Recognizing Career Opportunities

Sarah Buszka: Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Rising Voices podcast where we amplify the voices of young professionals in higher education. My name is Sarah Buszka. I'm one of your co-hosts and we have a really exciting treat today because we are joined by a guest co-host today. Yes, you heard it first here folks. We have a new member joining us of the YPAC. His name is Abhishek Gaur and he'll be jumping in as a co-host today for today's show. And we're of course friends and members of the YPAC, the EDUCAUSE Young Professionals Advisory Committee. So for the purpose of today's episode, I really am excited to bring this up because this is a topic as some of our guests will be mentioning that we've been talking about as YPAC and frankly just as professionals in higher education ever since I've been working in higher education, which is 15 years now, and it's about recognizing career opportunities, recognizing when to change a career journey, when to go for that next promotion or that next job or when not to, and that's tough to know and I don't know if there's ever a right answer. I think it always is. Our favorite answer of it depends. But there's a lot of things I'm really excited to dig into here with some of our guests because we have some very wise folks who I know personally have gone through some really interesting career changes and recognizing what those look like, including myself. So I'm really excited for this discussion we're going to have today. And with that, I'm going to hand things over to our new co-host to introduce our guests.

Abhishek Gaur: Thank you so much, Sarah, for the wonderful introduction to our topic. And without further ado, I'm really excited to welcome our guests for today's conversation. We are lucky to have not just one, but two amazing voices with us today. First up, we have Chris Bradney. Chris serves as the Director of Technology Initiatives at California State University San Bernardino. Chris has more than 15 years of higher education IT experience at both public and private institutions. He's responsible for ID strategic planning project and change management process improvement efforts. He has a master's degree in leadership and organizational studies and his nearing completion of his doctor of business administration with an emphasis in strategic management. Yes, with his unique perspective, Chris is sure to bring some fantastic insights and we can't wait to get into the discussion. And joining Chris, we are thrilled to have Bri Dennis. Bri is the director of portfolio management at College of Charleston, where she leads enterprise projects and change initiatives and data informed decision making, but over 11 years of ID experience including healthcare consulting and higher education. She also serves as vice chair of staff advisory committee and teaches in the school of business nationally. She's an active leader in a focusing on leadership, mentoring, and strategic development for emerging professionals. Bri's work and experience really add another layer to today's discussion. So, Chris and Bri, thank you both for being here with us today. Welcome, welcome.

Chris Bradney: Yeah, so excited to be here today.

Abhishek Gaur: So before we dive into today's topic, we always love to kick things off with a little ritual question. So Chris, I'll start with you. First, tell us what's your superpower and Bri, you're up right after?

Chris Bradney: Okay. Well, longtime listeners of the podcast will know that I was a guest previously, so I didn't already answer. And that answer was tenacity. And it's really funny, I'm going to preface this by saying I didn't create this on my own. There's a fantastic assessment called the Six Types of Working Genius, and I took that and guess what? One of mine is tenacity and the other one is invention, which is totally me. My wife bought me a little plaque from my desk that says, Ooh, this calls for a spreadsheet. I love creating spreadsheets and processes and process maps and if you've identified a problem, that person that wants to dive in there and help you solve it and jump into not only the technology, I think technology is sometimes a place we jump to too quickly, but the process, how is this going to work with people? How are we going to institutionalize this? How do we make sure that it doesn't just become us bending ourselves to the new tool, but how do we bend a tool to really serve the process that we need? So all that to say I love invention. I think I'm going to claim invention as my second superpower.

Sarah Buszka: I love it. Second superpowers two on the show.

Abhishek Gaur: What's your superpower?

Bri Denis: I'm going to claim one superpower. I was thinking of this, I just imagined one of my team members faces and their answer that they would provide for me where they would be like hyper productivity. I can find time there is only 24 hours in a day, but I have very rarely said no to an opportunity. And I have always found the time, it may have come at a cost to my personal life, but I've always found the time to be able to get everything done. And so I think that that would my superpower for better or for worse. I think that the superpower I'd like to develop going forward is balancing the finding more time in the day than needed, but also establishing better boundaries and knowing, and I was talking with some folks from EDUCAUSE, knowing which opportunities to say yes to as opposed to all opportunities.

