Mark Monchek, Founder and Chief Opportunity Officer, The Opportunity Lab
Mark’s mission is to empower conscious leaders to build great companies that make a difference in the world. He founded The Opportunity Lab to build organizations that are more conscious and sustainable, making life better for their employees, their customers, and their communities. Mark has worked with leaders from Google, Apple, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, The New York Times, the Wharton School of Business, NBC, Columbia University, Time Warner, United Nations, The American Lung Association and United Way of Greater New York to help them take their organizations to the next level of sustainable growth.
http://www.opplab.com/
Culture of Opportunity: How to Grow Your Business in an Age of Disruption
markm@opplab.com
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive.
[00:00:58] Welcome everyone. This is Scaling up Services, I’m Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host and our guest today is Mark Monchek and he is author of Culture of Opportunity How to Grow Your Business in the Age of Disruption. He's also CEO of the Opportunity Lab.. Mark and I have had a series of conversations over the years. We recorded a program, I think it was probably five years ago now on virtual and distributed teams, and we decided we'd get on the phone again, do recording here, talking a little bit about what's going on with the covered 19 situation and the transitions that companies are needing to make quickly and to reimagining, reinvigorating their business as a virtual organization, distributed teams, virtual meetings. And just talk a little bit about what we're noticing, the things that we see in the clients that we're working with, about how they're making those transitions. What are the things that are working in kind of best practices we thought would be helpful to kind of cover some of those things, given that we both work with a lot of companies and all these companies are now having to rethink how they do business. So with that Mark, welcome to the program.
[00:01:55] Thank you, Bruce. And thanks for having me. Great pleasure to work with you again.
[00:01:58] Yeah. So why don't we talk a little bit about the sort of generally the work that you do, sort of prekop at 13, and then we're gonna dig into what's going on in the last couple of weeks really across the world, but particularly in the U.S. and the companies we work with. Give us a little bit of background on the work that you've done. The book, Opportunity Lab, what's your area of focus?
[00:02:18] Well, our business is a consulting firm focused on strategy for conscious growth. Know, we serve conscious businesses that deeply care about their customers, their employees and the communities they do business. In my book, which came out several years ago. 2017, A Culture of Opportunity, How to Grow Your Business, a major disruption. I thought it was really relevant then and now it's become incredibly even more relevant because we are in as big of a disruption as I've ever seen in my lifetime. And it happened incredibly quickly. So we help companies navigate in a disruptive world. Our mission is to empower conscious leaders to build great companies and make a difference in the world. And we're seeing the need for that more and more, because in this age, where every day looks different, every moment something different, new and strange, can happen. It's important that we understand the importance of consciousness in business, that we're it's important that we understand reverence for life, reverence for the planet, with reverence for the people that we work with and we serve. And I believe the companies that will come out of this stronger, more resilient and more sustainable will be those companies that actually cared about their people, keeping them safe, cared about their customers and keeping them safe, but also serving them when they can.
[00:03:35] So that's been an incredible learning for me. And I compare this a little bit to 9/11. I know there are a lot of differences, but there are some similarities, too. So when 9/11 happened, I saw the towers fall from my office on Broadway and 21st Street, and I was literally in shock, hardly able to speak or think coherently for about three days. And that Friday after 9/11, I got a call from an employee assistance program in Chicago that had a client whose offices were on the eighty first floor of Tower Two. That second plane literally slashed their offices in half and cut the building down and lost 62 people. So they asked me if I would go down and work at their new adapted site, a half mile from Ground Zero at one New York Plaza. I went down there that following Tuesday, one week after, and I saw what then was the greatest miracle of my career. I saw this firm comeback re reopen in one week and bring ninety six percent of their employees back to work within three months, become profitable at the end of the fourth quarter, and donate three million dollars to the Euro Brokers Relief Fund to help the people who did not survive and their families have a life. And what I learned from that is the leadership basically said, we are going to care for you 100 percent.
[00:04:57] If you can't come to work, we're going to pay your salary. One hundred percent come back whenever you want. And people wanted to come back because they wanted to be with the people that were in their tribe. Now, today's world, they can't visit them back, but everybody wants to connect and they want to continue the way they work. But in a different modality. So we're teaching people how to have virtual. How to have a virtual strategy meetings, how to have virtual all hands meetings. And it's funny, some of the teams are telling me that they actually feel more of a team. They feel more connected than they did before, because before they would sit next to each other and they would have dozens and dozens of stations day, but they wouldn't be very intentional and they wouldn't be very strategic and they really were not connecting on. How are you doing, Bruce? How are you managing through this? Where are you? How is your family doing? Those are questions that people were not typically asking back then, but they're asking them now. And so a lot of these teams are actually getting more deeply connected and more motivated and, you know, being more effective.
