When most small to midsized construction companies think about Human Resources, they think of employee handbooks, PTO policies, and managing employee files. When people like Kathy Humm think of HR, they think about how investing in human capital becomes a strategic advantage for a business.

In this episode, we hear about how leading construction companies leverage their HR departments to become better places to work, minimize legal exposure, and increase productivity. Kathy has valuable experience from her time as the HR Director for Harkins Builders for 9 years before starting her new business, NTP HR.

Transcript:

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00:01
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:21
Speaker 2
They have completely different needs.

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00:23
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:41
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not for me.

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00:44
Speaker 2
Not for me.

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00:45
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

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00:48
Speaker 3
So.

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00:48
Speaker 1
So. Good morning. It's morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinke alongside my co host and producer, Stacey Holzinger. Stacey, how are you this morning?

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01:06
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

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01:10
Speaker 2
Doing great.

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01:12
Speaker 1
For me, it's all good. Yeah, we made it through a Thanksgiving. Like everybody, oh my God, I shouldn't even say this out loud. Everybody was sick and I somehow dodged it. Everybody's better and I'm not sick and I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I'm invincible. Folks, I think I made it. I believe it. Yeah. Though I don't know, Thursday to Tuesday, the incubation period is probably not totally over. There's probably, you know, there's some, you know, doctor somewhere like, oh no, he's got symptoms, I can see it. But anyway, so we have our guest and both of our friends, Stacy, Kathy Hum, here with us today. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Kathy owns Notice to Proceed hr.

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01:59
Speaker 1
She just started that business literally months ago after spending years and years in the construction industry working for a wonderful, well respected general contractor in the D.C. baltimore area. And, and I was just noticing like recognizing as were getting started, Kathy, Stacy and myself, all three of us have started our own businesses just in the past couple of years. Go us. That's exciting. So congratulations Kathy. How so far, how's it going?

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02:36
Speaker 2
It's going fantastic. As you mentioned, I've spent over 15 years in the HR space. Nine of the last years that I spend in HR were with Harkins Builders. So built their HR department and decided to break off and start my own consulting. And my goal is to transform the construction space HR from transactional to strategic. So it's been great. I have a tremendous network through Associated Builders and Contractors and from Greater Baltimore to Washington, D.C. and. And it's been fantastic.

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03:21
Speaker 1
Well, you're doing work for me, with me right now for a client, for a shared client, where we're working together and doing a fantastic job so far. So thank you for. For the work that you're doing there. And, you know, I think as a new business owner, it is the scariest thing is, am I going to have any clients? And you've been able to solve that problem very quickly through your network, and I'm very excited for you. So that's. It's a nice place to start from, Kathy.

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03:53
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

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03:56
Speaker 3
So many small subs, you know, need your help, too. We were just talking about, you know, same thing with marketing and hr. A lot of people are multitasking in smaller organizations when there's a level of expertise that's really needed. So you'll be able to help a lot of people.

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04:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. And what I found is that as companies grow, you know, they're just getting by with the transactional HR component, which is, you know, payroll and benefits administration, and then they grow even larger and they realize, okay, I need to recruit top talent, but my retention is low, you know, so you have to come up with some sort of strategy on how are you going to recruit those people and how are you going to retain them, and what does that look like?

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04:50
Speaker 1
Yeah. So. So let's. Let's make this transition into today's topic, clearly, which is we're going to talk about what the mission of your organization, what the mission of your company exists to. To accomplish, which is making that transformation from H in HR from transactional to strategic. Stacy, I'm gonna, you know, obviously put you in the spot that you're. That you're always in each week, which is creating great conversation with all of our audience members who are joining us live. We'll bring you back here with a few minutes left to. To cover the audience questions. Good.

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05:30
Speaker 3
Yep.

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05:30
Speaker 1
See, in a bit, Kathy, you started down that path of describing what transactional HR looks like. And what I picked up from that was sort of. I don't. Maybe compliance items, payroll items, things. Things that are really keeping the ship afloat. Give us, if you wouldn't mind, just sort of the comprehensive list or the best off the top of your head of what transactional HR is. What do you mean exactly when you say transactional hr?

