The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mastering Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges and Building Success with Feras Alhlou

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Mastering Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges and Building Success with Feras Alhlou Startupwithferris.com blackbeltstartup.com About the Guest(s): Feras Alhlou is a seasoned entrepreneur, author, and business mentor. He is the founder of Startup with Feras Alhlou, where he helps entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses to reach seven and eight figures. Feras Alhlou has an extensive background in the consulting and analytics space, having successfully sold a business to Dentsu, a global marketing giant. He is also the author of "Google Analytics Breakthrough: From Zero to Business Impact," published by Wiley in 2016. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss sits down with Feras Alhlou to delve into the world of entrepreneurship, sharing invaluable insights from Feras Alhlou's journey. From the early days of adjusting to a layoff to building successful businesses, Ferris uncovers the challenges and rewards of the entrepreneurial path. Listeners are treated to a wealth of information on how to develop a resilient entrepreneurial mindset, the importance of networking, and practical strategies to navigate through the common pitfalls faced by early-stage startups. Feras Alhlou discusses the significance of bridging the gap for those new to business, emphasizing the need to cultivate sales and marketing skills. He shares his personal experiences of overcoming setbacks, underlining the essential role of resilience and adaptability in business success. Both Feras Alhlou and Chris explore themes such as leveraging the talents of team members and advisors, the modern challenges faced by executives entering entrepreneurship, and effective problem-solving as a CEO. As Ferris states, "With the help of others, you can get through challenges much more efficiently." Key Takeaways: Networking is crucial: Engage in local networking events to enhance sales and marketing skills. Transitioning executives often need support in adapting their skills to entrepreneurial ventures. Resilience is key: Approach failures as opportunities to learn and grow. Surround yourself with a supportive team and leverage their diverse skills for business growth. There's an abundance of resources available to entrepreneurs today—don’t hesitate to seek help. Notable Quotes: "Sales and marketing are just muscles that you have to build gradually." "Passion is optional, but skills and sacrifice are not." "With the help of others, you can get through challenges much more efficiently." "The resilience in business is the ability to fail, learn, and not repeat the same mistakes." "If you have the skills and you're willing to sacrifice, your chances of making it increase significantly." Resources: Ferris Al Hulu's book: "Google Analytics Breakthrough: From Zero to Business Impact" Follow on YouTube: Startup with Ferris

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

When the Iron Lady sings, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. For 16 years, over 2,000 episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show, and we're going to keep doing it. Probably for another 16 years and 4,000 episodes, and then, I don't know, we might be dead by then. So I don't know.

We'll see how it rolls out. That was kind of macabre, right? The beautiful part is you'll have enough content where you can keep listening to the Chris Voss Show for the next billion years, long after I'm dead. And maybe they'll just put me on an AI bot and you'll think that I'm still here. That could be happening right now. You could think that I'm really here, but I'm just an AI bot.

They've mounted to a head on a pole, which is what some people say in the reviews on the Chris Voss Show on YouTube. And maybe they want to put my head in a pike. I think that's what they mean. We have Ferris Alhulu on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his insights to business, how he helps businesses be better. He can help you do better with your companies, et cetera, et cetera. He's also the author of a book that came out in 2016 from Wiley, Google Analytics Breakthrough from Zero to Business Impact, and we'll be talking to him about all the good stuff that goes into there.

Welcome to the show. How are you, Ferris? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. And are you Chris the Robot AI or are you Chris the Real Chris? How do I know? How do I know the difference? You look at my fingers.

Harry, great. It's me and Tina because the fingers are fucked up in AI, right? So that's probably, that's how you'll know folks, the fingers, sometimes the eyes. So give us your.com. Where can people find you on the interweb and learn more about you? Sure. Startup with Ferris, my first name, spelled F-E-R-A-S.com. And we also, we are on YouTube at Startup with Ferris as well.

So give us the 30,000 overview of what you do there at your company. So we help entrepreneurs, those who want to start a business and those who started and struggling, we help them build and grow their businesses to seven and eight figures. That's my background, primarily in the services and consulting space. And that's what I'm putting most of my waking hours in today, these days. So helping people achieve their goals and all that good stuff. And then I see on your website, you've got several, you've got a 12-part black belt startup course speaking. Tell us about some of the services that you offer and how you help coach people or consult with them.