[00:06:00] Do you think this is going to have a lasting impact on the way we do business, the way kind of business operates, the way people kind of engage with their companies? And what's your thinking out, you know, months, years on this? What do you think the real kind of permanent changes are? Long lasting changes are going to be in terms of how business works.
[00:06:18] I absolutely believe, Bruce, that this is a global reset that will have an impact that we can't even imagine right now. I can tell you a few things that I think will happen and other things obviously very unpredictable. People are realizing that commuting to work an hour, two hours, three hours, some people four hours a day is an amazing drain on their being, on their health, on their time with their families and their friends. So the ability to work from home and maybe not work from home all the time, but the flexibility to be able to work from home when it suits your needs and do it in a way that helps your company. That flexibility, that autonomy, I think is going to stay. I think being more intentional about when you meet and how you meet and connecting personally with people, I believe that will stay and grow and deepen. I think understanding that the businesses that are essential and business who operate in a sense of consciousness and caring are going to be more sought after. People are going to work, want to work for those businesses more want to do business with those companies even more. So I think there's some definite long lasting impact of this change, but it'll take some while to shake out how much. But if you look at two thousand eight right now, you saw companies that were very new. Facebook, Google that were just, you know, early stage companies. And they just blossomed. Companies that were just barely in existence, like Uber or Air B and B or Etsy lifted up because they served a need in that time. And companies like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and so many of the big banks and Research in Motion and Nokia were not serving those needs. They were being very complacent and they are either out of business or they are just a shell of their former self. So, you know, just big impact, longstanding evolving at the moment.
[00:08:07] And what are you noticing? I mean, in terms of, you know, companies being more kind of compassionate or more kind of focused on their employee well-being given this kind of situation that we're in.
[00:08:19] What does that actually look like? What are companies doing to help support their employees? I mean, other than, you know, I guess the more we're going gonna keep paying your paycheck, you know, providing them some financial stability. Are there other things that you see companies doing that have been effective in terms of caring for your people, engaging your folks during this very disruptive, high stress period?
[00:08:38] Yes, absolutely, Bruce. And also, I'll see the first thing it's so interesting and really inspiring is the company that I mentioned earlier. You know, this is 750 million dollar global retailer of specialty consumer electronics. They don't see compassion and caring as something nice to do in a crisis. They're actually seeing something as essential to do as part of who they are as a company. Interesting.
[00:09:01] So I think a lot of business think, well, you know, we're gonna be nice and compassionate and understanding empathetic in this unusual situation. And then one visit gets back to normal. We'll get back to our normal, you know, the leader, the CEO of our client.
[00:09:15] He believes that compassion is good business and caring, flexibility, empathy is good business because people work so much more intently and consciously when they are feeling cared about. You know, customers are being called by the salespeople at this company. And before saying, can we sell you anything? How are you doing? Where are you now? How has this affected you? And these customers feel like this is really something important for them. And they don't even mention the sales part until the customer says, well, you know, I need this or I need that. So that's the overall, I think, underpinning of how we what we believe compassion is. The second thing is communication and transparency. So we're communicating with our client to their employee base three times a week in a combination of two different types of communication. One is, how is the business doing? How our customers doing sales, gross profit, you know, availability of inventory. Operational issues. That would be one communication. The other communication, which is unique and really important. What are our employees doing to stay safe, to stay sane, to stay connected to their families? And we're using photographs and video and audio where people are contributing that. And that is also three times a week. So we had one employee e-mail our CEO who said, you know, this is incredible. I have a I have a husband and a son who work for a company. They don't even know what's happening, this company. And they'll probably going to get an unemployment check soon. And, you know, they're like in the dark. So not just communication for the leadership, but communication throughout all the levels of the organization with the employees can communicate to their manager and to the whole company. I think that is really important to say. You know, we are one company, we're a tribe, we're interconnected. It's not just from the top down. It's all the way through.
[00:11:05] You know, we've seen companies kind of grapple with the financial impact and figuring out like how much? Where do we invest?
