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Hi it's Paul McCarthy and before we dive into this week's episode I first wanted to say that I hope that I find you and your family safe and well. The corona virus has really impacted the world like nothing we've ever seen. We really are living in an unprecedented time. Something that's uh beyond any of our expectations within our law office on that. Any of us would have experienced anything like this and the impacts of the covered 19 disease and the spread of it and the reality is as a business owner you want to ever have to catch the corona virus to have felt its impacts its impacts have been well and truly felt by just about every business on the planet.

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The question now is how do we get through this. And I think that the answer is that we don't spend all of our time focused on the negativity of the doom and gloom. We have to shift our thinking to being proactive to asking ourselves what we can do to look at what we can control and those of course are our thoughts and our actions. And that's what it's gonna come down to that we just take control of what we can to make sure we've done everything possible to sustain ourselves through this difficult period and to make sure that we still have a business to go to.

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On the other side of that. So this episode is really dedicated to sharing with you some ideas and some tools that can help you to navigate this time. And to talk to you about the change process one that's really been thrust upon all of us and understand the five primary phases of change and how they are going to impact us as we move through these coming months. In this very different looking world and also gonna give you access to a tool to really help you to manage yourself and start to give you a bit of a circuit breaker to the thinking that's been going on in the world and help you to start realigning your thoughts about things that will be much more proactive about how you can take some control of what's happening to you and maybe pivot into a new direction that can make sure that your business is sustained through this period and ready to take advantage of the new economy that waits for us on the other side.

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So I do want to keep you waiting any longer. Let's get to it.

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Welcome to the marketers club podcast the show all about helping you work smarter earn more and accelerate your success

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and now here's your host Paul McCarthy.

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Welcome to Episode 32 of the market jazz club podcast I am your host Paul McCarthy and I'm here to help you market your talent so you can earn what you worth and ultimately make more of a difference in the world. Great to have your company again and boy what a world we are living in now and it certainly looks a lot different. I mean only a few podcast episodes ago and although it looked very different to the one that you see outside the window now there's a lot of doom and gloom in the air. There's a lot of negativity in almost an endless stream of media stories that are painting pretty bleak pictures about where we're going as a as a country in Australia and certainly globally and the amount of impact that's being felt by this coronavirus is incredible.

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So the reality is though that uh you know there's many many businesses that have been so heavily impacted by this and it's easy for us to slip into the kind of this negative mindset and to almost throw in the towel and say well there's nothing that can be done but I really think that there are many many proactive strategies and steps that we can take. And unless your business has been you know told to close down and you don't have any option there are ways to continue to try to do business.

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But it's gonna require a lot of innovation and a lot of adaptation by people. So I'm going to talk to you this week about some of the elements of change some of the things we need to be aware of and the five states of change that we go through when any change process is implied. But first I wanted to tell you about a resource that is available to you. Back in 2008 I sat down and wrote a book called The Survival trap. It's about a 90 page book and it was all about how to survive tough economic times.

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It was in response to the recession that came through in 2007 2008 and provided a framework for businesses of how to start to focus positively on the things they can affect rather than focus on the doom and gloom of the economy. At that time. So I've sat down and reworked that book to really be a tool for this period. I mean this is an unprecedented time in our history. You know specialists and business leaders talking about the fact that the size and scope of business impacts is truly unprecedented.

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That uh that uh you can take the 9/11 and the 2008 recession and roll them together and this has already had more impact on people's businesses than those two events combined. But that withstanding we still need to remain as positive as possible so the survival trap is a book. And I've also recorded the audio version of the book. So for as a podcast listener if you rather listen rather than read then you have access to both versions.

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So grab your copy simply go to market as Club Academy dot com slash survival trap that's marketers Club Academy dot com slash survival trap to grab your copy now. We released the book recently on social media. It's been downloaded hundreds and hundreds of times shared and I've received lots of emails about the impact of the book and people thanking me for bringing a new perspective and shifting the mindset. And that's really what it's all going to be about as bad as shifting our mindset if we want to get through this and we got to work together to do that.