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06:02
Speaker 2
So you're absolutely right. It includes payroll, it includes benefits, administration, any type of, you know, new hire termination, all of those critical transactional duties that a company needs to do. And I mean really the list goes on employee relations, if somebody has an issue or if they have a question and the employees are our customers. So we have to, you know, spend a lot of time and respond promptly to what their needs are, which is important. That's absolutely important.

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06:41
Speaker 1
Well, and that's exactly what I was going to say. What I don't hear you advocating for in any way is saying let's get rid of that stuff. Right. It's now have to occur. It's just that there needs to be a level of HR thinking that's happening at a different level than the day to day critical functions that need to occur to keep the, you know, the ship afloat. Let's now put some definition around what strategic HR looks like. What are some of the things that fall into that bucket? What strategic hr.

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07:15
Speaker 2
So strategic HR is being more forward thinking, not just putting out the fires today, but focusing on what is my 1-3-5-year plan. And you have to have buy in from the executive team. The HR business goals have to align with the strategic goal. So for example, if a business wants to double in size in the next three years, we what's the recruiting strategy to do that? Where are you going to get those candidates? You know, do you have a, you know, a diversity goal that you want to achieve? So how does that tie into your recruiting strategy as well? And I, it's all about being forward thinking and having that buy in from the executive team to be able to think outside of the box and really help that organization grow.

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08:11
Speaker 1
So, so if I can just solidify this recruiting can fall into either a transactional or a strategic bucket. But transactional recruiting looks like post the ad, call the headhunter. It's, it's reaction to we need a pm. We need to bring in somebody in this key position and our HR department reacts. Posts the ad calls a headhunter or any other number of just in time things designed to create a result. Not bad things, but things that are less effective perhaps than they would be if they were a part of a broader plan. So talk to me about what strategic recruiting just as an example might look like in comparison to the two, you know, to the, you know, post the ad, call the headhunter.

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09:14
Speaker 2
Sure. And those things like you mentioned Chad, are really important. But let's break this down a little bit. Is your job description from the 1920s or do you even have a job description?

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09:26
Speaker 1
Are we scrapping together a job description Last minute. I can't just, I can't tell you how I've seen people who are like, I don't know, Chad, do you have a job description? Something that we can help me with that? Yeah, totally.

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09:38
Speaker 2
But, but more specifically about the job description, are you talking about the challenges that this position will focus on? Are you speaking to the candidate? Are you talking about your culture when you write that job description and what it's like a day in the life at X Company? Then you take that a step further and do you have an employee referral plan within your organization? And have you coached your employees with an elevator pitch on how to recruit top talent? You know, you could be at a.

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10:12
Speaker 1
One thing to say, hey, we'll give you 500 bucks if you bring somebody in. It's another thing to give the tools to be successful in doing that.

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10:20
Speaker 2
You could be at a wedding, you could be in the grocery store and you get exceptional service from the, the person at the register and you think, wow, they have the skill sets, the essential skill sets that might be able to fit in our company. We can teach them the technical skills. Then you have to take it even a step further. And where are you going to find these candidates? Are you just parking your posting on LinkedIn and that's it. You have to build some sort of strategy around where we got most of our candidates. Do you typically hire from universities, community colleges, trade schools in construction? The Votech programs at high school are a great, you know, starting point to hire entry level people within the construction space.

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11:13
Speaker 2
And is your company the go to company in those programs that when they think about okay, we want to start placing our students, are they calling you? Are you the first one they're calling? Which means your recruiting strategy is you have to get in the classroom and you have to be present and you have to, you know, do the upfront work to get on that list and be the first go to caller.

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11:36
Speaker 1
Like so many things in life and business, what I'm hearing you say is it's all about making the investments in these areas that have long term benefits. That if I start laying down lines, if I start creating funnels at vocational schools, if I start laying down funnels in community college programs, I'm not going to have a bunch of candidates tomorrow. But what I will have done is help to Solidify my pipeline 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the line. And that's strategic. And that's, that's exactly what you're talking about is, you know, hey, if you're today, if you're transactional, so be it. You might need to post that ad, you might need to call that headhunter. But today I want you to also make investments that will help you to be more strategic in the future.