Sarah Buszka: I think that's a really wonderful superpower and I'm so glad to have you on the show. How apropos because we're going to dig into that today. So following up on that, Bri, actually I'm curious. My first question is for you is I heard you say you've had a lot of opportunities that you've taken and you can make time for it. So looking back at your own journey, can you share a moment when perhaps an unexpected opportunity turned out to be a major turning point in your career and how you knew it was worth pursuing?

Bri Denis: My turning point in my career, it's a lot professional, a little bit personal. And so when I started out, if you look back to when I was an undergrad, I probably could have gotten two degrees in psychology. I was such a psych nerd, I thought I was going to be a counselor. I had my whole life mapped out exactly what I was going to do when I was going to do it, PhD track and my husband now, we are high school sweethearts and he is younger than me and we had done five years long distance. And so by the time he graduated, after I had gone into research and I was working up in New England with Brown and Lifespan, we had to make a call of you can only be long distance, so long or one of you has to relocate to a new place.

Bri Denis: And Rhode Island is a very small state with not a lot of opportunity. And so he got a job at a company called Epic Systems, which is a very large software company. And it's so funny, we ended up doing the same job. I completely switched careers for this. And when he got the job first and explained it to me as a project manager, I was a research assistant going down academia, he described to me, I was like, I would never want to do that. I was like, that sounds terrible. And then I found the job description. I was like, I'll just throw my name out. Didn't realize it was the same one. They wind and dine you, fly you out. There are campuses like a Pixar movie and in meeting the people, talking through it, looking at the benefits, looking at different career trajectories and kind of what people who have gone that direction have been able to do afterwards.

Bri Denis: I switched from academia going down a research assistant route to becoming an IT project manager. And I always laugh because when I get new employees on my team and they're like, I just feel very overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. And I'm like, you cannot start further down than I did. I attended my first meeting and because I had no business background, I didn't know what a business process meant and they were using business terms for me and I left and went home to my husband and I was like, teach me, catch me up to date, ready to learn. And so that's my big pivot moment. And from there, my career has taken a completely different turn and that's where I sat back and realized it's important to have plans, maybe not a 10 year plan, but you never know what opportunity is going to present itself and always be prepared to and pivot because that could be what's better for you.

Sarah Buszka: And it sounded like you really thought about it long-term too. You examined what are the benefits of this potential career? What are those long-term career trajectories looking like? If I were to take this role, what do people maybe five years ahead of me look like? What are they doing? What are they working on? What does their salary look like? I think those are really great examples and ways to be thinking about navigating your career, right? Because at the end of the day, we're all trying to provide for ourselves and our families too, and that's a major component of that consideration. Chris, what about you? Have you had any unexpected career opportunities that ended up being this major turning point in your career and how did you know it was worth pursuing or not?

Chris Bradney: I mean, looking back, I think there were probably two very pivotal early career decisions that I made and I'm very grateful that I made these decisions very early on. One is I was still a student, I was a computer science student. I was thinking I was going to go be a software developer. I was thinking I was going to be that person that kind of sits in the dark at their desk and just programs all day. That was kind my career path, but I found a job.

Sarah Buszka: I can't ever picture you doing that.

Chris Bradney: I know it's so far from where I am today so far

Chris Bradney: But I found a job. I needed a job on campus. So I joined, we had a student run student help desk, so there was a team of about 60 students and one staff member that was running this organization and I joined that and I was literally just babysitting printers, making sure people could print and that. But then there was an opportunity, somebody had left the university and there was a student manager position opened and I said, maybe that's something I want to try my hat in. And I was the dark horse candidate was nobody expected me to apply for that job. I mean, I was told that in my interview. I'm like, we didn't expect you to apply, but they gave me the chance and they gave me the opportunity and it was just that very fulfilling like yep, this is the thing that I was really called to and I still didn't believe it.

Chris Bradney: I still didn't believe it. I graduated and I was applying for software developer jobs. I mean to the point where I was pretty far down this road interviewing for a software developer position at a biomedical research facility in Denmark. I was considering moving to Denmark and following that path. But lo and behold, I started dating the woman that would become my wife later on. And so I said, wow, this is getting really serious. I don't think I can move to Denmark. That's just not going to be in my path. So I said, no, it was the perfect opportunity. It was exactly what I wanted to do. I love being international. It was like, this is it. This is the opportunity for me. And it was a no, right? It tore me up to say no, but that was the right thing to do. So it was just really that analysis of what's important right now.

