Value-First Humans w/ George B. Thomas: Recognize Human Signals, Not Leads

[00:00] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning, Value First Nation, LinkedIn friends. Welcome to another episode of Value First Humans with our favorite Value First Human, George B. Thomas. How you doing, man? George B. Thomas: I'm doing good, brother. How are you doing this morning? Chris Carolan: I am doing alright. Doing alright. Still getting used to uh the the new surroundings, the new setup. Chris Carolan: Um, thank you for being flexible this week. Uh, that we're showing up on Thursday morning. Chris Carolan: Um but yeah, having a a good time. Got some good views here in in Columbia, so uh yeah, we're we're doing alright. George B. Thomas: Nice. George B. Thomas: Love it. George B. Thomas: Good views in uh good views in Eastern time zone. So you got to love that. The week um has been going good. Uh, you know, it's always interesting because you get to this point of the year and one of two things are happening. One, people are trying to hit the gas pedal and go as fast as they can to get as much as they can done before the end of the year, or um some humans have just flat out hit the brakes. George B. Thomas: Uh, they're not responding to you in any sort of way humanly possible. Uh, send up smoke signals, they're not seeing them. George B. Thomas: And so, you know, it I just have gotten used to this type of year or this time of year, you're just like do what you can with who's trying to do the things that they can can do. But but it's so it makes it for a weird week, but it's been a good week. Uh, to be honest with you. Chris Carolan: Yeah, that's the flow. Chris Carolan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Chris Carolan: I had a I had a call like that last night where it was like you know, some new people on the call. Uh, the person who's usually uh most vocal on the call, apparently uh somebody shared at the end of the call, like they're checked out uh for the holidays. So uh, yeah, they'll be back with us uh in 2025 or in 2026. George B. Thomas: 20 2026, yeah. Chris Carolan: Oh, man. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Here we go. Well, we're here today to talk about uh commitment number six uh, which is we will recognize signals rather than manufacture leads.

[05:19] **Recognizing Signals** Chris Carolan: We believe people naturally express genuine interest and need in observable ways. We commit to becoming attuned to these authentic signals rather than manufacturing artificial leads through manipulative tactics. This means we will develop awareness of how people naturally indicate interest and need rather than creating artificial trigger events. Chris Carolan: We will respond to authentic signals with helpful, relevant engagement rather than automated follow-up sequences. We will avoid tactics designed to create artificial interest or urgency rather than serving general genuine exploration. We'll train teams to recognize and respect genuine signals rather than pursuing quota driven activity. Chris Carolan: And we will build systems that capture and respond to natural expressions of interest rather than manufacturing engagement through interruption and this uh just heads up folks, this is going to probably be my favorite episode of all of the Value First uh content that I've been doing all year. George B. Thomas: Yeah, it's uh it's been some good stuff for sure. Good conversations without a doubt. Chris Carolan: What hits? What hits there, George? George B. Thomas: I mean, listen, there there are there are things that we've been trained to listen for and there are things that I think if we go deeper as humans that we want to listen for. George B. Thomas: Um last week I told the story, Chris, of like ripping out a conversion point, right? George B. Thomas: Why would I do that? Because there's a deeper signal. George B. Thomas: Here's the thing. Let me let me do this and then I'll stop because I I think we're going to go in that direction anyway. So many times in life in general, so let's not even talk about business. We walk into a room and humans are at surface level. Surface level conversations, uh, networking just there's nobody's going deep. Nobody's getting into the trenches. Nobody's trying to like by the way, I I I hate that. George B. Thomas: Like if you meet me in real person, you know, like I'm just not about the surface level stuff. George B. Thomas: Yet in business, when we think about the conversions, the uh urgency, the psychological triggers that we play around with and I do mean play. I'm using that word um purposefully. George B. Thomas: It's for surface level actions so that we can then try to run as fast as we can to this like outcome that's benefits us. George B. Thomas: And and I think if we try to find that deeper conversation, that deeper signal, um we end up in a way better place. George B. Thomas: I'll I'll stop there. But that's kind of where my brain goes at the beginning of this conversation. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Yeah, now that's that on. Um and again, it was the leads trap. Chris Carolan: Uh I'm about to get into why this word I think is such a is such a canary in the coal mine for the whole story that we're trying to uh share and um encourage moving forward. Chris Carolan: Uh, this started with the lead strap and um I got to the point where it's like these things keep happening where it's like, well, we would never do that to ourselves or our friends or our family. Uh, we don't like pop ups, yet we assume we we, oh, it's it's part for the course. It's what I'm supposed to be doing as a marketer. The data says it's a good idea, right? We do all these things that we would never do if there was a human right in front of us. Chris Carolan: And we saw them, right? And recognize them. We would not do that. Chris Carolan: So that's why I went in the tank and like the word itself, I believe like if we were able to just remove this word lead, right? From this part of the conversation, uh, most any part of any sales or marketing uh conversation. