Practical Strategies for Thriving Amidst Disruption With Chad Blackburn

Speaker A: Welcome to the Level up podcast, where

Speaker B: finance leaders share real stories, insights and

Speaker A: connections that move them forward. Tune in to learn, sharpen your edge, and level up together. All right, Nick Orocco here, host of Level up and founder and CEO of CFO Alliance. Okay, this is not another boring podcast. This is Level Up. We're the most forward thinking leaders in business, in finance, in operations, from the CFO alliance community and beyond. Come to share what it really takes to lead in today's. Um. This is an understatement. Unpredictable world. Each episode I have the pleasure to sit down with CFOs, with finance and operating executives, and leaders of all types across business and industries. Leaders who I and you come to believe are redefining what leadership is all about by stepping up, leaning in, and leveling up. Uh, these are not theory driven interviews at all. They're raw, they're real, and they're packed with insights you can use. Past guests of Level up have included, uh, what I call power players like Andrew Platt, like Albert Ramos Jr. Phoebe Bishop, Justin Norton, who I just spent time with yesterday in Denver, Colorado. Visionaries like Alana Esterich I spent time with last week in Tampa, Aaron Wilkins from Southern California, who I was just with a few weeks ago, and Tracy Williams, my dear friend, who I get to see in Houston, uh, when I travel there. So if you're a finance leader, an operations leader, navigating change, challenge or opportunity, this is your podcast. Okay. I have a special treat for you friends. Today I'm joined by Chad Blackburn. Some leaders adapt to change. Others challenge the assumptions that created the status quo in the first place. Uh, so that's why I'm excited to sit down with Chad because he's a leader, asked tough questions about AI, education, talent, on the future of work. While most executives are still debating whether change is actually happening, you're going to hear from Chad in just a moment what he's doing about it. Not debating it, do it. But I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that Level up, this podcast series is brought to you by Oracle netsuite, the number one cloud ERP trusted by thousands of high growth finance led companies from around the world. NetSuite gives CFOs and finance leaders and their teams real time visibility, automation and control across their financials, operations and planning, and so they can lead with confidence and scale, with speed. Oracle netsuite is a proud and longtime global partner to the CFO alliance, supporting our shared mission of empowering finance leaders to drive strategy, build resilient, teams and deliver next level impact. So if you're serious about building a modern finance function that keeps pace with your business, NetSuite is your platform. M over 1500 CFO alliance members are currently running their businesses and on NetSuite. Join them and learn more at netsuite. Com. Okay, so lal, let me dive in. You know, listeners that I do not use AI to write my intros of my guests. So this was yesterday as I'm flying home from Denver. I got to spend time with Chad a few weeks ago sitting next to me. Okay. But now I also did a little deeper dive. So uh, this is what I wrote about him. Okay. So I get the opportunity as CEO of CFO alliance to learn something new every day and learn from so many different people. The people I enjoy learning from most aren't academics. They're also not influencers, they're not professional keynote speakers. Uh, they're operators, they are builders, they're investors. People who've spent years making decisions when there weren't playbooks. That's why I'm excited to have Chad Blackburn join me today and join you. Chad has spent his career around high growth companies, healthcare innovators, emerging, uh, technologies, capital markets, AI and digital assets. He's worked with founders, investors, executives and boards during periods of growth disruption and uncertainty. In a world where everyone seems to have a prediction about the future, Chad is somebody who's actually placing bets on it. He's in it, he's around it and he's talking about it and he's willing to share. I watched him do it in person in a room where people were like a little earlier and kind of like, tell me, but maybe afraid to ask. And he said, let me show you and let me show you comfortably. I'm looking forward to exploring what he's seeing, especially around AI, what he's questioning and where he believes the biggest opportunities are emerging for leaders willing to challenge conventional thinking. So Chad, welcome to Level up all.

Speaker B: Uh, right, Nick, a handwritten intro. Now that, that is Artesian. I love it.

Speaker A: Well, I mean it's, it's like a lost art now isn't.

Speaker B: Sure is it? Sure is. Mhm.

Speaker A: So Chad, now we're gonna go. This is my traditional. We gotta go back in time and we gotta, we gotta begin with the Chad story. So, so when I say, where does the Chad story begin? What's the first thing that comes to mind that you want to share with us?

