Why Curiosity Beats Judgement with Gary Fretwell

Speaker A: Good day, everyone. I'm excited to welcome you to episode 27 of the shocking Profit Podcast. I'm Tim Van Megham, your Shocking Profit host, and join me in welcoming Gary Fretwell, the compassionate change agent, the author of the Magic of a Moment, and consultant to a thousand universities. Gary is passionate about learning because being present in the moment and helping universities succeed in growing new leaders. Listen in as we explore how universities leverage fiscal, technological, and human capital and how that relates to your business. Let's dive in.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Shocking Profit Podcast, a show for business owners and leaders who are interested in finding new ways to claim and create value in their companies. Shocking Profit is a practical and endlessly fascinating study of how to effectively run a company and build wealth. Host Tim Van Megham has decades worth of business battle scars from working in the trenches with business leaders. He is here to share his experience to make your journey a bit less treacherous and a lot more profitable. Shockingly profitable. Now, here's your host.

Speaker A: Thank you, Gary, for joining me on the Shocking Profit Podcast.

Speaker C: It's a pleasure.

Speaker A: Really is good. Thank you. Yeah, it's been great getting to know you and learning about the concept of shocking profit, but in the university setting. So you.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: You've worked with thousands of universities and you've helped them achieve their goals, shock their profits, so to speak. Uh, I'd be real curious to just start with what does that look like? What does it look like to work with the university? What are the things you're helping them focus on?

Speaker C: Yeah, great question, Tim. And I have probably talked with several thousand of them, but I have consulted on. I actually know the number, believe it or not. I kept an Excel spreadsheet.

Speaker A: No kidding.

Speaker C: I consulted with 963 colleges and universities.

Speaker A: Are there any?

Speaker C: Yeah, there's plenty left still. But I had a chance to just visit a lot of schools. And the interesting thing about a, uh, college and university, as opposed to a business, if you think, uh, consulting with a business. Right now I work with Prescott Meals on Wheels. I'm their president. But what I do is I've been consulting with them on developing strategic plan. In some ways, that is easier than doing it with a college university, because a college university, think about it as almost a multinational. Right. It has. Every dean of a college feels like they're an entity of themselves, and then you've got the umbrella of the university. So when I would come into an institution, it was not uncommon for me to meet with the senior staff first or the president in many cases. But before it was over with, I would meet with individual colleges, faculty from individual colleges, even students from individual colleges, as well as administrators and so forth in order to help them move forward. Specifically in two areas, primarily, uh, what's called enrollment management, which is helping them both attract students and keep students or retain them. That was the intention. So I would go in and a, uh, typical day for me was eight to 10 meetings. And then that night developing an overview of what I found, and then the next day presenting it to a group of those folks. As you know, in college and universities, everyone in there thinks they're the smartest people in the room. M. So somebody coming in brand new and trying to communicate with them about how they can improve is a challenge at times. But that's okay. It worked out fine. I enjoyed it, actually. It was new every time I went in.

Speaker A: You know what really strikes me, Gary, is what I heard you say is you go to where the work is done.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And you listen. You connect with people and hear them.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: If I'm working in a company, I go to the shop floor, I go to the clinic, I go to where they're actually serving the customer, sometimes talking to the customer. The triangulation is amazing. The different perspective of what is going on, what's important, what's our vision, what are our goals at the executive level. So the dean level, the teacher level, the student level has got to just be like getting your own MBA in that college.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it was really interesting. I, you know, as you were saying, going to the floor or going to the place where the folks were. What was interesting to me is there was a book I read, I hate to tell you this, it was 50 years ago. It was called the Art of Helping. It was guy named by a man's name, by Kharkuff was his name. And he wrote something that stuck with me. You know, you have certain books in your life that just stick with you, and I think this book did more for me, helping me be able to go into these brand new environments and be successful in trying to identify what was going on and getting people to share with me. His concept is that all of those. The book's name is the Art of Helping.

Speaker A: The Art of Helping.

Speaker C: But yeah, I read it, uh, for a master's degree was I was working in the counseling area, but it applied to working with the company or an organization. Because his first three tenets was to show empathy. In other words, you understand what that group or is feeling or thinking or believing in warmth where they know that you're not just there to sell them a bit of goods. You're there to help them. In respect to me, I translated that is to understand their context or the context in which they were in and have respect for that. That's, hey, their world is what they have seen. And his point was, if you do those three things, you have built the groundwork to both be, to be concrete with people about what is happening, what you're seeing is happening. And he used his term confrontation. But what he meant was to be open about the changes that needed to take place. But it's all built on that foundation. And so every time I went in, I tried to remember that, is that I'm there to help you, I'm there to understand you. And I want you to know that I care that you're going to be better off after this happens. And so it really opened the door. And it was so interesting to me. I think you and I talked about this one time. It was so interesting to me. People would literally say at the end of the meetings, how did you know so much about us?

