How Corporate Executives Are Planning Through Pandemic Uncertainty: Executive Coach Insights

Peggy Guest [00:00:03] As the crow flies on the Vans Crow podcast,

Vance Crowe [00:00:09] Dr. Peggy Guest, welcome back to the podcast.

Peggy Guest [00:00:13] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:00:15] So we are living amidst a coronavirus in a world where historically you meet with patients, you sit down and talk with them about what is going on in their lives and their work specifically because they're not so much patients as they are thought partners with you because they are generally executives that are trying to make decisions about the future and kind of what's going on out in the world. So, welcome Peggy Guest and what's going on with you during this Coronavirus Pandemic.

Peggy Guest [00:00:45] Thank you. Well, I am really very happy that we are in this era where technology is so great, and so I can see my clients on Zoom, and you're right, I don't call them patients because they're executive coach. I mean, I do executive coaching and they are leaders and we are thinking together about how to manage whatever situation they find themselves in that brings them to coaching that brings them to ask for consultation. So, you know, right now a lot of that is about how are we going to hold things together, both internally in our own selves and in leading our teams and in leading our companies. So it's, you know, a really interesting time and it's a really challenging time.

Vance Crowe [00:01:38] What kind of themes are you seeing emerge right now among the people you're talking with?

Peggy Guest [00:01:45] Well, I think the biggest one is curiosity. It's kind of wondering what, what is going to continue, what's gonna stay the same? What's gonna really have to change? How are we going to lead our companies in making these changes? So, you know, some of it, it isn't exactly wait and see, but some of it is we only have so much control over what's evolving. Let's figure out what we do have control over and let's put our sites there. A lot of people are doing alternative scenario planning. You know, if we, if we bring the whole workforce back into offices or schools or colleges at, on a certain date, what will that be like if we bring them on a different date? What will that be like if we bring them back and then we have to leave again? What will that be like? So, you know, they're planning for various scenarios and then in, in any given one, let's say we pick this date, how are we going to gear our workplaces such that people can be safe? So I think one thing I'm seeing is curiosity. One thing I'm seeing is a concern for safety. Like, how can we maximize safety and at the same time maximize people's possibilities to work, to work together. And particularly in workplaces that really where people can't do work online, how are we going to protect their workers while that work is happening?

Peggy Guest [00:03:29] So everybody who's picking up a newspaper is reading about this every day.

Vance Crowe [00:03:34] I, as I'm hearing you say this, and in probably a large part, it's because I am my own boss. I'm the one employee and the, and the employer all at the same time. But I think that if I, if I were gonna have my first thing to talk with you about, it's not the safety of the issue, and that may have to do with my age or what kind of health I'm evaluating myself to be in, but more of liberty. Like, I, I feel this, like strong, the thing that distracts me from doing my work every day is what sort of control we're going to have on our lives, because people are opting for safety over people's ability to do what they want. So it's, it's, I'm really glad that I, that you're telling me this because it's a different frame set than the one that I have.

Peggy Guest [00:04:20] It is definitely, and I, I do think that people have different frame sets about, you know, how, how not, it's not just how to approach it, how to think about how I'm approaching it. And I think that if, if we're looking at a continuum of high, high tolerance for risk versus low tolerance for risk, or high to high appreciation or desire for freedom or liberty, or, you know, if we're looking at that, you know, low to high, what's the mix for people? And I think people are wired such that some people are gonna be high on, on one scale and some people are gonna be high on another scale. And so I think that, I mean, the difference between you and me and the people that I have as clients, and probably you have as people that you're conversing with, is that I'm responsible for myself at, at least in my business. And if, if my clients were coming to my office, I would be, I would feel responsible for me and for them. But the people that I'm talking to are responsible for many large workplaces. And so they are thinking about both safety and liberty and both safety and sort of the risk factors of having people come back into workplaces together.