Speaker B: The Chad story begins getting pulled out of class in elementary school to go fix the computers for the Teachers. Right. I gravitated to it for some reason. There's a part of my brain, even though I'm not a professional engineer, there's a part of my brain that is geared to be attracted towards engineering tools and engineering problems and problem solving. And that has been something that, um, has driven a lot of my curiosity over the years.

Speaker A: Yeah, so like that spark, it probably initially scared you a little bit too. I mean, excited you, but scared you. I mean, just roll up your sleeves and you dive right in. But that diving right in has now changed to all of us having to dive right in. It's uh, a force. There's like no sitting on the sidelines though. But there's also so much noise, Chad. And I think that's what's really scaring us. We don't know where to look, how to prioritize, and how to steer not only ourselves but, but as leaders everywhere around us. So let's start with your philosophy and approach towards calming down the noise. That's really where I really look to someone like you to provide our listeners with some guidance. How do you do that in this day and age?

Speaker B: So I think first thing you've got to recognize is that we are going through a business epoch right now. This is, uh, it's transformational, it's big and it's happening whether you like it or not. And this, um, is one of those things that you can't ignore, ignore. Um, and it changes the way you interact with your clients, with your technology tools. Anything else that you have built out over the years is now up for reevaluation. So as a part of that, how do we start thinking through any type of changes, big changes that we might make in our business. And I don't know that it's that different, but I think the fact that this is so technical in nature, uh, people naturally want to give this decision making process to the IT department. It would make sense. Right? They should know the, they should know the most about, about AI. Right. They're the ones that told me that about training. I didn't even know. Right.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: But if you're letting it, if you're, if you are steering your AI enablement or your AI transformation, if you're indexing off of anything other, then how do we support the essence of how we deliver value as a business and a team? You're approaching it from the wrong direction. And in this situation, specifically in this business epoch, specifically, your IT department is your vendor. They're there to support you. But you as the business leader need to be driving this from a strategic perspective, not from a technical perspective, but really examining how do we deliver deliver value and what are the required steps leading up to that. What's our workflow? And really considering that each step in that workflow is up for grabs. Is it a candidate for automation? Is it a candidate for offshoring? Was it something that we had offshore before but now need to give the automation? Should we give it to a SaaS tool? Should we hire an employee? All of these things are evaluateable at a different level because AI is a, is the greatest research tool ever. Right. It's what you, uh, need to be in the moment that you're using it. And we're going to use AI to help us understand and reinforce how we deliver value and then how we dissect our workflow as we look at what is actually something that we should replace with AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that you use the word value because it's something that we as finance leaders can and should feel most comfortable anchoring the foundation for what we need to protect and, or drive and, or increase and or own responsibility for.

Speaker B: Economic signal is a clean signal.

Speaker A: Uh, yes, yes. And if we anchor on that, uh, the pathways and the action plans and the people and processes that we can lean into and, and direct and bring people along with are not foreign to us, then they're. There's similarities to anything we've done in the past then too. And it's not something new. It's just, it's just application of it in a different spectrum.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But yet, yet for so many. And I'll give you, uh, I'll give you. I'm going to give you a real time and maybe you can unpack this because it becomes real. Let's talk tangible. Right? That's what we're known for in the CFO Alliance. So yesterday I'm in Colorado and one of our newest members came into the room because we're the safe place. Right? Nobody goes, you know, nobody selling books, nobody using consulting jargon, um, no experts. Right. We're all there helping each other along, meeting people where they are in their journey. And new CFO alliance member walks in. Very complex, complicated, global nonprofit with operations on every continent. And she as cfo, said, I'm here because I want to enable our nonprofit to operate at what's much better performance so that we can execute on our mission at a much greater, greater level than we can. And AI can enable that. I know that. Here's where we are today. 440 different technologies m interwoven into our operations and our people and process and culture interwoven into that, creating both inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in some ways that can be untangled.

Speaker B: Ooh, all the bad things, right?

Speaker A: All the bad things that can be untangled. And I as cfo, have that opportunity now, because of the advancements in AI and technology, to untangle this.

Speaker B: Oh yes, me.

Speaker A: Help me undo this. But where do I begin?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Was her big question to the room of 24 other peers she had there.