Speaker A: Yes, exactly.

Speaker C: Because you told me. You told me.

Speaker A: That's better than the answer I would've given. And, uh, very accurate. At the end of the day, being good at conversations is being good at asking questions. I mean, it's amazing how much you could learn in them. And I think the other two pieces really speak out to me. And things that we found to be important in doing. Getting to know a company, getting to know the people, is first and foremost to prioritize, talking to, period. Just simply wanting to hear what's going on, not walking in with an agenda. Uh, it starts with understanding what's going on. The second piece, like you talked about, respect. The thing that I have learned in my years as consulting is, uh, there's always a reason why they're doing what they're doing.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Uh, always. It may be maybe one of the more common ones is that's how I was trained. That's how we've always done it. Right. But there's always a reason. And when you can show gratitude and appreciation for what they're doing today, giving honest compliments when we can. And, uh, it shows the respect. But the other one you said, that really is striking to me is understanding the context.

Speaker C: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: For us, the way I've thought about that is especially when you're in someone else's company, not your own. So this may be. It's still relevant, but it's relevant in a different way for someone who's asking questions inside their own company, but it's to commiserate on the things that they have to fight through to do their work.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Some companies have crazy demand patterns. 70% of your business happens in the fourth quarter. Sometimes it's radical changes that you can't predict what's going to be ordered on any given day.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Sometimes it's your union. I'm working with the union. It's tough. Uh, or regulations. We're a healthcare company. We've got to abide by whatever it is. Uh, when you pull those things out, I think it's a way for them to know you've heard them and understand that they're not just a typical company. And it helps them to feel comfortable that when you do come back with questions or ideas to consider, you know, their world.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: It's not irrelevant.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting when you were saying that. Ah. And it so resonated with me, Tim, is that first part of that, you know, that first day I was visiting with so many people, one of the questions I was trying to answer in my own mind was why they were operating the way they were operating. Simple question m. And if I don't listen, if I come in with some predetermined idea, I'm never going to get to that. So I wanted, from their perspective, why they were doing that. Now, the corollary of that is once I could communicate my understanding of their why, I could also take it to the next step and ask what? Why not consider this? Or why the recommendation was in that context. And I found it so powerful for people. And a lot of times people go, I never thought of that. But it wasn't brain surgery. I would always say it's not. This is not brain surgery. If you. What I heard you say, and I would. I would always use that reflective style, is based on what you've said to me. Here's what you said to me, here's what you said you wanted to achieve. That's not working. Why not consider this? And I would be able to offer them something that would give them, uh, some direction that they could or could not decide to do. And oftentimes they did. They decided to do it. But it was really with the intent of understanding them, that context. You're right. That context is so important because you don't know until you've been there and been in with them.

Speaker A: And just coming back then to this whole concept of, you know, you get a chance to come in, you get to interview the executives, you get to Go to the students, in other words, the customer, to the teachers who are, imagine, in another sense, our customers as well. You're recruiting teachers that. Yeah. And then it helps you frame their opportunities to improve. Attracting additional students and keeping. Reducing attrition. Which sounds remarkably like.

Speaker C: Like working with customers. Right.

Speaker A: Getting new customers and then keeping your customers.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Things like on time, delivery, quality, lead time, how quickly you can process somebody. Are things in the business world form, fit and function that can attract a customer and keep them. What are some of the key things you would look for and work to address to improve student retention?