Sure, sure, sure. So I have a bit of a background in martial arts and Aikido and a few other things. So we have one of our products is Black Belt Startup. You can find it at blackbeltstartup.com and it's a mentoring and a coaching program.

We have a free course, a 12 module course available, no charge, no gimmicks, just go log in and you'll get access to all the great content there. And we also have a paid membership where we can walk you through every step of the way

from having an idea to vetting this idea to defining the people you want to be selling to, to putting together a business plan, how to go out and get leads. A lot of people who don't have a sales background, they struggle with marketing. So we break it down into every aspect of the business sales and then as you start to get revenue and become more profitable you want to hire so how you hire and how you take care of the back office legal accounting so we it's a comprehensive framework that we've evolved over the years and we're dropping new content, three, four, five, anywhere from three to five new pieces of content every week so that our community and our followers benefit and our members actually get the office hours. I have weekly office hours to help people who are stuck.

Maybe they're trying something that's not working out or they're stuck at finishing their business plan. So we address those types of questions in the business hours. Yeah. And those are good to have. I mean, you're helping people avoid the pitfalls of what they did in business. I, like you, have been in business since I was 18. And boy, have I made some mistakes. Let's get their notes. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. I noticed on your website too, you have a downloadable media, nine ways your early stage consulting startup can fail. Do you want to tease that out a little bit?

Yeah, sure. So depending on where you go to look, you hear different types of stats. 90% of businesses fail, 50% of businesses fail. So at the end of the day, business failure rate is really high. And in that document you mentioned, in that asset you mentioned, we talk about some of the top nine reasons. For example, under planning is one, over planning, not finding the right business partner. The divorce rate in business is higher than unfortunately the divorce rate in our society. So these are things a lot of people who are new to business have never experienced. They haven't done before. So we want to make sure they know what they're getting themselves into. It's an interesting thing.

Tell us about your journey in your words. I alluded to a little bit of it, but what was your journey in life? How did you get the entrepreneurial bug the disease that once you get it it's hard to get rid of what were some of your influences do you have did your were your parents entrepreneurial did they help seed any of that yeah my my mom was my late mom was a teacher my dad was in business and he had his ups and downs for sure and then i i went to school i went to college for electrical engineering, worked in that field for a couple of years.

It didn't really work out really well. I moved to more of an account management. I'm more people-oriented and not really sales and marketing, but more project management, account management. That worked well for me. I got promoted, moved to Silicon Valley from Florida. And our thoughts are with folks in Florida with the hurricane. But in this amazing startup that I joined, and we raised $96 million, Chris.

That was in 2001, 2002, after the bubble burst. And we were building some infrastructure, some voice over internet, like what we're talking about today here. We were a bit ahead of the market, no customers, no revenue, waves of layoffs ensued. And then one day the CEO came into my office and I was a VP at the time. And he said, hey, Ferris, do you have a minute? I said, sure. He shut the door. And I said, uh-oh, what did I do wrong now?

And he said, hey, Ferris, we have a layoff tomorrow and you are impacted. Wow. You're impacted? That's one way to drop in. you are impacted. Wow. So that was. You're impacted? That's one way to drop in. You're fired. Wow. Or laid off, I suppose. Yeah, yeah.

I mean. You're impacted. You're a little impacted right now. Just unpack your shit and get the fuck out. Sorry about this. My allergies are acting up. You know, I had a young family at the time, my wife and three children. And think about it, a VP in a pretty cutting edge startup in Silicon Valley. So you go from the highest of highs to the sort of the lowest of lows overnight, at least psychologically, emotionally. Not just the financial part.

That's important, of course. And they didn't give me a whole lot of, they had an okay severance package. But like, what do I tell my friends? What do I tell my kids? What do I tell my wife? Why me? What did I do wrong?

Kind of an identity thing too. Exactly. Like, you know, this is my identity. Now it's been taken away. Who am I now? And it was one of those startups you read about in the books. We worked really hard.

We used sign up to work 12-hour days, six days a week. I slept a couple times at that startup helping the engineers get ready for the demo for the investors the next day. So I gave it everything I had. And at the end of the day, no revenue. So things have to happen. So that was really hard. It took me a few days to recover. And then you get up in the morning and said, you know what? It is what it is. I learned from it. Yes, I could have done this. I could have done that. But at the end of the day, it happened.