Speaker B: Oh yes. Oh buddy, this is a good one. I would love to have this one as an engagement because we're going to, first off, we're going to reiterate the place where you begin is your mission, how you deliver value. Obviously it's a nonprofit, but I'm sure it has an invoiceable moment, the moment when the money changes hands. And that is your North Star. So how do we support that? The best way we possibly can. And then what she's going to do is she's going to start interviewing everybody that's involved in that effort and understanding their supply chain. And as she gets into this, she's going to realize that there's things that we can research about our industry and tools and best practices. And then there's things that our team has written down. Sops, workflows, uh, a list of all 40 systems and what versions there are. But then there's the expertise that lives in the team members heads, the implied expertise. And you know, we might think that we've got workflows written down, but when I have somebody show me their process, the amount of times we have to stop and back up because somebody just went, uh, right. Exactly right. It's the whole point. Apprenticeships and internships exist. It's because, uh, the applied expertise that's in an expert's head is virtually impossible to write down because we don't even know that we do these things. And so getting as much of that written down and understanding those processes that support our North Star is where you start. And of course AI is the perfect tool because you can consume as much information as you want, you can digest it and still it out. Heck, she could probably even say, hey, give me a drawing of what all of this looks like. Now that we've got our, our whole picture right, give me a drawing of where our starting point was. And now give me a drawing of where we are now that we've got all the details. And at that point then we can start to see obviously this is where we're going to start. And we're going to start by connecting System one and System two, and we're going to start by connecting the teams account for country number one and country number two. And instead of two different walled gardens with two different Microsoft contracts, by the way, we're going to call our rep. Because they should have solved this already. Right, right. And so until you know where you are on the map, you're not going to know which direction that North Star.

Speaker A: Uh, how. So, so how do you. One of the. One of the other conversations that we had yesterday was about trust. And if you have the trust, protecting it. But if you have to strengthen and build that trust, what tactics and tools you can utilize to, especially during this effort to enable and strengthen that trust, what's working for you, uh, with people in this effort? Because it's a human game. We've all, as a community, agreed enough with the, uh. This is meant to replace us. No, this is meant to lift us, empower us, and actually in some cases help us strengthen relationships amongst us as humans working together. What's working for you in terms of strengthening relationship? Because we all have varying degrees of ability to embrace change. That's what makes us human. You have to recognize that my ability to embrace change may be different than yours, than the person that I'm working with or for. But what tactics work well in this effort in terms of ensuring that the trust component from the human to human factor is addressed and a component that a CFO or finance leader can utilize to ensure that that piece to it is handled appropriately.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. Um, and, you know, I think the example that we should anchor on here is the concept that robots are going to come take our jobs. If you go to my LinkedIn, you'll see that I did a post a couple of weeks ago about this exact thing. I actually had my agents do a huge research project and I told it to go find articles that talked about when, uh, I go find articles. When did Excel version 1 come out? And it was like, it gave me the date and I was like, find articles in that area where people declared that, you know, the CFO is no longer necessary or this is going to get rid of accounting. And then I was like, when did QuickBooks, like really become a tool that you could like DIY with? Right. Go find articles that sell doom and gloom. And I aggregated these things and created a LinkedIn post on it. And so I think the thing to address is, are robots coming for my job? And if I actually sit down and we talk about my workflow. Are you going to use this against me and are you going to fire me? Are you trying to get me to tell you how to get a robot to replace my job? And I think it's important for people to understand that if you listen to the doom and gloom that the media is paid to sell, you are going to completely miss the upside. I think Steve Jobs said it best, right? It is a bicycle for the mind. Right? Everybody seen him do the presentation about the efficient use of energy and how, you know, the human walking was like the least efficient. And he had all the different animals, the California Condor, so. And then he said, give the human a bicycle and boom. Instantly, instantly at the top, above the California Condor soaring, right. It is a bicycle for the mind. This is the exact same concept. And, uh, one of the most beautiful things about this is that when you actually start to look at what is my North Star that we're collectively delivering, uh, on as a company or that we're. That I'm responsible for as a team member, and then I start to dissect all the administrative efforts, I can start to actually look at these different administrative stops and start to resent them. Oh, my God. This thing is stealing from my ability to deliver on our North Star. Oh, my God. Of course I'm going to give this to the robots, because guess what? It's robot work.