Peggy Guest [00:06:02] So I think part of it is when you're working with leaders, you're working with responsibility for self and others, and in many cases, lots and lots of others, and in many cases, others who have varying degrees of freedom and varying degrees of resources for when things go wrong. So, you know, they're making decisions for people who really need to work in a financial way, not just a psychological way. If you think of Maslow's hierarchy, you know, they really need to work to eat. And some people they're thinking about need to work because they're engaged in a project that is so compelling and meaningful and they don't need to work to eat next week anyway, but they, they need to get the work done that they've been producing. So that's a lot of responsibility to be thinking about all of those variables. I think of it as very complex.

Vance Crowe [00:07:10] It's, it's great hearing the, the level of nuance that can be there because it's so much more than what you can see from the outside looking in. I also really wonder how when people are talking about all this contingency planning, there's so many things stacked on top of each other that as soon as you start saying, if we change this one thing, how does this impact all these other things? And I keep using the same example, but, you know, Cardinal's baseball in St. Louis is a way that business gets done. It's a way that you reward employees because they're, they've done a good job and you want them to be able to take their family out for something. It's where you sit down and meet people that you kind of know, but you wanna get to know better. And so lots and lots of business happens at sporting events and at dinners and at all these things. If we just take that away, how is business going to get done? And the person that was really, really good at operating in that environment may not have those skills translate online. And so you're trying to think of all these things that'll change. And then also your workforce demands would be different all at the same time.

Peggy Guest [00:08:19] You mean workforce demands? You mean like the who

Vance Crowe [00:08:23] You need to be

Peggy Guest [00:08:23] Employing in your workplace? Yeah. Who you need to employ. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:08:29] How far out are people thinking about the number of things that are gonna change?

Peggy Guest [00:08:35] The people that I'm seeing are thinking pretty far out. I mean, I think it depends on what your responsibility level is and what you need to be thinking. I mean, most businesses have five year plans, 10 year plans, and so they're having to think far out on their production lines and their, as, as you said, the kinds of people they need to do the work. And I, when I talked about curiosity, I think people are wondering, are we going to need to change? This is our, do we need to change our product? Do we need to change the supply chain? Do we need to change how our product reaches people? I mean, there are all kinds of questions that will necessarily influence the kinds of people they need to have on board. And the, and also if you have people on board, you have a workforce, how are you going to help people adapt to what they need to be doing next? And the main thing is we don't know what next is. We don't yet know what the other side is going to look like or how long it's going to take. I think that's, that kind of uncertainty is the most challenging for people. And again, people experience that differently. Some people find it very exciting and some people find it very daunting. And you know, a lot of people are somewhere in the middle or they have both experiences in any given day.

Peggy Guest [00:10:08] I, as a psychologist, I find it really interesting how people are managing their, their fears and their excitement about the opportunity to create something new. And so, and I'm kind of a sociologist at heart, that's not what my degree is in, but I like looking at systems. And so imagining what is going to evolve is exciting for me, but it also has grief a about what we're going to lose or what we have already lost. And it involves fear about, you know, will we be able to meet the needs of enough people in what we can provide in the workforce?

Vance Crowe [00:10:58] Say more about that. When with what we can provide meaning like, because HR is going to change so radically if you have people all working from home long term.

Peggy Guest [00:11:08] No, that's not exactly what I meant. I meant kind of if, if I'm a leader and I'm producing something and I've created a culture in the workforce to create that thing, well how am I going to, what, what are the products? What, how do the products need to change in this situation? How do the systems for the project products need to change? And then how do the people need to change in order to meet those needs? And so I, I think what I'm trying to say is, I don't know, I guess it's how can we keep the most people happy and supplied the biggest amount of time?

Vance Crowe [00:11:52] Yeah. Does

Peggy Guest [00:11:53] That make sense?

Vance Crowe [00:11:53] Yeah, it really does.