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Right? Because what it's doing there is giving us permission to not treat the person on the other side like a human being. Right? It reduces a complex human being with hopes, fears, professional pressures and personal priorities to a unit to be processed. Chris Carolan: Here are the obvious examples. Lead generation, literally hunting humans, lead nurturing, processing humans through automation, lead scoring, ranking humans by their value to us. George B. Thomas: Hmm. Chris Carolan: Lead qualification, filtering humans based on our criteria in converting leads, successfully extracting commitment from humans. Every time we use this language, we're reinforcing a mindset that treats people as objects. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it when you list them out like that and at least for me, I get kind of this like sinking pit in my stomach of like value and worth. George B. Thomas: And especially when it's like um the scoring the value to us. George B. Thomas: And I think that that's asked backwards. Like in in business and sales, it should be like the value we are to them. George B. Thomas: Like what's funny is, nobody's built this, but or maybe they have and I'm just I live under a rock, but I feel like there needs to be like uh uh lead score that we don't own, but a lead score that the actual human owns that points towards the business. Um maybe that's the next tool that somebody needs to to build and and what I mean by that is Chris Carolan: Coming to a Value First team website near you very soon. George B. Thomas: There you go. Because it it it is it should be about the value that we're adding. It should be about the experiences that we're creating. It should be about, you know what I mean? And and so many times from a business perspective, we look at it as like, well, you're good enough to extract some currency from your wallet, I guess. George B. Thomas: Which that just makes me sick even like thinking about or saying it that way, which I know why because I don't I don't natively run in that mode. George B. Thomas: Like that's not I'm I'm using like I'm teleporting myself into other um companies into other systems. Uh I I very much try to just not be that. But again, like I said last week, I catch myself to sometimes going, oh, why did I do this knee jerk business response when I actually know I'm trying to show up as a real ass human. So. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: And I think the part that's interesting again, why this whole journey exists is that AI doesn't operate in this mode either, right? Chris Carolan: Uh it's trying to create value in whichever way that it can, right? Um and that's what's going to kind of force if you still want to work in this mode, you you have a, you're on a burning platform right now because it's going to be harder and harder to do this. Chris Carolan: And it's where if you think back and what I did when I first started thinking about this was, okay, Salesforce introduced this object into the CRM and then it created this cascade of events where if even though we're speaking rather harshly, like nobody wants to be called out for dehumanizing the person that's in front of them, right? Uh but you you have there's still a little bit of time to give yourself some grace and some permission because you have been brought into this system where this is your goal, leads. Chris Carolan: Like that's what you're supposed to be doing. That's what your whole job description is sometimes. And there's no way for you to get that job done if you try to humanize the process in some way. George B. Thomas: No. George B. Thomas: We have to pause there. We have to pause there because I want people to I want people to understand the granularities of what you said because it literally I grabbed uh Google real quick and I looked something up. You said Salesforce created the lead object. George B. Thomas: Okay, now, think about that. There's a moment in time where business was done a certain way and humans were thought of in a certain way. Shake hands, word of mouth, uh salt of the earth, like ground you you you see what I'm saying? Then all of a sudden we get to this world, which by the way, everybody needs to know, uh, as as Google says, Salesforce created the lead object early in the platform's history, essentially as long as the platform itself around its launch in 1999. George B. Thomas: So before 1999, humans were treated like humans in the sales process. 1999 and beyond, all of a sudden this started to change, erode and take effect into not only salesforce, but other platforms because other platforms were trying to compete with salesforce, AKA be salesforce, but do it in a lightly different way. George B. Thomas: Hubspot held out for a very long time. We didn't have a lead objects, lead object. And all of a sudden now hubspot has a lead object. Why? Well, because we're competing in a space where that's the narrative that has been presented, but it's not the forever and true narrative of what a sales process look like for how many years before 1999 had people been selling things. George B. Thomas: So you can't tell me we can't go back. You can't tell me that it won't go that direction. