In this episode of Building Great Sales Teams Doug discusses utilizing VAs for social media and operations.
In this impromptu live episode, Doug and Ryan recap the successes of the BGST Podcast and share the secret sauce that makes it all come together: our VAs. Join us and learn how buy back and leverage your time so you can open yourself up from doing the $5/hr tasks to the $500/hr tasks.
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Speaker 1
Hey, guys. Welcome to the grayscale scenes podcast. Let's get started.
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Speaker 1
Great experiences build great leaders. Great leaders build great teams. This is building great sales teams. All right. I've.
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Speaker 2
What's up?
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Speaker 1
So we decided to do a little impromptu live episode for you guys. Don't talk me into it, because, you know, I'm obviously not camera ready.
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Speaker 2
But whatever their opinion, you're good to go.
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Speaker 1
If you always saw my here before this, I'd be honest with you about. Well, that's not in here a little bit, but you guys doing that is right. We got done right here, right now. Probably started.
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Speaker 2
So we're starting with a little celebration, right? What what? Got me excited. And I wanted to go live and I wanted to celebrate with the listeners and the fans and the people that have supported me thus far is we got some stats from Spotify today and apparently we're killing it on Spotify. So we're like, we're 1% in this thing.
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Speaker 2
Okay, so, so welcome to the first one's pop those up there. Right, and we'll walk through it.
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Speaker 1
So this one is our listener personality. So usually people who listen to us is the enthusiasts, their superfans, their favorite, our podcast episodes. Every week. And there are not the first Adele That's the people who are subscribed and just rocking with this nice, super awesome. Next, next thing. We're the top podcast for 14 fans. So 40 people out there are like building great sales teams.
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Speaker 1
It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I will give you that four times to the red. Better than zero mediocre friends, right? Top five. I ask for 54 people in the top ten for 86 people. So that's super awesome. Next year, top episode of the year, episode number one. So that means people are finding those. And then going back to the first episode, just let me get a little bit of what we do, who we are, how we get it going.
00:03:11:06 - 00:03:38:15
Speaker 1
And that's super awesome because most people don't even go back that far. Last one that I have is the final stats to this point. We had 92 episodes out or was 400 plus minutes, and we're in 15 countries, top five U.S., Canada, India, UK.
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Speaker 2
Switzerland, Switzerland. The Swiss man the Swiss represented appreciate you guys.
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Speaker 1
Yes, that's super awesome. Super glad that you guys are writing this. And also stat is not only here, but I'm pretty sure you said you were the top 1% in this podcast. Obviously hard to pull that off later, but yeah, yeah, we have.
00:04:04:09 - 00:04:23:21
Speaker 2
Yeah so Spotify to sentence an email and that was really cool to figure that out. But the purpose of this episode today, as you guys can see in the title, is Behind the Curtain utilizing Vas for operations and social media. So I get I get this question a lot. And the question is, Doug, how are you coming out with so much content?
00:04:23:21 - 00:04:35:18
Speaker 2
You know? JACOBS Tyler posted something the other day. He was like, I love it when people ask or say, Hey, a lot of people are asking me these questions. And then he's like, Nobody's asking you that question. Stuff like.
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Speaker 1
But it.
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Speaker 2
It's yes, this is one of the things like, you know, the subject is different, like, man, you're putting out a lot of stuff. Are you doing that? And the answer is Niko and Marianne and Cathy. Okay, that's the answer. Those are that's our the 18 and that's comprised of operations and social media. So I wanted to walk you guys through kind of how I'm utilizing Vas and how you guys can utilize Vas too, because this has been massive for my business over the past year, you know, and we, we were utilizing Vas pre podcast, but once we started executing them on the podcast and the social media, like the building great sales teams brand, the
00:05:22:20 - 00:05:54:07
Speaker 2
Doug Mitchell brand just blew up after that, you know, and it was because of the their execution on that. So let's walk through it from a philosophical level here. Right. So growing up, you know, I'm a red blooded American Republican conservative. And so anything about jobs, you know, taking jobs overseas, I was not about it. You know, I'm saying and so as I you know, as I got older, I started hearing about, you know, certain businesses utilizing Vas that I started making a little more sense.
