[Fully Managed] Amber McCue from ambermccue.com Ep. 70 – Transcript

Introduction

Shannon: Hello everyone and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Amber McCue from AmberMcCue.com. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Amber: Oh my gosh. Thrilled to be here. Excited to hang out Shannon.

Shannon: I’m super excited to have you on. It’s also really fun to be able to do that introduction with your name also in your business because it’s like, it’s just like a fun little, it’s simple. Keep it simple. Amber, from Amber.

Amber’s Professional Background

Shannon: So could you start by introducing yourself, letting us know a little bit about you, what you think is relevant to getting to this point in your professional career. Anything you think people need to know? It can be long, it can be short. Whatever you like.

Amber: Well, thanks everyone for hanging out with us. So happy to be here with you. I run my companies from anywhere. I started my career in corporate and soon realized that, oh man, we want some opportunities to have a little bit more flexibility and freedom in our lives with our family. And so I started a company, actually started a brick and mortar first, a bit of a brick and mortar, more of a brick and mortar model.

A photography company that grew into 26 cities with a team of over 50, and I still was able to do that while building my consulting business alongside that, where I partner with other business owners to help them build scale and grow their companies through the modern CEO method. Now, designing our businesses in that way, that we wanted freedom, flexibility to be able to run it from anywhere. I now live abroad. My husband’s job takes us everywhere with our girls.

So it’s kind of fun. It’s a fun life. It’s cool to be able to build a business strategically with a lifestyle goal in mind too. And they complement each other. So I feel really grateful and I’m excited to be here and dive into the podcast.

Shannon: That’s really beautiful. And that’s also so cool. So what kind of photography did you do? I’m curious.

Amber: Boudoir. It was a boudoir photography company. Yep.

Shannon: Very cool. Oh my God. Is that just something that you really liked? Like you had a hobby and you were like, I would love to do something with this.

Amber: Yeah, exactly. We started it and my business partner and I were like, oh, this is fun. Family kept asking, friends kept asking, we’re like, we think we’re onto something, and we were enjoying it and continued to expand from there.

Podcasting Experience

Shannon: Oh, that sounds so cool. So you also have podcast too. Can you tell me, I love talking to people with other podcasts cause I’m always curious. So what do you think the hardest part about it is and what’s your favorite part?

Amber: Hardest part is, well, favorite part. I’m gonna do the favorite first. That’s easier. Love connecting with people. And two things. When I do a solo episode, I love thinking through the ideas, the concepts that we’re gonna share and what will benefit people. So I enjoy that part of it, sort of the structuring of the idea. And then the second favorite part is I love connecting with people and hearing people’s stories and journeys. A hundred percent love. So that’s a big joy.

Least favorite part is similar planning out content, like getting to sit down and plan out the content. That becomes a challenge sometimes, but once I’m doing it, I’m like, oh, this is great. I love this.

Shannon: No, I completely understand that. It’s like getting yourself to do it is a little bit like jarring where you’re kind of “Oh, okay, again,” but it’s also really fun because I think amping myself up for knowing that I’m about to talk to someone because the talking part is fun. I love doing that. And I think the planning part is not not fun, but it’s more tedious.

And you’re worried like maybe this question isn’t good or maybe they get asked this too often, so it’s a bit, but I really agree with you. I really like connecting with people. It’s really nice to, I love knowledge, I love, and that sounds so silly, but I love learning every day. Like if I get to learn something every day, my day is a success. Like, I think it’s fulfilled. And doing the podcast is really nice cause I get to learn constantly, especially about something that’s helpful in my professional life. So it’s an incredible thing to be able to do.

Amber: That’s awesome. I love that. I agree and I love that you said learning something new every day. It’s a fun moment. I am a little embarrassed some days, however, where we sit. So I’m in West Africa, I’m in Covo right now. I mentioned we live work from anywhere, and to keep up on things happening where I am, around the world. You know, I’m out here on not an island, but it feels like an island. And so I read a lot of news and then the things I learn, so I’m in conversations we’re like, “oh, I just read an article. Oh, I read an article on that.” Like, oh, you have to be the “read an article” person.