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Chris Carolan: Yeah, no, and that's where a lot of people, like especially in the manufacturing space where I'm from, like they never bought into the CRM concept because of things like this. It's like, no, I'm not going to, why would I create leads? I just met the person. Uh, they're a contact. Like and if you force me to do this leads thing first, like no, I'm just not going to use the CRM now. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Because I know that I'm about this relationship and this whole full funnel, like people that can own it from start to finish. They don't they know it's incorrect to try and categorize this human in front of them in ways that can be detrimental to the relationship, right? And the reason I think this is historically important because there was a shift. Chris Carolan: Like what did we do? Oh, we need to get a lot of leads. Chris Carolan: All right, that means we need to do a lot of ads to get leads. Oh, man, we've got a lot of garbage leads in here. We know there's some good ones. But now let's get a SDR team in here so that they can qualify. George B. Thomas: Yeah. George B. Thomas: Can I can I jump in because you did something that tweaked my brain, which again, this is why I love these conversations. George B. Thomas: You said, no, I'm not going to use this lead thing. These people are a contact. George B. Thomas: I don't I don't think that's the words that they would have used because if you think about previous to somebody being a contact in a CRM, in a system, in a SAS software, um they would have said they're an acquaintance, they're a connection, they're an associate, they're a colleague, they're a relation. George B. Thomas: Like these are the human words that they would have used before a contact that equals a lead that equals an opportunity because they work at an account. Chris Carolan: That that's fair. Um and as we added like digital added this level of complexity. Chris Carolan: Uh and so then we needed these systems that we could use to qualify everybody. like we're literally creating this problem up front because we choose to just bring in as many leads as we can without knowing who the humans are or if they need us trying to create urgency, all this stuff, then it just blows and an entire industry is built to the point where manage services exists and people profit and build businesses off of all this complexity, right? And AI is naturally built to cut through complexity and remove these pieces. Chris Carolan: So here's and it and it should not be that hard to understand the alternative here, right? So here's some alternative language. Um signal recognition, right? Instead of lead generation. Chris Carolan: Relationship development instead of lead nurturing. Signal strength assessment instead of lead scoring, fit and readiness exploration instead of lead qualification. Supporting decisions, supporting decisions instead of converting leads. George B. Thomas: hmm. George B. Thomas: hmm. George B. Thomas: Yeah, so Chris Carolan: So the language, you know, we use and this is why like we talk about common language and why things like MQL and SQL and lead, like when you have to explain what those things are, like it just creates this this culture and it shapes the reality that we create around us. Chris Carolan: When we call people leads, we give ourselves permission to treat them like inventory. George B. Thomas: Yeah. George B. Thomas: And nobody likes that feeling. I don't like that feeling. I don't like feeling like a number. That's why I hate the DMV. Number 272. Chris Carolan: And what becomes real far away. Chris Carolan: Yeah, it's ridiculous. Chris, you you used you said fit and you used the word with fit. George B. Thomas: Right. Chris Carolan: Fit and what what did you say? Fit and readiness. George B. Thomas: Readiness. Um to me that's that's the that's the golden one, right? George B. Thomas: If I think about how not complex my process or system or whatever you want to call it, to get a human to the point where we both understand if we're a fit and if they're ready to move forward with the way in which we can help them, that's that's the only focus. George B. Thomas: Like there's one call and on the call, I explain who I am, how long I've been using hubspot, and then um who they are and what the problems that they're facing. Um, we talk about what it would cost for us to help, uh but that's only after we spent now probably 80% of the time talking about where they're at, where they're trying to go and what would need to change to make that happen. George B. Thomas: Um, not are they a good fit for me, but are they a good fit for us and are we a good fit for them? If they're not a good fit for us, then we're going to you know, like we're going to, hey, this is who you should talk to. Like XYZ is the most technical uh shop and you're talking about API this webhook that. George B. Thomas: Although I'm getting to the point where I might not be scared of that as much as I once historically was. George B. Thomas: But but my point here is like I'm not afraid to hand off somebody to a better human or a better organization for the problem that they might have. And so many times a sales process is not built for that. George B. Thomas: It's not built to have hand off partners. It's built to close every single thing because we need every single dollar in it. George B. Thomas: And so like that fit and readiness, like if I could get organizations to to focus