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12:32
Speaker 1
It will help you in the future to have a much more effective strategy. And we're just talking about recruiting, not to mention all the other things that could fit into the hr which I look forward to potentially getting to with you today though time is so limited and there's so much to. So I want to ask what are some of the biggest mistakes that contractors are making as it relates to their HR departments? Whether it's general contractors or specialty contractors, what are the biggest mistakes they're making in relation to their HR department?

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13:10
Speaker 2
I would say the investment in hr. You have to invest in HR for it to be successful. So that's number one. And what I mean by that is you have to put the right person in the seat on the bus or develop that team that has both a transactional mindset as well as a strategic mindset. Because the duties are still the duties but you need to be forward thinking in an HR department and an HR role. So I would say the investment in hr. I would also say that HR needs to have a seat at the table. And what I mean by that is the executive team needs to include HR because let's face it, our most valuable asset in the construction space anywhere are our people.

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14:07
Speaker 2
And if we don't have good talent, satisfied employees, we're not going to be the best that we can be in whatever we do. So who has the better pulse, the best pulse on our people? It's the HR department. They, they absolutely have a pulse on the people. And so HR needs to have a seat at the table.

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14:31
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's so the first, the foundational aspect of that I'm hearing from you is really treating HR not as an afterthought, treating hr. Making the appropriate investment in HR leadership is maybe what I'm, is what I'm hearing you say. Does that sound right?

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14:57
Speaker 2
100%. But here's also something about that HR.

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15:05
Speaker 1
People.

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15:07
Speaker 2
That, that lead the department, that work in the department, they have to be able to speak the executive language. They have to be able to sit in those executive meetings. And the two biggest things that executives are focused on are the cost and the risk. And if you can't speak in business language and take the empathy and the touchy feely part of hr, which is important out of that discussion, that's where HR people tend to have trouble in those meetings. You have to be brief, you have to be concise, you have to be prepared, you have to have solutions. Don't come to them with a problem, come to them with solutions. And you have to know your data analytics and be able to present that information so that you're touching on the cost and the risk. That's what they want to hear.

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16:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a two way street. You can't. First, first things first. The executive team has to welcome the HR leadership as an equal, as an equal voice at the table, as somebody that's really going to have impact, that they're going to consider their perspectives. Yeah. The other portion of that equation is HR people need to speak exact. They need to, they need to actually be prepared at that level. And playing at that level requires, you know, bridging the gap between these touchy feely topics like employee satisfaction and tying it to metrics, tying it to measurables, tying those touchy feely topics to real. Measurable business outcomes, costs, risks, returns on investment.

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17:12
Speaker 2
So even speaking about employee satisfaction, you can go into an executive meeting and say, our employees aren't satisfied. What does that mean? Right. What is tell me more? Or you can go in and after you've done, you know, year after year employee satisfaction surveys using the G12, the Gallup 12 questions, which are very simple, you can go in and say, I just want to let you know, this year our Gallup 12 survey, Employee Satisfaction Survey, dipped from 4.8 out of 5 to 4.3. And here are the categories that they dipped in. And here are those scores. And so we really need to focus and unravel this. And I've done a little research and this is what I've discovered. Two very different. You know, you go in and you say, we've got problems. Well, there's no solution there.

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18:14
Speaker 1
Right. Give me hard data and tell me why I should care.

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18:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

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18:19
Speaker 1
It's, it's a, you know, if somebody comes in and has the ability to say, this is a leading indicator that statistically, if we're not above this threshold, we're going to have retention rate issues, we're going to experience attrition. The cost per new hire is X. Right. Here's what it costs when we have a fail within our first three years. If we have to replace somebody, I mean. Yeah. And I can think about the differences. I spend a lot of time in my work with the HR professionals within my Clients, businesses. And there's a massive difference between the quality of conversation that we're able to have in one instance and the other. And without question, there's a connection on who's invited to the table. Yeah. Now at the same time I'm sitting here like, I'm sorry, I'm like thinking about chicken or the egg.

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19:17
Speaker 1
Like, am I a part of this problem? Do I need to make sure that. And I'm sure I am to some extent. And that's, and so it's a valuable discussion to be having with you.

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19:28
Speaker 2
So, but to be honest, where you excel is the strategic plan and the vision of organizations. And that's where it starts. And time and time again, when I ask companies, do you have a strategic plan? Well, kind of sorta or not really. Because the reason I ask that is because when I'm looking at hr, from soup to nuts, the recruiting business plan has to align with the strategic plan. It gives us direction as an HR team.