[00:11:12] Where do we not invest? How do we get the how do we maintain kind of long term company health or long term bring company viability with some of these programs? I mean, whether it's, you know, having to pivot your business model, whether it's figuring out can you keep all your staff? What do you do if you can't, you know, making some decisions, taking on debt? Like, what's the what have you noticed in terms of how that conversation has been playing out or how they've been grappling with those issues, given the situation and given their desire to be compassionate employees, but also, you know, thinking about what is the financial impact or the viability of the business long term.
[00:11:44] Yes. So we'll look at two sides, the revenue side and then the cost side. So on the revenue side, you know, our client has been extremely resilient and shifting their business from primarily cameras, video, film equipment, pro audio into people who need equipment at companies, need to set their people up working from home. So we're there talking about, you know, they're selling monitors, they're selling desktops, laptops, cabling, web cams, podcasting equipment, video gaming for people who have kids, have to work on musical instruments. Know we're starting a new hobby, getting inventory, working very closely with suppliers to shift the kind of inventory that they're buying. Be able to get new sources, new brands and inventory. It's really about the resilience of the merchants in this particular case and having deep relationships that go back many years where they're able to pivot.
[00:12:34] Also getting terms from their their suppliers, getting prices lowered. You know, map prices, being able to be relaxed in a legal way, serving customers that didn't even know about this company before. By reaching out, not with we're selling you this, but giving you content about how to work from home, how to set a virtual teams, the kind of content that you and I are sick today. So on the revenue side, all that kind of resilience, adaptability and really understanding and serving customers needs has served this company extremely well on the cost side, certainly working with vendors that I mentioned to get price discounts, to get longer terms, having to repurpose some employees where, you know, we've had to close some of the retail facilities, moving them into the warehouse. There have had to be some temporary layoffs, but doing those as selectively as possible, giving as many people the opportunity to repurpose as they possibly can, giving people information about unemployment, about local programs to support people. You know, having a human resource department is able to help people with some counseling, in some cases employee assistance programs. They're able to help with those kinds of things. But it's tough. You know, it's painful when people get laid off. And when people were good employees laid off just because their job can't work in a retail store. Yeah, and not everybody can travel, wants to travel to work in a warehouse, which is, you know, this is a very low risk, but there is some risk involved.
[00:13:59] Yeah. Obviously, many leaders are faced with difficult decisions and having to make them and really uncertain kind of times. I mean, it's tough. Can you really don't know how long this is going to last? You don't know what the longer term impacts are going to be. You don't know what kind of the market responses are going to be where your market industry might be in a couple of months. And, yeah, it's a bit of a balancing game.
[00:14:19] I do find that companies that do have kind of a good set of core values, a good sense of what their purpose and mission are in terms of what is the long term impact they want to be having. It's a little easier because they're not stuck with just kind of pure financial decisions. They've got a little bit better sense of kind of some guiding principles that help them decide either what they're gonna do or how they're going to do it. But, yeah, that it's a lot of difficult scenarios that that people are grappling with in terms of the the shifts that you've seen your clients having to make in terms of obviously there's there's all the operational stuff like how do we now do all this stuff in virtual meetings? How do we repurpose these teams? How do we change the operational process to deal with the current situation?
[00:14:58] But there's also the you mentioned the kind of the emotional connection. What is employee engagement look like in work from home kind of model?
[00:15:07] Give us some insights on on some of the things that you see working particularly well around, you know, those two different categories and kind of the logistical operational side and then the employee engagement cultural side. You see companies do that has helped them kind of bridge this the situation here?
[00:15:23] Well, I think being very intentional about meetings and having meetings where there is a clear purpose is a clear agenda. There's a clear follow through. Whoever is in that meeting should be necessary in that meeting rather than just, you know, in times which were we were more complacent, people would just draw a meaning. And we're going to talk about this. What's the outcome of the meeting? Who should be there? What's the agenda? And let's have a time frame which respects the fact that people have a lot of other things to do. Now, these are all best practices for meetings in general, not simply for virtual meetings. But I think that they become much more important, you know, in a virtual meeting, having a facilitator and a co facilitator is important. So the facilitator is somebody that outlines the objectives. The agenda kicks things off, opens up with a welcome, with a personal connection. How are people doing, you know, having that heartfelt what's going on with you today, Bruce? How are you managing with your kids, but then moving into the agenda and having the co-facilitator keep time. Make sure that all the agenda topics of our nature and notes are taken and things are followed up with an email where some communication to make sure that the action that happened at the meeting is actually going to be done. Short huddle meetings, regular basis, mixed in with a longer term meeting, maybe on a weekly basis. One of the things that I've been seen that's been troubling is that there's so much communication in meetings on a short term basis.
