The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Now, Near, Next: A Practical Guide for Mid-Career Women to Move from Professional Serendipity to Intentional Advancement by Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer, Kimberly K Rath

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Now, Near, Next: A Practical Guide for Mid-Career Women to Move from Professional Serendipity to Intentional Advancement by Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer, Kimberly K Rath https://amzn.to/3vLCa3u For many women, mid-career feels a lot like a merry-go-round. You start off, eager to jump in. You pick the pink pony and hold on tight. Uninhibited, you move to the zebra during the first stop. Look, Mom, no hands! However, at some point over the next twenty-plus years, you look up, and you're still on the same ride, with the same cast of characters, going in circles. You need a bigger playground! Now, Near, Next debunks the myth that putting your head down and working hard is the best way to realize your fullest potential. Energizing self-agency means taking control of your path ahead. Instead of conforming to social norms or other people's expectations, you look forward with intentionality, action, and reflection. It is time to amplify your potential by making room for yourself, bringing forethought to your journey, and developing a road map to your Now, Near, Next.

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. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Chris Voss. Chris Voss. There you go. What she said. The Iron Lady. When she sings it, that makes it official. I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for letting me off the hook for that after 15 years.

For 15 years, we've been bringing the smartest people, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the authors, the astronauts, all the smartest people on the planet, damn it, come on the show. We only allow the smartest people on the planet because they have to offset my incredible ignorance and stupidity. So it's kind of like the show balances out that way. See how it works? It's like a whole plan of format. We thought that through.

We're not. Anyway, guys, welcome to the show. We've got an amazing author on the show. And she's going to share with you her thoughts and stories of her lifetime. And as we always say on the show, the stories are the owner's manual to life. So there you go. So you're going to learn some crap today. And if you don't, well, or else,

I don't know what that means. Or further share your feelings with your friends or relatives. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss. That big LinkedIn newsletter just crossed 8,000 people and it just grows like a weed. And then the 130,000 group on LinkedIn as well. We have an amazing young lady on the show with us today.

And the title of her newest book that comes out March 14th, 2024. My God, we're in 2024 already. It is entitled Now, Near, Next. A practical guide for mid-career women to move from professional serendipity to intentional advancement. Cynthia Benson Mercer is joining us on the show today. She'll be talking to us about all of that. One of my favorite words is serendipity. I love serendipity, especially holding events that can create serendipity in different settings and where people can learn from each other. Dr. Cynthia Benson Mercer is a business executive,

human capital strategist, author, and executive coach. Working from the time she was 14, her leadership journey began early. A working mom and breadwinner, serving in predominantly male-led industries throughout most of her 30-year career, she was the youngest and only female on the executive team. Navigating a professional career as a chief executive in gaming, hospitality, and healthcare, while raising two children pursuing two advanced degrees, she has experienced the joys and

challenges of trying to have it all. And with deep appreciation for those who shine a light for her as a social psychologist with a passion to unleash human potential. She feels a personal responsibility to help women claim their agency and amplify their possibilities. Welcome to the show. Doctor, how are you? I'm awesome.

How are you? It's good to be with you. It's wonderful to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. You want people to find you on the interwebs. Absolutely. So zealoftheheel, so it's Z-E-A-L of the H-E-E-L, like the shoe, dot com is our website. And then we're on all the socials, thezealoftheheel on LinkedIn and zealoftheheel on Facebook, Insta, and YouTube.

There you go. And I noticed those heels on the website have that infamous or famous red bottoms that are so popular. Absolutely. We do love our louboutins there you go i wear them on fridays around here only friday they're not very comfortable i mean but they look good that's the important thing yes thank you lenny kravitz do you want me to refer you as doctor or cynthia throughout the show cynthia would be fabulous thank you there you go. So, Cynthia, give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside of your new book.

Yeah. You know, the backdrop, really the through line is that our research found that women tend to look down and work hard instead of looking up and looking forward. So we spend time really tooling and empowering women to create space, to invest in themselves, to create a roadmap, to identify their next potential career milestone, and then to get after it, to do something, do the work every day. Not when the kids go off to school, not when they graduate from college, not when the significant other does whatever they're doing right now. There you go. Now, near and next. That makes sense from what you said.