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. That. That is. It's a huge topic. It's a huge topic. For instance, a student. You know, retention is. There's certain things we know work well. The one thing above, um, everything else. And this is based on surveying like, a million students a year.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Every year, the company I worked with, we would survey students. We had what was called a student satisfaction inventory. And what that did is it asked students what was important to them and what was their experience with the institution. With that, every year, the number one thing in terms of affecting a student's decision to stay at the institution was something that most people didn't want to hear. It was academic advising. And I would tell people every year it had been done. It had been done for over 20 years. It had never been anything. That was the number one thing. There was other things, but I'll unpack that for a second. So you go, why would academic advising be important? Let's think about it for a second. If students aren't taking classes that are moving them forward to their degree, then why are they doing what they're doing? It increases the cost. It increases the time to graduation. It increases the likelihood of them feeling connected. It allows them to take courses that. That solidify that they're in the right major or they're not in the right major. So when we started unpacking that, we realized that it was something that nobody really wanted to talk about, but the students did. The students wanted that. So, again, if we translate that into a company. So we ask ourselves, why is a customer coming to this company? What are they looking for? And do we have things that move them forward or not? And that was another thing I would constantly look at, is ask myself, were the processes, the communications and the way we interacted with students or faculty or with customers or employees even, is it moving the relationship forward or are we creating barriers?

Speaker A: So I, uh, want to ask a related question, Gary, because my first impression when you Said that it was the advising, the student advising that was unexpected and also consistently high. It makes me think of that phrase, people will never remember what you say, they won't remember what you do, but they will always remember how they made you feel.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And I have to think that the actual simple process of talking to the students and customizing their curriculum and experience to meet their needs is. It's not just about the outcome, it was also about that process. They felt connected to the university because there's somebody there who knows me.

Speaker C: Yeah, it is typically in many institutions faculty did that. There's some places where it's so large it's very, it's like a uh, they run people through an advising office. But when students. What we found it was interesting. The underlying issue there was if a student did not have a determination of a major that they owned. In other words, that was my major I'm in the major I should be in. Um, because I took the courses and because they were, and because they were making progress towards degree. If they didn't have that, it was like 10 times more likely they would be an attrition figure for the institution. Because when you think about it, if somebody is not getting what they want or need to make the progress they want, then they're likely not to be successful. What we found is we found a lot of students, they've been there for let's say three years, but from a matter of the amount of credits they were taking and their sense of being in a degree that they owned personally, they would be typically a second semester freshman in terms of credits completed. And so think about it, that's already adding a year and a half to their, their numbers. And when you think about what it costs to go to a college or university, it's huge. And again I always tied it back to the attracting student and keeping student. Students come in with an expectation and we sell them on that expectation. If their experience is separate and different from what they expected to the degree, it's separate and different. And if they're not making progress towards what they expected when they signed up, guess what? They leave. And by the way, a tremendous of number of them leave and more leave than graduate in five years.

Speaker A: So what would be a range for universities, the low end, a low performing university to the high end where they're ultra dialed in. What's the range of attrition? Is it like, like in manufacturing? World class utilization of your capacity is like 85%. Toyota is 85% above that. What are we looking at when we talk about attrition with couch students.

Speaker C: Yeah, you look at a. Uh, I'll just use an example. At least at the time when I was doing this. I'll use example of Notre Dame. The point about Notre Dame was they used to say it was really hard to get in and even harder to get out because you could. Once you got in there, they wanted to make sure you were successful. They might be up as high as 90% graduation rate. Wow, Incredible numbers. But I have been on campus where the retention rate of just even into the first year was under 50%.

Speaker A: Yep, yep.

Speaker C: So the graduation rate, uh, in five or six years was below 40% and sometimes as low as 30, 20%.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: So that's the kind of range you have. We found that according to the type of institution, it made a difference whether it was public or private. It made a difference between the, uh, number of those students that had their major determined. It was interesting if a student had their major determined by the second semester of their sophomore year. In other words, they've confirmed, I'm going to do this. They were, it's like five or ten times more likely to graduate than those students that didn't. So what we did, uh, uh, when I was working with an institution, it was actually an institution I was working at at first. Before I started becoming a consultant is my goal was to create a program that helps students determine their major. Our goal was that every student would have their major selected by the second semester of their sophomore year. That was the goal.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it worked. It worked.

Speaker A: But as I think about applying this conversation to business, there's a lot that comes to mind. The first one is you help, I'm sure, is a big part of this. Some universities simply understand that, for example, student retention, it's going to be a goal for every school. Right. They want every.

Speaker C: It should be. It should be.

Speaker A: Yes. And the idea that their advisory approach, consistency, quality, how they actually interact with the student and actually making that happen and doing it well is a. There's a high degree of cause and effect there. When I think about a business, I think the first question I'd ask is, why do your customers keep buying from you? The ones that buy from you, why do they keep buying? Do you know? Is it, uh, yeah. There's the old saying, you can have good, fast or cheap. You can have two of the three. Is it customization? But the part that's ridiculously low cost is staying connected to your customers and understanding how they feel about your service and how well you're Helping them achieve their goals.

