Corporate Strategy

148. How do You Measure Bureaucracy?

The Corporate Strategy Group Season 5 Episode 2

This episode emphasizes the importance of understanding workplace happiness through a model known as C.A.C.C (Culture, Autonomy, Challenge, Compensation) while addressing the negative impact of bureaucracy and “sludge” in corporate settings. We share personal experiences and insights about the changing nature of job satisfaction, encourage listener participation, and highlight the need for continuous assessment of workplace dynamics to ensure both personal and corporate growth. 

• Introduction of the CACC model 
• Personal anecdotes about workplace experiences 
• The significance of culture, autonomy, challenge, and compensation 
• Exploration of bureaucracy as detrimental to happiness 
• Concept of sludge in the workplace and its implications 
• Encouragement for community engagement and feedback 
• The ongoing need for re-evaluating workplace dynamics.


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Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze

Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!

Speaker 1:

don't do it, don't do it, don't, it's not your welcome back to corporate strategies.

Speaker 2:

I guess it could have been email.

Speaker 1:

I'm clark, I'm bruce, that definitely peaked. I just practically screamed into the microphone. I could tell, I could tell Welcome back Another episode. We did Raw, we followed through, we did the Thing we're living our lives Vibe check. It's been two days since I last spoke to you.

Speaker 2:

How you doing Too long. It's too long to not be in touch. I'll be honest. I know we're putting a lot of work for the people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a lot of effort.

Speaker 2:

You guys are asking a lot of us. We did a raw episode, went to McD's, we put our stomachs under duress, eating a McGriddle, the greasiest of McGriddle. For you and you better appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

It was hard work. Can I share a biological fact about that corporate strategy?

Speaker 2:

Rob, I'm a little scared. To be honest, Just to be transparent with you, I'm worried.

Speaker 1:

About halfway through the drive home, I had to break the law.

Speaker 2:

What do you mean? I had to break the law. What?

Speaker 1:

do you mean I had to speed? I had to speed home, if you catch my drift, because the McGriddle had plans that I had to get sure I kept.

Speaker 2:

This is the most disgusting podcast I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I'll be honest, though If you got to get something moving, you got to grease up the skids. Grease the skids a little bit. Don't say that.

Speaker 1:

Don't say grease the skids of your intestines. I did it subtly, I made it a funny story and then you had to say grease the skids.

Speaker 2:

It's a corporate term. I'm going to say it, I probably said it today. I'm going to grease the skids for you, but you grease the skids that eating McDonald's probably just made. It just fall right out. Let's go.

Speaker 1:

Why did you just say fall right out? Why did you have to say it like there was no?

Speaker 2:

effort on my end.

Speaker 1:

You just started this I said I was going to share a biological fact, you said. You said grease the skids and fall right out. All right, these are your words.

Speaker 2:

I'm just repeating them back to you now our subscriber count just dropped 20 when you said fall right out when you say mcgriddle and you say biological fact, everyone knows what you're talking about. You push me over the edge.

Speaker 1:

This is a you problem and you put it on me and now we're putting it on the people yeah, this should be illegal.

Speaker 2:

what we're doing right now should be illegal, because they don't even know what's coming. Alex said bourgeoisie pinkies up. He said we need to have a trigger warning and we didn't trigger warning prior to this. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everyone who just listened to this.

Speaker 1:

The trigger warning should have been. When you blursed it into the microphone with your mouth parts, I saw you lean in. I saw you. I was like don't do it, they don't know. That's true.

Speaker 2:

They don't know. That's true. What is happening? Do you have a ghost in your house?

Speaker 1:

My dog. Biological fact my dog has an upset stomach and she is ringing the bells downstairs because she needs to use the bathroom. And I am. I am here by myself, hold on. So I was gonna say are you gonna let me go? Let me go, let her, I'll edit this. Okay, I will I'll edit it.

Speaker 2:

No, you don't actually have to edit it. You go, do your thing. You go, you go do your thing. I'm gonna carry on solo. He is walking out of the room right now. I'm seeing him run down the stairs. He can probably still hear me, but we can't hear him because he is not near his microphone. So, yeah, vibe, check, it is 2025 when we are recording this and we have a whole bunch of incredible things planned for you guys listening.