Shannon: Oh, that’s not bad though. You’re educated. That’s fine. Not current events. That’s good. That’s very funny though. I completely understand that type of person, but I feel like sometimes I’m that type of person, so it’s fine. But sometimes it’ll be like I, because I find out things through social media as I constantly have to be on it for like marketing purposes, whatever, seeing what’s new and stuff.

But I am, I think it’s very important to read articles because a lot of people find out information through there and believe it, but they don’t know the full knowledge. I constantly am that person that like if I see something and I’m fascinated by it, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna look this up. Make sure this is real. Make sure I’m not going around spreading misinformation. I have done that before for sure. Like where I’m like, I’m not looking things up and I’m like, “Did you guys know?” Then everyone’s like, “I don’t think that’s true.”

Amber: I love it. I’m not sure you’re actually saying anything that’s actually factual.

The Power of Quizzes for Business

Shannon: Very much try to avoid doing that. But I think that it’s really nice to be able to, it does suck because you don’t have, sometimes when you’re stuck in a little bubble, you have a hard time getting experiential information. But at the same time, it’s really good to stay up to date with keeping up-to-seed facts.

So what I am seeing with your practices is that you have a different approach to helping business owners than I’ve kind of seen. One thing that I wanted to mention that I want to kind of pick your brain about is, okay, so you have a quiz on your website, which I really think is interesting cause I’ve never seen that before. What do you think makes this helpful? Because I was thinking, oh, okay, maybe this is helpful with categorizing clients’ problems before you have a conversation with them. Which sounds really nice. But I was also wondering if there was any other pros that you found from doing that, because it’s a very unique attribute that I’ve seen.

Amber: So quizzes can be helpful. They’re quite popular, right? Speaking of articles, I believe buzzfeed has really ramped up their quizzes. For example, my daughter and I were in the doctor’s office the other day. She’s like “Mom, what kind of animal are you?” And I was like, I don’t know. What kind of animal am I? She’s like, find a quiz. So I Googled to find a quiz. I Googled “what kind of” and the quiz came up, and it was a Buzzfeed quiz.

Buzzfeed has introduced a lot of quizzes because they’re so engaging, people are drawn to them and we see them pop up on social media. “What princess are you? What color are you?” They’re popping up all over about different things and because people are drawn to them, it’s a great way as you think about if you’re running a business, if you are doing some marketing, allowing people this opportunity to discover something new about themselves that could be fun and quirky. Like what kind of animal are you? Or that could be more oriented around something productive.

Not quite the extent of a detailed psychological personality, of course, but just a guide. Something that gives you a guide or allows you to audit. So the quiz we have is a growth mindset quiz, and it helps you identify, am I operating in more of a managerial employee mindset, or am I embracing things and mindsets that owners need to do?

For example, owners and as you’re leading teams and companies, you need to think about setting your vision. And you need to think about things like getting the right team on board versus if I am on the team, right. Someone else is taking care of that. Or if I’m on the team, I might manage this project, which I’m a team member in a lot of ways, on a lot of things, but it is a different lens. So with our quiz, Shannon, thank you for asking about that. I guide people to think through, alright, am I operating more like an employee in my own company or am I fulfilling the role of owner, entrepreneur, and modern CEO.

Employee vs. Owner Mindset

Shannon: So do you think that there is kind of, for lack of better phrasing, problems with both of those categories? Like you’re doing too much of one? Is that kind of why?

Amber: Well, there could be problems. I actually once had a doula say to me, I was working with a sleep consultant on my daughter who was not sleeping well. I was just like, is it a problem for you that she comes into the room in the middle of the night? I’m like, not really. I mean, I could use a little bit more sleep, but I don’t mind. I know it’s just a season in time. She’s like, it’s not a problem for you. Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.