Speaker C: Great. Yeah. And you know, what we, we found is that. So the advising was a big one. The second one was the quality of the classroom. The students feel that they were getting a good course, they were having a good experience in the course, that they knew the faculty member, that they could talk to the faculty member. Back to you, what you were saying. And again, I think with customers, I think one of the fundamental things is to understand. I like that idea of understanding what their expectations are and really objectively seeing are we meeting that expectation? Because when you're not, what happens is the customer, the student, they will find someplace that will meet their expectations. Now, with students, unfortunately, sometimes they give up completely. And that is the saddest thing to me, that some of them will never graduate. Actually, more do not graduate than graduate, uh, nationwide right now. But when we think about customers, you know, your customers coming into you have communicated something that the customer said, I can go here and I can get that expectation met. And I think that we have to be very conscious of are we meeting that expectation or, uh, is that expectation being met? If it's not, then that's definitely a pain point that needs to be addressed, in my opinion. So, yeah, same with colleges and universities.

Speaker A: So does that come down often to the recruiting of teachers, like getting the right people in the right seats, or is it an approach to teaching? I may be asking a good question, I may not be. But I know that people learn in a different way. Some visual, audio, kinesthetic, is it? Yeah. Schools taking a, uh, adaptive approach to make sure that students are learning the way they learn.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think that is a big part of it. I would always tell people on the front end of the process, you need to understand how your students or potential students want to be communicated with.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: It gets downtown. Do they expect phone call from you? Do they. Will they just rather have everything written, or do they want it in their hands? What is the way that student wants to be communicated with? And I think for companies, and I, um, know this is true for Meals on Wheels, we're very sensitive to what the folks that are using our service, how do they want to be responded to? How do they want to be communicated with? And I think that's true for companies too. You have to understand your customer. It goes back to that empathy. Right. To be able to understand, just as it applies in the consulting role, it applies in the work role too. We need to understand who we're working with and be, uh, very objective for ourselves about whether we're meeting that or not. At least that's my opinion of it.

Speaker A: Gary, one thing I'd like to ask you about. If you think back to a university where you walked in and maybe they were struggling lower performing, and they became aware then of these opportunities to really, uh, move the needle in areas that their customers or the students would care about. And could you walk us through, like, why did they call you in, what was going on, what did you identify? And then where did they go from there?

Speaker C: Yeah, the immediate thing came to mind. I had an institution that was wondering why they were so successful with athletes. They had a big athletic program, and they wonder why they were so successful with athletes and not successful with the better students. They were having a hard time attracting them and having a hard time keeping them. So I came in and the president, I had received some information ahead of time and the presidency's. I, uh, walk in and he just, he hit me with this. Gary, why is this happening? And I had met with a single person first, but I had done my homework and I said, well, I said, I have an idea. And I said, well, we need to confirm it in the conversations and understand more. I said, uh, there is a thing with use of financial aid and institutional funds. They were actually awarding their athletes at about 117% of tuition cost. They were giving them both tuition, full tuition oftentimes, and housing and even sometimes the food plan. When I looked at their non athletes, they were awarding them at about a 35% range. That's a big difference. Yeah. And when I told the president that, he said, gary, that can't be true. And I, uh, happened to be in a meeting. It was me, the president, the vice president of finance and vice president of academic affairs and the vice president for finance looked at him and said, I've been trying to tell you this. I've been trying to tell you this. Now we had to confirm it and everything, but what we found was really interesting. It wasn't just the money. Those athletes had individualized advising support because they wanted to make sure they were staying in school so they could play right. They were getting extra support, they were getting extra attention. They were getting all this kind of support that they needed to be successful. They were not the same level of support for those other students we found at that institution. Those advising athletes were, as I recall, it was like 15 to 18 athletes. When I looked at the advising load of the for the non athletes, each advisor was carrying a load of about 120 students.

Speaker A: Oh my, that's a 10 times difference more than that.