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Speaker 2
It's like, okay, I understand the cost savings, right? That's the first thing everybody thinks it's about. It's about cost savings. And yes, it is. But the second thing that it's about is the impact. Right. And so when you look at the dollar to the Filipino currency, it's like 4 to 1. You know, I'm saying so, you know, I might be spending anywhere, you know, and there's experts on this, right?
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Speaker 2
Chris Kill is an expert. Justin Nelson is an expert. Oh, he helped me hire my first VA. Jose Jose Sanchez. That would have been bad. Jose Sanchez is an expert on this. He he's the one that got us Mecha, which is our social media director. She's fantastic. But you're going to spend if if you are paying premium dollar, you're going to spend anywhere from 240 to 350 in that range a week on Vas.
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Speaker 2
Right. But when you take that dollar and you send it over to the Philippines, that means those Vas are making the equivalent of anywhere from 40 to 80 grand a year. US You know, I'm saying but they have the buying power over there in the, in the Philippines. So you're making a huge impact. And the way their culture works is they're taking care of their whole family.
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Speaker 2
You know, I'm saying like they're taking care. They have multiple generations in one household. A lot of those families do. And that that dollar goes really far. So you're making a huge impact in another country, which, you know, obviously we all want to do that. You know, there's plenty of people that don't take time and build churches and build solar panel farms and get clean water to third world countries.
00:07:36:24 - 00:08:02:11
Speaker 2
Philippines is not exactly that, but you are making an impact. And so that's the second piece of it. And then the third piece of it is they are amazing at certain types of work. And I'm going to walk through some of that work with you right now. And it's just next level because your relationship with them is is a lot more professional because you're not walking into an office every day and chopping it up about the kids in school and, you know, everything going on and stuff like that.
00:08:02:11 - 00:08:28:15
Speaker 2
So it's it's a very effective relationship, I'll put it that way. So you can go ahead and put the USA workforce dilemma aside because I just don't think it's an issue anymore, you know what I mean? We're we're becoming entrepreneurs are becoming more and more globally integrated is the best way I can put it. You know, I know a bunch of entrepreneurs that sell their products globally and it doesn't make sense to only hire in the U.S..
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Speaker 2
You know, I'm saying as some kind of initiative or something like that. Now, the government I understand that 100%, but I think we need to utilize all the talent out there. And there's some serious talent in the Philippines and the different you know, I know South Africa has a good VA market. Mexico has an amazing VA market. And so I want to encourage you guys utilize that.
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Speaker 2
And so here's how you do it. Okay. So the first thing we're going to kick it off with is social media, okay? So when you guys look at my social media, right, and Ryan's to pop it up on the screen here for you.
00:09:04:19 - 00:09:05:08
Speaker 1
And your personal.
00:09:05:08 - 00:09:31:05
Speaker 2
Stuff. Yeah, Facebook and Instagram. So if you look at like my Instagram, you know, and understand that the only thing I'm responsible for in, in our social media program is posting 1 to 2 times a day, one time. If I have a podcast releasing that day to times, if we don't have a podcast releasing, right? So the posts I'm writing every one of those posts.
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Speaker 2
So the first thing people think is, Oh, your Vas are writing your posts, your viewers are responding to your messages and stuff like that. No, that's not the case. The only thing that my Vas are putting together is podcast posts, right? And so that right there was put together by Mika. She's gotten very good at what she does as you see this layout compared to the layout from months ago.
00:09:57:18 - 00:10:20:16
Speaker 2
This like we're making so many huge strides on this, right. And so that's the first thing that you can utilize your Vas for, right? If you have someone local. So whenever we go to an event, whenever we travel, whatever the case is, you know, typically Ryan will go with me. Right? And so Ryan's capturing video. He's capturing pictures.