However, if you’re seeing things in your company like “I don’t know who does what. I can’t take time off. I get text messages over dinner. I can’t even go to the bathroom without my email blowing up,” okay. These are some signs that we may wanna redesign how your business is operating so you are not in it all the time, and you can have the time to be strategic and look ahead.

Because if you’re not paying attention to the future, if you’re not paying attention to the vision, if you’re not looking at the data, if someone on your team isn’t looking at these things and you as owner aren’t attending to that, even the financials, right? If you’re ignoring your financials, you as a business owner need to know. Cash flow is a can be a big problem for businesses, right?

So if you’re not paying attention to those things which, if I’m on a team, not my job, not my responsibility cause I’m focused on this other thing that is more project specific or a specific role that I’m playing on a team. Someone’s gotta be looking at that overarching thing. And as a business owner and entrepreneur, I would highly recommend you have your eye on those things or you are gonna start to see those problems emerge.

Shannon: Okay. So that’s a really good way of categorizing it because I definitely, people will think I believe that they have the CEO mindset, but I think that they’re sometimes too far on that spectrum of that it’s taking over their life, which I understand when you start a business, sometimes that’s the way it has to be for a period of time.

But I understand what you’re saying is that like, if that is their business model, their business model is so fixated on their specific position that they’re necessary for, like contacting no matter what, if there’s a problem or whatever, that’s like your systems aren’t in place.

Amber: Yeah, exactly. You know, have systems in place, or if you have that belief that no one can do it, then I can, or no one will do it as well, or no one will care as much. We’ve got a team and a hiring problem. Because there are absolutely people out there who will care as much or more about that thing than you do, believe it or not. Because their heart is in it. That’s their passion, especially if they’re things that you don’t enjoy doing. Or you once enjoyed doing, but now they’re becoming tedious or annoying because you’ve gotta give your attention to these other things.

So it’s definitely a balancing act. But there is a whole lot of data that supports when you get the right help. Like if you’re not good at something, share that with someone who is as good or better at it, that you will see better results in your business.

Hiring and Team Building

Shannon: Of course. I’ve talked to a lot of agency owners where I ask them what would they do differently if they knew what they do now or whatever it may be, and a lot of them say that they either looked into hiring people for things that they could do themselves, or they looked into hiring like they hired in the wrong category kind of thing. Like, they don’t like something, but they continue to do that cause they couldn’t trust someone to do it for them or something like that.

And I think that allocating what you need is really important, but a lot of people are bad at doing that because they don’t wanna trust someone else to do it, or they don’t think they can do it better than they can. And that’s fine for certain categories, but if you’re overloading yourself, I mean you’re, you’re not being efficient, then obviously it’s gonna be a detriment to how you’re working.

Amber: Big time. In the book, the Productivity Project, the author shares research on this idea of overloading ourselves and are we productive when we’re working 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and the research shows that if you’re in a season of crunch time, if you’re in a season of go time, you’ve got a big project, you’ve got a launch, you’ve got a grand opening coming up and you’re working more than 40 hours a week, you will get the gains of working 50, 60, 70 hours a week for about two to three weeks.

But after that, productivity plummets and you might as well be working 20 hours a week. And that’s because of things like we just kind of get fried and we don’t even know it. And someone asks a question and you’re like, “I don’t know. Let me think about it.” Or you get, you take more coffee breaks. You need more coffee.

So the productivity starts to drop and you’re barely noticing it. You’re like, I just have to keep going. Maybe you just need a break or you need to get some team members to help you with those things. So that isn’t your long-term go-to. Again, a couple weeks. Okay. Three weeks, even a month. But after that, oh, we gotta reset the model.

Shannon: Yeah. Or you need to kind of reframe the model. Like maybe you’re not overloaded because you are working too much, but maybe you’re doing too many things or you have to like narrow your scope or something like that.