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So grab your free copy at market as Club Academy dot com slash survivor track today. Okay so let's dive into our conversation for today and that's all around the idea of change. Now we've all been thrust into a lot of change and I wanted to share with you the five phases of change that we all go through when we're going through a shift in our life. And we've certainly all experiencing this now. This is a conversation I have with entrepreneurs when they start working with me because they're going to go through a significant change process as a result.

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So I want to make them aware of the phases of change they're going to experience. OK so let's dive into our conversation today and I really wanted to talk to you about this whole idea of change. I know one of the things that happens when entrepreneurs first come into my world when I start working and coaching people to adjust their marketing to start changing the narrative of their business that they're going to go through a lot of changes. So I always want to alert them to the various changes they're going to experience so they know the emotions that are going to be coming and the feelings they are going to be having.

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So we can deal with those so they don't come up as a surprise. So I thought it'd be helpful to walk you through the five phases of change to understand emotionally what we're going to the responses we're going to have to the various things that are happening to us as we adjust to this new corona virus world that we're living in. So the very first phase of change is feeling uncomfortable and there's no doubt where nearly everybody is feeling that we're right where we're all feeling very uncomfortable with this kind of new world that many of us have been thrust into.

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Now for some the first big change was the fact that they had to work from home now. Many small business owners had the advantage of already having home based offices so it was an environment they were used to and they were comfortable with. But for many others we've been forced to come back into a home environment set up an office in a space that they're not used to working from. And that's caused a lot of stress for people and it's very uncomfortable working in new environments like that setting that up and maybe trying to figure out how to control the family and still keep yourself focused.

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So if you were used to going to an office and now that you have to operate from home you might feel a little uncomfortable about that. It might be the fact that having to learn a whole bunch of new technology is having to reach out to people using things like Skype or zoom and things that you maybe weren't using in the past and feeling a bit uncomfortable. But how to do that how to get your head around the various technologies how to manage the relationships and the conversations in a way that feels still natural to you. So we can feel really uncomfortable about that certainly you know as a speaker someone who does a lot of events and I know a lot of my speaking buddies are feeling incredibly uncomfortable about the fact that they don't get the opportunity being in a room.

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It's a very different experience to deliver on a online platform where that energy response that you get from an audience isn't there. So we're also uncomfortable about the fact that we don't get a level of human contact we don't get to sit in rooms and have meetings and do these things so there's a lot of discomfort surrounding the experience that people are going through right now. It was Charles Darwin who said it's not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent that survives. It's the one that is most adaptable to change and that's really what's required of us now is we have to be incredibly nimble.

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We have to be able to make change and just adapt to it as quickly as possible because if we continuously fight against the change that's where all of our energy resources go and we only have a finite amount of energy so we don't want to be burning it against something that we don't control we really want to get out and emotions our thoughts align with this need to change and that we have to move with that as quickly as possible. The bottom line is we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and that's really a phase of change that we just need to adapt to.

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It is about recognizing that when we first learn any new skill it is uncomfortable. I mean if you can cast your mind back to when you started to learn to drive I mean that first lesson was uncomfortable because you didn't know things yet you were trying to figure it all out and it's not yet part of your conscious competence yet you are still trying to get your head around it but you fast forward to today and that awkwardness has been replaced by the ability to drive with you know a mobile phone in one hand and a milkshake in the other and steering with your name.

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Now hopefully you don't actually do that but that point being that we can do things almost on autopilot because that's what we've now learned how to do. So that is the first development of skills. And so first being at home and operating a business is where we're going to have to quickly adapt to that so that we don't let the discomfort of it get in the way of us putting our focus and energy into where we want to go. So the very first phase of change that we all experience is this sense of being uncomfortable and that's very natural.

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And we just have to be aware of it so that we can say I yep that's I do feel a bit awkward about this but I'm not going to let that consume me I'm going to keep my focus on what I can't control. So the second phase of change is isolation. Now ironically with the corona virus we've been literally required to go into isolation most of us have been pushed back into our homes told to stay just in our family units not to visit friends or family really to stay isolated.