Peggy Guest [00:11:54] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:11:55] I mean, I, I,

Peggy Guest [00:11:56] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:11:56] And so I just recently interviewed a gentleman that runs a hog processing facility, meaning that they're, they're the meat packing. And you hear about the regulations or the ideas that people have to keep workers safe. You wanna keep workers safe, and you have numbers coming at you saying like, Hey, there are a lot of people that are infected. We see not very many people have symptoms, but we know that we need to protect people. So he's got a thousand things going on

Peggy Guest [00:12:26] In

Vance Crowe [00:12:27] Addition to the fact that you still have to run that operation,

Peggy Guest [00:12:31] Right? And you're running it the way you have been running it, and then you're making modifications. And then what if the new whatever is going to be evolving? What if it calls for something really different from what you've been doing? So some more radical shift than the smaller shifts you've been making for the last six weeks. How, how do you begin? How and when do you need to begin to think about that?

Vance Crowe [00:13:00] Yeah. Because if the, every moment you spend doing that, if it turns out things are going back to normal and what you should have been doing was ramping up and going back to the old way, then that's a mistake too. So the uncertainty is such a, such a crazy, one of the things that I think people do to avoid uncertainty, or at least the thing that I do, is just don't think about it. You know, like to, to, to just get preoccupied with other things. And I don't spend a lot of time with other people, right? Other than these phone calls and the meetings that I'm on. But I have to wonder if people are starting to worry yet about if their job is going to be there in the future and, and, and what it will look like or who will have entire departments that the work they were doing before is going to be so radically different. That is, are are you still going to be good at that job? And I think of something like, I don't know, HR is, is one that comes to mind is like, how does HR change if everything is online, right? People aren't interacting face-to-face. It's gotta change in some radical

Peggy Guest [00:14:11] Way,

Vance Crowe [00:14:12] Right? And maybe you need a lot less people. I don't know.

Peggy Guest [00:14:16] Well, I, the profession I, that is closest to me that I see the most is teaching and ha and, and teachers are so good. Teachers are so good at interacting with people and it, it's, I call it unconscious competence. It's like you do it like breathing and your, your whole way of being, the way your body moves, the way your mind works, the way you interact with people, it, it has to do with your gauging of what people are, how people are reacting to what you're teaching and what they're able to take in. So when you ask them to take the content of what they teach, which is a very important part of what they're doing to a different medium and do it online even on Zoom where they can see people. Although usually with a classroom, if you have a classroom of any more than 10 people, you, it's really hard to see people, especially if they're children and they're moving around. But I mean, I, I'm thinking also, I'm working with a lot of people at a university. And so I think of it also with teaching. So especially with higher level learning like college and business school, you think that the content is the main thing. But what you realize is that a lot of how the content gets conveyed, a lot of what teachers rely on in order to get the ideas across is relationship and body language and movement toward, and movement away from, and all those things you learn about speaking in front of people, you now have to translate that to the screen.

Peggy Guest [00:16:03] And people, some people will do it very successfully. Some people have already been doing it successfully, but it, it, it requires a different skillset. So yes, I think there are lots of people saying to themselves, gosh, you know, is it gonna stay like this? And am I going to be able to translate what I got an a plus for into at least a b plus, you know, grade on my grade card if I'm grading myself. So I

Vance Crowe [00:16:38] Mean, and in that regard, I, I think of like the student side of it to how many teachers throughout my life, you know, would, would maybe not directly interact with me, but it's the nudge or the smile or the groan or the whatever, right? The trust building that another person can have. And then that person starts to see things in you that your parents don't see in you, that your family doesn't see in you. So having those outside relationships, if you met it through a one-on-one with this video, there are things that definitely can't be replicated in that way.