[00:16:49] But then you could lose sight of actually having a weekly team meeting where you're pulling it all together and seeing how people are doing and looking at the following week. So the danger is being too short term. You can have very, very responsive, extremely quick to react, but then you gotta get your head above water. Sara, how did we do this week? And celebrating accomplishments is really important. Celebrating. Learning is really important. And asking people where they need help is very important. So to kick off the virtual meetings, I suggest two questions at the beginning and then two questions at the end for the whole group. So I'll ask each person to go around and say, what is inspiring you and what is troubling you? So one sort of uplifting question and one kind of concerning how are things going on that more concerning level question? So how what's inspiring you? What's troubling you? What have you been learning? What has been the most concerning to you? Those kinds of questions that at the end we do an ask and offer. Does anybody have an ask for the group? Anybody who needs something from the group or anybody in the group? And doesn't anybody have something to offer to the group? So the two questions that kick it off to get people really engage in the head and the heart and then two questions to make sure people are actually asking and offering for what they need and what they can give you.
[00:18:04] No, I think that's good. I think one thing that I have certainly noticed in both my clients and none of my clients teams that I've let's come aboard is this is the fact that people are quite often in very different places. Both. Both. I mean, obviously physically but mentally then different situations. And one of the things that I've found pretty helpful is just encouraging leaders to start these sessions. And the other one is it changes so quickly, start these sessions with a kind of a. Where are you right now? Question. And just you kind of figure out Person A might be coping very well, you know, is in a good headspace, is a clear set of priorities, knows what they should be focused on. Person B could be in the middle of a crisis and could just find out information that is very troubling. And they're in a very confused state. And if if you don't kind of assess the situation before you start these kind of meetings, in these conversations, you can run into a lot of prompts. You can run into a lot of miscommunication on this stuff because, you know, you just people are just in such different Headspaces. And I think identifying that quickly and then figure out what do you want to do?
[00:19:05] And in some cases, it's like, well, we need to actually shift our focus to deal with this or someone needs some help. Let's get them some help and maybe get them out of this meeting right now so they can deal with what they need to deal with.
[00:19:14] And we'll take over the rest of it because it is such a dynamic space right now. And I think a lot of leaders are kind of coming into it with their own headspace. They're they're focused on a set of priorities.
[00:19:23] They're dealing with their own stress. And if they kind of run into these meetings with thinking that everyone else is on the same plane as they are at that moment can be problematic. One of things I found helpful with a lot of folks is just checking in with your team at the beginning of these meetings just to figure out, OK, what's going on with them personally.
[00:19:38] Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's right, Bruce. And I think having a leader who has some empathy and if he or she is able to be somewhat vulnerable and say what they are stressed about, what's worrying them in a way that makes me feel, you know, the head of our company is struggling. So my struggling is going to normal. You know, it's not unusual. Understandable. Also allowing people to take those more intimate, the more difficult conversations off-line. So we don't want to have a group therapy session, but we want to have a group connected to session. So if one person is struggling, say, you know what? Let's you and I chat after the group. Let me see if I can help you with that. Now, the person has a chance to call out what they're struggling with, but then not make it disruptive in the meeting.
[00:20:19] Tell me a little bit. It kind of mentioned this in your comments earlier about starting to think a little longer term. You know, everyone clearly has been dealing with such immediate kind of issues and challenges and disruptions, I guess how and when do you start to think a little bit about, OK, well, what's going to happen in the coming weeks and months? What do I need to do now to start preparing for that? What can I do to, you know, maximize or accelerate my recovery or potentially even position myself strategically in this new market? How are you advising or how do you suggest folks kind of start doing that? When do they start doing that? Once they can, to think at that point? How do they start thinking strategically about the future?