00:10:20:25 - 00:10:51:21
Speaker 2
You know, if we have a podcast, he's capturing that podcast and so at the end of that day, Ryan uploads everything to Google Drive. And then what happens is Niko gets a hold of it and and her assistant gets a hold of it and they chop it up and make it into reels. So what happens is in this influencer world that we live in is we have an event one day, and by the next morning you guys get to see some highlights from that event the day before or, you know, a podcast post or whatever the case is.
00:10:52:05 - 00:11:13:27
Speaker 2
So right away we're creating like real time. We're telling the story whether it's my story of the podcast story. Ah, Jenna, you know, the event that we're at, we're telling the story almost in real time, you know, basically 12 to 24 hours later, which is huge because that's how people consume content. Now, they, they want the behind the scenes.
00:11:13:27 - 00:11:35:16
Speaker 2
They want the real time. They don't want old news, you know what I'm saying? And so that's huge for us. And the way that we manage this is, you know, of course, I'm sure some of you guys have a social media account, you know, so we're going to look at our social media team workflow real quick, which is we haven't set up and drive.
00:11:36:06 - 00:12:01:11
Speaker 2
And so Nika built this out and she did a fantastic job with this in general, Vas typically come to you trained in SOP writing, and this is one of the hugest under-utilized things that Vas can do for you. So if you're looking at the spreadsheet, it looks super complicated. But all she did was document what her and her assistant were doing on a daily basis.
00:12:01:11 - 00:12:26:21
Speaker 2
So as you go through the tabs, if you would for me, Ryan, you're going to see her responsibilities. Yeah, those are Nikki's responsibilities. She checks them off on a weekly basis and responsibilities. And then you're also going to see content capture. So like, if you look at group comments. Sure, this is something that we utilize. So if there's if there's a group and you guys might see some of your stuff in here, right.
00:12:27:26 - 00:12:49:21
Speaker 2
There's a group. They will screenshot the question, they will type out a response to it, and then they will go and respond to that group question only after I approve it. So they'll send it to me. And Pronto, Pronto is our messaging app. So our our office messaging app, right? So they'll posted and pronto, they'll get the thumbs up for me and then they'll post that.
00:12:49:21 - 00:13:09:23
Speaker 2
And what happens is yeah over time on these they get better and better at responding with my dialect and my voice and everything. But this is the only thing that they, they write as me pretty much, you know what I'm saying? And, and it's an easy way to get into these groups. And people ask a question and then we have a podcast that that answers that question.
00:13:10:06 - 00:13:28:04
Speaker 2
And so we we let them know, hey, this, this podcast we did a couple of weeks ago actually talked about that we had a guest on. He's an expert in that. So check out this podcast. And that's an organic way of offering value and growing the podcast, and that's something that our Vas do for us. So that's amazing.
00:13:28:04 - 00:13:54:20
Speaker 2
That's huge for that. So that's the podcast comments piece of it. So a lot of what they're able to do too is so you guys know, I post every day on social media, I tell a story, whether it's about kids, the business, you know, my philosophy on building sales teams or consulting in general, right? And so I'll put that information out there and mainly I post on Facebook and Instagram.
00:13:54:20 - 00:14:18:09
Speaker 2
You don't see me on LinkedIn, you don't see me on Tik Tok. You know, it's just mainly those two platforms you don't see me on on Twitter. But what they'll do is they'll take that what I posted on social media and they'll repurpose it for LinkedIn and then they'll post it on on LinkedIn. And so that puts my words in more areas and gets more eyeballs on me, right?
00:14:18:23 - 00:14:20:21
Speaker 2
And so that's a huge, huge piece of it.
00:14:21:06 - 00:15:09:25
Speaker 1
And so sure, they are really good at following the trends we like when we go in and we yeah, I, I, I apologize to all English majors. Yeah. Out there, my guys. But when they get in our targeting, it's always like, hey, how about we try this? Got to try this, try this. And they're so good at keeping tabs on what's going on, especially since in the entrepreneurial space, it's like it moves so fast and having us hear it and see it the very next day is super helpful.