Peggy Guest [00:17:11] Right? You've captured it very well. You know, the teacher who looks at the kid and sort of links or says, I know you know how to do this. You can't really do that on the screen when you've got 30 little squares

Vance Crowe [00:17:23] In front

Peggy Guest [00:17:24] Of you

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] Yeah. When all the other 29 squares can see you winking,

Peggy Guest [00:17:27] Right? Yeah. Yeah. So yes, the answer is, I think that in lots of industries, people are thinking, what is this going to evolve to? Will my job be as needed in the system? And how can I adapt what I do to a, a system that isn't yet in place? I mean, to me that is the biggest idea. I, I talked to you about this a little bit offline, that, you know, we're we're moving from point A that we didn't really intend to move to, to some point be that we have no idea when we'll get there. So there's a guy named William Bridges, and I, I love that his name tracks what he writes about, but he, he wrote a book called Transitions, and he is writing about the bridge that we need to build when we're between point A and point B. So in this situation when with COVID happening, if we take point A as being ourselves as individuals and companies and workplaces in February of this year, so we're in point A, most of us have no idea that we're gonna get kicked out of point A Sometimes when you're thinking about changing jobs or something like that, you've been, it's been kind of boiling around in you and you, you kind of knew you were gonna leave point A before you ever actually left point A.

Peggy Guest [00:19:02] But this is a situation where you were totally surprised that, that you're kicked out of point a, point A is not there anymore. And it really didn't take us very long to realize it's, and it's not gonna be back. I mean, when I first stopped going to my office, I thought, oh, I'll be back in three weeks. And I still haven't been back. And it's been since the 16th of March, I haven't even been back to pick up my mail. Thank heavens my building will mail it to me. But, so I'm out of point A and so are all of my clients out of my business in point A and I don't know what point B is going to be. So the middle is what William Bridges calls the liminal stage. It's like limbo. You're neither here nor there. And, and that liminal stage requires a whole different set of skills that most of us aren't very skilled at, especially in our culture. We move fast, we make decisions fast, we want people to make decisions fast. And so when people say, you know, like, remember in the graduate, what are you gonna do when you graduate? You know, if you don't have an answer, you're kind of like frozen in time. But now we don't have answers. We're on this bridge, we hope we have a solid bridge, but it requires all kinds of things that we didn't used to do. One of which is just, you know, the the ability to stay zen while things happen around us and trust ourselves and trust our systems that, that we're gonna be okay.

Peggy Guest [00:20:45] And that's a lot to ask.

Vance Crowe [00:20:48] I I think you've totally nailed it. I, I mean, like, that's exactly what I think. And I think that at least at the times in my life when I had to change just before I had to change, I did everything I could to avoid looking at it. You know, you think about the times when you start misbehaving or you, you spend your time being frustrated at stuff, but you're not really willing to say what you're frustrated at or what you need to change. And yeah, I hope people, you know, you don't want somebody to take a jump early because they're like, oh, I, I, I wanna have resolution to this. But at the same time, you hope people are saying early enough, Hey, this is, I am on a bridge and I do have to figure out, not only is this where I am going, but do I wanna go there to begin with, right? Is, is the thing I was doing right? Should I be clinging on to this job that I had before? Or should I be looking for another thing to swim towards?

Peggy Guest [00:21:43] Yeah. And, and some of it, again, like the, the move from the middle of March to now is, is not in our, in our choices. I mean, we could decide to leave what we're going to do, what we have been doing before they tell us we're gonna leave. But, and I don't mean necessarily about losing jobs or being furloughed or something like that. I'm talking about what you and I have been saying, you know, that the skillset begins to look different and, and that's gonna take a while to evolve. We don't really know and we can't know. So I, I think very few people are gonna say, I don't want to be employed in the place that I was employed in, unless for them it's an opportunity to do that. You know, like they were already at their own point a thinking about leaving. I think most people are going to hold and see what, what their system, what their workplace does, and what it needs. And we're not gonna know that for a really long time. I, I would say, well after people go back to work in their own offices because we just don't know what's gonna happen and we don't know what's gonna, how our products are going to be needed, let's put it that way. But I do think there are some things that people can do that will kind of give them courage and hope and resilience.