Speaker A: Uh, yes.

Speaker B: Give the robot work to the robots and do the thing that they can't do and sit down for five minutes and figure out what that is.

Speaker A: You're so right. You know, yesterday in Denver, Kate Daniels from Oracle netsuite used a perfect example. And she said she had to put together a very important presentation. And she used the tools available to her that had never been available to her before. And that presentation took seven minutes instead of four hours. And her first thought in the past would have been, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be out of a job. And instead it was, oh, my gosh, I now have three hours and 53 minutes to do more impactful, valuable work, which means I'm going to be able to do more impactful, valuable work for the enterprise. I lead and serve. I just became more valuable to the company. I lead and serve, not less valuable. Bingo.

Speaker B: Bingo. We can only make so many decisions in a day. There's only so much stuff we can do in a day.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it, uh, like right there, it's like, it's empowering, it's enabling m and also allows you to marry passion towards Those goals too.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Instead of that eye rolling of I wish I had more time to do what I want to work on because I hate doing the stuff I am working on.

Speaker B: Bingo. You know, I know we're primarily talking to CFOs, but I mean, a lot of the accounting industry is focused on compliance.

Speaker A: Right, I know, I know.

Speaker B: And, uh, you know, I think the expectation in the compliance element of the accounting industry was that when digital accounting really hit, that it would go ahead and take care of the parts of accounting that people hate. And I think that we are, it took 20 years, but we're finally there. But you see it in the numbers. You see it in the 30% drop in students, not accounting. You see it in the fact that a, uh, material percent of compliance that are at the partner level are more than five years past retirement age. So you have got pressure from both sides because nobody wanted to do it. The only thing they hear about in the finance world are the parts that nobody wants to do. And guess what? We, uh, finally don't have to do them. We can give them to a set of tooling that is far more accurate and provides us and serves our ability to deliver value and unlock value and research new ways that we can figure out how to deliver value. Right. If you're not spending energy on busy work and work that just, you know, should be given to robots, I can come up with new ideas. And of course now I have the greatest ideation tool ever invented. The cost of ideation just went through the floor. Oh, he dropped.

Speaker A: Right? That's absolutely right. Yes. The intellectual curiosity, the critical thinking, uh, the analysis or analytical skills of the accountant. Now, because of our passion and desire to understand basis, the qualifiable, quantifiable driver we have to understand basis can now be unleashed combined with intellectual curiosity and critical thinking that we didn't have time for because we were mired in the processing side of accounting.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. So much so, uh, so much so. In one of the organizations that I'm a part of, it's kind of the, the stealth part of what my LinkedIn says.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, we even recognize that, oh my goodness, like our ability for our team members to keep their heads on a swivel and find new revenue streams and actually those flesh those out and even present them to us in a way that makes it easy for us to understand. We decided to lean into that hardcore. And if you're a team member and you invent a new revenue stream, you get to, you get to keep a part of that Revenue.

Speaker A: That's awesome.

Speaker B: And so future. That's right. So inside the company you now have a entrepreneurs, you've got a client base, a ready made client base that very well might want to pay you for that idea. And then the rest of team members, you now have a built in sales team.

Speaker A: Yeah. See how it is? So to me it is the great lift, the great enabler instead of the disabler. Yeah.

Speaker B: We are about to see things and be surprised by new ideas and new ways to make money and the amount of small businesses that are going to be uh, schooled up for things that we never even thought of.

Speaker A: You know it's so funny because it's counter to the, it's counter to all the concerns people have about will this mean that the next generation is going to skip all the hard stuff by. Because they're going to miss all of what uh, we had to learn.

Speaker B: Oh my goodness. Anybody that has gone headlong into AI knows that you don't do less hard stuff. You now have the greatest get unstuck machine ever. Um, plow right through into the hardest of the hard stuff. The starting points, the sticking points. Hold on.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean I think that it actually forces the mind into the complexity earlier in time. Instead of shielding the mind from the complexity or keeping most from having to go there.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, they kept that the tears from being able, forced to go there or keep the laziness from going there too. You're now forced there. Right?

Speaker B: Well you're incentivized.

