Afford Anything - This is The Toughest Episode I've Created So Far

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

#83: Hey. It’s time we talked. I’ve made many tough decisions in my business. I’ve said “no” to thousands of pitches, turned away countless advertising requests, and made difficult choices about content and tone. And sometimes I don’t know whether or not I’ve made the right choice. Today’s podcast episode is a painfully personal one. I open up my mind, explaining exactly how I make decisions about how to lead this online community. I’m frank about the doubts I hold and the choices I’ve questioned in hindsight. I’m blunt about the things I still do not know; the ethical quandaries that plague me. Today’s episode, perhaps more than any episode I’ve ever done, comes from my heart. I hope you enjoy it. ---------- Have thoughts/concerns/suggestions regarding what I discussed in this episode? Feel free to reach out on the site (http://affordanything.com/episode83), Twitter (@affordanything), Instagram (@paulapant), or YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/affordanything).  Also, note to new listeners: I HIGHLY suggest you don't start with this episode! There's way more valuable content in the interviews and Ask Paula episodes that I've previously published. You can check those past episodes out on iTunes, or on the site: http://podcast.affordanything.com/listen Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by SaneBox, a smart filter that prioritizes your inbox, removing the email distractions and saving you time. Get a free $25 credit at SaneBox.com slash Paula. Aboard anything but not everything. This is the Afford Anything podcast. Welcome to episode 83. This is one that I'm really nervous about. I'm going to say right off the bat, if you are a brand new listener to this podcast, if this is your first or second episode, I don't recommend that you listen to this. this one. There's plenty other stuff there in the archives. Check that out instead. This is specifically an episode that I am doing for my long-term listeners for people who have known me, who have known the show or the blog for a while, because there's some stuff on my mind that I really want to get off my chest. I completely mixed metaphors there. So, hey, we're kicking off to a great start. Hashtag not an anatomy show. So I'm just going to repeat one more time. If you're new to this show,

and or if you just don't care, if you just want to get in, get the information, get out, and you don't really care about me or the community or the backstage of this all, then this is not the episode for you. This is episode 83, the not episode. The first thing that I want to talk to you about and the main thing that I want to talk to you about, the reason I called this meeting to order. God, I'm speaking really quickly so you can tell that I'm nervous. I also crack stupid jokes when I'm nervous.

So yeah. So I want to be really transparent in my thought process about, well, about every business decision that I make because, you know, that part of what I blog and podcast about is how to run a business. And so obviously if I'm transparent about my thinking process, I think that could be educational for what I cover, even if it's just a lesson in what not to do. And specifically, I really want to be transparent about my thought process behind the sponsors and the advertisers that I bring on. Who I say no to, who I say yes to. And I have said no to many, many more sponsors than I have ever said yes to. I've left a lot of money sitting on the table. And I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back. I'm saying that because I had very strategic reasons for doing it. And

sometimes I second guess that right now I'm really second guessing myself on a lot of these. So I guess maybe the point of this episode is that I want your advice. But all right, but here's the deal. This is what you can expect in today's episode. Number one, I'm going to explain the backstory of how I've monetized and run this blog and podcast. And number two, I'm going to share a question that's in my mind, a specific decision that I'm trying to make right now, which is that I'm wondering whether or not to make a significant change to the way that I run. things. So I'm going to give you the story. I'm going to ask a question and that's the show. I don't

have the answer. So I'm just going to give you the story and then pose the question. And that's the whole show. If that sounds interesting, stick around. And if not, totally get it. This is not a normal show. If that doesn't sound interesting, I totally get it. This is not a normal show. You can skip this one and I'll meet you at the next one. For those of you who want to stick around, here we go. I have been blogging for six years. I started in 2011. And I've been podcasting for one year, started in 2016. For the past six years, ever since I started that blog, my rule, ironclad rule has always been I will not ever promote a company unless I use them myself. I needed some type of an ethical standard by which I said yay or nay. And that seemed to be a good one. And for six years, I've held to that. On the blog, here's how that played out. First of all, when you start blogging, the low-hanging fruit, the first opportunities that come your way are these things called sponsored posts. That is the online equivalent of running an advertorial in a newspaper or a magazine.

