Podcast: The Makings of a Great Agile Coach

Damon Poole shares how agile coaching helps teams move faster and defines the qualities great coaches embody.

By
Matthew D Edwards
April 13, 2021

Show Highlights

In this episode, I visit with Damon Poole, who has provided Agile coaching to countless people at some very recognizable companies. He opened up about his journey in Agile, as well as what led up to him publishing, “Professional Coaching for Agilists: Accelerating Agile Adoption,” with Gillian Lee (available at InformIT as well as other places you’d expect).

Key Takeaways

  • Effective coaching helps people move forward when they are stuck. 
  • Teams who are coached do move faster.
  • Great coaches have qualities that make for great humans. No one embodies all of them, but you work on building better relationships on your teams and in your personal life.

If you are interested in applying both agile and coaching principles, consider reading the book. Preview sample content on InformIT.

Read the Transcript

0:00:58.4 Matthew D Edwards: Today, I visit with an old friend, which means to some extent, I'm dating both of us, but hopefully you our listener, will find bits of wisdom in this episode and the journey that led us here. Damon Poole has provided Agile coaching to countless people at some very recognizable companies. EMC, Capital One, Ford and Fidelity. He speaks everywhere, and he's even virtual, thanks to our new normal, today. He's also an accredited instructor with the International Coaching Federation, ICF. I invited him to visit with us because he and his collaborator, Gillian Lee, have published a book, "Professional Coaching for Agilists: Accelerating Agile Adoption."

0:01:43.7 Matthew D Edwards: We are providing links to where you can buy this book at the best price. Damon isn't expecting to get rich off the book, he's very excited to get the book into your hands. So he wants to help you save money, get the material, learn the material, learn how to become more. What he and Gillian have done is put out a great book for people who love Agile, want to be better at it, and want to help those around them get better. The focus is professional coaching, and the book even includes coaching exercises. Today, I visit with him about his journey in this space and how he continues to advance himself, the people around him, and professional coaching itself. Welcome Damon. Thank you for being here. Would you tell us a little bit about your journey as a professional, like in particular, a professional who seeks to master his craft.

0:02:33.5 Matthew D Edwards: You and I met a long time ago, and we talked about a lot of different subjects, and we haven't talked again for quite a while, and so there's a whole lot of catching up to do. But even back then, you had a lot to teach, because I learned back then from you in terms of configuration and change management conversations. Will you tell us a little bit about where you've come from, where you are today, where you're heading, just in terms of your journey.

0:03:00.1 Damon Poole: Sure. Well, these days, for whatever reason, I like to say I was born a programmer. [chuckle] I guess that's to distinguish from mostly where I am today. So I didn't realize it at the time, but I walked into… Actually, a little bit of this story is in… Actually, it's not in… It's not in the book. It's in Bob Martin's book. But anyway, walked into an appliance store and unbeknownst to me, I was doing pair programming. I'd never programmed before, but that's actually sort of how I got into it. Some guy was writing a Star Trek program, and as an 11-year-old, I was pestering him, "Well, what's that? Well what's that? Well what's that?" I was super fascinated with computers and I'd never really seen anything like that quite that close. And after about 20 minutes, he asked if maybe I couldn't do something else, so I was quiet.

0:03:50.3 Damon Poole: And then eventually I said, "Hey, I don't think that's right. What is that?" And he goes, "Oh." And he made a change. And he goes, "Oh, that's it." And then he asked me, "How long have you been doing this?" And I said, "I don't know. When did I walk in?" So that's… Having an adult have that kind of look on their face… I was like, "Wow, this is pretty cool." And so I programmed only in small groups for many years after that. Then I discovered this waterfall thing. We started out shipping every couple of days, and at the peak we were shipping every 18 months. And somewhere in there was where I discovered Agile for the first time. And I… At first I thought it was evil. At first I thought that… We were getting requests like, "Couldn't you process request for history faster?"

0:04:40.9 Damon Poole: Like… Who processes… Who needs… Well, it was continuous integration… Stuff like that. But eventually I saw the light and it was thanks to hobnobbing with folks like yourself and others. So I started to switch from technical person, to more product person, to more Agile person. And so I went full on Agile for quite a while. Then I got kind of tired of people not really getting the point of Agile… I had just banged my head against that… That wall too much. So I definitely learned a lot. And along that journey, I decided it was time to start earning enough to put away for retirement again. Through serendipity, I got into teaching Agile coaching again. That's been fascinating, I love that. More recently, as the title of the book suggests Professional Coaching For Agilists, I've gotten into professional coaching.