You know, we just had a great author on yesterday who talked about how sometimes I guess a lot of women think that if they just do the work, they'll be recognized or they'll get advancement opportunities. Do you think that's true? Yeah. You know, we tend to over-index on performance. The studies have been quoted a million times that we think that we have to tick nine out of 10 boxes or 10 out of 10 boxes to be capable or eligible. And men, bless their hearts, they meet three out of four and they're like, fake it till you make it. They're indexing on potential. And so we're really encouraging women to realize that if they dig in deep to that potential and look up and get off the merry-go-round, right? We put our head down

and we find ourselves three decades of a mid-career and we're finally looking up and wondering why we're still strapped into the same pink pony. The same pink pony. That's Fridays around here too as well. There you go. Along with the Louis Vuittons. That sounds like a party. It's like a horrible image. I just gave my own. I really know.

I'm in her head and say, sorry for the nightmares, folks. Please don't think it. Never mind. I just ruined it. You know, one of the studies that's cited is there was a study i'm just gonna have to wing it but basically there was like when it came to certain job offerings and requirements for jobs men would apply for it without having all the requirements and women would wait until they were ready and had most of the requirements and then apply is you know the study that i'm citing yeah absolutely absolutely so it's been quoted a couple of times but we actually we refer to that study in the book and and that's one of the study that I'm citing? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So it's been quoted a

couple of times, but we actually, we refer to that study in the book. And that's one of the things that we're encouraging women is to figure out what you're naturally great out and focus on your talents and then develop the skill and knowledge. You can lean into those leadership talents. You can lean into those strategic acumen and those kinds of things. And you can learn the skillset. You can also surround yourself with really smart people that can shore that up. And we're not going to be in equal footing competitively if we're trying to tick all the boxes and get masterful at everything we attempt before we're willing to put ourselves out there. There you go. So tell us a little bit about your life.

Let's let the audience get to know you a little bit better. What was your journey through life and what shaped you? Who hurt you? No, I'm just kidding. What shaped you? It's that kind of show, okay? It's that kind of show. We're going to make it.

It's like real sports. No, I'm just kidding. That's right. We don't do that. We've done a couple of shows like that, but not today. I mean, unless you really want to. But tell us your story so people get to know you better on what your journey of life was like. Yeah.

You know, not starting at the wee bit of my upbringing, but I was raised partly in Southern California. And then when I was in middle school, my mom had remarried and moved us to the Midwest, to a very small town. So I went through some pretty extreme culture shock from Orange County, California to Russellville, Missouri, town of 500 people. And I think that there was a pony involved in my relocation package to convince me to come along. But I ended up going to college in mid-Missouri and I thought I was going to retire Barbara Walters. I was seeking to be a broadcasting. I had a broadcasting and film undergrad and kind of had to make money and fell in love with business thinking that I would eventually get into broadcasting. Found my way by accident in human resources and really found that I had a knack for leading, coaching, guiding people. And so I kind

of stayed that path and served as an executive in human resources in a number of different industries. I get bored very easily, which is really sort of the through line and the essence of our book is mid-career is a long time, three decades, you know? And so every time I would get bored or restless, I'd go get another certification or a degree. And after getting my PhD, I thought, you know what? It's time to write that book that I've been fantasizing about getting going all these years and time to give back and shine a light. So that's the Reader's Digest version. A lot of people had a huge impact, though, on framing and forming who I am and how I see the world. There you go. Well, congratulations on getting your book done.

That's a wonderful thing to get your first book. It's just funny how people look at you after you have a book. Like you can be Jesus Christ, and if you haven't got a book, you're screwed. I need to save that joke. I just wrote that in my head. That's beautiful. book like you can do you can be jesus christ and if you haven't got a book you're screwed i need to save that joke i just wrote that in my head that's beautiful it just came together like that that's why they pay me five dollars for the show but it's true i mean i guess without the bible you would never heard of jesus you know it's that book's really important but no it's like people just i i you know i like you have done a lot of things in my life you you've gotten done a lot more than i have i've just been you know sitting around here talking on a mic but it's funny you

you you're like hey i did all this stuff people like oh that's nice and then you get a book out people like oh you have a glow special glow about you and it's like i just made everything up in that book it you're not gonna read it anyway most people don't like so somebody somebody wrote so some executive the other day wrote gave me had given me a great referral on my book years ago and and we're on the call in the green room and he goes yeah i never finished your book chris i'm like but you wrote that wow okay all right well and then i told him i never read your books either. But what's, what's, do you find that, what's one of the biggest things that women mid-career do you find are struggling with? What's, what's some of their, their big things that they're,

you know, dealing with? When, when we interviewed, so we interviewed about 30 women and did qualitative interviews, and these were success, these are successful mid-career women really studying success and hindsight. In addition, we surveyed over 300 women and then leaned in a lot to the quantitative data. So our goal was really to come at this from an evidence-based perspective. Kimberly, my co-author, and I certainly have our own background and experience that we bring to bear, but not thinking that everybody's going to think that that's the pinnacle of what career success looks like. And the thing that was thematic across 900 collective years of experience of these women is that they lacked intentionality.