Amber: Exactly. Are you focused on the right things? Are you focused on what I call $1 bills versus your honeys? Like, you wanna make sure you’re focused on high impact activities and then are, do you have a team, but you’re not trusting them? Maybe there’s a reason there is like, so that’s where the diagnostic and something like a quiz to go back to your original question is helpful. Where we do an audit like, all right, what is really going on here? And let’s parse through that so we can find a better long-term solution.

Shannon: No, I think that’s really efficient. And I really like the idea of quizzes. I love quizzes. I’ve been making them since I was like 13 on Facebook. I love quizzes, but I actually did talk to one of the lead marketing directors when Buzzfeed was at its height. Her name is Melissa Rosenthal. She’s a lovely person.

But she was talking about how, like the attraction of quizzes and how that kind of led to Buzzfeed’s boom. And I remember taking them when I was a kid. I loved them. They were just like, they were fun and they were attractive and you could send ’em to your friends and it was just like a very fun thing.

But I can see how useful they are. They’re similar to a survey almost, I think. But it’s more fun when you get a survey and you hear the word survey, you’re like “uh,” or like, I’m thinking of Blue Cross Blue Shield, like I’m thinking of like my insurance company contacting me to do a survey. I always do it because I’m like, oh, they were good to me. I have to do it. I have to respond. But most people don’t wanna do it, and I get it and I don’t wanna do it, but I do it anyway.

But quizzes are fun. They’re like interactive in a way that makes you feel noticed or cared about in a way that a survey is kind of, it feels almost selfish in a way for the person. And it’s not that sending out a survey is not selfish, it’s just asking for feedback and you can choose not to take it. But I like a quiz because it feels more of something that you’re getting something out of it cause there’s a result rather than a survey is only one sided in a way.

Amber: It’s true. It’s very true. That’s a good point. There’s the element of the law of reciprocity and you know, I’m giving you something and you’re giving me something, and there’s that exchange, right? As I am building connection with potential clients, I’d love to be able to stay in touch with them. So from a quiz perspective, right? They’re giving me their email address, but I give them some results and a lens into their business, so there’s a fair exchange there. And hopefully as you take, you’re going through and learning something about yourself that you can apply.

Shannon: Yeah, exactly. So that’s like a very nice thing, for lack of better phrasing too, to do because it’s, I think that people don’t often wanna do something that’s just one sided or not helpful to them. It’s not very likely. So that’s what you’re putting them in that scenario where they’re getting help, but they’re also doing something for you in which they might become a potential client and that’s really helpful.

Amber: Win-win, win-win. Love it.

Outsourcing Strategy

Shannon: Exactly. So, I love quizzes and I think that’s great that you’re doing that. I think that more, I think more agencies would really benefit from having a quiz, especially it sets you up not only with their email and their contact information, but it sets you up with having, you can already get an idea about what they need before you actually talk to them, which I think is something that’s super helpful when categorizing clients or potential clients.

Where I feel like people go in blind to meetings most of the time about what they need and they can only learn from them through what they’re saying. But I think that there’s a difficulty with transparency between clients sometimes where they’re not giving you all of the information, but if they have to answer all these questions on this quiz, like the priority information has to be answered. Or you might forget something or you might not think something is relevant. But when you have this foundation to ask them questions, that sounds very helpful to not only you, but also them.

So I noticed that you have like a section on your website about outsourcing and how people might have to do that in order to lessen the load as we talked about earlier. What is your strategy for kind of sorting that out for a person or a business? Like what do you think is, how do you find the best fit for them? What do you think is a good strategy for them finding a specific type of person or people to work with and do things and they’re able to trust them?

Amber: So good. Okay. So there’s a broad element of this, like who do I need on the team? And how do I like to work so that I know what kind of person I need to hire so we can complement each other, and the person will be a fit for your company. So there’s this overarching element, but let’s assume that you know the person you need to hire and you know the role you need to fill and what those responsibilities are.