00:15:10:16 - 00:15:35:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think Ryan's videos is a little. So one of our Facebook listeners commented about that, but we'll we'll get that figured out. One of our one of our viewers also commented, I apologize if I missed this. What if something like this cost. Right? So the people that I'm going to go to if I need a VA tomorrow is going to be Chris Kyle, Justin Nelson and Jose Sanchez.
00:15:35:12 - 00:16:03:11
Speaker 2
Those are three people that I have done business with or gotten Vas from. And, you know, it's it's it's different for every time. Like Justin Nelson is more like he works really well with real estate offices because they need constant they're constantly rotating Vas, hiring new Vas. So he has a monthly retainer that he charges Chris kill is a finder's fee essentially so the recruiting fee and then same thing with Jose Sanchez.
00:16:03:11 - 00:16:24:28
Speaker 2
He tries a recruiting fee and so it's a one time fee and you're looking at anywhere from 1520 $500 for the one time fee. And then, you know, you're your Vas. If you're paying well, okay. If you're paying well, you're going to start at 240. And then, you know, I have the Vas that do a little over 350 week.
00:16:24:28 - 00:16:46:06
Speaker 2
Right. And there's different things that go into that bonuses, 13 month bonuses. And Chris kill, if you look at his Facebook page, has a lot of information about that that you guys can find there. And so those are the three guys I'm going to refer for that. And so one of the things that I like utilizing and I'm just going to call my social media team now because that's basically what it is.
00:16:46:15 - 00:17:13:15
Speaker 2
Besides Ryan, they're both Vas and that's that's next and what an is really good at is helping me develop my relationships right and Marianne as well. And so one of the ways that just to give you guys an example, right, real business owners just came out with their inner circle group. Right. And now because I'm in the OG Mastermind, I automatically got access to that inner circle group.
00:17:14:02 - 00:17:41:15
Speaker 2
And so I did an intro there. And then Trevor posted the other day, he's like, Let's let's all put our Instagram handles and everybody follow on Instagram because we're mainly on Instagram. So everybody starts posting their Instagram handles, but some of them are posting just text, some of them are posting the link, you know what I mean? It's just kind of all over the place and in my, you know, my crazy head, I'm like, I need one sheet with all the links on there.
00:17:41:15 - 00:18:00:26
Speaker 2
So I messaged and I'm like, Yeah, can we get a Google drive sheet, right? And then we post their name and their Instagram link next to it all in one document and then we'll, we'll link that to the Facebook group and these guys will have a directory basically. So we did that. It was huge value and everybody loved it.
00:18:01:04 - 00:18:22:22
Speaker 2
And so when we talk about whether you're in Apex, you're real business owners or you're in any of these masterminds that I'm in, we always talk about service first, service first. I just had a guest a couple of weeks ago, Robert Rob Frederick, who talks about the rule of ten. Right. I'm going to offer value nine times before I ask anything.
00:18:22:22 - 00:18:48:27
Speaker 2
Not you the 10th time. Right. And so that's just one of the ways that I'm able to do that, is by utilizing my PR team to execute on stuff like that. And one of the other things that they do for you is like, or at least I ask them to do for me is the friend requests. I know you guys, especially if you just joined one of these mastermind, you're getting friend requests like crazy and then you want to go through and just accept them all.
00:18:49:06 - 00:19:08:01
Speaker 2
But then what happens? You start getting the spam, you start getting the sales pitches in the DMS. And so it is work. It is work to go to each of those four requests and look at them and say, okay, is this a real person? First off, do they have something to do with my business or do I like their content, whatever the case says?
00:19:08:09 - 00:19:38:16
Speaker 2
So each one you're spending like maybe 20 seconds on or 10 seconds when you're getting like 15 to 20 friend requests a day because, you know, Apex is a massive group that can be a whole nother job in order to go through all of that. So what and does for me is she has a filtering process basically. So it's either a certain amount of mutual friends or hashtag apex or they're in solar or they're in some type of consulting or something like that.
00:19:38:16 - 00:19:59:25
Speaker 2
There's some synergy somewhere and they have a filter that they walk through. It's like a five step soap to accept that friend. QUEST You know, and they've been trained also by me to make sure that, okay, I can tell this person is just a scammer or somebody is going to spam me right away. All their posts are all about their business and trying to sell something.