It's essentially when a company comes to you and they say, hey, we'd like to buy a blog post, you know, put up a blog post. Sometimes they write it, sometimes you write it. Sometimes you write it. but they're essentially buying content with links that go back to their site, blah, blah, blah. And I basically, I mean, God, when I started, 2011 was the heyday of sponsored post fever. It's kind of abated a bit since then. Oh, that's also, that's kind of an interesting phrase to say, abated a bit, abated a bit, abated a bit. Anyway, it's abated a bit since then. But back in 2011, 2011, 2012,

Well, blogs, even blogs that didn't have much of an audience were making $3,000, $5,000 a month just from putting up sponsored posts, particularly if they had a solid Google page rank. It gets a little technical, but basically that was how they would pass on SEO's search engine optimization link juice. Anyway, TLDR, a bunch of people were making a bunch of money by putting sponsored posts on their blog. And I decided to stay out of that game because it just didn't sit right. right. It didn't pass the gut test. And that was when I developed the ethical standard, the ethical barometer of I'm not going to ever represent a company unless I personally use them myself. And frankly, back in 2011, 2012, I really could have used the money. Like, those were lean, difficult years for me. And an extra $3,000 a month, my life story would have come out

a lot different if I'd had that kind of money back then, if I could have put that into some rental properties. With an extra $36,000 a year, I could have bought an extra house with that. Like, either made a down payment or just got a really, really cheap foreclosure. I mean, either way, do that for two years. That's two extra houses. Wow. Yeah. But I made that decision knowing full well what I was walking away from.

and I did it because I believed in the long-term future of afford anything and this community. I believed and still believe very strongly that you never slay the goose that lays the golden egg. And this community, you guys, you are, you're the goose. You know, your trust in me and our relationship with each other, this is the goose. Like, this is what I do this all for. I wouldn't be doing this if I were literally just, like, it's a beautiful sunny day and I'm sitting in my closet alone talking into a microphone. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the fact that I believe that there are some people out there who are listening and who are benefiting from this. So anyway, I'm straying off topic a little bit, but as a blogger, I said no to sponsor.

sponsored posts. And then later, I said no to a lot of affiliate link opportunities that I could have pursued. So 2011 and 2012 was the sponsored post heyday. That's when I was said no to all of that. And then around 2013, 2014, 2015, that's, I feel like when affiliate links really kicked up into full gear. And I started seeing a lot of my colleagues, my fellow finance bloggers, make a lot of my by going that route. So people were representing, for example, various robo advisors, various crowdfunding platforms, various credit card offers. I said no to all of that. I said no to affiliate links to any company that I personally didn't use. And because I don't use that many companies and I don't use that many credit cards and I don't, you know, because I don't use a lot of stuff, that meant that I just didn't have very much in the way of direct revenue opportunities. Because as long as I held my standard of only representing companies that I use myself, it really shut out the vast majority of the universe of opportunities. And so I've held to this very painfully for six years.

And I'm not like trying to garner sympathy or garner praise or bust out the, you know, applause or the violins or the whatever. Like, I'm just saying that I made a conscious decision of what my standards were and I held to it and I was fine with accepting the consequences because I'm an adult and I took responsibility for the consequences. And I did it all because I was and am committed to thinking long term. And thinking long term means not slaying the goose that lays the golden egg. And that goose is you. that goose is my relationship with my audience. And, you know, for six years, I've watched people with much smaller readerships than mine make a lot more money than I have. Now, to be clear, because I don't want this to be misleading in any way.

So please understand, to be clear, I am not complaining I did very well. This is absolutely not a complaint in any way whatsoever. I did well. I started making six figures, but I did not make that money through advertising or affiliate links. I made it through other opportunities that landed in my lap as a result of the blog's exposure, namely freelancing and consulting. And I intentionally avoided writing blog posts that were, like, for example, travel hacking articles full of credit card links or robo-advisor comparison articles. And I mean no disrespect to other bloggers who have made different decisions. Like, dude, you've got your own business with its own strategy. I've got mine with my own strategy and it's all good.

Like we each run our own thing. So absolutely no disrespect to bloggers who have made different choices. That's cool. But I, just me, I personally chose not to go down that road. I knew that I could make money doing that, but I chose not to. And I feel good about that decision because now with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of those people with smaller readerships never grew past where they were. In other words, the readership metrics are stuck back at their 2012, 2013, 2014 levels. Whereas mine has grown significantly every year, year over year growth in readership and in email subscribers has been incredible.