Speaker A: Yeah. Or incentivize by the way. Yeah, very cool. So let's talk about industries. Where are the accelerators? Where are those that are lagging? Can you point to any industry phenomena where you could say I see collectively movement, I see lag.

Speaker B: Mhm. I don't know that any industry can't benefit from this. And I don't know that I have seen any industry in particular lag. What I have seen is individual leaders decide to um, ignore this for whatever reason. Maybe they tried AI a couple of years ago using a chatbot. Um, and they um, they asked a question, they gave it very little context. It didn't give the answer that they expected and they wrote it off and

Speaker A: they just went I'm done.

Speaker B: They said oh, that was a gimmick. Right. Um, so I think that that is, that is what I see is people that anchored um, and have ah, really just backed off from any type of curiosity. And I think that's more of a macro problem probably about that individual in particular. Now the, the people that I see are excelling.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: Oh buddy. When that light bulb goes off and it clicks, that their industry, their company, it just became something different. Right. The way m. You know, if, if I am a, you know, I do a lot of work with, with uh, lower market accounting firms on their modernization plan. Law firms too, on their modernization plan for. How do I adopt AI? Right, yeah. Uh, how do I.

Speaker A: Because the business models are, have a great opportunity to be reformed and redefined.

Speaker B: Right, yes, exactly. So, you know, as I work with an accounting firm and we start to interconnect the system that their audit practice uses with the preferred tool that their tax team uses. Oh, and by the way, we just bought another accounting firm. We haven't integrated them yet, but they use a different set of systems because they're a little bit different. Do we have to like switch them into like the old school tools? No, no, let's just get them all talking to each other. Right. And especially in accounting when they, when the light bulb goes off, that. This isn't accounting work. This is data transformation. And at a certain point, as this data moves through our organization, the professional, um, is going to apply their special expertise to that data and make that data orders of magnitude more valuable. And as cfo, you all do that all day, every day.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's easier to understand that and see the impact and the value of it in real time and the immediacy of it too. Mhm. Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: So, so what are your sources, Chad, in terms of like, must have, must do or what are some new habits you have adopted to stay connected to the here and the now around, you know, um, the source for information, real source from NAI standpoint in terms of education or trend or voice.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, the biggest source is by doing and exploring. Okay, right. Just by. Is by using these tools. It's just like the same, it's the same thing. When you started using Excel and you realized that, oh man, like there's a whole nother set of formulas in here. Oh man, there's an entire plugin for fpa. I had no idea. Right. And so, um, that's going to be your number one source. Right? Um, I do, I do listen to a handful of podcasts. Uh, and then of course, uh, talking to others. Uh, you know, AI Daily brief. Fantastic, fantastic podcast. Nice short form, in and out. Uh, keep you updated on some of the things that are macro, uh, in these, uh, in the set of toolings and how you, uh, might want to, you know, explore something New, Um, uh, there's another little newsletter called the Neuron, which is fantastic. It's actually owned by an entrepreneur here in Nashville. Uh, awesome. And, um, so that's another really great resource, but doing, and actually getting in there, um, and actually using it in your day to day. Um, and if you are, if you've been putting this off, and I see this all the time where people say, gosh, I wish I need to go take a class for this. I need to go like, pay somebody to do some training. Um, um, you know. No, no, no. And by the way, if you are the one that is administering training, the only way to train someone is to sit down, understand their workflow, and help them work through a specific part of their workflow. Because training someone on, uh, you know, just use, let's just say a general used AI tool like a, like a, you know, a Microsoft copilot or, or OpenAI has codecs. Everybody's heard of cloud. Um, OpenAI's codex is so much, so much better. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it's so much better. Um, and, uh, you know, just help them through something that they do on a daily basis and, um, use it once.

Speaker A: Yeah. Start with comfort. Start with something that creates comfort, I always say, too. Right.

Speaker B: Start with an easy win.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And make it specific to him.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, so if a finance leader is listening right now, what's the, what's the very next move in terms of a skill set that they should work on to stay relevant, impactful, and future ready? I mean, what's the muscle move they should really work on?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, first off, they're going to have to realize that, um, this is here. This changes the way that we lead a finance organization. This changes the frequency of how we present FP&A data, how we present expense data, how we present budgeting, how we build out dashboards, how we monitor, uh, the data coming out of our ERP and our inventory systems? Um, you need to recognize that everything has gone from report driven to real time.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. Speak in the current tense and voice, my friend. You're right.