00:20:00:01 - 00:20:21:11
Speaker 2
So that's probably something that someone that I don't align with, right? And so they have an app for that and they walk through it. And that saves me time, right? Because accepting friend request is like a $5 an hour like task, you know? And if you're running a business that's way too low for a CEO or president or a business owner to be doing.
00:20:22:06 - 00:20:46:25
Speaker 2
And so that's another way that they add value to me and then content's huge one. So I have an advantage in that I have a podcast, right? And so one of the things that we do is we have relationship folders, okay? And so these are like, you know, I probably have about 75 key relationships that my Vas are aware of.
00:20:47:09 - 00:21:07:18
Speaker 2
And any time I take a picture with a person in one of those 75 relationships, they drop it into that folder. So let's just say, like I posted about Matthew me hand the other day and the awesome thing he did for me with the line of credit, right? I can go to Matthew Means folder and look at the look for pictures of me and him, which I've already used, the ones I've been him before.
00:21:07:18 - 00:21:29:29
Speaker 2
So I just used one of him most recently. I can go in there and look at those pictures and then utilize them there. I can add his email to that folder. And so any time new pictures get dropped in, he gets a notification and he can utilize those pictures as well in in a space where content is constantly being created all around us.
00:21:29:29 - 00:21:58:15
Speaker 2
You know, there's my relationship folder with Wayne's skin, right? I think a good one is probably awesome. Montgomery And so it creates a situation where you're able to add value back to someone because everybody needs good pictures for the content on social media, right? And so you're able to do that. You know, we do a podcast episode, we add the guest into our creative folder for, for their podcast.
00:21:58:15 - 00:22:21:18
Speaker 2
So they get the full video, full audio, they get any reels, any content that recreate. We either make them a collaborator or they can download it themselves and repurpose it however they want. That's a huge value add. And again, that's not me doing that. Ryan's capturing everything, but the Vas are actually doing the editing and going into Canva and editing and doing graphics and stuff there.
00:22:22:02 - 00:22:46:07
Speaker 2
So that's huge. So Marianne, my executive assistant, what she does is after every guest episode, she'll reach out to the guest, she'll get their address and then she'll send them a guest gift. Right. And so that's another way to kind of build those relationships and add that value through those episodes. And so you can say you can see, yeah, we did a ton of content with Casper.
00:22:46:07 - 00:23:12:00
Speaker 2
She was an amazing guest. And so that's another way that we have that content there is with guest gifts. So that's the social media piece, you know, and that's how we're utilizing our VAT for social media. So we have a social media director and a social media assistant, right? And then on the operations side, we've got Cathy and Marianne.
00:23:12:17 - 00:23:38:14
Speaker 2
So what we realized right away is Cathy is a operations specialist big time. So the ability to create SLPs is becoming more and more important, right? If one of your staff members is out sick, gets COVID, gets hit by a bus, you know, who knows what happens, right? People have to be able to step in and pick up that work for the time being or replace them altogether.
00:23:38:18 - 00:24:01:03
Speaker 2
Right. If you have some turnover in your business. And so you're always going to hear me talking about soap. I Love Soaps, you know, I'm saying I didn't realize it when I was 23 years old and took over our agency, I immediately started creating soaps. I don't know why. I just didn't want to have to re-explain and re explain how to train a new salesperson coming in to one of my trainers that was existing already.
00:24:01:03 - 00:24:32:24
Speaker 2
So I said, I need to write this down, right? And so obviously I've evolved since then. And what Ryan showed you guys right now is our wise hire recruitment process. There is a workflow that Cathy built. There's a step by step. So basically you can go through and check off. So whether it's another VA can come in and do this job or another staff member, whatever the case is, or you know, if everybody doesn't show up one day and I come in here, it's like, how do I keep my recruiting going?