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20:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I totally agree. Without one, you can't really have the other. And I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be a very strategic and capable HR professional operating inside a business that doesn't know where the hell it's going. That's got to be excruciating. So you can't have one without the other. I think that's an interesting thought. So let's talk straight talk here for a minute about something that I, I can't help. I, I, I'm really, I'm trying to solve this problem in my mind for the average or sort of typical sized contractor out there that does not have unlimited budget. This is an overhead hire. Right. We can't job cost this higher. If we're, if we're going to hire HR people, we've got to be able to really justify what we're doing here.

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21:04
Speaker 1
At what point do we need to make sure we have an HR person in place? Is there an employee count? Is there a revenue size? Is there, are there any rules of thumb for the point at which I need to be fully prepared to be past the transactional HR and have really HR leadership inside my business?

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21:23
Speaker 2
From my perspective, because I'm very strategic, that has to be out of the gate when you're considering starting a business. You know, think proactively. Okay. I may not need somebody right this minute, but who is that person going to be that's going to handle all the transactional and help me grow? Because you want them as a partner, but if you don't have that person in play. By the time you have 50 employees, it's time.

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21:59
Speaker 1
Okay, that's fair. And I, and now I'm, I can get that perspective. When you first started, I was like, oh, man. So, so it's going to be, I'm going to have, my first hire is going to be an HR person. We have to install metals or, you know, whatever our job is. What you're saying isn't that it's from the start you need to have this seed mindset. Yes. Which is I need to be. And perhaps, man, I don't know if you'll like what I'm about to say, but perhaps you can be strategic about HR in your business without having an HR professional leading that.

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22:38
Speaker 1
In other words, my job can be business owner or I can have vice president of operations, but if they have at least for some period of time in the business the ability to think strategically about HR issues, that could be sufficient. I don't necessarily have to go out and hire an HR professional, but what I'm hearing you say is once you reach maybe that 50 employee mark, it's a, it's time for you to have an HR professional.

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23:03
Speaker 2
Well, and Chad, I would argue, I would counter your point there with, you know, there comes a time where the HR responsibilities pull that CEO, that president, vice president, away from what they do best and helping develop and grow the organization. So there is a point that you need to offload those duties and find somebody who is equally as strategic to be a partner to be able to help the organization grow.

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23:49
Speaker 1
That's a really great point. I love that. And I can't agree with you more that there does reach almost in every business that I've ever come across a point, whether it's HR or sales or marketing or operations for that matter, where there's, there are people who are really in this lane who are carrying this added responsibility that it reaches a certain point where this responsibility isn't getting as much of their attention as it needs. This responsibility isn't getting as much responsive attention as it needs. And ultimately it's time to hand one off. And this is your primary responsibility. So it's time to hand this one off. That makes a lot of sense. That's helpful. And if you're an audience member, you're watching this. Consider, are you there? Have you reached that point where you have been handling the recruiting? Because, man, you love it.

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24:48
Speaker 1
You really enjoy being out in the Field with people. And you're the vice president of operations for a 75 employee company and you're heading up the internship program and you're heading up the employee, all these different types of things. But you're also the vice president of operations.

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25:05
Speaker 2
Right, Right.

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25:06
Speaker 1
It's a lot.

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25:07
Speaker 2
And there's a lot of nuances to all of the HR functionalities. There's just so much involved that, I mean, you take recruiting, we talked about that earlier. You know, from scheduling the interview to ordering the background check to this, that the other. There's all of that behind the scenes. That certainly needs to happen.

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25:29
Speaker 1
And it's time consuming. It's got to happen. So. All right, I'm going to bring Stacy back. There's one thing while I bring Stacy back that I want to just toss on the table with you is that I personally have always felt that one of the most essential functions of a strong human resources department is enabling employee development and training throughout the organization. And I'd like for you to describe, well, first off, if you agree, and second off, what an organization that wants to be a great employee development organization, they want to be awesome at training and developing their people. What role should HR be playing in that environment and what role should others be playing? Because I'll tell you, one of the things I hear a lot is like, well, I don't know, training hr. Are you on that?

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26:22
Speaker 1
And I always, I'm like, that's not fair. That's not quite right. You can't just lay training at HR's feet and walk out. So what's your take? Am I, am I wrong or.