Speaker 2:

This year, we are really going to spend a lot of time trying to deep dive into a number of topics. We're going to have awesome guests on. We're going to do a revitalization of CAC for those who don't know it. So that's probably going to be what we end up doing today Doing a revitalization I can't even say it revitalization of CAC. And for those that don't know what CAC is, I am now going to provide you a quick summary in a soothing, soothing voice, at a tone that you will appreciate, because I have to fill time, since Bruce is off doing biological facts that no one wants to hear about. So, cac, let's talk about it Everybody.

Speaker 2:

While you're working, you go through a series of ups and downs. It's a roller coaster, as you might say, and you need some way to understand. Am I going to be happy this next year? Am I happy right now? And what are the factors that go into making me happy at work? And everybody has a little bit of a different scale, everybody works for a different reason, and what we did, probably two years ago now, we created something called CAC. I keep on saying it, not explaining it. It is your way to rate your workplace happiness and what the acronym stands for C-A-C-C is Culture, is Culture, autonomy, challenge, compensation. Using that rubric, you can essentially assess how happy you will be in your current role, and so Bruce and I have had a lot of fun with this in the past years. We've actually went hour by hour through our day with our personal CAC rubric and we did it for about two weeks and at the end of it we scored it. We put it in Excel spreadsheet and we scored it to say how happy are we based on our criteria in our job. So, hour by hour, every day, for two weeks, based on our scale, we gave it a point for every single hour and then at that point we said, hey, what's our score? And I can tell you, mine was abysmal at the time. Bruce's wasn't bad, his was passable. It wasn't like C's get degrees level was what his was, but mine, mine was down in the dumps. So I think it's time for us to revitalize the topic of CAC, explain what it means on this episode, and I think it's time for us to kind of give you guys our scores of where we stand today.

Speaker 2:

Because over time let's face it what makes you happy at work will change, whether you decide you want to lean more into work. You have a major life event and now work isn't as important in your life. It's going to change, and so CAC is going to be a very helpful tool for you to understand where my workplace happiness comes from. So culture, autonomy, challenge, compensation each one of us values those in different ways. So for mine, for example, I value challenge and autonomy more than anything else. So not that culture and compensation are important, but for me, I love doing the work, the process of doing the work, the journey of doing the work. That, to me, is one of the most important factors in what makes me happy at work, and having the autonomy to do that work in the way that I'd like to do it with my team gives me the freedom to be creative in decision making, and so, for me, having autonomy within those decisions is a super, super important factor.

Speaker 2:

The other one that I have is challenge. I always want to be learning. I think that's something that I've learned, you know, very early on in my career. I get bored pretty easily, and when I get bored, it's not exciting for me anymore and I tend to start trying to do other things to revitalize my energy, make me happier, and I like to learn and be challenged and be working with people that are smarter than me, so that way I can continue to learn. And so they would say you know, if you're the smartest person in the room, you know, maybe find a different room.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying I'm the smartest, but with a lot of the work, tasks that I take on every day personally, I've done them for quite a long time now. So I've got a system, I've got a process around it, I've trained my team on it. So for me it's great because it's organized, it's simple and I know what to do when these situations arise. However, it isn't fun for me doing the same thing over and over every single day, every single week. In that regard. He is sprinting back into the room. I've had a solo pod going for five minutes. You can actually just not come back.

Speaker 1:

You were listening to the whole thing. Was it good? Yeah, it was great. I get signal outside.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I heard the whole thing. Oh, you listen to it all the way. For context he has an upstairs office. He ran all the way downstairs. He still has headphones on and he can still hear me Through those. What concrete walls, concrete walls.

Speaker 1:

Center block hurricane proof. I mean I am so proud, slash, impressed with you, mr Clark, for for carrying this on my poor dog. Her stomach is very upset, so Ted.

Speaker 2:

Listen, we got to take a time out. We got to make some rice for you and your family, your dogs. You guys got to soak something up in that stomach of yours because you're coughing right now. You're out of breath. You're looking down the stairs to see if your dog is there. Holy cow, what a mess.