Again, it gets back to that, women at this stage are busy. They're raising children or raising somebody else's children or taking care of a spouse or significant other or their community or their neighbors or their friends or their church, you know, nurturers naturally. And if you ask women to list the top three to five people that are the greatest priority and take the greatest amount of their time, they don't put themselves in the list. And so it's this putting off. And that's why this notion of serendipity, which I like that word too, but it was, we would talk to these women and they'd say, well, I was lucky or I was in the right place at the right time. And it's, you know, you're really successful. So let's sort of Monday morning quarterback that and try to figure out what did you do accidentally that if we could bottle it and package it and help women to have more foresight that they could experience some of those successes with greater intentionality rather than hoping that through luck, serendipity, what have you, they're going to have that same kind of

success. Because we know if you just look at the numbers, right, 17% wage gap still between women and men. There's only 10% of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. And yet we outpace men in the workforce and we outpace men in advanced degrees. So something's amiss. And instead of taking the, it's all on society and society's broken and social norms and it's all the man's fault, we take the look at, you know what, how do we energize our own self-agency, look up, and create intentionality? There you go. I like that. Self-agency, self-accountability, self-actualization. You know, biology is biology.

It doesn't change no matter what sort of bullshit society wants to feed us. And so women are going to behave by women's nature and do what they want to do. And I think that affects a lot of those things that you reference. But when women go into business and want to do their own things, do you help them in your book talk about what goes on in the corporate environment? Do you help a lot of entrepreneurial women? Yeah, it's both. It's generalizable. The references, there's a fair amount of references that are in the corporate environment because the book's written through my voice. But again, given all the folks that we interviewed and studied, there are many entrepreneurs and successful women in nonprofit and for-profit. So I think it covers a really

wide spectrum. But to your earlier point, Chris, it looks at things like we know that men show up a certain way, generally speaking, through data and information. And we know that women generally show up a certain way. And so it's how do you live inside that context and realize that we may have to make some different decisions. We may need to come to meetings more prepared so that we're willing to step in and be brief and brilliant in that moment, instead of keeping our thoughts to ourselves. We may need to show up in the office, even though we're in a hybrid work environment or a remote from time to time to create that fraternal kind of relationship. Men like to be in the office, generally speaking.

They're showing up more in the office than women. They even did through COVID because they like that sort of camaraderie and that fraternal feeling. A lot of women say, gosh, I can throw a load in laundry in between meetings and balance all my, keep all my plates spinning and not miss a beat. So there's choices to be made. Definitely. Well, part of it is too, men have a paradigm of provide and protect. We're seen as the people who have to do that. And that's usually our yoke in life. And it's our biological paradigm. Like we get off on it. And And that's usually our yoke in life. And it's our biological paradigm. Like we get off on it. And so that's usually the reason we're in the office. Sometimes

we don't like each other as much that or we're competitive. But, you know, we are tribal. Men tend to be very tribal and we work together and we rise up together. But normally we're in the office because we want to pay for a family and do all the things and be the provider. We have bills to pay and kids to feed and all that good stuff. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would argue that women are more and more feeling that way as more women are becoming either primary breadwinners or sole parents, sole income, et cetera. But because of what they're trying to back, the choices sometimes is to not lean into the relational side. And I think that that can create,

I think that that can create a gap because they're not building necessarily the same relationships with their counterparts if they're more removed. I'm not, I'm a fan, by the way, of remote and hybrid work. We simply address it from how to be intentional. Again, that's our line straight away all the way through is how to be intentional about when and how you show up. Yeah. I mean, it really is important. I mean, you're in a masculine game. You're in a masculine tribe and you've got to perform in the masculine way. I mean, that's just it. It's very different than the feminine culture and the things there.

And it's hard for women to bridge that gap. And like you say, you've got to play the man's game. I mean, we're aggressive. We're designed the way we are to be argumentative, to fight, to fight for ideas, to fight for physically. And that's our push. And so, yeah, you've got to be in there in the mix and scrum. And then you've got to be able to tribe build.