As you dig into the recruiting, the interview, the selection process. I think oftentimes when we go, when I see companies, owners, agencies go to hire, there’s a pinch already. You’re in crunch mode. You’re like, we need that person. We need them yesterday. Which I get right, because you don’t wanna hire too soon. You wanna make sure everything’s in sync, you know, somebody leaves unexpectedly.

So I think that in pin crunch mode, it’s really important that you don’t speed through it, because if you hire the wrong person, you’re gonna be upset, they’re gonna be upset, everybody’s gonna be annoyed, right? So I look for those win-wins and we wanna make sure that the time spent recruiting is well invested.

So I want you to think about what is this person gonna do? And so you’re gonna screen for that, and you’re not gonna use traditional based interviewing. You’re gonna use a interview approach called behavioral based interviewing, where you can really probe and understand the experience that someone has versus just saying, “Hey, do you know WordPress?” I’m like, “yeah, I know WordPress.” “Are you qualified for this?” “Different than, yeah.” “Are you a good personality for this company?” “I’m perfect. I’m perfect for this company.”

But what you wanna know, right, is tell me about your personality, Shannon. Tell me about a time when you have built a website in WordPress before. Okay, now we’re gonna hear an actual experience versus me just saying, “yeah, I’m perfect.”

You really wanna dig into that. It’s interesting. When I was recruiting, I was leading a recruiting team early on. And a recruiter on the team came to me and said, look at these resumes. They had different names. All of the content on the two resumes was exactly the same. So I’m like, huh, well, who’s telling the truth? Who wrote the resume? Where’s the story coming from?

So you’ve really gotta be able to say, “oh, you know InDesign, okay, but tell me more. What have you done in it?” Go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. So really that probing is really important. And so having an evaluation model, having the questions that you’re gonna ask, same questions each candidate, and being able to dig into the heart of what someone knows as well as how they work to make sure that how they work is the right fit for your team, your company, your style of working, so you’re not experiencing sandpaper from the beginning.

So those are some of the things I would recommend thinking about. Assuming, you know, we’ve got our values line, we know what we’re hiring for, we know how many hours a week we’ve got, pay in mind. But you’re really gonna make sure you’ve got, you’re bringing on the right person. So take the time to get prepared for that recruiting process so that when you’re in it in a pinch, you still have a framework to use to go through, so you don’t make a mistake in the pinch because that can cost so much money.

Shannon: Yeah, no, I definitely resonate with everything you said because I think that a lot, especially agencies I’ve seen at least kind of have businesses, depending on how large they are, the environment kind of changes, I think, rapidly. But I think for agencies, a lot of them have a specific work environment and a specific personality for someone that works there.

And I think it’s very important that they cater to that vibe, so to speak, and make sure that they have people that they’re working with well, especially when it’s a smaller agency, because you’re working with these people every day and you’re interacting with them, and you wanna make sure that the personalities mesh together.

And I think qualifications only show so much about a person. Why I love interviewing so much. Like when I go to a job interview, I like going to a job interview because I hate the jobs that they determine you know what you’re going to be there or you’re gonna be hired or not based off of resume, because sometimes I don’t have the same experience as someone else, but sometimes I feel differently about the work.

I interned with different nonprofits in college. And I actually saw, which is not good, but I saw the resume of someone else who was not hired over me that I was like, and I realized they were so much more overqualified than me. They had way more experience with nonprofits. It was like the first one that I had gotten. And I noticed that, and I was like, why would they, and then I was like, I must’ve had a good interview.

I didn’t have experience with this, but I really cared about what they were doing. And I think that is a difference. It’s like, yeah, you can have experience, but if you don’t have that care or that attention to detail because you feel like you wanna do that work, like there’s a difference between, there can be people that have a load of experience, but they hate what they do. You know, they’re just like, you can be good at what you do, but hate it. And I think you have to be good and also enjoy the work, and that is something that’s really difficult to find. So getting a personality read is really important for that too.