Speaker 1:

I have a cold. I have a cold.

Speaker 2:

She has the diarrhea so you know it's the two of us, it's house falling apart.

Speaker 1:

So back to the back, to the cack. Um, it's interesting to me, like you know. You know your CAC has changed right, like the things you care about, since we last did this. Is that what I was taking away?

Speaker 2:

I don't know if that's true in my case. I actually think mine has been pretty consistent when we do our affirms yeah, I think it's reaffirmed.

Speaker 2:

I think for me it still stands, because I'm still relatively in the same situation and I don't think it's much different than the last time I scored it. So if you caught it, challenge and autonomy are still my top. I don't remember which I rated higher, but if we pull up the Excel spreadsheet we could probably find it. But those are still my top. Not that culture and compensation are important. They are important, but where I'm at at since nothing's changed I'm happy with my compensation and even if I got paid a little less, I'd be all right. And culturally I work for a pretty cool place. So you know, and I hired my whole team, so I've kind of built the culture around me, and not that that means it's any less important, but for me it's been consistent and I've been consistently happy with those things, so they're not as important to me.

Speaker 1:

So you know you said you wanted to revitalize it. In all honesty, for me I almost think it needs a re-evaluation, because what's changed for me is my CAC. I value autonomy over all else, and then I think it was culture. Second, you know, obviously, compensation. We always use that as an offset. I think, out of all of them, I value compensation the most. But you know that, as an offset, I think out of all of them, I value compensation the most. But that helps with the lows. This might sound wild, but I loved CAC. I think CAC was great, but now it's missing something, which is we need another offset which is trivial work, or work you don't want to do Like busy work, trivial work, like it's the sludge that you try to eliminate in your life.

Speaker 1:

It's a second offset that I think we need to work in because, more importantly than anything for me, it's compensation and removal of sludge. I don't care about the other pillars anymore, I just they can be. They can be rock bottom for all I care. Uh, I just want little sludge, as little sludge as humanly possible in my life.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting you know, trying to think we don't really have that. I mean, I guess you could say challenge could be part of that, because I'm sure I'm assuming the sludge is just like wasted wasted stuff. But you have to do it. It's like stuff you can't avoid. You've got to do it.

Speaker 1:

I thought about that but I don't want to be, you know, swung with really hard, challenging work either.

Speaker 1:

Like you know I don't want to be at the top of challenge, but I also don't want to be because there there is a world where there's no challenge and there's still a crap ton of sludge true, I'm saying yeah. Or there's a world where there's a lot of challenge and a lot of sludge. Like I thought about it when I was outside watching my dog struggle to live her life and it it doesn't work in challenge autonomy, autonomy, kind of right, because the more sludge you have, the less autonomy you have. Period, just because you have to deal with the sludge work, but at the same time you could have very little sludge work and very little autonomy because you're focused always on high value, high priority things and you're just being dictated what to focus on. So it's like it doesn't fit in either of those. And that's my problem with CAC now is I've got a new thing that I need evaluated, that I can't evaluate with our system.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you kind of just put a graph in my head where you've got like high value, low value as your Y and then your X is like low work up to high work, like the amount of work it actually takes to do it, or, I guess, like low sludge to high sludge, wherever you want to call it right. Ideally everything would be in like the top left, high value, low sludge still might mean a lot of work, right, but it's like high value, important work work. It's not just a bunch of like oh, I got to go through legal reviews and talk to lawyers and go through marketing. All that is like low value work. The output is the high value. Hmm.

Speaker 1:

And now it's interesting because compensation and sludge are my focus points where culture, autonomy and challenge. Those are offsets. They can help with compensation and sludge, but that's not my focus. That's not what I'm concerned about in 2025. The year of our Lord and Savior, the year of our Lord and Savior.

Speaker 2:

That is a great way to brand 2025. It's interesting we do have to talk about this because I don't know like we talked. We gave some tips, probably a year ago, maybe two years ago now, about how you ask the right questions in an interview to understand, like, what your CAC might look like. I don't know that there's an easy way to evaluate the sludge you're walking into.