Now I got to go knock. I got to do something else. So I started sending out resumes, I think for six or seven weeks, zero. It was cricket. Zero interviews, zero responses. And then I ran into a friend of mine who was thinking of starting a business. And he said, hey, Fares, why don't we get together and put our resources together and start this thing called online marketing web design? This is 2003, the dawn of the internet. And that's how we got into it. So in a way, I was forced into entrepreneurship, but that's how we got into it. Hey, survival of fitness, man. That's what shapes entrepreneurism, right?

A necessity, a need that needs to be fulfilled, seeing an opportunity that you can exploit or what's the word that Silicon Valley loves to use? Disrupt? Disrupt, leverage, yeah. Disrupt, leverage, impact. Oh, yeah. Those words are very vivid in my mind, Chris.

You've been impacted. You're like, so did I just experience something at a Diddy party or did I, I don't remember being covered in baby oil but what kind of impact is going on here because it feels like i might be at a diddy party that's starting to feel like a diddy party this i'm being laid off so i'm basically being effed in never mind anyway you get the idea diddy parties have you been no i'm just kidding i'm not i'm just joking around we're doing the diddy jokes right now so if you're watching this video 10 years from now he just got arrested and put in jail so you probably know what the end result was of all that it wasn't

suicide anyway just kidding so when people come to you what what sort of problems you see a commonality thing that they're that they're experiencing and they're asking you for help on? Yeah, so I think there are two main types. One is those who are about to start or just started. Most, I think 70%, based on some stats I've found, 70% of founders of new business owners, they don't have any background in sales or marketing. And that's hard. If you haven't been out there telling people what you do and how you can help them, it's hard. So I think helping what I end

up doing a lot of times is just showing that you're not the first one who's looking to start a business. And sales and marketing, they're just muscles that you have to build gradually. And I tell them the best thing, and this for your listeners, I think this is the one advice, the one advice that if you apply this coming week, you will build this muscle very quickly. Go to a few, two or three networking events in your neighborhood, not online, in person. Learn how to talk to strangers about the value you offer. So that's really getting people over this fear of speaking to strangers, asking strangers for money, telling people about, hey, I have a business. So there are all these constraints and all these restraints we have in our minds that we were not entrepreneurs. We're used to employment and all that, most of us.

So that's like getting that, you know, bridging that gap or helping them address the fear of starting and it's okay, you have to learn sales and marketing on your own. That's one major issue we typically deal with. And then I think the second one is more on, okay, like the financial piece of it. Like, how do I plan for this? Do I have enough money, you know, savings? Do I need to get funding? How do I, you know, how do I, once I start to grow, like, what do I do?

So really showing them the first few steps to get to profitability. Those are the two main areas. Those who want to start, kind of getting them over the fear of taking the leap. And those who started and they're just not sure about sales and money and all that, like helping them build a financial or like a business plan to support their goals. There's probably a lot of people now that you're helping because they're getting out of the executive game, right? And they're wanting to be, you know, I want to start a business. And so they're kind of skillless in a lot of these things.

Is that pretty much what you find? I mean, they're different. So in the last two, three weeks, for a reason or another, I had three folks reach out who were recently laid off. And we're seeing lay, I mean, there were massive layoffs

in 2022, some in 2023. We're not hearing of massive layoffs today, but layoffs are still happening. And especially for those of us who are maybe in mid-career, you have 10, 15 years of some technical experience. It could be accounting. It could be coaching. It could be whatever it is. It could be programming. It could be event planning.

I think if you have skills, that's what I always tell people, one of our black belt principles, if you have the skills and you're willing to sacrifice, I think your chances of making it are increased significantly. So passion is optional, but skills and sacrifice are not. And if you have the skills, then there is a science, there are a number of steps you can take to turn these skills into a business. You just have to learn the business side of it. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot to it.

Then probably how to learn how to delegate. That was one of the hardest things I had to learn for starting a business is learning to delegate, giving up the, you know, quit trying to control everything. Of course. I'm the only one who can do it.

No one can do it as good as I can. Yeah, as well as I can. Yeah. Yeah, fun is fun. What else is there that we haven't touched on that you help people with? You do one-on-one calls or do you mostly do code? So actually a whole lot of people helped me along the way over the last 20 years.