Amber: And is it a match? I love how you mentioned the company culture or is there a fit there with our agency’s culture? If not, oh, you’re gonna not be happy here.

Shannon: Yeah. That’s, and that’s something else that’s so important in the recruiting process, is to make sure you give a realistic job preview, not just painting a picture of how wonderful it is here and how awesome we are and we’re growing so fast and look at all this cool work that we’ve done.

Amber: Yes, share that, but also share the realities. We’re actually working long hours right now. We’re trying to get better about that, but it’s just the reality. What are those things? You know, we don’t have the best systems in place. Our workflow is a little clunky. Our approval process, so sharing that, so people come in, they’re not surprised and like, wait, this is nothing like what they said. And then trust is eroded immediately.

Shannon: Yep. And your turnover rate is not great.

Amber: Exactly. Exactly. And it takes a lot of time to train someone when they come new into a company. So you want that investment to be a strong one.

Shannon: Yeah, of course. Because you put in resources in order to train someone, and then of course, if that’s not the environment for them, then you’re losing them immediately and then you spend all that time doing those things and then you lose them, which is unfortunate, for both parties involved.

Fun Questions Game

Shannon: Well, this interruption is perfect timing for the game. I’m ready.

Shannon: I’ll ask you a relatively not absurd question first. Would you rather work for Apple, Google, or Microsoft?

Amber: Oh, good question. Oh. Oh, not Microsoft. I like a lot of what Microsoft has done, and I’ve used a lot of their products. Oh gosh. Google, Apple. This is a hard one. Use a lot of Google. Oh man. Oh, I’m so torn. I’m gonna go with Google.

Shannon: I think that’s the winner, like for the majority of the picks. I’m gonna be honest. I think they have a very good, and then this could be a total farce, but I know that they do have a very, it seems like they have a really fun work environment and they have a lot of good benefits.

Amber: Yep, yep. I do see that a lot, but that could just be really good advertising and marketing and part of me went, it’s fun to work at Google. You know, I read an article on that once. Surprise, surprise. I was digging into this. I read a lot of business articles since I play in that space and it was interesting Google benefits are great and the perks are great and the environment’s great and it keeps you at work so you lose a bit that work-life balance.

So I was thinking through a culture and I was thinking, man, Apple, I envision like, there’s a story about Apple products and like, not simple enough. Not simple enough, too many clicks, too many clicks, and Steve Jobs kept sending the product back. Nope. I just wanna click one time, one button to get me to where I wanna be. Like, oh, it feels like a lot of iterations that that’s annoying.

Shannon: But also annoying. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I mean, there’s stories, even Steve Jobs saying I might’ve been annoying to work with too, but then I was like, oh, Google. Maybe a little bit less than that, but still innovative and trying new things and markets, so that was where my decision went down too.

Shannon: Yeah, no, I can completely understand that. Especially Apple. That seems very tedious because I understand that, because I still use Apple because of the simplicity. I cannot use technology. I’m so God awful at it. So Apple makes it simple. I would love to use Microsoft more, or products more, or even Android phones. I think they’re so cool. I think they have so many gimmicks, but I have no idea how to even begin to understand an Android.

I don’t understand. There’s too many things that you can do on it, and I don’t want them. That sounds horrible. I don’t wanna navigate that.

Amber: Oh, I love it.

Shannon: Okay. I’ll ask you an absurd question. How many eggs do you think you can eat in a day? If it was like a competition?

Amber: Competition. I don’t know. My number’s probably gonna be low compared to many people. I’m gonna go with 20.

Shannon: Honestly that’s pretty fair. That’s pretty good. We’ve had 80. We’ve had 50 and we’ve had like 12. So I mean, you’re not doing, you’re a good ballpark. Some people are like at least three.