You know, I mean, that's the reason a lot of men rise to the top as a group is because we're good at tribing. And one of the biggest challenges that I see in women's things, and I think Harvard study, I remember reading this in the 90s, one of the biggest problems is women not triving up with each other and actually being competitive as their biological nature is where they get cutthroat with each other

and they sabotage each other and there's drama. And they're not as good as triving up. You know, men, we can, we're competitive, but we'll team up to build something i mean that's how we built the whole world you know we'll build whole cities and stuff and we'll work together but you know women by nature are competitive and part of that comes down to biology where you're

competing for the highest dna so you can propagate the species and all this comes down to caveman stuff and biology in the end on how we're motivated. And so the main thing is that we talked about this yesterday with a great author who's in the same field as yourself. And we talked about how, you know, women just need to help each other work together more. And I think that's something that they could do better. I mean, what do you think of my theory there? Yeah. So I generally agree. Here's what I would say.

I think the biology of it and the sociology of it is right on. I think the difference is this. Women are highly competitive with each other. Yeah. My theory is that it's also, you're laughing, we kind of can be. It's an understatement to say highly. I know, I know, I know. I should be more dramatic.

I know. Guys are like slapping each other on the butt. Oh, yeah. But here's the difference, Chris. The honest to God truth is the fact that they can throw a rock and hit an opportunity. They can throw a rock and hit a opportunity. They can throw a rock and hit a male mentor that has a shared life experience. Women, as they elevate through the ranks as professionals, those opportunities become more and more narrow, number one. And there's fewer

women at that level that have those shared life experience for them to learn for and mentor with and so on. And yeah, it becomes highly competitive and sometimes ugly, quite frankly. And we're not nice to each other. And we talk about that a lot. My business partner and I talk about the fact that we've been so blessed in writing our book that we've leaned out to a ton of incredible women and they have been all high fives, all hyping, all, you know, let's do this together because we're better and stronger together. We have to get out of our own way. I do think that there are some societal norms that definitely don't help matters and perhaps accelerate that natural competitive nature. But I think that's really our calling. Our calling is let's shine a light for each other.

Let's celebrate one another. Let's make space for each other. Yeah. I would love to see more women do that. You know, I've been, I've dated for 35 years and I think every guy I know has the same experience when his wife or girlfriend comes home from the office and the drama just gets unleashed on us of what Betty and Diane and, and are doing. And, you know, it's just,

you're just like, finally as a man, you just go, just why don't you just go murder them all? Seriously. Just, that's what I would do. I don't know.

It's, it's. It's funny. Your guys' friends are people that are enemies. But I would love to see them work together better in the office and eliminate that. You mentioned that as women rise and they're more successful, is that because women thin out? I'll give you an example. Well, I'll give you an example. I'll give you two examples. One, there was a law firm, it was a really high power law firm, and they couldn't keep women past a certain age. And they brought in some consultants and they're like, why can't we keep women? Because we're trying to make

it look like we're being inclusive around here. We can't keep women on. And these are high-powered attorney women, lots of money, success, power, but they were eventually launching out to fulfill their biological paradigm of having a family. And that's what they're doing. They're bailing and doing that. Right now in the dating market, I see so many women that did the wait, do your career and wait to start a family. And now they're 45, 50 and they have a half cook family. And they're also divorced back on the dating market. And it's interesting to see what's going on there. Is that why it's thinner at the top where there's fewer women?

Is because, you know, I mean, there's more men there because the men are, you know, they got to pay for all those people. Is that why? I have so many thoughts about your dating history, which we'll probably leave for another. That's probably another podcast. The social psychologist in me couldn't help it. But here's the bottom line. I think there's room for both. I mean, I think the bottom line is there's room for both. Sure.

There is, but is that why it's thinner at the top? Why are there fewer women at the top? Well, that's a great question. I think part of it is our theory would be this. Part of it is there are societal and cultural norms that are holding women back. We don't

take that on, but there are she has children she might not be willing to travel. She has a societal and cultural norms that are holding women back. We don't take that on, but there are, she has children. She might not be willing to travel. She has a family. Is she going to be willing to put in the hours? And, and frankly,

our, our corporate America was designed for white men. It was designed for the, the, the structure. It gets back to your question about, you know, guys going in and feeling that they have to make a living and feed their families and all the structure. It gets back to your question about guys going in and feeling that they have to make a living and feed their families and all the things. But as more and more women, now outpacing men in the workplace, are also in the workplace, but still doing statistically the