So 2003 is when I was laid off, started the business about seven, eight weeks after that. And then we struggled for the first two years. We struggled a lot, Chris. I tapped into my savings. I depleted my 401k. After I saw a bit of a light into, here's this, I've sold a few projects.

I see the potential. I went all in. I had an amazingly supportive wife and family. And then we did well after a few years. And then we built another business. And then we sold that business. And then fast forward to 2019, we had specialized in one of the business into analytics. We became one of the top globally, one of the top Google analytics partners.

And then we sold that business. We were at eight figure at the time, and we sold it to Dentsu, the global marketing giant. And that journey from 2003 to 2019, 16 or so years, it was full of ups and downs, amazing people that we've worked with, a lot of partners, a lot of suppliers. I mean, you build some of the strongest relationships, I think, in business because we spend most of our waking hours in business, right? As you are working hard, as you are trying to build something amazing make sure you surround yourself with amazing people because it's a long journey and you want to be there you know you want to be with people that you enjoy you know you enjoy working with you enjoy having fun with

yeah i mean the enjoyment part of it you know i've talked about this ad nauseum on the on the on the group it's it's doing something you love genuinely love makes all the difference it's hard to show up every day after 10 years 20 years it's hard to show up sometimes if you don't love it it's really hard to show up for it and when you love it you i mean you it doesn't matter 10 15 20 years on i do this podcast, I'll skip to work. I love it. I love talking to people. I love talking about people's journeys, lessons of life, all that sort of stuff.

But you really have to love it because otherwise it's labor work. And that's probably why 99% of podcasts fail. Yeah, it's really important. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think you have to find something in it that that you really love in life in general and in business specifically you're not you're not going to enjoy as a business owner as a manager as a developer as a designer you're not going to enjoy

every part every piece of what you do. I don't like accounting. I don't like reviewing contracts, but I see that initially I have to do all of it. And then later I was taught you should outsource this stuff, right? So there are parts of it that are going to be difficult. Sometimes you have to have difficult and awkward conversations with suppliers, vendors, customers, and your own team members. That's something that just comes with a package, but there has to be, to your point, something that you're going to enjoy. For me, it's building, finding the right people, building this culture that people just enjoy coming to work. We'll have

challenges. We'll have our arguments. But at the end of the day, we are building something together. And as a business owner, I also want to make sure I want to take care of these people who sacrificed with me, who maybe could have gone somewhere else and gotten a better salary.

As they sacrificed and stayed with me, I also want to take care of them when profitability starts to show up. One of the things you talk about is entrepreneurial mindset. Tell us about what that means and how do people, I mean, maybe some simple tips on how to get into it. I know you have a lot of articles on it. Yeah, yeah. You know, one tip is don't watch YouTube channels who promise you to become a millionaire overnight or over three months.

You know, it does not happen. There are no shortcuts to building anything of significance, to doing anything in life. You can't fake preparing for a marathon. You cannot. You just cannot. Unless you're David Goggins, maybe that's different. You have just an amazing...

He didn't make it either, man. I mean, the training he puts in is... Exactly. But I mean, his willpower, I think, is just so high. He can do whatever he wants. But you're right. He's more crazy than willpower. No, he's willpower.

I'm just teasing. I really love David. No, no. I mean, he's amazing. I read his book, and I was tired. I was exhausted. Like, I ran a marathon. I'm just, like, going through what he goes through.

Yeah. Props to him, man. Props to him. Yeah, let's just go around for 20 props yeah let's just go around for 20 miles let's just go around for 20 miles this afternoon yeah he tells the story about how he gets lost one time and he's breaking down and i guess after you do those massive runs that he does when you get home and you finally collapse your body expels everything from both the ends and i'm like wow that was really good to know I won't be doing marathons anytime soon. Yeah, and just take some duct tape with you just in case you need to tape your foot.

I mean, that's what he does, amazing stuff. I would just lay down on the side. Exactly, call an Uber or something. No, I think on this note, it's important for, I think, for entrepreneurs to do something hard. If you want to build the muscle to start your own business, or if you have your business and you're struggling, part of it is learning in terms of the mindset.