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26:34
Speaker 2
Training is a part of an HR function. And I would say that anything from leadership development, management, essential skills, those kinds of things are led by the HR team. Now when you get into technical skill sets in the construction space, HR people don't know the technical, you know, how to's part of the job. What HR's role in that particular situation would be that they're facilitating the training. They're finding the technical trainer, whether it's in house or outside of the organization to have those training sessions. And they're making it. So HR absolutely plays a role in training. I would also say that companies need to have career paths. They need to spell that out because the younger generation coming into the workforce, they want to know, if I get hired here, what's my next step and what's my next step?

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27:45
Speaker 2
And you know, I want to see the three to five year plan for me. So it's really important for companies not only to have a really good job description but also paint the picture of if you start here, and these are the training things and certifications that you need to acquire over the next X months year, what have you. This is your projection and that's super important.

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28:13
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. That seems fair to me. And it seems like there's an internal customer that obviously that HR is serving. But there also needs to be an investment from department leadership alongside HR to make this be successful. So HR not only needs to service its internal customer, but it also needs people to be bought into servicing the internal customer that's inside their department sense. In other words, it needs to have the buy in and support of everyone else so that everyone isn't just pointing the finger at HR and saying, I don't know, we're supposed to have a training program, hr, are you on that? But instead they're building it together. We are already up on time. I'm the worst. But we're going to go a little late. Stacy, what do we have in terms of questions?

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29:18
Speaker 3
We have a great question from Ralph. So how do you make training and employee growth a priority throughout your organization? Allow time away from projects for employee growth? I think that's a big concern for a lot of companies because they don't want to take people off the projects because they have to meet these deadlines and these schedules. But it is important for employee growth.

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29:43
Speaker 2
So.

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29:43
Speaker 3
So what are your thoughts on that?

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29:47
Speaker 2
Well, with any function of HR and this particular question relates to training, there has to be accountability from the top and there has to be buy in from the top. So how do they treat learning and development? And if they have buy into it, then you can formulate as an HR team what that looks like. Dollars to spend for your department for each of your, you know, team members for training, going away to conferences, taking time away from the job, maybe recruiting and hiring more people so that you have that backfill for you to take that time off. A lot of companies are also moving to sabbaticals in construction. It's a very challenging industry and it's high stress, high energy.

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30:45
Speaker 2
So a lot of companies are going to take some sabbatical time after a three, five year period so that they can recharge and train and develop.

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30:57
Speaker 3
Definitely when you were talking earlier about training and things like that, I, when I worked with Shapiro and Duncan, I worked very closely with the HR department and I think marketing also usually ties in as a support system to HR and trying to simplify the message, trying to get forms return that you need, whether it's health benefit forms, meeting deadlines, event planning, employee morale type things. So if you do have marketing support, include them into the HR conversation because they can help you out a lot when it comes to communicating these crucial messages, whether it's safety or HR or health benefits or anything like that, to get that information out and get it returned. It was always kind of a struggle, but we worked together pretty good doing that.

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31:59
Speaker 2
I would 100% agree both for your internal messaging and your external messaging, because you have to paint the story of the culture externally to attract candidates, but internally, all of that messaging around open enrollment, recruiting, employee referral program training and development, compliance. Why we have to do things that we have to do because the federal government and state legislation, you know, are putting, you know, bills in place that we have to comply with.

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32:30
Speaker 3
Yeah. And how can companies better enable a shift to becoming more strategic if they don't have unlimited overhead budgets?

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32:42
Speaker 2
It starts with investing in automation. We have tremendous systems that can do a lot of the transactional duties and it starts there and it will free up that one person team, two person team to be able to spend time planning and being more strategic.

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33:07
Speaker 3
Nice.

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33:08
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I think there's a real hesitance for companies to purchase software that they don't know that. How do I put this? Contractors don't love, don't like purchasing software that doesn't specifically tie into operations or the technical aspect of the work. Right. And I mean with automation, can you give us a sense of the return on investment that you would get for, you know, I don't know. That may be difficult for you to come up with out of thin air, but for X dollars invested, what are we, what are we saving when we bring in the right hr? Automation.