Chris Bradney: And then ultimately going down my career path, I got a job at my alma mater and did that computer support, but really quickly got to transfer into managing that group of students that I was a part of before. And that was just such a fulfilling opportunity to realize that that was really my calling, right? My calling was being in a community of students, investing into them, leadership, developing people, and really thinking about how can we apply our systems and our processes to serve and support the higher education community. So very early on, thankfully I learned that lesson and avoided a job that would've taken me in a very different direction.

Sarah Buszka: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I really love that both of you, Chris and Bri have shared that a lot of your decision making and with respect to this process involved more than just considering the job itself and your career itself strictly your considering other factors that make you happy and bring you joy. I heard both of you mention your spouses or soon to be spouses. I think that's a really important piece that it's tough to talk about. I think a lot of times when we're talking to our mentors about our career decisions, we're strictly talking about what is this going to look like on a resume and we stop there. I really appreciate that you both shared. We considered other factors, things that are going to bring us joy and eventual happiness that we didn't maybe expect, but we're considering that as we're making these choices. Thank you for sharing that

Bri Denis: Because I didn't realize Chris, Chris yours was very similar to mine as well, is that while very valuable to make sure you're considering all facets of your life very holistically, if you're at a stage of your career, especially early on where maybe you don't have a spouse or you don't have those familial ties that would prevent you from going to Denmark, take the risk early in your career once you're seven to 10 years in, it's harder. You're going to have to explain why you deviated from an industry, why you picked up and changed positions entirely. But for those first five, seven years, you have an open book, try something totally left field low risk for you. You can always go back to engineering or whatever programming your initial interest was. So I think it goes both ways depending on where you're at in your life.

Abhishek Gaur: Let me pivot just a little bit. Hearing from both Bri and Chris, your first experience of getting a job, I was sitting down with my colleagues who are young, professional like me, and in this fast-growing AI world and things are changing at workplace, what one practical step a young professional can take today to open themselves up to a new opportunity? Should they focus on building their network, reaching out on LinkedIn, strengthening their professional presence, or is there another strategy you'd recommend to step into the market with a little extra edge? Chris, can you sparkle your thoughts on this question?

Chris Bradney: Yeah, that's such a relevant question. What's that first step? Because I think oftentimes we can look down the road and see what we want to become, but that becoming starts with day one and that day one decision is so vital. I'm going to answer maybe something that you didn't lay out there taking a really careful look inside about what are you about? So not only Bri, what you were just saying about considering these factors, these familiar ties, these roots that you have in a community, but really consider what are those strengths that you have, right? That superpower question is so vital, but having that inward knowledge to be able to say, here's what I'm really good at, here's what I could be best in the world at. And Sarah, what you were saying, here's what actually gives me joy. Because if you're really good at something but you are miserable when you do it, that's going to be an important data point to consider.

Chris Bradney: And that's not to say you can't do it for a time, but it's not going to be a long-term path for you. So once you can really understand that, I think before you get to the market, before you get to networking, before you get to all these other things, is be able to express that in a short sentence. Here's the value I bring to an organization. Here's the things that I can be best in the world at. And once you can articulate that, then it's time to say, okay, now let me go to the Edika career pathways and say what are some of those opportunities? Where's the alignment? What am I looking to do? And then you can go strategically, network. Let me go talk to some of those people in those fields. Is my understanding of that position the same as the lived experience of some of these people that do this day in and day out? But you got to start with that inward reflection first. If you don't start there, you can convince yourself that something is the perfect opportunity and it's perfectly wrong for you.

Sarah Buszka: Well said. I like that. I like that a lot. Thank you. And I want to give a plug too, and Chris, I want you to speak to this a little bit as well. I think our audience might be thinking, okay, great, well how do I do that? What does that look like? And can I get support in the journey of examining myself and my skills and simultaneously matching that to some career trajectories or opportunities? And so I want to give a plug for the EDUCAUSE Early Career Accelerator program that our one and very own here, Chris is helping conch and lead. And I think that's a wonderful program that Edika offers young professionals or even anyone new to higher ed who hasn't been in the space before and needs to understand what are the career trajectories for me. We heard Bri mention earlier, I think this is a wonderful resource, very timely given that the cohort will be meeting in person at the annual conference coming up, oh gosh, in two months,

Chris Bradney: Two months. Two months

Sarah Buszka: In October, I mean right around the corner. So Chris, is there anything you just want to add in and plug about that program while we're here?