So the fact that that has happened, the fact that I now have an email list of 50,000 people, and I'm going to be up on stage at FinCon, which is the big financial blogger conference, I'm going to be up on stage giving a big ideas talk this year. The fact that all of that is going right for me gives me some assurance that over the last six years I've made some of the right decisions, even if they haven't been easy ones. In everything I've done, I've always tried to put this community first. And, okay, so that's been my thinking throughout this last six years of blogging. And last year, a year ago, I started this podcast. And it quickly became apparent to me that looking at the numbers, you know, just the cost at that point of running the blog and the podcast. I was going to have to start monetizing more aggressively than I had been. So up until that point, the way that I had been making money through the blog was indirect,

through freelancing opportunities and consulting opportunities that came to me as a result of exposure from the blog. But by the time I reached 2016, the workload of running the blog and podcast were such that I just couldn't accept any freelancing or consulting gigs anymore. And I had to let go of a lot of the clients, actually almost all of the clients that I had in order to focus full time on afford anything. In addition to that, the costs of running all of this were starting to mount up. So the blog, just the hosting and the email list alone cost me $600 per month. The hosting costs me $250 a month. And maintaining an email list of 50,000 people, that costs me $350 a month, just to maintain that list on a server somewhere.

And I'm being flippant about the service that they provide. If they do more than that, they make sure the emails go through, yada, yada, yada. But anyway, those costs just that alone is $600 a month. Plus there's, you know, the cost of hiring people, which I'm very understaffed and I really ought to be hiring more. And anybody who has ever tried to email me or message me or, you know, reach out to me in any way and has not gotten a reply, I'm sorry. I would love to reply to you, but I'm really, really understaffed. So anyway, 2016 came around and I realized that I just need to start monetizing more aggressively in order to at least maintain and ideally grow.

When I started the podcast and began taking sponsors on for the podcast, I decided that I was going to maintain that same ethical standard of only representing companies that I personally use and like. But as it turns out, in the world of podcasting, sponsorships are tricky. Like, it's not like having a blog where, you know, if you've got a blog, it's relatively easy to think of a company that you like and become an affiliate for them. So for example, I'm an Amazon affiliate. So if there's a book that I recommend on a blog, I'll just put an affiliate link to Amazon, to that book on Amazon. In the podcasting world, it's a lot more like a courtship where you have to be interested in the company and they also have to be interested in you. And then you have to

commit to one another for a given number of episodes. the chances of that happening, particularly the chances of a long-term relationship forming, it can be difficult. It can really be hard. But at the same time, it costs money to produce every podcast episode. You know, out of respect for my team, I won't tell you exactly how much it costs, but it's, you know, definitely a three-digit number per episode. and so, you know, including the cost of finding people to interview and coordinating all of that. And, you know, there's all of the behind-the-scenes planning that goes into it as well. And that costs money. So it's important in order to keep the show running to monetize each episode, ideally with two sponsors.

Later in this episode, I'm going to explain the significance behind the sponsors on this episode. So ironically, we're going to break for two ads right now. But please, please listen to the end of the episode because one of these two sponsors is, well, you'll understand the intentionality behind the choice when you get to the end of the episode. So with that being said, here's our ad break. My inbox gets really overloaded. I get a lot of emails. It's stressful because the important stuff gets buried under. underneath all of the unimportant stuff.

And then I end up spending a whole bunch of time just organizing my inbox, sorting through things. And no matter how much time I spend there, number one, I can never keep up. Like, no matter how much I try to sort through my inbox, new stuff comes in faster than I can make sense of it. And number two, the emails that are actually important end up getting lost under all of the clutter and noise of the stuff that's not important. And that's why I was really happy to bring SaneBox on as one of the new sponsors of this show. SaneBox is a service that prioritizes your inbox.

It sorts things into the emails that you have to actually look at now versus Sane later, the emails that can wait. And then it also sends things into the black hole, things that you don't actually have to see. It rescues important emails from your spam folder. So, you know, it works both ways there. things that need to go to spam away and things that need to come out of spam into your inbox. It lets you set reminders for yourself. It lets you track emails that you've sent that haven't yet gotten replies. It automatically uploads your attachments into the cloud. It basically makes sense of your inbox for you. It's almost like having an assistant who does a first pass of your inbox.