[00:20:53] Well, give me back the example of the specialty consumer electronics retail that had reference earlier. The CEO of that company, he and every single all hands call and every single communication to the entire company. He has three kind of points in time. What's happening right now? You know what happened yesterday? What's happening today? What's happening over the next week or two to give people a horizon to look at? And then what does he see over the next several months as the light at the end of the tunnel starts to be seen? So an example of right now we are shipping X number of boxes out of the warehouse. Today, we are getting in a Y number of boxes tomorrow. And we are adding some staff because we were getting a lot new shipments of some of these categories that are in high demand for our customers. Let's be ready to make sure we are staffed for that new influx of inventory. And he will then say, talk about another example. Next week, we're going to be seeing some new brands that we're taking on in some of these at home categories. We're going to be meeting to market to our customers to help them understand what we have, what we can offer them, how can help them. We're launching a social media campaign around creating no matter what. And then long term, you know, he talks about when we get through this, we are going to be a much more relevant company. And there's some opportunities for us to be able to be much more flexible in how we work at home, how we serve customers in ways that we never could before, how we're seeing customers even notice before. So he again, immediate, near-term and then longer term.
[00:22:28] Yeah, I think that providing some sense of the future can really be helpful for teams. As much as, you know, everyone's dealing with their immediate kind of situation and immediate challenges, knowing that at least there's some thinking or there's some sense of what the future is, you know, even if it's not perfect. You know, even if there's still challenges out there, at least having some insight on what they might be, that there's a bit of a plan there. You know, I always say that the biggest fear is uncertainty.
[00:22:52] So even if thinking about three months from now is still kind of bleak or has some hardship, at least being able to kind of put it down on paper or put it down in writing in some way and say, OK, well, now I can kind of deal with it. I can kind of process that. It's when that it's just this big blank page can be really hard for people. So I would encourage leaders, even if you're not a hundred percent sure, putting some something down and starting to develop some strategies around it, we'll give you a little bit more confidence and be able to take support.
[00:23:20] Absolutely agree, Bruce. That's right.
[00:23:23] I mean, we talking a little bit about some of the tech, but any interesting tack that you've seen people do or just kind of techniques, even in terms of dealing with this work from home situation, whether it's how they've kind of set up their workspaces, how they've connected with folks, how they manage their personal environments. I mean, people are dealing with, you know, everything from, you know, having literally the hardware and software to do the stuff. But also people are dealing with child care. People are dealing with, you know, all sorts of logistics that are just so unimaginable. You know, months ago in terms of can I be up in a running company in this context?
[00:23:55] What are the things you see or you've heard people do that has been helpful to folks in terms of productivity?
[00:24:01] Well, this is kind of a quirky, fun thing. But, you know, one of our merchants that our clients found out that you can hook up a GoPro as a webcam. So we ran our Web cam. So we were selling GoPro is a little more expensive, but people wanted them. So, you know, we couldn't get a webcam. You hook up a GoPro and you've got a video camera. The other thing in terms of kids at home is to just acknowledge that know you know, you've got kids at home and at meetings will be interrupted. And that's OK. That you're kind of accepting that and not making anybody at all feel other than this is a normal new normal here. You know, the big thing, though, and this goes this goes pretty much booze to everything we've talked about is the wisdom of the crowd, the wisdom of the team that our client and our organization believes in hearing from every part of the company and getting the knowledge not from the top down, but getting it from every single place. So how people are doing this?
[00:24:57] There's somebody in the merchant team that's figured something out that we want to make sure they share that with the entire company. Somebody in the marketing team has figured out something. Want to share that with the whole company.
[00:25:05] Some customers doing something that is novel want to share that with all of our customers and our whole team. So really making sure that we understand our company is the sum and substance of all of our people, whether the people who. Clean the buildings, the people who answer the phones, people who ship out of the warehouse.
[00:25:24] The CEO. Everybody is an important part of the company is sharing that information. Best practices, knowledge is important. So on the going back to the virtual teams, making sure that everybody has a chance to speak and everybody gets as much of an equal face time as possible and asking those engaging, inspiring questions to make sure people have permission to say the good, the bad, the ugly and weird and strange and funny.
[00:25:48] Yeah, I certainly have noticed. I mean, as is true with general meetings. But, you know, you always run to the challenge of I mean, you can kind of it's a little bit extroversion introversion. I mean, it's slightly different dynamic.