Chris Bradney: Absolutely. That I think that program is going to be a fantastic start. I don't think it's going to be the complete encapsulation of this is the silver bullet that's going to solve the problems for you. I'm a big fan of personality assessments. I mentioned the six types of working genius at the top of the show. I mean I've done, you name it, I've probably done it. But the ones that are really resonated for me are six types of working genius, the Myers-Briggs type assessment and Enneagram. Those are probably the three that I've really latched onto that say this is really important for me. But I would also be remiss if I didn't plug, there's a new resource from EDUCAUSE called the Early Level Professionals Competency. So it walks you through some of this and you do that self-identification of where your strengths are and what brings you joy. I think that's a great tool too.

Sarah Buszka: Bri, do you have anything to add?

Bri Denis: I'll build a little bit on what Chris said, but without saying the same thing, I was just talking to a team member and he threw out and he was like, I have these career aspirations, but he didn't want to share them, not at the risk of getting in trouble. I support my team knowing what they want to do, but he was like, I just don't want to sound too ambitious. I was like, go for the moon. And I was like, to my point earlier, things change. Don't be so tied to something but have a plan. And I told him, I was like, listen, there's things that I do today that I don't need to do for my current role from where I'm currently at, but in five years, 10 years when I want to hit that next stage, I won't not get there because I didn't take the time to prepare today because it's not enough that when you're going for that promotion to say in the last year, look at all that I've done.

Bri Denis: They're looking for what have you done the last five years? What have you been doing building to be able to get here? And so I think that kind of going off of what Chris said, I think sometimes for young professionals it is hard to early in your career identify what you're good at, what you would put your best foot forward outside of the chatGPT summary, elevator pitch that we're all taught. And even as you're going through putting forward request to present, I think people sometimes struggle to come up, what would I present because what am I an expert on that I'm going to teach someone that they don't already know? And I think that introspection that Chris talked about is very important and to make that actionable. A lot of times people talk about building your brand and I probably could do a better job at that.

Bri Denis: I'm not the most savvy person with social media, but I always think in terms of social media posting on LinkedIn. But I think for me the more meaningful and actionable building your brand is doing these podcasts, it's getting involved with your industry in meaningful ways where you're establishing a network, but you're doing it where you're building up a portfolio that you can share, that you can use as a platform that goes above and beyond making a LinkedIn post that's sharing an article. You're being a creator of content that you are providing to the industry rather than just pointing to someone else creating. And I think that that first step is like what Chris said of knowing what you can start to partner with others to build your expertise to be a creator.

Sarah Buszka: I think that's a really great piece of advice too, Bri, and it reminds me of one of our, I would say esteemed guests that we've had on the show, her advice, it's Tara Hughes. She frames it as you don't have to be the expert in something, just start the conversation. And I think that mental flip for me actually was really helpful in saying I'm just here to start a conversation and facilitate it and see what comes up and something really amazing has come up from it. So I think that's a really great piece of advice that young professionals can, I hope take to heart and just say, all of us here are just trying to start conversations. We can all be better experts. We'll never be perfect and there's always something to learn. So thank you for sharing that.

Chris Bradney: Let me dive into that really quick because this is something, this is really something apropos that I've learned. I'm going to use your word Sarah,

Sarah Buszka: It's one of my favorites.

Chris Bradney: It's great. Nobody's arrived, nobody's made it. Nobody's the expert and they've mastered everything there is to know. We're all on a journey and something that I've had to learn is you don't have to be in that place of expert stage on the stage to present, right? People are so interested in hearing your journey. They're so interesting to hear we're working towards this. Here's some of our thoughts, here's some of the challenges and the struggles that we're having because we're all learning from each other and we're all striving together. So don't hold yourself back from what you're saying. Don't hold yourself back from presenting just because you haven't mastered everything. It's not perfect because it's never going to be perfect.

Sarah Buszka: Exactly. Well said. Thank you. Well, one thing, the final question I want to ask before we start moving ourselves towards the end of the show is almost flipping this conversation on its head a little bit. We've been talking a lot about how do you recognize these good career opportunities, what have you gone towards, those types of things. And I want to talk a little bit more about something that can be challenging, I think especially for young professionals and a little vulnerable, which is how can you recognize when you're just in a bad spot? It could be because of culture, it could be because of a manager, it could be because of a teammate. It could be because of fill in the blank, but not everything will be perfect in your career. And it's not fair to expect that everything will. But there are, I think objectively that I've learned in my career thus far some situations that are objectively toxic and you can never come back from and you will never grow in. There's some things I think that are within reason that you can work through and some that just aren't. And you have to know when to get out when those situations come up. What I like to say is the grass isn't always greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it and you also need to recognize when you're watering rocks and nothing's going to grow from that.