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But the type of isolation that I make people aware of when I'm working with them is isolation that's result of it's a mental feeling it's a state of where you feel like it's only happening to you. You know I've noticed you know on the on the TV programs the news channels that they're getting all of their celebrities and running ads and almost every channel is doing this. They're running ads constantly with one message and that is just one celebrity after another saying you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone. We're all in this together and that's because they recognize and understand that a phase of change is a sense of isolation.

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So even though we all understand and know that we're all going through this it doesn't stop us feeling like it's just us. It's the internal feeling that we get where we really lock away and we feel really isolated and it's only having to us and entrepreneurs. This is where I have conversations with entrepreneurs all the time about this element of isolation this feeling is because entrepreneurs often feel lonely because they often don't have many people in their world that understand the stresses and pressures that they are experiencing.

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When running a business and now they have a whole new range of stresses and pressures on them and I often find it difficult to express that or tell other people and often it might be their loved ones in a living now in a confined space. And there's great concern and I don't know how to share that they don't want to share that. I want to carry that burden so these are the sorts of emotional isolation that starts to happen to us. So really what's really important for you at this time is is to absolutely understand that you aren't alone and that it's so important to focus on yourself care to make sure that you're looking after your own mental well-being as part of this process that you don't feel like it's all just happening to you.

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So having a trusted buddy or friend to talk to reaching out to a mentor and having a conversation about what you're going through. Getting involved in a small network of entrepreneurs where you can have some proper honest conversations and really just make sure that you don't get yourself in a space where you're completely isolated away from everyone and going through something without talking about some of those challenges and this isn't about focusing on the negativity at all. This is about just making sure that your emotional state is being tended to that you're being careful to look after yourself and don't get yourself in a place where you feel locked away from everybody else.

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You know there is a really funny me my daughter shared it with us over the dining table a few nights ago where there's a gentleman in and he's looking into the camera and the sound of a voice over And the voice over says Okay you've got two options here. Option I that you will be isolated at home with your wife and children or option B. And he says B B B give me B you know. So he's got this funny feeling of I don't want to be trapped here you know.

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And we all are feeling this sense of isolation and concern around that so we need to really make sure that we are looking after ourselves. And you know as entrepreneurs make sure that we're exercising that we're eating well that we don't try and manage the phases of change or these feelings by numbing ourselves through alcohol and so forth. And it's really tempting and obviously alcohol sales have gone up dramatically over this period and that's not surprising. But we just need to be aware that that's not necessarily the best way for us to work our way through the challenges that we're out we're facing right now. So

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So the third phase of change that people will go through is a sense of loss. And of course many of us have lost a lot. We might have lost a lot of revenue. We might have lost the ability to trade at all we might have been forced to close the business down. We might have lost staff. We. So we're going to be losing things through this process. And there is a sense of grieving if you like when you lose something and even when I'm working with entrepreneurs that sense of loss is an awareness that for us to move forward to gain something new we have to let go of what we had.

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And so there is a grieving period as we let go of old patterns and habits and form new ones. But instead of just focusing our energy on the past and dwelling on what we've lost it's so important for us to keep looking at what we can do and focusing on the future and moving ourselves forward and not spending all of our energy grieving what has gone on because that can be a huge drain on us and it can really bring the change process to a grinding halt when people just refuse to let go of what they had.

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And again you can do that just mentally you know that you just keep holding onto and dwelling on and talking about what we'd done what we'd had in the past and that doesn't really help you move forward. So we've got to get really focused on what we've gained and what we can move forward to. Now I've received some really interesting communication from some entrepreneurs people that I've worked with who've been tremendously successful and men really built substantial businesses. And I got a few almost in a Rose it's sort of uncanny how that came as a sort of a cluster to me and a bunch of conversations that we're having about though all we're sharing one common thing and that was these incredibly busy people who had these really busy lives they were working long and hard but they've been hugely successful.

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All of a sudden found this kind of a silver lining to this uh dark cloud which was they now had space and time with their family they were almost forced into an opportunity to spend time with their children that they hadn't had because they had been so busy and it stopped them in their tracks and has helped them to re-evaluate what's really important to them. So as painful as some of the loss has been and it's been substantial and you know I'm talking people who have lost hundreds thousands millions of dollars in revenue.