in on that and if they're not a fit or we're not a fit or it that readiness by the way, okay, yeah, we can help you in two months. George B. Thomas: Or yes, we can start your project in three weeks, right? That's different. But the fit side of this, like have hand off partners, um have integrity. George B. Thomas: Say no let your no be no and your yes be yes when it should be, right? George B. Thomas: I'll I'll stop. Chris Carolan: And and when this is happening in the context of you said that you would do your best to provide value, imagine it's an interest object in the CRM and it's built to gauge and understand fit and readiness, right? And you said you're going to add value and provide value and help this person if they booked a call with you, right? Chris Carolan: You're going to have, you might hand them off, but they don't close. There's no closing happening in your CRM until the handoff has happened and there's fit and readiness confirmed over there. Chris Carolan: Because what often happens is like, oh, there is something that we can work together on and now you've got a a three-pack of, you know, partners. Chris Carolan: And that's the part where when it's just qualification mode, it's either I got to yes no it as as quickly as possible. It just misses the point and I chose not to get this crazy with the language uh transitions. But as I was thinking about it, because honestly the researcher stage is representative of what I'm about to say. Chris Carolan: Yeah. But like when I built the value path, like it still didn't account for like the prospects area of most CRMs and most like tasks and workflows that teams have to deal. Chris Carolan: And I was like, um, all right, first of all, it doesn't belong in this path, right? It's it's a thing that we think we have to do as an organization. give me a list or I'm going to go find prospects or I'm going to prospect. Chris Carolan: To what George said earlier, they are prospecting us. They are prospecting for value and gold. They are trying to find what's going to work. They're going they're trying to find the value for them in any given moment on their journey. And that's when I was I was working on this with AI. Chris Carolan: And like he was he was going along for the ride. He's like, all right, yeah, so they're a prospector when they're in that moment. So we might have a list of prospectors that we want to be seen with. Like if we know they're the prospectors, we want to kind of show up and make it easy for them to find the gold, right? Chris Carolan: But then when he did like a recap, he did like researcher/prospector and I was like, yeah, you're right. I probably don't need to get like that's it's what they're doing. Like they're researching and they're trying to find the gold for them. So that's not we're not prospecting. They are. George B. Thomas: Yeah, it's interesting because my brain wants to play with that um prospector thing a little bit because like what the prospector is trying to find is the gold nugget, right? George B. Thomas: And if you think about that from the organizational standpoint, like what is your gold nugget? What are your gold nuggets? Um, and I agree, they're in the research phase, but in that research phase, they are a little bit of a prospector hat where I'm like, hey, um the way that I'm going to figure out if this organization is a good match for me, a good fit is I'm going to find a couple gold nuggets here and there. George B. Thomas: So like if you think about your business storytelling in the sales process, what are your gold nuggets? What do you need to lead people to of understanding? George B. Thomas: So Chris, I'll go back to something you said earlier where it's like if I hand them off, they're not really closed until like they're handed off and like everything's going on there and they're really not closed because for us one of our gold nuggets hubspot training. George B. Thomas: So while I might send somebody off as as I was talking about APIs and web hooks and all that and more technical stuff, boom, by the way, once that's built, we can help you train your people on hubspot because we've been doing that since 2013. George B. Thomas: That's one of our gold nuggets, right? Um if you get confused about workflows and creating emails or if you just don't have enough time and you need some worker hands, we can also help with that. That's a gold nugget. George B. Thomas: Like so so understanding that narrative or that mindset around that researcher and what they're trying to find, I think would help unlock some some sales folks and some business ideas of like, oh wow, if I can just in the conversation get them to know like and trust me and show them these three gold nuggets, that prospect who is researching seven other agencies will probably fall in love with me. George B. Thomas: There's your model. Like run with it. I mean it's worked for me. I'm just saying humbly. Chris Carolan: It all takes is that understanding. Chris Carolan: Like if that makes it easier for you, like run with it. Like they're prospecting us, not the other way around. And that's the whole point here. Like they are humans on the other side of these screens, right? Even if you can't see them uh and that just shifts the mentality. Chris Carolan: Um, so some and again, I'm about to run through a list of authentic signals that Yeah. will not be uh, you know, anything new. George B. Thomas: Before you do that, can I can I double click on the story that I started to tell last week and then you can run through these signals because I want to I want to position us. George B. Thomas: So first of all, the