[00:25:58] But you have some people who are are very quick to speak, have less to say or fairly forceful. You have some people that are a little shyer, that they're cautious with their words. They need more thinking time. And so they tend not to participate as much. I think that actually gets exacerbated in this virtual meeting kind of context, because it's just much easier for people to hide. It's much easier for people to kind of dominate. So the one thing that I certainly found helpful and I've encouraged folks that are leading virtual meetings is make sure that you have this equal airtime process and policy and systems in place to that you really are hearing from the people that otherwise might be quiet. And the other one I talk about is structuring unstructured time. So. So having some time before and after the meeting for that casual conversation, just cause one of things we lose in the virtual meeting environment is that, you know, people show up at the meeting, you get there five minutes early, you chit chat with folks. The meeting finishes. You hang out a little bit. You don't have that casual banter time. And so actually putting that into your meeting of some groups that, you know, the meetings start at five after the hour and people get there on the hour and then they take the first five minutes just to kind of chat. And then sometimes they're checking in with each other. I'm not just talking what's going on, but it's spending a little bit of unstructured time can be really helpful. And I think it's one thing that we just lose when we're doing this work from home. Virtual meeting context. You know, everything tends to be all right. The meeting's on. We're gonna get at the content. The meeting's done.
[00:27:18] Everyone signs off. So so having that and I think you've seen I've been posting these virtual happy hours, you know, twice a week where it's just we just get together with folks and we spend an hour and just hang out online. I think having some space and time for people just to connect on whatever they want to connect about is going to be key, particularly as this goes on. You know, I think a couple of weeks people are gonna be like, OK, we got to get the business. It's crisis. We're gonna, you know, focus, focus, focus. But at some point, people are going to start to get fatigued. And I think people are going to need some time to connect with folks even if we can't physically be together.
[00:27:48] Yeah, there's there's ways you can make personal connections. As you mentioned at the very beginning of the call, we are kind of warming up and getting people to be more personal. So like today, when we had our all hands call with our client, you know, one of the guys has a beautiful, massive library that he was sitting in front of. So somebody said, oh, you know, Bill, have you read all those books? You know, this it look impressive. He goes, Yup. Not all of them, but I intend to. And then, you know, we just commented about the books and somebody else had moved where they were. And he said, well, I move where I was because I was in front of a liquor cabinet.
[00:28:21] I didn't want, you know, as far as the introverted people going back to that, because I think it's really important.
[00:28:30] So if somebody is is introverted and like you said, they might even be more introverted on a on a video conference. There's several ways to deal with that. One would be to reach out to them beforehand, individual and say, hey, Bruce, you know, I know that it's it may be a little more difficult for you in these video conferences. I really do want to hear from you about your conference call with this client, or I really want to hear about what you learned on that webinar or texting somebody or commenting on, hey, Bruce, how are things going where you are? I know that there's a lot of stress in the town you live because there were some people who were diagnosed. I'm just making that up. So there are different ways to get people who are a little bit more introverted, connected. Sometimes I'll just ask him, so what could I do, Bruce, to help you be more comfortable talking about something people will tell, you know, OK. And so, yeah, it's just being present and understanding that there is a wisdom and knowledge of the group and each person has their own intuition and taking some risks. You know, we're taking more risks now than we before. We're being less cautious when in a way, I think that makes us more human.
[00:29:38] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think I'm kind of bringing more humanity to the work that we're doing is probably generally a good principle, you know, connecting with folks.
[00:29:46] Mark, it's been a pleasure.
[00:29:47] If people want to find out more about you, about the optioning lab, about the book, what's the best way to get that information?
[00:29:53] You can go to our website app lab dot com. You'll see a lot of things about our company case study, some content. You can get my book, Culture of Opportunity How to Grow Your Business in an Age of Disruption on Amazon, both in the Kindle version and the print version. And you can reach out to me at Mark M and they R.K. M at opplab.com. That's Mark m n o p p l a b dot com.
[00:30:17] Great. I'll make sure that the. Links are in the show notes here so people can click through and get done that again, a pleasure as always. I've always enjoyed our conversations. I think this was a great chance to sit down, talk a little bit about some of the things we talked about before. But obviously in a really different and important context, hopefully we've got a couple of good takeaways for folks. And people can develop some strategies, take away some strategies they can use to get through not only the immediate situation, but hopefully plan for a faster recovery, you know, be more strategic. Once you're on the other side of this. But I really appreciate the time today.
[00:30:44] Same here, Bruce, and thank you for your generosity.
[00:030:49] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.