0:05:37.3 Matthew D Edwards: Tell us a little bit about where you're heading… So in your current company, your current role, responsibility, how do you define what it is you're doing today, and where are you heading with it? Well, even lead… Teaching us what led you to the book.

0:05:53.0 Damon Poole: Well, that would be Bob Martin. [chuckle]

0:05:56.0 Matthew D Edwards: Okay. Alright.

0:05:58.9 Damon Poole: Among other things, but… It's kind of the interesting part of the story. So he and I kind of loggerheads on Facebook. We've known each other for a long time, I guess. He came to do a talk for us in Boston as part of what's now Agile New England. So he had this new book coming out, Clean Agile, and he asked me to review it. I guess, because he figured if we were at loggerheads and I was telling him what I thought and then I would do the same thing for his book. So I said, "Alright, I'll review your book." And there were two things in it that I kind of objected to, which he said… He said there was no need for Agile coaches. "Okay." And the other one was something about scaling. And I sort of strongly objected to those two things. And so I thought that was that, and then he says, "Hey, you know, you seem to have a pretty strong alternate opinion there, how about if you wrote a bunch for the book?" And I was like, "Oh no, what have I done?" [laughter]

0:06:57.4 Matthew D Edwards: That's what I get for talking.

0:06:58.7 Damon Poole: Exactly. Oops. [laughter] So I wrote up, I don't know, 10-ish pages for that. And then after that, I was like, "Hey, you know, this might be the start of something." And Gillian, my co-author has always been sort of pushing me in that direction. And so she added her shoulder to that, and so then I said, "Well, if you come along with me, then fine." So that's how that got going.

0:07:23.1 Matthew D Edwards: So the book came out just recently.

0:07:25.3 Damon Poole: Yeah. It's actually still in the process of coming out, just a funny side story there. So it's been out on InformIT for quite a while as an e-book, and then shortly after that on Amazon. The funniest thing was, it looked like it was for sale and I went through the process to see what was going on, 'cause people are always asking me, "Where is it available?" And it gave a strange shipping… Strange shipping option, which I'd never seen before, it was like a… Scheduled delivery or something. And I clicked on the learn more and it said, for bulky items. And I'm like, "Is this a bulky item?" So it took me a couple of days, but finally I noticed in the specs, it said that it was like 8 feet by 6 feet by 3 feet, and it weighed 20 kilograms or something. So clearly somebody miskeyed that and…

0:08:13.7 Matthew D Edwards: Wow.

0:08:14.6 Damon Poole: Yeah, so that was pretty humorous.

0:08:14.6 Matthew D Edwards: So the graphics must be amazing in that version of the book.

0:08:19.5 Damon Poole: Right… [laughter] Very.

0:08:23.3 Matthew D Edwards: Fold out everything. So your difference of opinion or different view on the value of coaching from Bob Martin's is one of the things that led you to say, "Hey, maybe there's something here, I should explore this a little bit." And you had been doing coaching long before you decided, maybe I should write something. Is that accurate?

0:08:46.3 Damon Poole: Well, it depends on what the meaning of coaching is.

0:08:49.8 Matthew D Edwards: Fair enough. Alright.

0:08:51.5 Damon Poole: Yeah, I think I'd use the term coach… There's the role, Agile coach, and then there's coaching. Actually, not everybody knows that not everything an Agile coach does is coaching. But it gets confusing as to what it is. And I think the simplest way to define coaching is the thing that… Anything that you do that helps another person move forward that has nothing to do with your own expertise, other than coaching. And usually people are like, "Well, what's the value in that?" Which is kind of difficult to define, but pretty straightforward to experience.

0:09:31.3 Matthew D Edwards: I wonder if that can be likened to a concept that Gerald Weinberg had in one of his consulting books, where he called it, 'the Jiggler'. [chuckle] In that illustration, what he talked about was the idea of a running toilet, and how sometimes the only thing that you really had to do to get that toilet to behave in the correct way was just go jiggle the handle. And then one of his consulting conversations throughout that book, really what he was talking about was sometimes your role in an organization is to just help facilitate a flow or to just unblock something [laughter] previously blocked and it didn't require amazing knowledge and experience and all kinds of crazy stuff. It was just fresh eyes. You just jiggled the handle a little bit, and then people were able to move forward and evolve and become more than they were prior to that. So I wonder if those are similar.