the thing that I was talking about last week is literally been putting a side mission together spiritual side of leadership.com, um where we created an assessment that is the superhuman framework for faith driven leaders assessment. George B. Thomas: And we had a conversion point in the middle of it. I ripped it out. George B. Thomas: And here's why, Chris, because is is a conversion point a signal? Yes. However, if I were to get an email saying, wow, a 43 on whatever pillar or a 76 on whatever cornerstone, right? George B. Thomas: So purpose, passion, persistence, love, or any of the eight pillars. Imagine getting an email being like, dude, um I got a 46 on humility. How is that? How that ain't surface level, bro. George B. Thomas: That's a deep signal. George B. Thomas: Like I can do something with that. The amount of value that I could add in time to value based on somebody responding with I got a 47 on humility versus first name, last name, email. George B. Thomas: Our worlds apart. That's the signal I want. I want I want the deeper signal so I can add deeper value more like quicker. George B. Thomas: Anyway, okay. George B. Thomas: I I think that's a good portrait to paint for people to be like, oh, yeah, like why wouldn't I take that secondary or tertiary like real human response instead of just a hubspot formed submission notification anyway. Chris Carolan: Yeah, like that that conversion point that we're forcing in that moment, like it lets everybody off the hook to go deeper and actually add find find the value because what's happening that you've already created value for that person, right? Chris Carolan: And uh they might have have that value but they're if they have to fill something out, now it's like, okay, I'm going to hear from George anyways, so I'll just tell him whenever whenever we get together, I'm not going to send this email that I might have sent otherwise, right? Chris Carolan: And so it just all these mechanisms that just uh, first of all, they just don't work as well anymore because humans are have figured it out. AI knows how the game is played too. So when humans are presented with those scenarios, they might say, hey, I'm about to fill this form out on psychic strategies.com or or um spiritual side of life or leadership, uh, what's what's going to happen next? Chris Carolan: Like when I fill this form out, what are people saying out there? Uh and if and if it's super transactional, AI will find that and come back with, yeah, uh, you know, people on Reddit saying two or three days to get back to you and like there's there's nowhere to hide on this stuff. There's no ways to trick the system anymore, right? Chris Carolan: And instead of trying to trick it with conversion optimization, just this word optimization in general, like think about these these signals. Um depth of engagement, right? Reading full articles versus bouncing. We've been tracking stuff like that for a long time now, right? Chris Carolan: Return visits. We've been tracking that for a long time. Multi-topic exploration. If you've got a lot of content, you've been tracking that as well. Chris Carolan: Time spent, resource downloads without gates, right? When you remove the gates and you decide to capture that information instead, you can very quickly see what you want to see without manufacturing it inauthentically. It's just this this manufacturing moment reduces it from so many different directions, reduces the value, right? Chris Carolan: Um, and so those are those are just behavioral. There's easy intent signals to see on social now, relationship signals, referrals given without incentive, right? Somebody who defends your approach to skeptics, right? Chris Carolan: Uh, bringing you into relevant conversations uh and this is something I'm trying to play with um and also teach at the same time, uh, you know, in the my value path portal. Um, people can see all the data that we have about them and hubspot because we collect as much as we can while you're on the website uh and even as we interact with you outside of the website so that we can give you this personalized value first kind of experience. Chris Carolan: But you can see it and if you want to delete it, you can. Uh, but what's interesting and I know you know this, when we show up transparently, people give you more signals. They just Oh yeah. because they trust you. They trust you because you show up in a certain way and it's like, hey, we're we're in this together, we're here to create value, let's go. And it's like, okay, let's go. Like what can we do? What other, you know, things can I read? What other signals uh can I create? Obviously they're not saying it like that, but that's how if you can understand that's the outcome of these interactions. George B. Thomas: I mean, if you so there's um let's talk a little bit about life and let's talk a little bit about business. George B. Thomas: So we always talk about like how empathy is a superpower. And if I could wave a magic wand, I would I would make more humans, especially if they're in the sales process, um uh like empaths. It's just like a natural you know, empathetic nature. Because I can tell you the amount of times that I've got on a call and you can tell and I use these words, other people don't use these words, but they're guarded and I literally in my mind would be like, oh yeah, they have their business armor on. George B. Thomas: I can tell they have their business armor on. The amount of times I can tell you that within 10, 15, 20 minutes of a conversation that I can tell that somebody has placed their armor off to the side and we're now actually