That's your original question. Sorry for the detour there. There are different components to the mindset. I think one is you have to be ready to work hard. There's no ifs, buts. You don't have to kill yourself. You don't have to kill yourself. You don't have to sever all the relationships. No, but there's a season in life where you got to put time into

the business to get it off the ground. And that requires more than 40 hours a week. The other thing I think is we're really bombarded by marketing messages and I have a marketing background, but it sort of makes it almost I can do it. I can do whatever I want if I put my mind to it and I can do it very quickly. This sort of instant gratification, things take time. So people have to be prepared for that. And last but not least, I think from a mindset perspective, resilience, failure, and resilience. So you will have issues. You'll have many challenges.

You'll have failures. And you just have to be able to learn from what you just did. Like a big mess you created, you have to learn from that and not repeat it. So I think people talk about resilience, and in my mind, it's very simple. It's the ability to, okay, we failed. Yes, we lost this deal. We did not pitch well. We did not take care of this customer. I did not hire the right person. I didn't do my proper vetting, whatever the case might be. Just make sure you sit down at the end of the week, at the end of the month, evaluate what went well, do more of it, evaluate what went wrong, and then, okay, here's what I'll do better next time. So that resilience in my mind

is, okay, you'll fail, that is guaranteed, if not if, it will happen. And then getting back up, learning from that mistake or that failure or that whatever you want to call it, and then learning, you know, going forward, not repeating the same sort of mistakes we've done. These are like that working hard, I think the mindset of I want to go and do it, and then learning from your own mistakes, learning from the mistakes of others,

and just takes time. It takes time and effort. It's not going to happen overnight, but you'll increase your chances of success significantly, I think, if you have that type of mindset. Most definitely. I mean, you've got to just be prepared for the problems. So really, you know, we talked about this on the show from different shows, but really, they really should name an entrepreneur problem solver. That's really what you become as an entrepreneur.

And the problems are endless. And what you just said, all the stuff there, means preparing a mindset for, hey, things are going to go wrong. It's okay. My job is to solve them. And so I just look at myself as a problem solver, as a CEO. So what's the problem? How do we identify it? How do we identify it? How do we

attack it? And then how do we resolve it, innovate around it, whatever the case is. And that's all you're doing all day long. I remember I was kind of struck. I shouldn't have been struck, but there was this gentleman on TikTok and he's got, I think he's in his sixties. He's got a executive, he buys and sells executive private planes right expensive real expensive clientele the and so and so he was talking about his what his days are like and what his things are and he mentioned that in a video that was really cool he goes you know all that's all i do is problem solve and he goes you know what's really interesting about it is I've been in business for close to 40, 60 years. You know, I've been alive for 60 years.

I've been around for 40 probably years in business. He's been doing it a long time, right? And he goes, you know what's funny is I, to this day, am solving problems I've never had to solve their deal before because of technology, AI, the internet, competitive pricing, you know, data that consumers have more access to now than ever before so they can understand things and what they're buying and selling. And he goes, you know, you'd be surprised. He goes, I have, you know, 40 years in business and I'll have a new thing come up. We've never had this problem come up.

Let's go solve it absolutely absolutely you know i just did a short record a short for our youtube channel and in the quote i heard from i think an old you know the sage like basically the more maybe it was socrates or someone else but the more i learn the more i knowledge i acquire the more i know how much I don't know. And it is, I mean, people can say, okay, like it's not sort of fake humility. It's true. And you hire someone who's a Gen Z-er and they're going to be a whole lot more adept and just, you know, the whole social media aspect of things, they understand it, they

lived it, they've grown up with it. They might not be, maybe they're not have the same, maybe perspective on life or work or the way you were raised as a millennial or as a Gen Xer, but learn from them and then maybe coach them along the way as well.

Or you hire someone who's much more in sales and you have no background in sales and you'll learn from them. So I think as a business owner, yes, you have the drive, you've built this business, you care for it. It's like your own child. But to grow that business, to scale that business, to your point, Chris, you need to solve problems. And a lot of times, especially as you're growing and as you're hiring people, you want to hire people who will help you solve bigger problems because that's what you want to do. You want to grow. You want to get bigger clients.

You want to hire more people. You want to have more complex processes. And bigger problems will show up, and you need the right people on your team to help you solve these problems. Most definitely. the right people on your team to help you solve these problems most definitely it's a it's a it's i mean it's just the thing where you gotta you know what was it ford henry ford had a thing where he i think he barely graduated second or third grade in school but he had a button board on his desk where he could push any button and get any expert at any different thing in field or life or business to come to him and answer his question and they even took him to court once and said you know this guy isn't

qualified to run a company you know there was a power struggle to take back take his company over and you know he doesn't know what he's doing he's a third grade level and he told that to the judge and jury he said you know i can press a button I can get the access to the knowledge that I need at will. And, you know, I don't have to be the silo of all the great ideas and all the great inventions and thoughts and stuff. And so he kept the company because of that perspective that he had. I have not heard this story. Interesting. Yeah.