0:10:34.0 Damon Poole: I don't know that I wanna sign up for the title of toilet jiggler. [chuckle] But… Gerry Weinberg.

0:10:40.9 Matthew D Edwards: Okay. Fair enough.

0:10:43.2 Matthew D Edwards: Awesome. I've dabbled in some of his books. The one that I've read through twice and I always recommend is Secrets of Consulting, which is not the best name, 'cause people say, "Well, I'm not a consultant." But that book is such infotainment. You get knowledge and you laugh all the way through and you're like…

0:11:00.1 Matthew D Edwards: Yeah.

0:11:00.9 Damon Poole: I think this is just a folk story. Oh, oh, there's the punch. Oh, that's good. Really wonderful book.

0:11:07.2 Matthew D Edwards: One of the roles or responsibilities that you're suggesting, more or less a selfless role inside an environment, I think, is what you were saying. Which is what you're doing isn't necessarily serving you, you are being an enabler in that environment, and it may or may not directly benefit you but you're directly benefiting them or that journey or that path they were walking.

0:11:32.2 Damon Poole: Absolutely. And I think actually, as an Agile coach… And when I use the term Agile coach, I would include Scrum master and RTE and various other things. Anything where you're helping an organization or a person move forward in Agile and you're using a coaching mindset. I think we all have an ego to some degree, shape or form, and there's nothing wrong with that, right? We want to help people. And I think one of the ways that in anything new like Agile, we want to help people… is sharing our expertise. And then people say, "Oh hey, thanks for that expertise. That was really helpful." And we might pride ourselves on that expertise. But I think the pure coaching side is that it's not about, did you share expertise or not sort of leaning more towards the, did the person get what they were needing, whether it came from them or you or…

0:12:31.3 Matthew D Edwards: So in your experiences have you found… Or what types of difficulties or challenges have you found when talking with clients or potential clients or even advising someone else on why hire an Agile coach. Have you ever experienced resistance or chafing or difficulty in explaining why hire this person, this…

0:12:57.5 Damon Poole: Never. It's always super simple. No. [laughter] It's the biggest lie I've told this week. [laughter]

0:13:09.6 Damon Poole: I don't know that anybody actually ever wakes up in the morning thinking, I need coaching. People might think other people need coaching. But there's a couple of issues there. Like what is coaching? Coaching as a profession has really only been a more recent thing, like the early to mid-90s and before Agile, like, life coaching, executive coaching, coaching from an International Coach Federation perspective. So that's an issue. And then it's kind of a support service. So you're not actually producing any code generally, unless you're a technical coach… Technical coaches will do that, but that's not really their main point. To some degree, it's kind of like what does a manager really do?

0:13:55.2 Matthew D Edwards: But we have plenty of those. So quantifying the value is… Is kind of… It's like the chicken and egg. If you don't understand the value of Agile, then understanding the value of an Agile coach is difficult. And how do you understand the value of Agile, part of it is by getting an Agile coach. So that's a hard problem. One of the biggest victories at Eliassen, and I'm sure other places, was when we came out with this thing, it's a mouthful, but the Eliassen Maturity Matrix. And that originated from a couple of dozen coaches at Capital One getting frustrated with the hundreds of teams and spreading the coaching out way too much.

0:14:37.8 Damon Poole: It was too thin. So we were getting paid and that was great, but we felt like we could produce more value. So we developed this way to help the organization teams and individuals understand were they moving forward or not. And it was clear that un-coached teams did not move forward as fast as coached teams. Teams that got a concentration of a coach for an extended period of time, did the best. So that was the best ROI. So that was super helpful, and that's one of the best ways that I found to sort of quantify that value. Doing it ahead of time, super hard. Once you're in there, expanding, much easier.

0:15:20.6 Matthew D Edwards: Is one of the things that you wanted to do with your book or that you've done with your book is to just help bring clarity to say, "Hey, I can't solve all of the things in all of the world, but as it relates to this idea I'd like to teach you about this."