Peggy Guest [00:23:18] And that is to really stay as positive as they can about the possibilities and not dwell on the awful things that could happen and not dwell on the awful things that are happening. Now, I'm not saying don't acknowledge that they're happening. I think for those people who feel anxiety and grief and who actually have something big to grief, it's very important to do that. It's very important to acknowledge our feelings, and yet at the same time, to not dwell on them. Because the process, the, the, what happens in our brains when we dwell on negative and painful stuff is that it, it stresses us. It increases our hormone production of cortisol and the kinds of things that make us feel anxious and stressed. So we wanna stay out of that zone as much as we can, while at the same time acknowledging that we are feeling very challenged and, and allowing ourselves, someone or someone to talk to about it, or some journaling or some way of acknowledging the tough stuff without dwelling on it too much. And then turning toward what are the positive things. So in terms of thinking of myself as a worker, I wanna be able to think about what have I done in my work life?

Peggy Guest [00:24:55] What, what makes people value me? What am I good at? What do I love to do? What have been my successes? I use something in my coaching called a leadership life map. And I ask people to populate about 20 squares of looking at what are the highlights and the lowlights of their different periods throughout their lives from like late childhood until their current life. And then look at kind of what are their strengths and what do people value them for? And then, and then think about what are their own values that are reflected in that. So, you know, using a tool like that to really deepen your knowledge of yourself is something that I, I think can help people feel resilient and stronger and like they're getting ready for the next phase. So here's who I've been, here's what I have offered to the world, here's where I've been successful, here's what I value so that when I learn what's going to be required next, I'm gonna be able to ask the question. And this is what the positive thinking does. It allows us to look forward to possibilities in positive ways. So I wanna be thinking about what might the world need next? And this is gonna be an era where entrepreneurs are really gonna have their day in the sun.

Peggy Guest [00:26:30] They have been having it for like the last 10 years, but the next 10 and certainly the next year. You know, like, what does the culture need that I could give? And how do I wanna think about that? So I might think of it in terms of a new startup or a new idea, or I might think about how could I help my company move in this way? So, you know, what are some creative ideas about what is needed in the world? So that takes us to the second part of, you know, like knowing yourself is a good way to be prepared and knowing your environment. What is going on in your, in industry? What have been the cutting edge trends? What might they be now? What does this industry need in order to move to the next step? So really thinking about your, the kind of work you have done or you would like to do, what do they need? And it, if you have time during this COVID time, which I have more time than I usually do, and I'm really enjoying the opportunity to think about these things. So if you are lucky enough to have reflective time, I think those kinds of structured exercises can be very helpful to help you feel resilient.

Vance Crowe [00:28:00] I am in total agreement and it's, it's, it's why I've been asking everybody. My favorite question, which

Peggy Guest [00:28:07] I

Vance Crowe [00:28:07] Guess I could ask you this, is that I've been asking offline, I haven't done this very much on, on this podcast, but if I'm just chatting on the phone or doing, you know, FaceTime or something, I like to ask people what is one thing, this is the Peter Teel paradox. I think you and I have talked about this before. What is one thing that you believe that no one else agrees with you on? Or one thing that you think is true that no one else agrees with you on? Because if you can answer that question, you've found a gap somewhere, right? And, and figuring out that gap before other people do, you can either try and persuade them that that's what is true, or you can act on that information. And if you're right, it pays off big. So I think that's a, that's been my fun game of playing your thing. Do you, would you take a swing at that? Do you have something that you believe is true that no one else agrees with you on?

Peggy Guest [00:28:58] I don't know about no one else, but I, what I do think is true is that we have a country, a culture with amazing intelligence about how to make things work. And I have a lot of faith that smart, wise, thoughtful people are going to find ways that we can come together and create new things. I don't, I have no idea what they'll be. So if, if you ask me, do you know which widget do I think is gonna be important, I'm one of those people who, when I see widgets that are important, I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that? But you know, like, but I, I do have faith that somebody's gonna come up with them.