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So it's huge stress tied around that and I don't want to for one moment sort of belittle the stresses and pressures of that I understand it completely. But the the thing here is that it's also looking at some of the positives that have been gained and maybe that there's a quality of conversation and time spent with people that are most precious to you in your life that you've now gained or there are some other elements that you're discovering. You know it's people that when they've lost one thing they've gained something else and many people what they've gained is time that they never had before.

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You know lots of entrepreneurs that come into my world one of their challenges. They're so busy they don't actually have time to market their businesses properly. And so that's one of the things we have to learn to let go of a few of the activities that we can create the time and the space. And I know that right now I mean this time in our lives where we're living through this day is a unique opportunity for people to get really focused on getting their marketing messaging and structures right at a time like they've never had before an opportunity like never before.

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So while revenue might be down there's this time and space to focus on things that you can really adjust and change. So that's kind of exciting that if you look at it from that angle. So we get the choice to look at these things in different ways. And I think that's one that we can look at and say okay I'm not gonna just keep focusing on what we've lost I'm gonna focus on the things that I've gained and where I want to go. And that's going to help you move forward. So the fourth phase of change that people go through is the tendency to want to revert.

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Now I say this a lot when I'm working with entrepreneurs that they they want to go back to the old way and that's because human beings are hard wired in terms of the habits that they form. That we tend to want to go back to what we were comfortable with and that that feeling is normal. So we just we don't we get and beat ourselves up about it but it's it's why when we go on exercise regimes maybe we lose some weight. We do that but then we start to revert back to the eating habits or the dropping the exercise or whatever it was that we were doing and you can see in the world that the tendency to want to revert back to the way it was.

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Reports about people not managing social distancing or going out and sitting on the beach like it's just a regular sunny day in a row clustered around. So it's taken time and it takes the authorities coming in and saying All right we're got to close the whole beach down because people won't adhere to the rules because they want to revert to the comfortable. They want to revert to what they know. So as marketers we you know we've really we must be aware that the old strategies the old marketing messages the old things that we were doing is simply not going to work like they used to.

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So we've got to keep adapting. We've got to fight the tendency to want to go and just put out the old stuff to people as if it's business as usual because it's not. So we have to be ready to adapt and change those messages if we want to move forward. Now we will get back many of the the things that we crave but it will never be the same again. It will always be different know if you remember me when I was a kid I can remember you nice to play a game with my brother we'd play some game it was fantastic we loved that and it was just awesome and we win the game was over.

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We'd go let's do that again and it was never the same. The second time do you remember that feeling you know maybe you you eat something you know you just eat something and it's just so delicious and you love that thing. Oh man that was so good. I'm gonna have another one. The second one's never as good and so we've just got to be aware that while we might want to revert it's not gonna be the same again. So we can find kind of the new love the new things that we want to focus on and start driving new messages out. And that's what we want to start putting our energy into not continuously reverting back to the old.

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We'll get back some of the things but even the things we get back will be changed through this experience. So we've gotta watch and be aware of that tendency to want to go back to the old way all of the time. So that's the the fourth phase of change that we're going to go through. And the fifth and final change is really the one that we all are experiencing and that is a sense of overwhelm. Now the reality is when I'm working with an entrepreneur working them through adjusting and changing their marketing strategies I say to them this is gonna be a journey.

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It's gonna be a journey because it takes time to embed all of the changes we need to make. Because if I came in and started working with the business owner and made all the changes I know I need to make to make that business actually hum. I would totally overwhelm the business owner because they would just be freaking out because everything would change from underneath them and so many things would have to be shifted. So I always talk to clients about the fact that this is a journey a journey that you can expect to take years to actually complete.

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Now doesn't mean you don't start getting results really quickly and that's the reality that you can make some subtle changes to the things you're doing get some results really quickly. But over the long haul it's going to take lots of changes in lots of areas. And so typically we want to have a building block process but unfortunately for us you know this kind of got thrust on us. And so there's this huge overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed. You know that we are just being buried in so many changes.

