, and of course they never heard of that movie. Movie. I'm like, did you.

Speaker B: Did you tell. Now listen, if that, if that kid had your class right away and then they went to the history class right after that, and they're, they're talking about like World War I and the Nazi Germans. You know, how, you know, how messed up you guys made that kid today?

Speaker C: I, uh. Well, I never claim to not. I think that's the role of sociology is to cause people to be moderately disturbed, but to at least have a greater awareness it's kind of like the allegory of the cave. You know, sure, I take them out of the cave and they no longer see the shadows, and it's painful, but at least they can see what the outside world looks like. And I did, just to be fair, I did not encourage them to start killing old people. I just said it was one way to correct the math and the ratio.

Speaker B: Thanks for. Thanks for. Thanks for correcting that.

Speaker C: No worries. But you asked me about crazy ideas. Like, that's a pretty crazy one, you

Speaker B: know, it's pretty crazy.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, but then we also talked about. You could talk about Eskimo, uh, you know, groups where the old people might go out into an ice floe, or we talk about, you know, the end of life care and how much it costs. And at what point do people no longer seek to prolong life or do not resuscitate orders or what values do we have as a society? And what do we think is important in terms of how we meet these challenges? So it was a crazy, ridiculous idea to make the larger point of, uh, policy is action taken by people to meet challenges. And as a society, we define who we are through the policies that we enact. And it says a lot about us as a people and how we want to be remembered for by future generations.

Speaker B: Yeah. So by the way, you asked me something about my. My podcasting. Right. This book. And that book is going to be released in, uh, who knows? It's going to be. It's going to be released midsummer. It's just called Amplify. And we're doing, uh, we're doing so much work to like, try to bring this profession of podcasting out there because it is, um, it is. It is something people's voice need to be heard.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, uh, and this is the. The great thing about podcasting is when the. And this is the last thing I'll say about podcasting is we did not argue once on here. We didn't throw somebody at the bus. Right. We also didn't, um, we're also. We could disagree on a topic and politely. Right. Still move on. Right, Right. But it maybe have changed the thought just a little bit along the way. And I think this is the. I think this is the place where we're going to start solving some of our greater problems in the future.

Speaker C: Well, I have a great. I have a great cover maybe for it. So we take that famous Norman Rockwell painting of the gentleman standing up in the. In the town hall, speaking. Uh, but we have him with a microphone because it is essentially the way for people's voices to be heard by our larger population in public and to have opportunities, as you said, for those dialogue, that dialogue to take place. That's not really happening as much anymore because we are not in these third spaces to the extent we have been. So this is the third space of the public school square, of the agora, of the place where ideas are exchanged and shared in a respectful way.

Speaker B: Man, I love how you put that.

Speaker C: I forgot exactly what I said, so I'm glad I'm recording.

Speaker B: Pull that quote off this podcast and throw it in my book.

Speaker C: It's yours, it's yours. Well, I. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat. I knew we were going to cover a lot of different areas, from mermaids to podcasting to financial services. But you know what? I see them as all kind of tied together. It's all about leaving your mark in a way that leaves the world a better place and using the technology and the tools that we have available and providing some artistry along the way.

Speaker B: I cannot disagree with your summary there.

Speaker C: Well, thanks so much, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Yeah, Gary, it's been a blast.

Speaker A: M Foreign. I want to thank Mike Milligan for joining me to talk about financial literacy, financial planning experiences, podcasting and education and Norfolk. Remember folks, that's not Norfolk, that's Norfolk. You can find out more about his work and his company in the links in the show notes. You can also share feedback about this episode or any episode@feedbackperiencexdesign.com you know I

Speaker C: love to hear from you.

Speaker A: Thanks for folks who have sent in their feedback and if you haven't, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. And you know who you are. And if you want to subscribe and stay on top of all the EXT news, which includes the UNW book, very exciting. And the UNWOW movement. Head over to Experience X Design.com and put in your email. I'll make sure you are in the loop and have all the latest breaking news about EXD and the unwow. And while you're there, if you want to support the cost of the podcast, you can always buy me a coffee. I always appreciate your contributions, no matter how big or how small. And no contribution is too small. I'll take anything. And as you get ready to plan your next corporate event, keynote or professional development and training and you need a speaker with humor, insight, charisma, and who is easy to work with, make sure you consider me Gary David, you know me from the podcast, but now you can have me in person or virtual, which is kind of in person, but a little bit different. Check out my speaking profile@garyconnects.com you can choose topics from a wide array of things, including workplace community development, employee and customer centric cultures, achieving belonging in your organization, and the unwow. So shoot me a message@garyaryconnects.com or DM me through LinkedIn. And with that, as always, be safe, be kind, be well, and be here for the next experience. By design. Bye.