having an ungurded and just open and transparent conversation. George B. Thomas: That like that should be, by the way, that should be your first goal is how do you get them to remove their armor? Because if you're going to sit there and talk to armor, armor, armor, armor, armor, you're not getting anywhere, right? George B. Thomas: You cannot pierce the heart or pierce the mind if they're wearing a breastplate or a helmet. George B. Thomas: So you've got to like and so you can like if you're if you pay attention because and that's why I love video by the way is zoom because I no longer have like in person like sales meetings, but if they're on video, I can see the micro expressions, the mannerisms, the leaning in as they're talking, things like that. George B. Thomas: Like do all you can do. And if you're watching this, listening to this, however you digest it, moving forward, please, by all that is holy, use the next two, one, two, three years to figure out how to turn yourself into this superhuman when it comes to empathy, micro expressions, body language. You will need it more in two to four years than ever in the history of the human race. George B. Thomas: There's there's been some things that I've been watching and listening to lately that are like, we are, we we only have started to understand the massive change that is about to happen in humanity and the value that you have historically provided is not how you'll provide it. It will be in different ways that you'll provide it. It will not be from your hands uh industrial age. It will not be from your head uh information internet age. Um it will be from your heart human, uh emotion, um energy, frequency. George B. Thomas: This is how you will walk into a room and be able to do the things that need to be done in the future. Um, I literally was listening to this thing with Joe Polizzi as well an interview and this idea of your tilt. This idea of some people call it a niche. Uh I think it's more than that. George B. Thomas: Listen, invest in yourself right now on these things that we're talking about. Uh it will be at some point and I'm not a doomsdaer, but it will be a make or break in future years if you have or have not taken the time to do 1% better each and every day on these things that we're talking about. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Um and we're we're seeing so many long-time practitioners. Uh people that have generated a ton of value in their their decades of service uh to the business world like Joe Polizzi, just starting to lean into these less measurable things like when you describe tilt, uh, you know, and you mentioned frequency, energy, all these things that that's what the digital space has really taken that away because we were used to being in person. We didn't have to figure out how to understand that because we could just feel it with each other when we're in the same room talking to each other. Chris Carolan: Um and that's where digital digital tools and AI now can um help a lot with that. And to to give you an example of things that are already happening in tools like hubspot, right? That if you just shift how you how you're looking at the data to to the point where data is here so I can understand it and then show up more human instead of data is here so I can understand it and get and know how I'm going to convert the hell out of this human, right? It's a 100% difference. So page view tracking, content engagement depth, return visitor identification, social monitoring, email engagement beyond just opens, custom behavioral scoring, custom events. Chris Carolan: There's a huge long list now, right? But most organizations use these tools to manufacture more leads, right? So hubspot's bringing in these signals from the market and the question is whether or not you're going to pay attention to them. Chris Carolan: And you naturally won't when you're too busy running lead gen campaigns to notice, right? Because all those signals come in. Chris Carolan: My lead gen campaign is here. Chris Carolan: I'm grabbing those signals and it's always in the context of my next conversation that's supposed to convert because sales velocity needs to be high and conversion rates need to be high and I can't be wasting time on these calls, right? Chris Carolan: Instead of just taking a step back, seeing all the signals together and then making it very obvious which humans are the fit, which humans are ready, yeah, right? Chris Carolan: And even the humans that aren't ready but are a fit, now you have ideas on what to do in that next conversation to help them be ready. George B. Thomas: Yeah. George B. Thomas: So I got to I got to unpack something because that's just who I am and some people are going to be like, George, you're so full of like you use the word running. Running these lead campaigns, which by the way, the word running, people are just running through their day. George B. Thomas: They're running through the business. Um the amount of humans that I hear talk about, I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel. Oh with that hubspot updates and with AI and with everything I got to do, I'm just on a hamster I'm running. Oh my god, how did we get to December? Like because you've been running. Head down, eyes shut, as fast as you can. and guess what? Here we are. Welcome to the present day. George B. Thomas: Again, there's going to be people out there that dude, you're just full of shit. Um and I don't usually swear. So there you go. Have that one. Um I try not to. I have been spending a massive amount of time in my personal and professional business, um trying