0:15:34.4 Damon Poole: So the book starts out saying… It basically literally says, "Forget about Agile and coaching and everything for a moment, and think of people that when you're stuck in whatever you're stuck in, maybe a personal issue, who do you reach out to?" And if you think of a person you reach out to and a person you don't, and you think of their qualities and different… That are different. Like this one listens. This one is always like, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I've been there… I've done… Okay, here's what you need to do." And then a week later, they're like, "Hey, did you do it?" And they're like, "Oh man, leave me alone." So that first person, those are the qualities we look for in a coach, and sort of, taken to a very high degree of intentional purpose. And it's kind of a long list. Like, on the don't side, it's actually kinda easier to list. Don't interrupt, criticize, discourage, judge, evaluate… A whole bunch of things. And actually… Oh, oh, and don't give unsolicited opinions. Actually doing all those in the same person… super hard. [chuckle]

0:16:36.5 Matthew D Edwards: I was just evaluating that in myself, thinking, first I should memorize the whole list, and then second, I'm curious to what extent I do or do not exhibit these characteristics in whole or part or in combination. I think that'll be interesting. I might not… Well I expect there to come some humility with that realization.

0:17:00.6 Damon Poole: It is. And it's not like anything against anybody, if you have things on that list, it's really just things to think about. It's a journey.

0:17:15.1 Matthew D Edwards: Right now, what I'd immediately mapped to is I asked a good life-long friend of mine a long time ago, what was one of the most important things he learned along his journey of being a parent. And he said the most important thing that he had learned was knowing when to shut up. But the way he communicated it was sometimes you need to actively shut up because they need time to think, they need time to process, they need time to consider options, and they don't need you talking right now. And as I moved through that from the parent, I realized that that also applied to just about every relationship in my whole life, professional and personal, knowing when to talk, knowing when to shut up. It could, of course be said far more elegantly than shut up. [chuckle] But…

0:18:01.7 Damon Poole: Maybe not as clearly…

0:18:03.1 Matthew D Edwards: He was being… Well, he was being direct with me. I am dense sometimes, and so it was direct advice. But it sounds like maybe similar to what you're suggesting, which is knowing when and then choose.

0:18:16.6 Damon Poole: Absolutely, there's a lot of dimensions in what you just said. We could parse that all up and that could be an offering right there. Just what you said. So one dimension there is… Think about… It sounded like that took a while for that to sink in. It took a while for you to practice it, and all the while… kind of like what is even the value of this. That's absolutely part of coaching. And oh… And you also mentioned the dimension, it sounds like it changed who you were as a person. It affected other interactions. And a lot of coaching actually is, not that you need to, but that you want to change yourself in certain ways. And actually, what you gave, as an example is one of them… To get accredited by the ICF, you can't fake it. If what you were just saying was difficult, you wouldn't make it. You have to do a 30-minute recording in which you're exhibiting that all the way through and that's hard.

0:19:15.7 Damon Poole: The other aspect of that, which I think is at the root of value of coaching, not necessarily Agile coaching, but professional coaching, is what really is the value to the other person if you're not saying anything. And the way I would look at it is exactly what you said… The talking through, the thinking through. There's a certain amount of that, that you can do in your own head with no other human around. But the way we're built… And I don't know the brain science on this, but it's born out and you can use your own experience on this. The way that we're built as humans, we actually are better able to think things through with another person just sitting there.

0:19:58.7 Damon Poole: I don't know why, but you think about… There's things that when you go to articulate them you're like, "So it's simple. It's just… " And nothing comes out. And you're like, "Oh, I don't actually know how to articulate that. Let me think about it." So there's just this process that with the person that's there actually listening to what you're saying, you can do some things. And then if in their response to you, they skilfully are able to leverage that… And I don't mean paraphrasing for instance… In coaching paraphrasing, is actually bad. But asking a question that shows that you understood. So let's say you listen for a bit and then you ask a question and the person just goes like this, "Ahhh… " And then they're just silent. So you caused them to think of something they weren't thinking of before, because you listened to them. So you didn't add any knowledge, but you helped them move forward, and that actually has value. And you can think of those times… Those conversations you had, you were like, "Oh, that person was really insightful." But actually the new idea came from you.

0:21:12.0 Matthew D Edwards: Interesting. You know, there's a sales methodology, if you will, called Challenger Sale. And in that one of the things that they articulate in that whole process is, is in order to make a sale, your responsibility is to help someone see in a way they had not previously seen. And the way I visualized it was, if I were to say something to you, and that made you turn your head to one side and then turn it sideways like, "Oh my gosh. I didn't even know that was a room in this house. And now I need to just figure this room out. Where does this room come from?" And all of that… You can see that going across their face. But sometimes it sounds similar to what you're suggesting, which is a role… A role of a coach is to help one… Someone see also. So think and see, but to be this non-intrusive encourager, if you will. That seems like, actually, a very hard role.