Speaker 2:

I mean maybe maybe let's take a few examples, like if you say you're in, you're in marketing, what does the approval process look like to get a marketing prompt ready or a social media post ready, something like that? Or you know, if you're in technology, you could say, hey, if I'm trying to, you know I've developed something. What are the reviews look like that I have to do, or the testing levels that I have to do in order to get to a production release, and that will kind of let you know how much maybe what it is. Is it bureaucracy? It is. Is that sludge? That's the word.

Speaker 1:

Let's classify sludge. It's the slides you have to make every week for status meetings, it's the check-in emails and check-in meetings and all of the things that exist, because either meeting makers and email senders need to feel like they're in the room so they create the busy work, the trivialities, or it's the just straight-up bureaucracy of the process you have to deal with. It all accounts into sludge, but I think bureaucracy is probably the best word to describe it.

Speaker 2:

The level of bureaucracy could be the offset, just like compensation. It's like if the compensation is enough.

Speaker 2:

I'm willing to put up with the level of bureaucracy. This is interesting. Yeah, it's like what's the reason? Let's, let's break this. What's the reason? Let's let's break this down. What's the reason for the busy work? And it's usually because of bureaucracy. Yeah, I've got stupid, arbitrary processes that have been in place for years and they actually don't affect the output. Like, like, I asked this question all the time in my team. I'm like how often do we catch bugs during this process that stop a release at this point? And the answer is like never. Like we've caught one in the last three years. And I think we really have to question this is two days of our release process, two full days. We've only ever caught one thing in three years. Is that valuable?

Speaker 1:

Right, and I think most people how much money and time is wasted on that?

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and it's obviously not providing value, you know. And it's like, why are we? Are we doing it just because we've always done it, or should we be questioning, Like why?

Speaker 1:

are we doing this in my perfect world that? Is it a zero compensation? Is it a? Is it a 10? And everything else can be wherever the heck it wants to be. I'll deal. Really Interesting. I'll figure it out.

Speaker 2:

Even if it's still low-challenging work. Right, I can just do it.

Speaker 1:

Think back to the corporate strategy raw in Black Friday edition when I talked about the landscaper job.

Speaker 1:

In all honesty, at the time that was like perfect cack because I was getting paid more than I'd ever been paid before, and you can laugh at it now. It was like $12.50 an hour, but I'd worked minimum wage up to that point. Everything I did brought value to that job, whether I was pulling weeds, digging ditches. Whether I was pulling weeds, digging ditches, planting roses, putting in pipes, testing your like, every single task I did, from the start of my day to the end of that day, brought some kind of value to the landscape of that college campus. There was no bureaucracy whatsoever and the pay was good, the culture, abysmal.

Speaker 1:

I was physically assaulted on that job by my own co-workers. The autonomy I was told what to do 99% of the time there's none. The challenge it ranged from. I was dealing with physical pain from the sun and blisters on my hands. To you know, getting whacked by shovels. To you know, just, I'm literally breaking my back pulling weeds for eight straight hours. But like, everything had a purpose and it never got to me. So it's like there's the valley of the cack, supported by the lack of bureaucracy and the compensation. So, like I don't know, I think we need to create Bukhaf.

Speaker 2:

Please stop Please. Bukhaf, it's a chicken. I can't cancel the episode. It's interesting to think like is this part of? Is this part of culture? Is bureaucracy part of culture? I think that's what I debate is like the culture of the company creates these things.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It creates the sludge. You know, and people introduce sludge for many reasons. Either the quality sucks, so you got to add more things, more checks and balances in place. The right people aren't being included, leading to the lack of quality. You got to create these processes. Things are always hectic and you can't get control of anything and no one understands where anything is is. You got to create processes around it and involve people and that creates bureaucracy and you're kind of going through it.

Speaker 2:

It's like, as you're a startup who's really small, there is no bureaucracy or sludge.