Vance Crowe [00:29:59] One of the things that I've observed in this that I would not have predicted is that I spend more time talking in groups, and I find the groups that I kind of naturally cluster towards, because you can do it so much more online with discussion boards and Google

Peggy Guest [00:30:13] Hangouts

Vance Crowe [00:30:14] And all of these things that people seem to be like sharing more wisdom than they ever have before. And people in my, I call it a whale pod, which is my distributed network of friends that I'm really close with, have various places where we get together and we talk with one another. And there are conversations that I've started or other people have with each other. But you get to watch it and, and you get to see, hey, these are the people that are thinking, what should I be filling my freezer with as we see grocery stores going down and hey, what, what are the, you know, any, anything around it. Like, how should I think about my safety and security? Things like that. And I never saw as many people asking other people for their wisdom as I've seen now. Maybe it happens, I mean, it happens in one-on-one conversations, but it seems like it's supercharged right now.

Peggy Guest [00:31:08] I actually think that's true. I hadn't thought about that before you said it, but I have been in several group conversations where, and often I'm leading them. 'cause I'm just, that I'm the oldest of six children, I'm kind of a natural boss. So people say to me, will you lead this discussion? I just had one last night with a group of women leaders and you know, we, we tend to start with a question, how are you handling this? Or what is something you've created in your work setting that is going to be meaningful for when people come back? And we, we might ask questions like that, and then everybody gives an opinion. And I do find that people are hungry for real talk right now. They don't want the, you know, the little talk. It's, it's, people wanna talk about important things and they wanna hear each other's wisdom. So I hadn't named that before You did, but I, I think that's definitely true, and I'm really seeing that on LinkedIn and Facebook where people are saying, you know, this is something that was meaningful to me. So I, and you know, passing around wisdom in that way, and I really like that.

Vance Crowe [00:32:26] Yeah. I think there has been a, a sharp increase in people acknowledging that they don't know what the answer is. Yeah. And that it's, it's much less an insecure, an insecurity. And I also think that, like you said this before, because people don't have things that they're obligated to go to, whether it's sporting events or galas or whatever these things are, these are hours upon hours that you get back to your, to yourself. So now you get to choose what do you spend your attention on, because you aren't having to split it with like, I have these obligations and these people I want to be friends with and all of these things. So now the value of your attention or the freedom that you have to recalibrate it has just gone way, way up.

Peggy Guest [00:33:13] That's true. That's a freedom.

Vance Crowe [00:33:16] Yeah, freedom. Yeah. And then you can figure out what you wanna do with it, right? So, and, and one of the questions that I do try and ask everybody on the podcast is, what do you think the world will look like two weeks from today,

Peggy Guest [00:33:33] Two weeks from today? Will, I think we'll be telling in the same way the first two weeks, like, I'm, I'm thinking here in St. Louis, like the 15th to the 30th of March, every day there was something new about, you know, should you wash your groceries with soap? And I'm, I'm laughing now, but it wasn't funny then.

Vance Crowe [00:33:56] No, we wish you were doing it. Yeah.

Peggy Guest [00:33:58] And so I, two weeks from now, we're going to know a lot more about what happens when people go out to work. You know, like how do, how are people structuring it? So that's one question I'm asking a lot of my clients, how are you structuring the return? What, I mean, a lot of people are doing things to fix their offices. They're doing things to, to calibrate how many people can be in a given office at a given time, how they're gonna have meetings. People are eager to be in the flesh and blood of each other. They wanna be connected rather than on screen. So we're gonna, we're going to be seeing the variety of ways that people approach that. I'm very curious about that. And we're going to be seeing the health results. Are there, are there big consequences for people being out and exposed to one another again in new ways? And again, we don't know, but I think we'll know a lot in two weeks.

Vance Crowe [00:35:06] That's pretty hopeful. I mean, that's, I haven't heard that. That's, that would sound good. I'd like to know a lot more.

Peggy Guest [00:35:13] Yeah. And I, I I think that two weeks will inform the next two weeks.

Vance Crowe [00:35:19] Do you sense that people are becoming un unrestful or are are pushing back on the, you know, we started this conversation with about liberty, right?