0:22:20.4 Damon Poole: Yeah, it's super hard. And one of the things that makes it hard is… Like I said, nobody wakes up in the morning looking for coaching. Generally… People ask me this in classes all the time. They say, "Okay, okay, but… Do you ever find that people come to you and they're not looking for coaching, they want your… They want your advice." Or they want expertise. And I say, "Yeah, absolutely, 100% of the time." Zero percent, people are looking for coaching. So what I say is, as coaches part of what you're doing, is coachee education… You wouldn't tell people that you're doing… Well, I guess that's what I'm doing right now. But you don't generally tell people you are doing coachee education. You can't go full born to coaching with somebody that doesn't understand it or want it. So you have to find bridges to that.

0:23:09.7 Damon Poole: And one of them is… One of the simplest is, most people when they're starting coaching, have to learn that actually, they initiate the transfer of knowledge far sooner than anybody asked for it… So if you just hold back for a while, you'll be providing coaching value that you didn't even know that you could do. Because as soon as you see a chance, you're like, "Okay, here's some knowledge." Have you tried this? What about that? Right away. People generally don't realize that it's them holding back that is the first thing they can work on.

0:23:46.2 Matthew D Edwards: I'm going to have to sit and think about these things after we're… When we're no longer talking… You're giving me a lot to think about. These are good. So in your journey, you're currently enjoying and finding the value in helping other people through professional coaching. Is that an accurate statement?

0:24:05.9 Damon Poole: Yes, absolutely.

0:24:07.6 Matthew D Edwards: So do you feel like you've found a passion?

0:24:10.1 Damon Poole: Oh my.

0:24:11.5 Matthew D Edwards: You're passionate about this.

0:24:14.6 Damon Poole: One of the things that I like to ask people when I'm doing Scrum training or Agile training is this idea that people should specialize. I ask people, raise your hand if you want to do what you're doing right now for the rest of your life? I've never ever seen anybody raise their hand. I think, we all… We have certain passions, but I think we can learn new passions… We're always learning something new. So for me, I would say that, A, this is my current passion, but B, it also was sort of each passion led to the next one. In programming, unless the design is given to you, there's a certain amount of design… So programming, design, product management, business stuff, Agile, Agile coaching, coaching. So it's been sort of a progression of passions. So yeah, I'm very passionate about it.

0:25:10.9 Damon Poole: And the interesting thing that you see from pure coaching is you see a much more human side of people. People come to you with, "How do I keep the product owner from double stuffing the sprints?" That's like, I'm over and over again. How do I get people to show up to stand up some time? How hard is Scrum really? It's super… It's stupid, simple. Well, then, why isn't everybody doing it? Well… 'Cause there's all this human stuff in there… That's the way we've always done it. I can't let go of control. So that's all coaching stuff that's very human-oriented. So I often see people… A side of people that you wouldn't see when you're just trying to solve two plus two… What is two plus two? Oh, it's four. Oh, wow. Right… So I really enjoy that. Seeing the human side of people. People sometimes… You know… A tear in their eye. It's beautiful.

0:26:08.7 Matthew D Edwards: So that makes sense that you've been on this journey that has led you to here so far. And where it leads you, next of course, makes it sound like you're just like every other human, which is this journey composed of moments, and ideally those moments give you choices. And you've made some choices and you've had some good experiences, and this led you to learning about you, which also then led you to eventually write a book. Taking the time… To your point with the Scrum stuff, the human element is what's difficult about Scrum. The recipe for Scrum is pretty easy to understand. It's the human aspect of all of these things that's hard. For someone who thinks that they want to become a professional coach, what advice would you give them?

0:27:05.6 Damon Poole: I may seem a little self-serving, but prior to… [laughter]

0:27:12.0 Damon Poole: But bear with me here. I'm fully aware of what I'm saying. Prior to our book coming out, I used to recommend… Well, I still recommend. It's a great book. The Co-active book. Co-active Coaching. Amazing, amazing book. We got a lot of inspiration from that book. One of the things that I like about that book is it's left to right, soup to nuts, top to bottom description of pretty much everything in professional coaching. Not to the same level of depth you get to in a 60 or 125 hour course. But in six to eight hours of reading, you've covered the landscape. And they're not trying to sell you anything, they're not pushing you towards training. It's… They're not leaving something out. It's not… Two-thirds is all about how to market yourself or whatever. Our book from… It comes from a different perspective, but is very similar to that.