Speaker 2:

It's like if something got to get on the website or you got to get a blog done, like you're doing it. That's you Like that's your only gig, gig, no one else matters in the world. But as you scale to enterprise, it gets worse and worse and worse, and obviously I've been in enterprise pretty much my my whole career, so like the sludge has always been terrible and I would say, as I've risen the ranks, the the sludge or the bureaucracy just gets worse. Because and especially in the other episode when we talked about my recent feedback from my leader about do we value getting things done or do we value getting everybody on board to get things done even if it takes longer, and the answer was the opposite, that is, bureaucracy and sludge. If now I've got to attend all these meetings, get people on board, help people who aren't doing the best job to get this thing done, rather than just say hey, clark, you own this, you're accountable to this. Go figure out how to get it done, with or without these people is that culture?

Speaker 1:

uh, I so I would love to say that it is culture, but I see culture as people. In my opinion, culture is the people you work with. Are they nice, are they mean, are they a blight on your day, like, do they just ask you non-stop for things? Are they capable of doing it on their own? Can you trust someone to go to them for help? Can you trust someone to have an open, accountable conversation?

Speaker 1:

A good culture to me feels like it's good people or it's bad people. Right, like that's the top and the bottom of that scale. If you put bureaucracy in there, then it it almost becomes like a weird triangle of you have the quality of the people and then you have, like, the quality of the processes that you deal with. I don't know if there's a perfect I mean like a perfect culture. I mean you have great co-workers and team and synergy and all that jazz and no bureaucracy. But I think back to when we worked at Big Corp. Remember Team Cobra? I had great culture on Team Cobra and the bureaucracy was a nightmare. So how do you rate that? How does that fit on the scale?

Speaker 2:

Right, it's a big corp. When we worked together, it's like we had all the autonomy in the world. We weren't getting paid the best, but I didn't know any better. Anyway, we really didn't know really what we knew at that time and we had low bureaucracy. I mean, it was us. It was like we made the decisions and we were very happy, like we got to work when we wanted. We sometimes took two hour lunches, three hour gaming afternoons, like we did whatever we wanted and work still got done and I would say it was still valuable work. Was it valuable? Looking back at it in hindsight, as a you know, as a more experienced professional, the work that we were doing? Was it that valuable to the company? Not really. It wasn't the focal point of the company, but it was valuable in our department and the product we were working on.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't valuable to the company, but I would argue it was valuable to the customer, I agree. I agree we ensured that customers did not have to deal with the kind of frustrations and garbage that a non-quality, assured product would give them. And I think what companies value versus what customers value, that's a different topic in itself. Right, because quality assurance is always the first thing that gets hit when layoffs start to happen, because it's just QA. They just test the product. What value do they really? You can have devs test the product, what could possibly go wrong, but like we caught things that otherwise would go out and ruin a customer's day. Company doesn't see value in that, but we absolutely kept our customers happy. So, like you're right, but at the same time, I think there's a hidden part of that that goes unappreciated.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, and I would say we work hard too. We did, we had the autonomy when we needed to yeah, when we needed to. But there were other times where we were like, all right, we already did our stuff, we're just hanging out now. We just had a good time. So it is interesting to kind of factor that in, because I would say we were all pretty happy. It had its ups and downs, but in hindsight I've never had that much freedom and fun doing a job.

Speaker 1:

That is why we have to change it for 2025.

Speaker 2:

Bacaw, bacaw, say it with me folks.

Speaker 1:

That didn't get picked up.

Speaker 2:

Good, I'm happy it didn't. Everybody would have had their eardrums blown up.

Speaker 1:

So scream into your nearest cubicle or office B-C-A-C-C. Bacock, Just the same way a chicken would. 2025, year of Bacock Corporate strategy Peace.

Speaker 2:

We do need feedback. If you've got feedback on this, we want to talk about it in the discord. It's like we need to have a healthy discussion with the corporate strategists about this and how do you look at it. Hopefully the people that listen this episode. We'll start up a conversation we'll talk about, like, does it just fit into culture or should we? Or autonomy?