Sarah Buszka: So I want to thank you. So I want to ask both of you, maybe I'll start with you, Bri. How do you know when you're watering rocks and what do you do to move on from that?

Bri Denis: I think that for me, I'm always operating from a growth mindset and maybe it's a personality flaw. I have to always be challenged. I have to always feel like I'm learning that I'm doing something new and that I'm really contributing to my max potential. I remember at my last position, I was a contractor, so I was by the hour and I went to my boss and I was like, you are not getting your money's worth from me. And I was like, I am not being able to give everything that I can give to this position. He joked with me, he was like, you're the highest paid secretary if that's what you're doing. He was like, be happy, find hobbies. And I was like, yeah, we were very close. And so for me it was a great opportunity there. But that's kind of been the trend of my career is when I feel my growth has been stunted, then I'm reassessing things going, is there some You can only control what you can control.

Bri Denis: Have I advocated for myself? Have I voiced my concerns to the people who have greater control than I do in these areas I'm upset with? Is it institutional? For example, I work at a state entity. We can only control so much as an institution. Is it cultural where that's something that we have greater control as a leadership team? What does that look like? And also what is the importance? To me, when I came onto my current position where I inherited my team, it was a very toxic work environment, and I think I spent my full-time job for a year and a half was turning that team around so that people felt it was a safe place. They felt valued. And today I had so and say that we are the whole foods of teams. And so the work can go in to be able to have improvements, but whether you're early in your career as a contributor, even as an early leader, you have to make sure you're having those open conversations. And if you've talked about it a few times and you've given time and you've been actionable and there is no change, there's a lot of opportunities. Throw your resume out there and see what happens. It doesn't need to be your full-time job of: you're quitting today and you're taking a huge risk. But just see if something pops up that maybe is more aligned with you holistically as a person.

Sarah Buszka: I agree. I think that's great. One thing you mentioned that I really liked is thinking about the growth. And if I feel limited in this position, I only can focus on what I can control and for whatever reason, if it's a manager or the institution or it's a state institution, so there's just other regulatory things that might be impacting your ability for growth, it's good to recognize that and to move on, right? So thank you for sharing that, Chris.

Chris Bradney: Bri, I think we are the same person in so many ways.

Sarah Buszka: I wonder why we had you two on the show today.

Chris Bradney: I don't know. I don't know, right? I classify myself as a fatal optimist. I am always the optimistic person. I'm like, we can turn this around and we can make this better. I've also, multiple positions been that person to come into an organization where it's like, wow, things are not going great right now. Let's turn things around. And it is very rewarding to do that. But to your question, Sarah, about how do you know when you're rocks? I think Bri, you touched on this, but I think that it's really important to understand what is the category of challenge that you're experiencing? Is it the nature of the position that you're in?

Chris Bradney: The third time, I'll mention the six types of working genius, but they also talk about in that assessment, what are your working frustrations? What are the things that you say, please do not make me do this. And sometimes there's an opportunity to reorg your position to say, Hey, here's where my strengths are. Leverage me in these ways. Don't leverage me in these ways. Not every position's like that. So for me, my frustrations are in this model galvanizing. Don't make me be the person like, come on guys, we got to get this done. Don't make me be that person. I want people to be self-motivated. And the other one's enablement, which is the don't think about it. Don't try to redesign anything. Don't try to er anything. Just put your head down and get the work done. And that's not me. I can't turn my brain off, I'll be honest. So some of the frustrations that you might experience are nature of the position and how you're utilized, and there's ways to navigate that. Some of it is your relationship with the manager, and this is some really good advice I heard early in my career, which is don't assume that your manager is leading in the way that they want to be leading.

Chris Bradney: The leaders are not perfect. We're not this pristine ideal of what we want to be as leaders. We're all in process too. So have that conversation to say, here's what I need from you. And some leaders, hopefully, I'd say maybe the really good leaders are going to be really receptive to saying, I hear you, I hear what you need. Let me adjust my approach. But you can advocate yourself for yourself in those situations. Now other leaders are not open to that, right? Other leaders are not going to be receptive to adjusting their approach. And that's a place where you only have influence, you don't have control. Recognize when that control isn't in place and recognize whether or not it's something you can work through or if it's something that's not going to work for you. The other one is culture, the organizational culture, the organizational mission.