Amber: Oh yeah, definitely three. You’re not really challenging yourself.

Shannon: Yeah. At 20 I might get a little like, ooh, okay. My stomach’s starting to feel it. So why push it? I’m just gonna go 20. I don’t know what the prize is in this competition.

Shannon: High cholesterol. Yeah. No, I think the 80 egg person would probably die. I don’t see a good future for the 80 egg person. I don’t think they’re planning on doing that though, but you know, if they do, probably not that good. 20 is fine. 20.

Shannon: Last one I’m gonna give you. Because this one is topical, I suppose. If you’re doing outreach, what do you think is the most optimal way of doing so? LinkedIn or email?

Amber: The most optimal way of doing outreach. Like any decision we make in businesses and lives, I hate to say it, but totally depends on what are we doing outreach for? How do people, how do we connect with them in email? How do we get their email address? So I’m gonna say it depends. I would need more information to properly assess this.

Shannon: How about this? For your business specifically, like say this was the earlier stages and you were reaching out to people to get them to be involved.

Amber: Building rapport. I mean, the best place to connect with someone and reach out to someone is place where you’re gonna show up, period. So if you’re starting up and you’re like, oh, LinkedIn isn’t my thing. Okay. Then start, start with, start reaching out to people on email. Start calling people, start showing up at networking events.

I added some options there. Networking events are good too. Definitely in person things are very valuable. And then LinkedIn, of course LinkedIn. Great place to connect with people. So no hate on LinkedIn, but if you’re like, I’m not there yet, I’d be more comfortable somewhere else, go for it.

I think what’s so important is that you just go for it. Start, start, start building those connections. Cause you’re immediately gonna start getting feedback. Oh, this isn’t my space. Oh, I’m not making progress there. Oh, I got this feedback. Let me roll that in. So I’m gonna go with the place you’re more comfortable. And they both work.

Shannon: No, I think that’s definitely a good assumption. Honestly, I think that LinkedIn specifically is difficult if you don’t have a foundation there. People just think you’re a bot or something like that. You don’t have at least 500 connections. You’re a fake person and we don’t believe in you.

Amber: Yeah. And I think that’s very funny too, because no one knows 500 people. Really?

Shannon: So I think that’s very funny because that’s, I feel like that is foundation of what people believe is a real person on LinkedIn or like a real business owner or whatever it may be, but I don’t think that makes sense. But yeah.

Amber: It’s hard to maintain relationships, authentic, deep relationships with the hundreds and thousands that we’re connected to online. It’s a difficult space. It’s like the social media professionalism, I like to say, but I also think that it is a very helpful tool.

Shannon: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, what beautiful connections. I think about it too. All of the social media platforms have their pros and cons, but ultimately, I think that social media online, it’s been a gift to be able to stay connected to people from throughout the career, throughout different places we’ve lived. So yeah, I like it.

Shannon: That’s really incredible to be able to do. I definitely am lucky that I don’t travel, so I’m not ever away from people to be able to see them. But it’s also, yeah, no, I would very much like to do that too, and gain some recommendations, some places to go when you’re ready.

Amber: That would be great. I’ll send you an email for sure.

Conclusion

Shannon: But thank you so, so much for coming on today. This is unfortunately all the time that we have, but I really appreciate you coming on and teaching me some things, which is always my goal for the podcast. So thank you so much.

Amber: I love it. Such a blast hanging out. Thank you so much, Shannon. 

Shannon: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you to everyone watching. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to hear more stories like this and to be able to learn more things like I get to do. Thank you so much. Yay. Thanks. Yay. 

You’ve been listening to Fully Managed, brought to you by Penji. Check out the show notes to learn more about today’s guest and to learn more about Penji the Human First creative subscription service. Head over to Penji.co. And by the way, if you’re still listening, it would mean the absolute world to us if you were to share this podcast with a friend, and of course, subscribe.