lion's share of the caregiving, whether that's in the home, whether that's aging parents, 61% of the population are caring for aging parents that are working. And the vast majority of those are women. So they're caring for aging parents. Some of them still are trying to launch children and they're working in their careers. I think they get overlooked sometimes based on these narratives that are going on in corporate cultures. And I think women are oftentimes not looking up and looking forward and being intentional about their own career path. So that's what we address. You know,

we're not going to be able to take on the societal norms that have existed for, you know, decades. But what we can take on is look, ladies, if we can understand what is our next professional aspiration, put it into a universe, create a path and a plan around it, start working on it today, not when it's convenient for somebody else, unapologetically, guilt-free, invest in ourselves, put our masks on first.

We position ourselves for those opportunities. We put that in the universe we're looking up we're then able to compete for um those positions we have to change it from a scarcity model right to to that there's plenty to go around and and that gets back to women competing with women because we live in this scarcity mindset yeah i mean that mean, that's, we talked about that actually yesterday. This is like a theme. I didn't know we had two great authors at the same time. But yeah, the abundance mindset versus scarcity. You know, a rising tide lifts all boats.

That's how kind of guys drive up and that's how we look at things. You know, even though we're kind of competitive and we'd like to have the other guy's job, you know, we'll work together because we know that the rising tide rises on boats. So for the women that are, you know, God bless women because without them, we'd be really screwed as a species. Effectively, we'd be over really quick. And their need to nurture, their need to raise a family, and sometimes they choose family over career. I think that's why a lot of this goes on. God bless them. But those who want to stay in can read your book and focus on the next step to their career and focus on excelling and accomplishing whatever they want to take and accomplish. And I think that's great. What have we touched on about your book that we should tease out to people to get them to pick it

up? I think there's a couple things. One is, you know, we start in the beginning of the book really about setting the stage. It's about creating space to invest in yourself. And again, unapologetically guilt free. So how do you create boundaries? How do you make sure you're taking on value, not just volume? So being even more intentional, both personally and professionally. We don't have to do everything. Believe it or not, some other people might be better at it or our kids might enjoy it better if somebody else made the sandwich or ran the bath or whatever stage in life. We really then get into the actionable part of the plan. So we talk very directly and very uniquely about what is your purpose? What is your calling? What are your talents? What are your gifts and skill sets that you already have so that you're not choosing your next based on the proverbial ladder or chasing a title, but what really is going to bring you intrinsic joy and satisfaction? Because if you're going to have to balance it all, you better love what you're doing. And for all the right reasons, right? Otherwise, more frustration, more restlessness. And then we talk about resilience. I wrote the first eight chapters of the book

based on my experience. And chapter nine was the only chapter that was theoretical. It was really about, okay, gosh, and if you've done all these things and bad things happen, life is messy, and something gets disrupted, a layoff, a relocation, etc. Plan for that. And here are some steps to having a model around, we call it the Basecamp model. And in June of just 23, as we were ready to send our copy, our manuscript off to our editor, my position was eliminated. My corporate position of 13 years that I had been narrating about for eight chapters that I've been balancing. That's another podcast. And so I went home and I was like, Oh my God, I have to rewrite chapter nine because it's sort of like the conviction that came to me in that moment was,

had I not been journeying through this book and creating my next, which I thought would be three to five years from now when I retired, had I not been doing that, I would have been left with one option. I've got to go back into the corporate grind. I've got to go hurry up and find another C-suite level job. And where do I begin? And instead, I had a roadmap. I had a blueprint to my next and I accelerated it. And so six months ago, I was chief administrative officer. And six months later, I have launched,

gone full-time into my own consulting practice, executive coaching, public speaking. The books, it hits the shelves actually March 19th. And that created a lot of conviction for me because I would have been really in a tough spot had I not been thinking about my mom. There you go. Well, time is everything. Sometimes the karma or the world or universe or whatever you want to call it falls into place. Did you put in the book calling out the people who let you go there? No, no, no, no, and no no no no no no no my sister said

that that was god saying hold my beer i've got this so there you go something like that whatever works but yeah it's it's it's interesting and sometimes i don't know i i'm not a big believer in karma but i kind of am especially if it if it destroys my enemies but you know then you know then i'm a miracle claimer. But one of the things you, you mentioned throughout that was kind of work-life balance and finding, you know, it really makes people thrive. If I, I can't bring your words back off memory, but basically finding something that works for you. We live in a great environment, I think, especially for men and women in the workforce where the power is going back to the employees.

