Ep. 1: Introducing the Groundbreaking Growth Podcast

🎙️ Calling all AEC professionals! Get ready for transformative growth and innovation with the groundbreaking podcast, Groundbreaking Growth, created by Stambaugh Ness and hosted by Emily Lawrence and Jen Knox.

Join us as we explore strategic growth trends reshaping the AEC industry. Each episode brings the same enthusiasm and excitement you find at conferences, packed with practical insights to apply in your own company.

In our first episode, we introduce ourselves and offer a sneak peek into what Groundbreaking Growth has in store for you. Join Emily Lawrence and Jen Knox as we delve into strategic insights, creative solutions, and cutting-edge trends.

Whether you're an architect, engineer, or construction professional, this podcast is tailored just for you. Tune in regularly to stay ahead of the curve, unlock new possibilities, and elevate your career and company.

🔔 Don't miss out! Subscribe to Groundbreaking Growth on your favorite podcast platform. Let's ignite growth, shape the future of the AEC industry, and redefine what's possible. Are you ready for some groundbreaking growth? Let's dive in! 🚀💼

Transcript

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Welcome to the AEC Groundbreaking Growth podcast.

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Hosted by Stambaugh Ness.

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Hi everyone,

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and welcome to the AEC Groundbreaking Growth podcast.

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I am your host, Emily Lawrence, and I am here with my co-host, Jen Knox.

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We really just wanted to start off with an episode to describe our backgrounds

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and give a little bit of context on the conception of this podcast

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and what it means to us, and what we hope it will mean to listeners.

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So I will go ahead and jump into my background.

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I have a degree in strategic and organizational

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communications.

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I started out my career

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working for Zillow

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in client engagement and agent support.

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Tech startup was sort of

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my first introduction to a big kid job.

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And then, from there, I worked for Walmart.

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I moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, and I worked for the Walmart

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headquarters, and I worked in operations.

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And then, I moved into merchandising from there.

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From that I knew I wanted to get into marketing,

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I got a job at a small architecture firm in Colorado Springs.

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I worked for them and joined SMPS, Society for Marketing Professional Services.

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I made some connections and,

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from there, worked for a national full-service firm in Denver

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and did marketing for them internally.

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I worked from there at a general contractor here in Colorado.

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And got experience there.

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And now, I am at Stambaugh Ness working as a consultant

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in our Strategic Growth Advisory Group and I work with Jen.

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Jen is also my coworker on the SGA team. And

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I do mainly outsourced marketing,

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and marketing strategy as well for firms.

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We have clients all over the country,

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even some international clients,

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and provide a host of services for them.

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I love my job.

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I love being a consultant.

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I have had my experience working in AE and C, and I love this industry,

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and I love getting to work with all the clients that we do

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and getting to see what's going on in the industry.

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So that kind of takes this up to now, as your hosts.

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Jen, do you want to provide a little bit of your background as well?

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Yeah, I’d love to.

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So similar to Emily, I've worked in AEC a majority of my career.

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My background is actually in civil engineering, so I have a

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BS and MS in that, but really, as soon as I entered the workforce,

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I really stepped into construction more than anything

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and worked as an owners project manager

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at a large Fortune 500 organization

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for seven, about seven or eight years.

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So in that role, I was really responsible the whole way

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from RFP for design

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for our design team members, the whole way through construction,

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and then turn over to our operations and fiscal management teams.

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Had the opportunity to work

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internationally and manage construction work in Malaysia and Mexico

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and throughout the US, which was a great experience.

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And doing that, I really fell in love with kind of the business

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side of engineering and

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what are the economics behind

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these projects that large organizations are trying to execute, right?

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What's the return they're looking for, and what's kind of the dynamic behind it?

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So I decided to go out and do an executive MBA, which was such an eye-opener.

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My cohort was made up of people from multiple

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industries, health care, you know, everything under the sun.

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So that was great exposure.

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And through that, I decided to step over and start working for a small family-owned

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business and heavy civil construction, heavy side work.

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And again, that was another big eye-opener, right?

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Coming from a large Fortune 500 where you have a lot of resources

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at your disposal. It's very structured and formatted

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and whatnot, to small family business.

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It's definitely a different dynamic.

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It's a lot of bootstrapping it, which is amazing, right?

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As an employee, you get a lot of flexibility.

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You can see multiple aspects of the business.

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You wear a lot of hats.

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But I think it really opened my eyes

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to; I guess a little bit, that lack of resources, right?

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These people are amazing at what they do, great at site construction, electrical,

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mechanical, etc., the skilled trades, they're amazing at that,

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and they can maybe use a little bit of support and guidance

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on some of the business aspects, HR, strategy, etc.,

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and that's why I then decided to step over to Stambaugh Ness as a consultant

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and really see how we can help

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businesses with the business side of the business,

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how we can help the AEC industry with those other components

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of running an organization and growing and whatnot.

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So that's a little bit about my background.

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I love AEC; I grew up in it.

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My dad is in construction, so

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it's just a

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it's a great industry to work in, and I'm excited about this podcast.

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So, Emily, I guess give us a little bit of background on how the idea for

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the podcast came about and kind of where we landed from a formatting standpoint

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and really what we hope our listeners can get out of it.

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Yeah, So

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when I joined Stambaugh Ness,

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we had an AE advisory team, and it was a little bit of everything.

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And then really my skills, obviously with my background

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in marketing, I moved over to the Strategic Growth

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Advisory with Scott Butcher, who is, our team leader

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and is just he and I,

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and after working with the advisory team and just seeing the immense

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talent and well-connectedness of our team and

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all of these people have something

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really interesting to say and experience in the industry.