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33:56
Speaker 2
So on the front end you'd have an applicant tracking system which can give you those, the data analytics. As far as the candidates that are applying, who you're hiring, all of that data is critical to the ROI and understanding. You know, is this worth the investment? And then, you know, certainly you have your benefits tracking in there. You have your open enrollment and you have capabilities depending on the system with learning and development and then compliance. I can give you an example of the Affordable Care act requires at a certain number of employees requires you to do reporting. And at my previous employer, we paid over four thousand dollars for that reporting. If you have an app, if you have a, an HR system and you're automated, you can Pull that data out of the system and it saves you.

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34:56
Speaker 2
In that case, it would have saved us $4,000.

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35:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I see where you're going with it. And I, you know, I'm assuming that if I were an audience member and I had questions about even any aspect of what we've talked about today, that these are all things you'd be, you know, totally comfortable having a conversation with somebody about if they wanted to reach out.

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35:21
Speaker 2
Absolutely.

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35:22
Speaker 1
If they wanted to reach out to you, where would they get you? Should they reach out via LinkedIn?

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35:27
Speaker 2
Ntphr.com cool. And my email is Kathy Humtphr, LinkedIn. Be happy to talk through any of your HR needs. I do an assessment from soup to nuts, no cost to the company to give you an idea of where you are and where you'd like to be. And then we go from there.

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35:54
Speaker 1
Awesome. Nice.

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35:56
Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us.

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35:57
Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you.

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36:00
Speaker 1
I really enjoy this conversation. Kathy and I have been particularly recently talking a lot, and I still feel like I have a lot to say to you. So. And I love listening to your perspectives on things. You're, you're a great, fun educator. I don't know if that's something you're aware of, but you are, you're very good at it.

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36:21
Speaker 2
Well, thank you.

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36:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, thank you. Very good. So. All right, Kathy, thanks again. Stacy, let's do a little housekeeping to wrap up the last show of three.

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36:34
Speaker 3
Yep.

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36:37
Speaker 1
So, so we are up in the air on exactly when we're coming back, the exact day I. Oh, wait, no, that's not true. We nailed it.

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36:46
Speaker 3
January 31st.

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36:48
Speaker 1
January 31st. This literally just happened over the past week. So we are, our first show back will be January 31st. We'll be running for 12 weeks, pretty much consecutively. Consecutively thereafter, unless there's some holiday that we haven't accounted for and we are looking for guests. So please reach out to Stacy if you or somebody you know should be on our show. And the best way to do that, to reach out to Stacy is right here. Stacey H. Steeltoe.com.com. You can reach out to me as well, but I'll just forward it to Stacy. He handles all the, she handles all the booking. So I'm not qualified to handle that particular aspect of what we do. Stacy, do you have a steel toe? Communications tip of the week.

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37:34
Speaker 3
I just want to remind everybody today that it is giving Tuesday. Make sure that you're supporting your local construction nonprofits that are doing all the hard work to recruit people into this industry to help get people or help get you employees. If you're not donating with money, try donating with your time or just spread the word by sharing the organizations and their messages and what they represent. Please do that today.

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38:08
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you, Stacy. So I'll take one moment and just say this, which is the past few years have been extremely busy for most people in the construction industry. Now, depending on if you've been doing commercial interiors exclusively, you might be angry to hear me say that. Or if you've been doing hotels exclusively, there was a pretty tough time during that period, but by and large the industry has been really thriving. There are some very valid indicators that we are heading into a less vibrant time. We're heading into a time where business will be less plentiful and your strategy for your business is going to be that much more important. I've been speaking with a lot of people recently about designing their strategic plan so that their business is more recession resilient or recession proof.

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39:14
Speaker 1
If that's a conversation that you want to have with me, you can reach out to me directly through LinkedIn or via that email. I've been giving a lot of talks on it. I've been giving lots of keynotes on it. So if there's anybody that wants to have that discussion, please do reach out. Best of luck everybody as we enter into the New Year. Happy holidays and all the best from us at the Morning Huddle. Stacy, any final words?

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39:40
Speaker 3
Happy holidays and I look forward to the break, recharging and bringing some new awesome topics and guests for next season.

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39:50
Speaker 1
Same here. We'll see you in 2023.

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39:52
Speaker 3
See ya.

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39:53
Speaker 1
Bye. Bye.

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