The basic plan for SaneBox starts at only seven bucks a month, but if you want to give them a try, For free, you get a free trial, and on top of that, you also get a $25 credit if you go to Sanebox.com slash Paula. That's Sanebox.com slash P-A-U-L-A. Give them a try. I mean, what do you have to lose? Go check them out for free. Get the free $25 credit.

And then see if they offer the value that you need. See if they are making your email experience more pleasant. So sanebox, s-a-n-e-B-O-X.com slash P-A-U-L-A. Are you an entrepreneur or do you have a side hustle in which you have to physically send goods to customers? So, for example, do you have an Etsy store or an eBay store? Or are you a seller on Amazon? If so, you might be interested in hearing about our latest sponsor. They're a company called Ship Station, and they offer two awesome benefits.

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You can try them for free for 30 days and also get an additional month free, by using promo code Paula. That's P-A-U-L-A. So if you want to try them, go to shipstation.com. And before you do anything else, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Paula. That's shipstation.com. And then when you're there,

click on the mic and type in the word Paula that'll get you two free months. Give them a try. Ship Station. In order to keep the show running, it's important to make it. monetize each episode, ideally with two sponsors. But by the same token, my standard of only representing companies that I use and like personally started making, well, let me just put it

this way. It started playing out in very weird ways. And here's what I mean by that. If a sponsor came to me and said, hey, we like you, we're interested in sponsoring your show. If they were a company that I had never heard of before, my response would then be, well, let me try your product and see if I like it. And if I like it, then cool. And if not, then go away. The result became that I ended up using, like trying and using a lot of products and services that I never previously had tried or used or in some cases even heard of. and sometimes I would try a product or service and I would think, oh, dude, this sucks. And so I would tell them no. And then at other times I would try something and be like, hey, this is actually kind of cool. And I would tell them yes.

And even after that sponsorship ended, I would continue to use that. And that's my barometer. Like when I'm evaluating a product or service, in my mind, I'm like, well, if they're not a sponsor, would I still use them? And the answer is yes. Audible, if you're a long time listener, you might remember. Audible was a sponsor for a long time. That sponsorship ended. I still use them.

And so in that regard, it's been kind of cool. Like I've gotten exposed to a lot of companies that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to. Like, frankly, when La Tote first approached me, my knee-jerk reaction, I was like, ugh, that is gross. Like, that is not me. That's not my scene. because they're a fashion company, and I'm not into that stuff, you know, like their whole shtick was like, well, you can get Rebecca Minkoff or pennies on or whatever. And I was like, nah, why do I care? But then I tried them and it turned out I really liked them for a number of reasons. And, you know, like, I love the concept. I love stuff that gets delivered. I love that I don't have to own the stuff. I frankly, and this is like kind of a little bit redneck maybe, but like I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I also like that I don't have to wash this stuff, like that I can, you know, I mean, I'm sorry.

Am I supposed to apologize for that? Like, I tried them and I liked them. And that's the really the end of the story. But, okay, but here's kind of the shan part. I've gotten a lot of criticism from various listeners who all of, you know, the criticism is along the lines of like, how dare you pretend to be frugal and how dare you promote like frugal living when you're also promoting all of these discretionary consumer goods. Here's a thing.

First of all, this is not a penny-pinching show. This is not a show about how to stack coupons with buy one, get one deals. I am not Trent Hamm. This is not the simple dollar. This is not a frugality show. I advocate figuring out what percentage of your income you want to save, pulling that off the top, and then chilling the F out. about the rest. So for me, Will and I combine to save 50% of our income. We pull that off the top. And when I say

save, I mean that to refer to anything that improves net worth. So accelerated payments more than the minimum towards a mortgage counts as part of that, saving in a retirement account counts as part of that, or literal savings in a savings account counts towards that. Any net worth improvement is what I mean when I say the word save. And for me, as long as I'm saving 50%, I'll spend the other 50% on whatever the F I want. And if I try a service and I like it and you don't like the fact that I like it, well, like, what? Am I supposed to apologize for that? So, I don't know. So that's been kind of frustrating. And it's also been frustrating because of the fact that I have shut myself off of most financial services companies, most companies that would directly fit with the topic of