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And it's happened so fast. So you know we can you know spend and fall into the trap of spending a lot of energy then sort of blaming you know and looking for someone to blame for this you know. But you know. George Bernard Shaw quite. You know people are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances the people who get only in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them they make them.

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And that's really what it is for us. We've got to make our own circumstances now. You know this set of circumstances that have been thrust upon us and things that we don't control. Now we've got to get back to the things we can and blame is one of those things that's a choice. If we spend our energy there we don't move forward as much if we spend our time focused on the negativity. You know these things are not helpful to us. They don't move us forward. So one of the best piece of advice I ever got is when you see two negative people walking toward you what do you do you introduce them to each other and go the other way.

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Because they want to draw you into their negativity circle and it doesn't help you. It only fuels a sense of overwhelm. So it's all now about your ability to pivot. It's your ability to innovate to adjust change and to understand which things you can control and which things you can. So you know one of the things that we've been developing is a a new members forum and we're gonna throw this open to everybody. To any entrepreneur that wants to be in there to create an environment for people to come to where they can get a break from negativity where they can get a break from all the doom and gloom and they can just connect and talk and share and provide insights to each other.

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So that's all we want to do is provide a platform where people can come and work with each other and bounce off and have a connection point that is free from you know promotions and advertising free from people just you know talking about what's going wrong but really coming to find answers. So if you're interested in being connected to that if you want to be it's a there's no cost to be involved in it or you just go to market as Club Academy dot com slash Corona forum. So we're gonna set up this forum where we will have discussions and I'm gonna be in there regularly just helping out and sharing insights and answering questions and just working with entrepreneurs to help them get moving and shift their mindset.

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And that's what's gonna be so important is that moving forward that we have to move our mindset. And you know there's got Colin Hightower had a quote that was worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead end street. Thinking opens new avenues and that's what we're talking about here. How do we open new avenues of thinking. And that's what's gonna be required if we just stay buried in these old thoughts. You know we can't solve a problem with the same mind that created that sort of thing. We're going to have to shift.

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And that's what the forum is all about. So again if you want to be a part of the forum you can register for it. We haven't even opened the doors to it will swing the doors open in a little while. Because the reality is the truth is for any forum to function well you need a volume of people. So we're just going to get some expressions of interest we'll get a few hundred people who really want to start sharing some insights with each other supporting each other. And we got to open the door and we're gonna be in there working with you and supporting you. And there's no cost to do it at all. So if you want to be a part of that go to market as Club Academy dot com slash Corona forum and just register your interest there and we will be opening the doors very shortly.

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So certainly within the month of April that will be our goal to swing open the doors. We'll get it all set up where I'm working in the background doing all that so that people understand how to use it how to communicate how to add their conversations and threads and what we can start having conversations that really matter to help you move through the change process that we've all been thrust into. So I hope that this episode has been helpful to you that you are better placed now by understanding the phases of change that you are going through.

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I understand that it's normal to feel uncomfortable that there's going to be a sense of greater isolation than simply that you've been isolated in your home. That there is a sense of loss that we have to let go of some things if we want to gain others that you're going to have a tendency to revert or want to revert back to some old wise old messaging old practices. But most of those won't function the way they used to. So we need to let them go. And just to be aware that yes we unfortunately have been thrust into an overwhelm of change because so many things have been changing so quickly but now it's time to just that's a zero.

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Focusing on. What's the first thing I want to get my head around get a handle on. And we slowly start innovate and pivot as where we're going here. And again if you want to be a part of the forum that we're setting up its market as Club Academy dot com slash Corona forum to register your interests for that. So thanks again for joining me for another episode. Always a pleasure to deliver those thank you to everyone who's been subscribing to the program sharing the program. I really appreciate you.

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I value so much and I really care about everybody um that all of my listeners all the clients I work with you know I really love my clients and I love entrepreneurs and I'm here to serve you as best I can to help you through this tricky period that we're all going through. You know Christopher Reeve said you know once you choose hope anything is possible. And I think that that's so true that we got to focus on on that hope element and not on the doom and gloom. So until next time I wish you all the very very best of luck with your businesses. But much more importantly with you lives bye for now.