Speaker C: So in every way they were doing great things with their athletes and they were keeping them, but it was costing them more than the institution were making.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And for the non athletes, the problem was is that they just weren't getting the support on any front. What was uh, really interesting corollary to that, when I met with students, I met with a group of athletes, I met with a group of non athletes. One of the most interesting things because, uh, the non athletes, because they were receiving fewer dollars, right? Guess what they had to do. Almost all of them were working at least halftime jobs and some of them were working full time jobs. So not only were they not getting the support on any front, but at the same time they were having to work when they left campus. So what they would do is this. They would come to campus, take whatever courses they had, they take the same sidewalk back to the car and go to their job. The athletes, most of them did not work. I think the average was like five hours. And they would do some kind of work, uh, study job on campus. The athletes, guess what, they more likely lived on campus. They had all this advising support. They were making sure that they were making progress. They didn't have any of the financial challenges. And so the first thing that I said though was eye opening to the president. Even though he'd been told, no offense to him, he just, it was hard for him to understand how that could be. But what we found it was deeper than that. That's that understanding getting in there and understanding it was not only affecting the student's ability to pay and to continue to attend, but it was affecting their ability to study.

Speaker A: So I gotta share this because this is just so spot on.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is the exact same thing happens in regular businesses. This shows up in a couple ways. One of them is we what you did or what they did, the thing that started this whole conversation for you was they had segmented their student population between athletic scholarships and academic scholarships. And they noticed a very different. You know, if all they had done is look at the average and not separated the two and looked at the numbers, it would have been hidden in the mess. As an example, one of the questions we often end up asking is to a CEO, what percentage of your profit do you think comes from your large customers buying your main products? And oftentimes they'll say, I don't know, 70, 80%. And what it's truly surprising is when the numbers 110 or 120% that you're actually subsidizing smaller customers and smaller SKUs, or services. Yep, right. It comes back. So this idea, first and foremost of curiosity to dig in, and because you were able to segment the data, break it down and look at the details, you learned that you actually had a couple different businesses under one roof.

Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely and absolutely.

Speaker A: And they need to be treated like they're different. Same thing happens in business. And, uh, another quick example, we have clients that there's Items that provide 80% of their business. Many, some of those items will have consistent demand. Uh, they can predict when it's going to happen. There's other items that they sell that are highly volatile. And often those are their like B and C items, the items that make up 5% of sales, but there's 10 times more of them than there are their big items. And when we look at how they plan and manage each of their SKUs, they treat the items the same as they treat the C and D. Yeah, they do the same thing with customers. If a customer calls and says, hey, can you break in or give me a faster lead time, they may treat that customer the same, whether they're a customer that keeps the lights on or a customer that is around the error. It's recognizing it's that first piece of curiosity and digging in. And this goes back to something you said at the very beginning. There's no judgment. It's pure curiosity to just understand what's going on.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: It's interesting when you were saying that is a lot of times when any organization sort of segments their data, they segment their information. The nice thing as a consultant, sometimes you come in and even if it's segmented, you bring it together. And one of the things I would always try to encourage institutions to think about in, uh, terms of data is three things. One, did they have anywhere where there was comprehensive data? And if they didn't have comprehensive data, it was really hard to make decisions. So that tells you what is really happening to me. And sometimes I would have to bring it together myself because it was segmented. And I'm sure you experience that.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker C: And then the second thing I'd ask is, do they have reports that actually does something with that data that gives them information, workable information that they can do? The third thing. And do you act on the data that you have?

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: That was when people. Oh, now Gary, that's going too far. You know, but it was a simple kind of concept. But I found so many times people either didn't have comprehensive data, things were segmented so much it was sort of hard to ever bring it together. They didn't have reports that were comprehensive, that they gave good analysis. And because of those two things, guess what? They hardly ever used the information from that data to make decisions change. And so part of my job was to help them do that.

Speaker A: That 100% rings true. And I think back to the original example where you talked about the quality of the advising, how well the students were being advised that once, uh, the university understands that is a leading indicator that it's highly relevant and highly controllable, you can change the experience that students receive by paying attention to it. That they can start. Then they measure it by. If it's a university, each college, then by teacher, uh, and look for patterns in areas where they can start saying, how do we. How do we take action to solve a problem that we're running?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You think, Think about it for. What were you saying is. So often it's easy to. I'll, uh, give you a direct example. So you go to an institution, they bring in a freshman class of 300 students, a small private institution, each one of those students from a revenue that the institution actually receives after they give their scholarships or something. It's, let's say, $15,000. They have had a good year. If their goal was 300 and they brought in 310, it was a banner year, uh, which is a great thing. They, they met their goal and actually exceeded it by 10%. And everyone would be clapping. Everyone would be clapping. And yet their retention of that 300 would be, let's say, 70%. 70%. And I would typically hear, well, that sounds pretty good. I said, well, is it? I said you were applauding, gaining 10. The 90 that walked out the door, you had no idea about. Right? Guess what? That 90 that left the door is a lot more than that 10 on multiple fronts. They come back a second year, a third year, a fourth year. You raise tuition that second year, the third year, the fourth year. So the impact is much greater. Is much, much greater.