Peggy Guest [00:35:32] So you and I are in such an a different age cohort. People who are my age are most grieved not being able to see their grandchildren. And I don't think that's a sort of itsy feeling like I need to get out or I, and I think because we've been so encouraged to be outside as much as possible and because we have more reflective time and kind of more life to reflect back on, really, it's, it's not an uncomfortable position. I I think that the notion of, and I'm, I I would not have ever been in this stage of life because I always have worked on my own, but the notion of not being able to continue the work that I've been so invested in and so identified with, I mean, there are lots of people who say we shouldn't be so identified with our work. But I, I actually don't agree. I think we shouldn't all work as much as we do. I mean, I, I'd like to have a world where people are working more like eight hour days than 12 hour days. But I, I think people, it work is very meaningful in life. And so I do think there are people who have work that they cannot do online and that they, I I, I think of, I'm working with a number of people at the medical school and the people who've had to close their labs, it's just heartbreaking.

Peggy Guest [00:37:14] I mean, they are on the cusp of scientific breakthroughs. The, the lab, you know, sort of like there's the principal investigator and then there are all these younger people, students who are, you know, like 10 experiments away from writing their major paper and getting a job out in the world. I mean, it's just heartbreaking to see it break up there for my grandchildren who came home from freshman year of college and they don't know that they can go back. I mean, for those people, yes. I think there's, you know, on, on the one hand a respect for the needs and safety of people who might get sick and a, a very, very powerful desire to get back to work. And that isn't the same as saying to get back to life as normal. I don't, I don't know about that. I'm not saying that, I'm saying to do the work that people were so invested in. And so it, it made their lives. I, I think

Vance Crowe [00:38:19] I, I really like that distinction because because work is progress, right? And the human psyche needs to have that forward step. And there are a lot of projects you can do around the house and extra time you can spend with the kids or whatever. But there is something to be said for, I was working on this difficult task. I wanted to discover this thing, or I wanted to build this thing, or I wanted to sell this thing. And, and that's the thing that people are aching to do. Yes. I, I watched this guy named, named Lance, and he's this, this dude that was in prison for a while, and he got out and he was in a halfway house. I don't know if he still is, but he is posting photos of him working. And every day at the end of the day, he takes a photo. And I love it when he like flexes his muscles because he is like, yeah, I got out and I I shoveled rocks all day, or I shoveled sand, or I did these things. And you see what that does to a man, and I'm sure to a woman, but it is a powerful thing and we want people to feel strong and be able to be out in the sunshine. And, and so I think some of this poll on the liberty thing that I'm feeling is because that's what people wanna do. They need to stretch and breathe and flex their muscles

Peggy Guest [00:39:37] And be themselves and become themselves. That's

Vance Crowe [00:39:40] Right. Yeah.

Peggy Guest [00:39:41] So part of our ourself, and when Freud used to talk about work and love to be successful in work and love part of ourselves may not have been paying as much attention to the love parts of our life in last February or January or November because our work was so demanding. And so many people are very happy to sort of get that back in balance. But part of the self is striving to strive and to want to thrive, pardon the pun, by striving. And so, yeah, I, I think there is an ness to do that. And it, it isn't about not having the, not having the permission to do it. I mean, I think that that governments have said in the last six weeks, you don't have permission to do it. It, it's more about acknowledging the striving and trying to find a, a way that the government and the individuals can monitor themselves such that they can do their work and still be safe.

Vance Crowe [00:40:52] Gosh, that's, that's probably a great place to wrap up on. I mean, that is what we all want, right? That to strive and to and to be free, to be safe, to protect our families to provide for 'em. That's, that's good. This has been a wonderful conversation. I thank you so much for taking some time.

Peggy Guest [00:41:11] Thank you. I enjoyed it.

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] And if people wanted to look up more of your stuff, I always ask you this question. It's, it's a, it's a weird web to, if they wanted to look you up. So

Peggy Guest [00:41:20] My website is Aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E. We're we, you and I have been talking about aspirations, aspire.company, and it's not.com, it's dot company aspire.company.

Vance Crowe [00:41:36] Will I, I am always grateful for these conversations. Thank you so much for spending some time.

Peggy Guest [00:41:43] Thank you. Take care.