0:28:06.0 Damon Poole: A soup to nuts, not trying to push anything, and it covers the whole topic in whatever depth you can in six to eight hours. And so we're not gonna get rich off this book. Books don't generally make a lot of money unless it's… It's not a romance book or something… So I don't think you can beat the knowledge ratio for the dollar. So that's a really great place to start. Actually, you could even just read the first chapter and get a sense of like, I wanna keep going or not. So time-wise, it doesn't have to be a big investment. Short of that the other thing that you can do… I think the sort of next tier would be the ICAgile, ICP-ACC… Full disclosure, I teach that. That's just 21 hours. And then there's a lot of instructors that teach that. And then the next sort of final step would be ICF, which… That's 60, 125 or 200 hours of training. Your choice, depending on what level you wanna go for.

0:29:10.1 Matthew D Edwards: But if there's someone in an organization who says, I wish that we could just have a professional coach for a while to just help us figure out how to become more. Do you have any advice for them on how they would position that in their organization?

0:29:29.0 Damon Poole: You can only help people see so much value. So wherever they are… This is very partial. I don't know how to advise other people on this. Just my personal approach is, I literally ask people, what do you see is the opportunities and what do you see is the problems? That's all I ask when I start. And the stuff that spills out from that is awesome… Then you just kind of feed it back to people. So here's what I've heard. These things… You know, that's not really something that I can help with. These things, I can, if that's what you're interested in. And then there's either a match there and they go for it, or they don't.

0:30:08.4 Matthew D Edwards: Well, we value people. People are some of the most interesting, amazing things that I get to do in this life and in my job, just people. And they can be horribly energizing or draining, or encouraging, or discouraging… It could all happen in 60 seconds. And then there's still a whole day left to live. So people, I think are way more interesting. And so the idea of how to add value to other people on the journeys that they're on, it seems to me that professional coaching and the work that you're doing and the book that you've written can enable more people to figure out how to actually add value. The lowest common denominator is always people. And Damon, it sounds like your intent and your motivation for this book is to enable people. And the journey that you're on is, how do I become more so that I can enable someone else to become more.

0:31:16.8 Damon Poole: Yeah. And we've really poured our heart out into the book… We didn't hold back. There's… If you like powerful questions, there's over 100 in there. We… At one point we realized there was something missing and we couldn't figure out what it was. We like doing games and activities. So we made a… Every chapter has activities that you can do either one-on-one or… One is, a powerful question of the day… To practice working towards powerful questions. You get one in mind and you try to just shoehorn it in wherever you can that it makes sense. And so all kinds of activities. There's a reference in the back that summarizes all of the different coaching techniques, and you can read the first three chapters and then go to any chapter you want after that.

0:32:07.1 Damon Poole: So we try to make it as full of information and as easy to use as an ongoing reference, and to explain it as best we can. Because a lot of people, I think are expecting an Agile coaching book, and it's really not an Agile coaching book. It is a book about coaching for any Agilist. Anybody that's got that Agile torch just for whatever reason decided that they want to be the crazy person saying, "Agile is great." And I think a lot of people in the organization wish, could we just do our work for a while… Why do we have to focus on this Agile thing? So anybody that's looking to bring coaching forward, to add coaching as a skill.

0:32:54.7 Matthew D Edwards: Damon, thank you. It's been a privilege to have you on our podcast today. Thank you for taking the time to teach us about you and your journey and your book. Thank you.

0:33:04.8 Damon Poole: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's really been an honor on my side and you've given me a lot to think about. Every question, has the possibility of bringing forth insight. And I feel like you've done a lot of that for me. I've said some things, I didn't say before that I'm going… "Ooh, I gotta remember that." So thank you for the opportunity and don't be a stranger.

0:33:31.5 The Long Way Around the Barn is brought to you by Trility Consulting, where Matthew serves as the CEO and president. If you need to find a more simple, reliable path to achieve your desired outcomes, visit trility.io.

0:33:47.0 Matthew D Edwards: To my listeners, thank you for staying with us. I hope you were able to take what you heard today and apply it in your context so that you're able to realize the predictable repeatable outcomes you desire for you, your teams, company, and clients. Thank you.