Speaker A: And for the rest of their lives, they're alumni.

Speaker C: Yeah. And they're giving that. Exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: But it takes bringing that together, uh, and getting. It's an aha moment for people. They go, oh, my gosh, I never thought of that. I never thought of it that way.

Speaker A: So, uh, one, this has been absolutely fascinating and deeper than I even imagined about the alignment or the similarities of digging in to understand how to improve performance, how to improve the student journey or the customer journey or the patient journey, whatever Your business is. The process is the same. Absolutely. Ah. And so, one, I want to say thank you. And I want to wrap this up with one more question, which is, if you're talking, uh, to a business owner, let's say you're sitting next to them on the plane, you got a bit of time, their attention, what would you bring up? What would you want to talk about to. If you had one thing you could talk about with a business owner, where would you start?

Speaker C: Boy, that's a hard question. I think that one of the first things I always try to understand is we have a customer. It could be. I, uh, could be sitting next to a pastor, and, uh, he has customers, the people that are members of his church. Right. I could be talking to the folks at Meals on Wheels, and their customers are the folks that we go and serve and provide food for or on a. In a business. They might be buying something we make, or they might be buying a service that we have. One of the things I always was really interested in is how aware are your customers of you. We assume that people know. And I'll give you a great, funny example, uh, something I was a practice that somehow got in my head and I started to use. I would obviously be traveling all over the country, all over the world, really. I would go into a location and go to a hotel. One of the things I would always do is ask whoever checked me in, hey, can you tell me a little bit about the school I was going to visit?

Speaker A: Oh, interesting.

Speaker C: You would be amazed. You would be amazed how many people go. I have no idea who that is, where that is. Oh, yeah, there's that big school. They're down the road, and they would give me a direction. They knew nothing else about them. So one of the things I always wanted to understand is how aware are your customers of you? What are you doing to help them become more aware of you? That was one thing, obviously, the thing that, uh, as a consultant just comes out of you naturally, is what's your biggest challenge? Is, oh, sure, clarity about what do you want to achieve? And then what's your biggest challenge in making that happen? And I would typically have that conversation. And it was very interesting, as you said earlier, Tim, and it was a very wise comment. It translates into any organization, really. It really does translate the commonality of some of the challenges, the things that we have to look for. But understanding where they want to go and what, uh, are the challenges in getting there. So that's what I typically want to.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. You Know what really sprang to mind when you said that is I think when you ask someone about their biggest challenges, they may share it and at the same time, feel or believe that they don't have any control over.

Speaker C: Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker A: And that's the fun part to dig in and find.

Speaker C: Yes, yep, yes.

Speaker A: There's aspects you absolutely control.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It. And until it is articulated, you know, I guess that comes back to my counseling background. If a person, a client that you're working with cannot communicate what their challenge is, it's sort of hard to make an, uh, improvement. They need. But you need to bring them to that point, in my opinion. Absolutely. Your process is you're helping them come to an awareness of. For themselves, of, hey, this is not to. This is not to judge. This is not to plain blame. This is to say the. This is where you say you want to be. Here's where you want to be, here's where you are. What is keeping you from being there? And I know it's so simple in a way, but there is typically a lot of things that people just need to be more aware of.

Speaker A: You get to help them bring more granularity and clarity to that and then understand they can do something. Terry, this has been an even bigger pleasure than I expected.

Speaker C: You know, Tim, this is. I've enjoyed every moment of it. And really, we could probably talk the rest of the day that much.

Speaker A: We'll schedule another one. Thank you for joining us today.

Speaker C: Excellent. Well, so appreciated. And thank you for asking me. And it was absolutely pleasure.

Speaker A: What a powerful way to wrap up this episode of Shocking Profit. Curiosity beats Judgment. I love it. Thank you, Gary. And thank you for joining us on this episode of Shocking Profit. And be sure to tune in for episode 28. In the meantime, please tell your friends about us. And. And if you have a question, a challenge, a, uh, life hack, reach out to us@elwoodshockingprofit.com and remember, everyone, focus on what matters to shock your profit. See you next time.