Chris Bradney: Sometimes there's good alignment there, sometimes there's not. And so if you understand what are the job attributes? What are relationship with my supervisor, what are my relationship with the mission of the organization and the larger culture? Those are, again, it's very introspective to be able to take a hard look at that to say, where's the alignment? Where's the misalignment? And if there's misalignment, what can I be doing to realign? Because again, I'm the person that's always going to stick through something and work to make it better. I'd much rather water where I can water, make improvements and make the team, the organization my work better than it is today, rather than just saying, all right, that's it. I'm out.

Sarah Buszka: Well, maybe Chris and Bri in thirty-second answers, what is one key takeaway that you want to leave with our audience today? Bri? Are you willing to go first?

Bri Denis: I think that the key takeaway, always push yourself. I think one of the things that young professionals struggle with is I don't have the full experience of what that position description, that posting is asking for. Should I even my ego, am I going to be embarrassed? Is it going to be a tough situation worth the time? I will say that I very rarely would apply for a position that I didn't have, opportunities that I haven't done. Because how am I supposed to grow? How am I supposed to develop if there's not opportunity there? If I'm doing everything, and I don't mean you don't have experience, there's experiences that are transferable that you've done in one facet, that means you'll be successful. Another, you just haven't had that opportunity to do it. So make sure you understand that piece. But take the risk. Don't tell yourself no. Let them tell you no. And keep trying even if you get told no the first, second, third time, because you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take. So not to be cliche, that would be my thirty-second answer.

Sarah Buszka: Nice. You. Well, it's true, right? I mean, people can tell you no, but that's not something to take personally. That's just at least how I see it as motivation to find someone who's going to say yes. So Chris, are you willing to share in 30 seconds what your key takeaway or key messages for our audience today?

Chris Bradney: I don't know if I have a thirty-second answer in me, but I'll give it a shot.

Sarah Buszka: You can do it. I believe in you.

Chris Bradney: I think a key takeaway for me is spend the time. You need to be introspective, know yourself, know what you're good at, know what you're bad at, and be really honest, brutally honest with yourself about what those things are. And then spend the time working with your manager to look ahead to say, where's that career path? Where's that? I would say even be bold. Think of where you want to retire from. What is that position, right? Are you aiming for CIO? There's no shame in saying that. Say that. And then work yourself back from that to say, what are the skills I need to develop? What's the career path to get there? And then what do I need to do today? What are those conversations I need to have with my manager to say, I want to grow in this way. I want to have these opportunities. I want to develop these skills. If you can have that level of clarity about your career path, that will ease every one of those assessments you're going to do, every opportunity that comes your way, you're going to say, is this going to further my career or is this going to sidetrack me? And there's also nothing wrong with changing your mind, change your mind early. Because if you experience something and you change your mind early, great. You have time to pivot. Don't change your mind 20 years from now.

Sarah Buszka: Exactly. That's great. That's great advice. Yes. Another thirty-second snippet.

Bri Denis: Just that when you ask, how do you know you're watering the rocks? Advocate for yourself. If you are talking to your manager, a great manager is a huge catalyst for your career. Do not waste years working for someone who is not building you up, because when you do, your career trajectory is completely different. And where you will end and retire from are not even near each other. And so if you are talking to your manager today and you have given it multiple tries and they are not building you up, they are not giving you an opportunity. The day I make that decision, I'm applying for other jobs. That is a critical red flag.

Sarah Buszka: Yes. Thank you. That's a mic drop for today's episode. We do a lot of mic drops on this show. That's a mic drop because to your point, that impacts your long-term ability for success, for income, for a lot of things, and it's just not worth it. Well, I think this might tee us up for potentially a second conversation, so just we'll plant the seed there. But with that, I want to wrap up today's conversation. Just say thank you, Chris and Bri so much for sharing your wisdom. I really appreciated it. I hope our listeners also appreciate it too. And I also just want to say too is the YPAC, we're meant to be friends for our community here. Yes, we're talking on the show, but we welcome folks reaching out to us in real life, especially knowing that the conference is coming up right around the corner. We will be recording live and we want to see folks there in our audience and to continue having conversations like this, because that's why we're here. We're here to support each other in this industry, in this profession. So thank you, Chris. Thank you, Bri. And thank you so much Abhishek for co-hosting today's show with us. It was really fun. We appreciate it. Thank you all.

Chris Bradney: Great, thank you, Sarah.