00:24:32:24 - 00:24:55:18
Speaker 2
Then I can follow this soap to a tee and I'm good to go. And people learn in different ways, too, right? You've got people that learn off of reading, people that learn off of video. So every one of these soaps has a loon attached to it that they're able to go to and see the actual video. And then some people learn by workflows like that visual of that workflow, which you see some of that in there as well.
00:24:56:17 - 00:25:20:28
Speaker 2
So that's going to be incredibly important. And then, you know, when you're when you're doing the interviews for these Vas, obviously you want to hire to the position that you need. And so whenever we hired Meka, she was going to be, you know, we needed a social media person, right? So she was experienced with Canva and we can show you our difference maker, a difference maker PDF right now.
00:25:21:14 - 00:25:41:00
Speaker 2
And so she actually created this for us and this was one of the hardest things for me to let go was graphic design, right? Because I've been doing graphic design since I was 15 or 16 years old. Right. But, you know, and I use Photoshop Illustrator, you know, all the programs that like took you weeks and hours to learn.
00:25:41:03 - 00:26:01:28
Speaker 2
Right. And then Canva comes out, you know, I'm saying. And she created this in Canva and it looks great. So that's the difference maker. Just the top one there. That's the difference maker flier there that she put together for me. So that's just an example of some some of the work that she does for us. Whenever we do competitions and stuff like that, she puts those together.
00:26:01:28 - 00:26:35:01
Speaker 2
So going back to the subject of the podcast, which is behind the curtain, utilizing Vas for social media and operations, that is that is basically a very high level overview of the way that I do it. Now, if you're in Apex, if you're in real business owners, I will absolutely share, copy and share those SOPs and those that was written as a piece to you so you can utilize those when you hire your first day as well.
00:26:35:01 - 00:26:57:21
Speaker 2
But those are just some of the ways that you can leverage your time. You know, just Nelson talks about this a lot, basically, you're buying leverage. You know what I mean? You're getting rid of those $5 or $10, $50 an hour, $100 an hour tasks. And you're getting back to the $500 an hour test every day. You know, most of you guys that follow me consume a lot of development content.
00:26:57:21 - 00:27:07:28
Speaker 2
So I'm not seeing anything that's new to you. I'm just trying to help you out on how to execute on that. So that's all I got for today, right?
00:27:07:28 - 00:27:35:15
Speaker 1
Also, hopefully my microphone is better next time, but I think you guys still hear me pretty loud. I get like that sometimes. Anyway, thank you guys for joining us. Thank you guys for joining us on this episode of Building Trades Teams. Oh, we do have a newsletter. If you got a building gross break. My gosh.
00:27:36:09 - 00:27:39:24
Speaker 2
Ryan, you're on fire today.
00:27:39:24 - 00:28:22:11
Speaker 1
If you go team building great sales teams dot com all spelled out you can join our newsletter we have not done to try yet for years a lot of our agents in energy so you still have time to get in on the ground floor of that and you will be the first to hear about when the book drops, when the event, if that's still going, all the stuff that goes into that as well as some secret stuff that has been working online exclusively for the PTSD group on Facebook.
00:28:22:21 - 00:28:37:02
Speaker 1
So go ahead and go on to building three sales teams dot com. Sign up for that newsletter. So that way you can hear everything that is going on with PTSD. It does actually.
00:28:37:02 - 00:29:01:20
Speaker 2
All right, guys, appreciate your tuning in. I'm about to jump into reporting with Kota Ivers. He's doing 20 million a year in solar. You guys are to see that episode probably coming out next week. So I'm excited about that one and the future episodes coming out. Appreciate you guys for listening. Thank you for all the Spotify love. I'm sure we get some similar numbers on Apple Podcasts, so I appreciate you guys for that.
00:29:01:20 - 00:29:16:22
Speaker 2
And as always, the fee, just like any always says, we don't charge anything. We don't run any ads or anything like that. The fee is share of the show. If you think someone can benefit. If you've benefited, share the show post review. Thank you guys so much. And let's get.
00:29:17:00 - 00:29:24:28
Speaker 1
The text message. And if you get an idea, just get it out there. All right. You guys got the.