this show by virtue of having my ethical standard of only representing companies that I use and like. Because the thing is, in the world of financial services, like banks, brokerages, trading platforms, investor crowdfunding websites, asset allocation websites, robo-advisors, that's where this ethical standard really starts to matter. Because unlike food or clothing or luggage, that stuff you don't want to mess with and that stuff you don't want to take flippantly. And frankly, that stuff you're not going to switch out very often. Once you've got your retirement accounts at a particular brokerage,

there's a huge passive barrier to moving that elsewhere. It's just time and hassle and confusion. expense. And so, frankly, I love Vanguard. I've made no secret of that on this show. Vanguard is not an advertiser. I've never accepted a penny from them. But they're the brokerage that I love and they're the brokerage that I'll recommend. Therefore, any other brokerage that comes to me is one that I'm going to say no to. Charles Schwab is the only one that I would, the only one that I'd consider. because I have accounts there too and I like them too. But other than Vanguard and Schwab, I'm going to say no to any brokerage that wants to advertise on this show

because, frankly, they're not who I would use. They're not who I do use. And they're not who I would recommend to a friend. And if I wouldn't recommend something to a friend, then I'm not going to recommend it to you. And so that's where this ethical line really, really makes a difference is when it comes to recommending financial services companies when it comes to recommending banks, brokerages, robo advisors, crowdfunding sites, all of that. And because I have, by virtue of setting this standard, closed myself off to most of those opportunities, the stuff that's left over is consumer goods. The stuff that's left over

is clothing and food and luggage and ways to download audiobooks that aren't going to the library. And so that's where this difficulty comes in is I've been getting a lot of criticism. And it's been really frustrating because I'm like, if I had just accepted any one of the sponsorships that had come to me from a life insurance company or a loan consolidation company or a crowdfunding platform or a robo advisor or a bank, if I had accepted any one of those offers, those ad spots would sound on. brand. They would have the veneer of being on brand. And then I wouldn't get emails from people being like, how dare you recommend that dinner become more convenient? So that's been a little, that's been really challenging because I feel kind of like damned if I do and damned if I don't. I've talked about this at length with several friends, actually. And one of them pointed out to me, rightfully so, he was like, well, aren't you kind of abiding by the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law?

You know, like if you are testing out different products and services for the sake of seeing whether or not you like them enough to bring them on as a sponsor, I mean, or if you're making yourself use them so that you can abide by your own usage barometer, aren't you kind of abiding by the letter and not the spirit? And I'm like, well, maybe. I don't know. I mean, this is where the ethical quandary comes in, right? Like, I can really see all sides to it, you know? And I talked to another friend who made the point, like, well, there are probably a lot of products and services that you yourself would not use that your audience could benefit from. You know, there might be like a really awesome some company in the financial services. sector or some company in, you know, the B2B entrepreneurship sector.

Like they basically there might be companies that are awesome and that are recommendable and that are doing great work, but that just don't fit your personal needs. And the point that my friend was making to me was, aren't you a little bit too much putting yourself in the center of the universe by decreeing that you would only promote things that would also serve your own needs. Shouldn't you be thinking about what might be best for your audience rather than what is of interest to yourself? And the friend who said that, like, yeah, he made a really good point too. And so I guess that is, that's the thing I haven't figured out. And that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. And I guess that's where I need

your help is do I continue to do the same thing that I've done for the last six years, which is hold to my line of I'll only represent products and services that I myself use? Or do I only represent companies that I think will be of benefit to my audience? Which one of those should be my barometer? Do you understand what the question, like, I don't know if I'm phrasing this. I know I'm not phrasing this very succinctly because I'm just, you know, spoken word is never as tight or as concise as the written word. But the question ultimately is, do I hold a standard of only representing companies that I would use myself? Or do I hold a standard of only representing companies that I genuinely believe would be of interest to my audience? Which of those two

barometers should I use. And I'm going to tell you outright. So recently I brought on a test run with a sponsor. I'll just give you the name. It's Ship Station. They are the, and ironically, they're one of the sponsors of this episode. They are a company that I've not used myself. And that's like really a big thing for me. And I thought for a very long time before I brought them on. And I mean, they seem to be great. Like, I read a lot of reviews. I looked at their website. I like, I definitely did my due diligence and they seem really awesome. And they provide a service that I don't need because I don't do any physical shipping or physical fulfillment. But I know that there's a contingent of this audience who needs it. Given the fact that

can get such steep discounts on their items, all of, I mean, every, all signs pointed to they're pretty good. So we're just doing a test run with them right now. But that was a very big and hard decision. And I guess that was probably my way of testing the waters to see which of those two ethical barometers I want to hold. And I guess the reason that I'm hosting this entire episode, episode 83, which is not an episode, it's just me talking to you and really opening up, I guess the reason behind all of why I'm doing this is because I have had a very particular ethical barometer that I have held to for six years.