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And it's something that I, I mean,

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I had never experienced being around that type of,

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you know, that group of people with that type of experience so broadly.

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And so when I joined the Strategic Growth Advisory Team,

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I pitched the idea to Scott, and I said, “Hey,

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with all of these people at our

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fingertips on our team,

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what if we do a podcast?” I feel like it would be a really,

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you know,

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everyone has these crazy networks within the industry and know amazing people.

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And I think we could really have something interesting here.

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And Scott said I love the idea.

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And so we sort of kicked around some different

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formats, like, do you want to do an interview style?

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Do we want to, you know...

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and even then, Scott and I recorded a couple of pilot episodes

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really early on just to test it out and see what it would take.

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And I was doing research, and then our team underwent some growth,

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and we were, you know, focused elsewhere for a little bit.

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And so we, we put the project on pause.

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And then, after our growth,

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that included adding Jen to the team and some other team members. And

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it sort of came back to life.

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And so we started the discussion again, and wanted

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I kind of wanted to change our approach on it because

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with just doing like interview style,

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like episodes, it

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just, it didn't feel as organic to the way

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we like to interact with our clients and the way we interact as a team.

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So we changed our approach to maybe just having people on

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and talking about trends that we're seeing in the industry

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and just having a conversation, and we can share what we're seeing,

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and the expert guests that we have on can share what they're seeing as well.

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And so we really wanted it to be more of a conversation

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and make it more of an approachable format for people.

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And so we kind of brought it back to life, and we were playing around with that.

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And then, really, my aha moment was when I was in our SMPS

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Colorado Communications Committee meeting.

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I was just listening to what everyone was discussing,

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and I knew of a lot of things just because

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I work with people all over the country.

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I get to see what other firms are doing; I get to talk to people

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that are using different software or, you know, management systems. And

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it's just a different world, right?

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When you work with people all over the country, then to just sort of

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use what you're using at your firm, which I have also been in that position.

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So I know what that's like.

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So for me, I had this aha

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moment where, you know, I was kind of being asked like, Oh,

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wow, you know, about so many things like how do you get all this information?

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And it's like, man, if I could help people in the industry,

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just share my knowledge of what's going on because of the unique position

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that we're in as consultants, I think that would be a game changer for people.

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And the way that we started looking at it was,

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you know, when you're at a conference or when you're around other professionals

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in some sort of learning environment or setting where everyone's just sharing

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what they have going on,

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and you come back to work, and you're excited,

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and you've learned all these new things, and then that kind of fades

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because you get back to your day-to-day grind of what needs to get

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done at your company.

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And so

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we really thought this would be an accessible way to continue

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that conversation for people and the ease of access.

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You can access it at any time and just hopefully share ideas

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that we learn and trends that we're seeing.

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And that sort of brings us to today.

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And with Jen, your background just of, you know,

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you have such an interesting background with your engineering degree,

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so you've been on that technical side,

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and then I've sort of been on that support and marketing side.

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And with our expertise

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and sort of being next-gen leaders ourselves,

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that really was the area that we wanted to focus on as well as information

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for our next-gen leaders and starting the conversation for them.

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And when you first, you know, tapped on me

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and asked to see if I was interested at all.

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And when you explained that kind of energy around

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when you get to collaborate

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with other industry professionals, that just resonated with me so much. And

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it's tough for middle management

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young leaders to find the time to step outside the business

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and collaborate and think strategically about their organization.

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And that's why I think we have such a unique opportunity to share

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ideas and trends that we're seeing with those next-gen leaders.

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And it's tough to step outside of the day-to-day

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grind and work on your business and not just in it.

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And I hope what we can share with

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those leaders is just the little tidbits, you know, gold nuggets,

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different trends we're seeing and that, you know, other clients are experiencing.

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What are their challenges around workforce, around

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business strategy and, you know, different

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legal aspects and whatnot, and how can we help them

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or broaden their perspective on what opportunities are out there

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different resources they can leverage to solve

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some of the tougher problems in their organization?

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I'm excited, and

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I hope that people find it useful

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to kind of tap into that energy on a more frequent basis

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than having to go to conferences or other industry organizations.

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Then wait for those to happen.

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Right?

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It's like they aren't just at your fingertips.

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And that's this accessibility that we really wanted

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to share with listeners and bring to the industry.

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And we also really want it to be a collaborative space.

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So as a listener, we want people to engage, and we want

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people to let us know what they are seeing or what they would like to know about.

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So we really want it to be a conversation, and we really want

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this to be a platform to talk about what people are interested in.

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And it's really about the industry as a whole, right?

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How can everyone, A-E-C, all these people in different firms,

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how can we just elevate the industry

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and make it one,

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maybe more attractive as an employment opportunity, or really leverage

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what we're doing on our projects to benefit the community more?

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Right.

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What are all those ways that we can just

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be a little bit better and one, you know,

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1% improvement day over day for the industry as a whole?

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Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.

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So that is the background on Groundbreaking Growth.

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And so we hope that everyone is able to take

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some sort of nuggets away, like you mentioned, Jen,

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and really just engage with us.

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So, we hope that this is a beneficial

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way of gaining knowledge and insights. Yes.

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And kudos to Emily for the idea and keeping it going.

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And we're super excited to launch.

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Yes. Yes.

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It has been a long inception process from start to finish,

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but we are very excited about it, and I think we have come up with a

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really unique experience.

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Well, thank you all, and we hope you enjoy our future episodes.