And, you know, Gen Z is really big on this where they want to find something that, you know, it feels good and feels like they're doing something and they're having an impact and there's something bigger than themselves other than, you know, us boomers and Gen Xers who are just like, I don't really care. I'm just going to go slave at work and maybe I'll get a watch or something. We can't figure them out. So do you find that that's really important for women to identify that, identify what kind of activates your soul and kind of your passion or whatever, as opposed to, you know, just doing the grind for something you didn't really care about? Yeah, a thousand percent. I mean, our target client customer reader is an ambitious, overextended executive woman. And so by virtue of that, most of them, this target person, and there are hundreds of thousands of them,

whether they have children of their own, or they have other places they're extending themselves, they have a home life, they have a personal life as well. But because they're ambitious, because they have a desire to grow professionally, they spend a lot of time in the professional work environment. We often don't create boundaries there, and we don't create boundaries at home and we address boundaries. But the point is, is simple, is that if you're going to put that much time and energy into a profession, why not get paid to do something you love? Why not get paid to do something that fills your cup, that you're naturally good at, that you have exponential success at? You know, that's at. That's where my passion lies,

is helping women in particular. And I work with men as well. But find that natural gift, that natural talent, and then just unleash it and develop it to the fullest of its potential. And then you get paid to do what you love. It makes it a lot easier when you're making those sacrifices. Most definitely. If you're doing what you love, right? It's not work at that point. Right. It's a hobby.

You just love what you do. Yeah, I guess a hobby. I don't know. What do I think of it? I love what I do. I was going to say. I love everything. Exhibit A, right?

Yeah, but it took me a few years to find. I've always loved being a CEO. Since 18, I've loved being an entrepreneur. I've always loved being a CEO. Since 18, I've loved being an entrepreneur. I've loved always being a CEO. I love building companies. I like innovating. I didn't always love the companies I invested in or built. Sometimes the industries weren't like my thing, but they were a vehicle at the time.

But yeah, more and more I've focused on, do I really enjoy this or something? That way I don't have to, the judge says I can't choke the employees anymore when I'm unhappy. There's that. Well, I get one of the ankle bracelet monitors off the stack next week. That's the callback joke on the show. Tell us about some of your offerings, how people reach out to you, onboard with you. I noticed there's a blueprint thing on your website that's kind of cool. Tell us about some of the things you've got going on there. Absolutely. So a couple of free things, just if people are curious and want to get kind of invested right away on www.zealofthekeel.com. If they go to the resources tab, we have the blueprint is free. They can download it. You can start your planning straight away. There's also a mid-career audit, which is just 20 questions.

It takes less than four minutes, but it gives you a sense of how intentional are you about identifying your next professional milestone and how intentional are you about actually putting energy toward that investment and moving that forward, which I think has been really clarifying for a lot of folks. The book, again, is out on March 19th, but right now we're offering a lot of pre-sale bonuses. So it's available pre-sale on our website. If you go on our website and order Now Near Next, we're offering a on-demand masterclass that will be emailed to you. We'll invite you to join our LinkedIn network. And then we also are inviting you to a live webinar with Kimberly,

the coauthor and I in April. And then we have a series of packages. If you want to go a bit deeper than that, the book is also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold. Yeah. Some great bundles right now, $28 retail price and you get $600 worth of free education and insight and wisdom.

There you go. And you've got the, it's a big red button you can press on the thing. That's right. The zeal of the heel with the Louis Vuittons right there on the cover. As always, I need to order a new set for Fridays around here. I really do. I love that callback joke. Maybe wide.

They're kind of narrow. Sometimes I wonder if my audience ever gets sick of that callback joke, but I don't care. So thank you very much, Cynthia, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. I think we got your dot coms package in there when we got that last round,

right? We sure did. Zeal of the heel. Check it out, folks. Order up wherever fine books are sold. It's called now, Near, Next A practical guide for mid-career

Women to move from professional Serendipity to intentional Advancement, I highly recommend Thank you very much Cynthia for being on the show We really appreciate it Chris, thank you, it's a pleasure There you go, and thanks to my audience for tuning in Go to Goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss

LinkedIn.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss Chris Voss 1 on the tickety- tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Crispus, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Crispus, Crispus One on the tickety-tockety, and CrispusFacebook.com. Be good to each other. Stay safe or else, and we'll see you next time.