And I am at a crossroads right now where I'm trying to figure out if I should continue to hold. to that or if I should switch to a different barometer. And so accepting ship station on as a sponsor is, I guess, one of the ways in which I'm, you know, sometimes you have to push the boundaries to know where they are and you have to test the waters. And I guess it's my way of trying to figure out which barometer do I want to hold, which bar, which standard do I want to hold. And I just don't know the answer because I really see the argument on both sides. You know, when there are a lot of companies that are out there that would probably really appeal to many of the people listening, but that I just don't need what they have to offer.

But that doesn't mean that you don't. And likewise, there are also companies that appeal to me personally, like clothing companies, for example, that appeal to me personally, but that might not appeal to you. So I totally see the argument on that side of it. But then again, I just don't know because that also sounds like a slippery slope, you know. And I guess that's my big fear is if I change my ethical standard to one that says that I'll only represent companies that I genuinely believe would be of benefit to you all. Well, I mean, that is a standard that has a much looser interpretation. If the barometer is I have to use it myself, then there's a tight interpretation to that. I either use it or I don't.

Yes or no. If the barometer, however, is that I have to actually believe that it would be of interest to you, that is such a loose standard. It just feels like the beginning of a slippery slope. So as much as shifting that barometer on one level makes sense, I don't want it in any way to be the beginning of a slippery slope. And that is my fear about adopting that as the new standard. So that is where I am with that. And that is the question that I have that I have not been able to address or figure out.

So, well, I'm emotionally spent. How about you? But I feel like episode 83, man, I think this is the most important episode I've created. So that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. And I'm sharing this because, number one, I want to just be completely transparent and open about the way that I run afford anything and the way that this blog and podcast and this whole community has has grown and will continue to grow. So I just, I think it's important to peel back the curtain. Is that the expression peel back? Pull back. It's pull back the curtain. Okay. I'm clearly not great at cliches. That's why I avoid cliches like the plague. But I think it's important to pull back the curtain and you'll let you guys know what's happening behind the scenes. I'm going to end this analogy here before it completely goes off the rails. I'm sorry, did anybody else find that funny?

Because I kind of did. Okay. Hashtag too many cliches. So anyway, I would love to know what you think. I would love to hear what you have to say. You know how to get a hold of me. I'm on Facebook. Facebook.com slash afford anything. I'm on Twitter at Afford Anything. I'm on Instagram as Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T. The show notes are at Afford-A-N-T-E-N-T. So all of those are great ways to get a hold of me. And I may or may not be able to personally respond. I would like to. And in some cases, Aaron could or would respond. But, you know, I'm sorry I do let messages slip through the cracks. I don't like the fact that I do it, but it happens.

And it's just a fact of life. I read messages, but I can't necessarily reply to everything. But I absolutely am reading them. I want to know what you think. That's why I'm recording this. That's why I'm sitting here alone in my closet, talking into a microphone, asking for your input and for your feedback, because I couldn't do this without you. And it wouldn't make any sense to do this without you because why I have a podcast when you're just completely speaking into the ether? Is that a phrase?

I think it's a phrase. I'm going to Google that right now. Oh, okay. So the phrases vanish into the ether. Okay, I am not good at cliches, clearly. But anyway, you know how to find me. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And thank you so much for sticking with me.

I really appreciate it. I am really excited about how much this blog and the... the podcast and the community has grown and I can't wait to see what the next six years brings. So thank you so much. You guys are awesome. I appreciate that you've stuck with me and that you continue to do so. You have a choice of whatever podcasts you want to listen to. And the fact that you are choosing to listen to this one, that means a lot. That does not go unnoticed. So thank you so much. You guys rock. My name's Paula Pant. This is the Ford Anything podcast. I'll catch you next week.