Speaker B: So, you know, stop thinking of, you know, a six month FPA report and start thinking of. Okay, how do I deliver a dashboard that's got a slide? I want, I want to look at three months, I want to look at six months, I want to look at a year, um, for really any other measurable metric that's important to how your company operates. Think about how we can deliver that information in real time and really start to recognize that all of these systems that you use and pay for, they all have little connectors built into the back of them that allow one machine to talk to another machine. And a lot of people had never turned those on or they never explored. And, uh, you now have a tool, just a basic tool like a codex, right. Or a cloud node that can actually take that connection and do something with it like build out a dashboard or. Just show me what the 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months FPA is, right? Spit it out.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it's, it's, it's, uh, which is actually exciting and more powerful. Right. To me, that is, that's, it's. I don't think you're going to find a finance leader that's not going to be like, okay, I get it, I can do that. Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, I love using old reports. Right. They're old from the moment they're, they're out of date from the moment that you generate them.

Speaker A: No, no, yeah, totally got it. So, uh, Chad, what's, what's the best way. Tell us. I, uh, want people also get to understand you outside of the professional, uh, Persona. What's one thing we don't know about you that you'd like to share? What's one thing you do outside of work that, that we would find surprising?

Speaker B: Oh, man. Um. Well, the main thing I do outside of work is I've got a beautiful wife and an almost six year old daughter and an almost three year old little boy. And the main thing that I do outside of work right now.

Speaker A: Uh, that's awesome.

Speaker B: I'm telling you what, once you go down the AI rabbit hole, work actually becomes kind of a, a thing that you do all the time. Don't stop yourself. You, uh, you're going to stop sleeping.

Speaker A: Well, you know, I cherish those, cherish those days. Those days go fast. That 6 and 3 become 16 and 13 and 26 and 23 very quickly.

Speaker B: I hear, I hear from experience.

Speaker A: Yep. You have your priorities straight, my friend. Flip that or you're right. So listen, what's, what's the best way for people to connect with you, Chad? Because your story's still being told. You're going to share your share or. I know that, um, what's the best way for people to connect with you?

Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I love connecting with folks on LinkedIn. That's the best. That's, um, that's the easiest place for people to connect me. Yeah.

Speaker A: What would get your attention. What would get your attention if somebody connected with you on LinkedIn you know,

Speaker B: send me a direct message.

Speaker A: Send me a D. All right, all right. We heard that, friends. So, Chad, uh, I promise me you will continue to contribute in this community, because I talk about you now after seeing you in Nashville and you beginning to educate us. But we also need your voice in this community, too, because you are living by example and you're leading by example. I cherish that you spent some time with us today, and I hope that you'll spend time with us going forward as you continue disrupting in the most positive way and keeping us on our toes.

Speaker B: Oh, man, it is my pleasure. Happy to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we touched on the surface, we dug down a little bit, pulled some layers out, but there's more layers to come. Chad, I hope you'll join us again and listeners, if you enjoyed what you heard today from Chad. First of all, we've hyperlinked everything that Chad referenced. So you heard some recommendations on podcasts, you heard some recommendations on some tools and resources. That's why we do this series. So, uh, if you have recommendations for guests like Chad, please send them our way. If you want to be a guest on Level up, send them our way, please. So don't just read about leadership. Learn it from leaders like Chad who are living it. And if you like this episode, please subscribe to Level Up. Stay tuned for more. And look, the best thing I can tell you is we're in this together. This is a journey. You've heard firsthand from Chad that, um, hey, this is something we've all been doing all along. This is just another chapter. And the fun part about all this is that it's moving fast, but it's using and applying things we've done. We're just doing it now in a brand new setting. Uh, but with all of our hearts and minds and all that we have experiences before now brought into this, but we're going to get through it, and we're going to have fun doing it. Guests, join me again for another episode of Level Up. Chad, thank you again for joining me and speaking so freely.

Speaker B: Appreciate it. Have a good one.

Speaker A: All right. Thank you for tuning in to the Level up podcast. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. More stories, insights, and connections to help you level up.