And I think Anthony Robbins tells it and some of his stuff maybe Anthony Robbins or other people but yeah he basically he he could get any expert that he wanted and and that was the real key it's okay he has people he can call and and everybody has that you know there's no you know Steve Jobs had to have advisors you know you name any other Titan of industry Warren Buffett his advisors you know not everyone's the all-power, all-being, and all-seeing thing. And I learned that the hard way after losing a lot of money that I wasn't the person in the business with all the perfect ideas, and I needed more contribution from my partners and employees as well. Absolutely. employees as well absolutely and you know one thing chris i always say when people ask me how is how's entrepreneurship today compared to 20 years ago and i say there are different there

are many differences but at the time there were a shortage of of resources and it was hard there was little access or not an easy access to Today, it's sort of the opposite. I think you go on YouTube and there's so many, so many courses you can take and so many things that are available. So now people can get overwhelmed. But at the end of the day, you have access to top-notch skills in whichever area you want. You can go, and I don't have any affiliation with any of these platforms,

but you can go on GLG or Upwork or what is the other one? Yeah, intro.co. And you can, yeah, it's going to cost you a penny, maybe a pretty penny, but you can get, you want to talk to a lawyer about, before you have a business partner and you're not sure how to construct a partnership agreement, yeah, you go and pay someone $200 for an hour, sit down with them. They will give you maybe an outline of things that you should negotiate. You want to get a graphic designer, there. You want to get someone who will tell you about CRMs for your sales processes. So I think this is one area.

I made a video on the number one regret. And I would say the number one regret early on in my career is not seeking the help of advisors earlier. Because I think entrepreneurs, we think we can move mountains. We have the grit. We have the determination. We have the willpower. We put the hours.

And yes, we sometimes do move mountains, but with the help of others you can get you know get through these challenges i think in much more efficiently and i think we most of us under i think underutilize this this amazing resource people who have been to that you know have been to where you want to go and they can help learn it and do it through you as we go out give us your final pitch on the show, your.com, and tell people how they can onboard with you, reach out, handshake with you, find out more about you. Yeah, thank you, Chris.

I appreciate it. Yeah, just go to startupwithferas.com, Feras spelled F-E-R-A-S, and follow us on YouTube at Startup with Feras. We have a lot of free content on all things entrepreneurship. And then we also have our product, blackbeltstartup.com, where you can sign up there for a free course and then also the paid membership. So I'd love to help entrepreneurs. Check out our content.

Let us know if you have any questions. I have a weekly live stream where we answer questions from the community. So if you're stuck, let me know. Happy to help you get unstuck. Or if you have an amazing story, a big win, or even a small win, reach out, let us know. I'd love to share that with the community as well. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you so much, Chris. And thanks. Congrats on 2000 plus episode. That's very impressive. So congrats on that. My back hurts.

Actually, it's been a wonderful joy. We changed the form of the show in, what, 2020 with COVID, and we opened it. It used to be just Silicon Valley, this sort of thing, talking business and disruption and Google and Apple and technology. And then we opened it up to everyone where we talk about life in general, this, that, and the other, trauma, how to help yourself. And it's a labor of love. I show up every day. We do two, three shows. We're doing four shows today.

Oh, nice. And I love meeting people. I love finding about their journey. Hopefully my audience does it well. They listen to 96% of the podcast episode. So I think they dip out at the end. They're like, Chris is rapping. On to the next one.

But they evidently love it too. It's a great thing. Learning is so important. so I think they dip out at the end they're like Chris is rapping on to the next one but they they evidently love it too yeah it's a great thing learning is so important and I hope that most of our audience has that same sort of belief system too

and hopefully we keep providing smart people I guess like yourself I'm just the idiot host of the mic so no one really cares about me but thank you very much Ferris

thank you so much Chris thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com 4chesschrissfuzz Ferris. Thank you so much, Chris. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, christmas1, the TikTok,

you know, those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.