Speaker 2:

You know how do you kind of look at where this could fit in, or is it truly an offset, like we did? For, to give the folks an explanation, in the Excel spreadsheet, we had compensation in there where, even if our score it was like a curve, it was like you know, in school, if you take a test and everybody knows the test is super hard, they might curve it by 10% or whatever. Compensation is like a curve. It's like if your compensation is really really good and ridiculous in nature, yeah, you can probably afford to have a low F score because you're like compensation curves that bad boy up to a C and I'm fine. So those are the factors you have to consider, and maybe bureaucracy is something like that that we have to throw into the mix.

Speaker 1:

We'll do a um, we'll do do a nice discussion on Monday in the CorpStrat channel and we'll run this for a month. So end of January we're going to come back to this and decide does CAC change or does it stay the same for 2025? This is an interactive adventure with the corporate strategists and you must get involved. And the only way you can do that. There's only one way to join our discord, which someone just joined yesterday. People join it all the time and we welcome it. We love it. We love when people join. How do you join Clark?

Speaker 2:

So easy it's ridiculous, like it's ridiculously easy, well help me scroll down.

Speaker 1:

Open up your phone right now Okay. Use your face.

Speaker 2:

Staring at yeah, make sure you're not covering the camera. Use your face, unlock it, or use your fingerprint, whatever you got.

Speaker 1:

Instruction's unclear Phone is on face.

Speaker 2:

Slap that phone right in your face, scroll down with your nose, use your nose, drag it on the screen. Just give it a little drag and then there will be a link. It's a link tree LNK T-R-E. Is it T-R-E-E?

Speaker 1:

It's T-R-E-E. Yeah, it's L-I-N-K, l-i-n-k, I think it's.

Speaker 2:

L-N. There's no I, it's L-I or L-N-K, t-r-e-e.

Speaker 1:

Hold on. Let me double check.

Speaker 2:

You have so many ways to verify this L-A-N-K-T-R dot E. Dot, E that's what it is.

Speaker 1:

Dot E.

Speaker 2:

You literally just click on that. It's the only link in our description, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

It is Well we also have the elevator music by Julian Avila. Legally I have to include that because we're using his music To me this is a 50-50.

Speaker 2:

Click any link on there. You're either going to get awesome music by a really cool dude or you're going to get the right link tree to join a Discord. Either way, click the link.

Speaker 1:

Click one of them, click the link. Now when you get in the link tree, there's more links to click, unfortunately, like you might link your way into getting the Corporate Strategy official baby onesie, you might click your way into supporting the show. By donating, you help keep the show ad-free, which we will continue to be until our funds run out. You might also click your way to our website, which you know is just a cool place to get the latest corporate strategy news and details that we haven't updated in like a year. So, yeah, it updates with automation.

Speaker 2:

Hopefully. Hopefully the automation is working and it's just staying up to date, but you can sign up for the newsletter on there. You can enter in a podcast topic if you don't want to join the Discord, but join the Discord. It's a lot easier to submit topics there.

Speaker 1:

I don't check email anymore. I don't check it. You stopped, I still get it. Yeah, I believe in community. If you want to reach me, you got to go into the Discord. If you want to submit a topic, get in the Discord Email. I do that all day at work. What are we doing? Screw, you Don't send an email.

Speaker 2:

Corporate baddies. Bruce is going into it. Baddie Bruce, get out of here with your email. What else we got you got to share, please share. Share with your friends, yes. Share with your enemies. Help the world in the corporate space become a better place for everybody. Share today, now. Hit it now. Tomorrow, every day, yeah, why not Share with a new person every day? Share with your kids.

Speaker 1:

Play in the car. That's a great 2025 goal. There's 12 months in the year 2025. I'm asking you, the listener, share our podcast 12 times in the year of 2025. Once a month. If you share the podcast once a month with one of your friends or enemies, we really don't care. You will help us grow to the number that we want to hit, which is 10,000 downloads a month. Is that right? That's the number right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because we're hitting like 1,000 right now.

Speaker 1:

So if we can 10x our output, the overlords, I think we'll really be doing something with our lives.

Speaker 2:

I agree. I was about to just make a bold statement. I'm not going to say it. Make it.

Speaker 1:

I'll edit it out.

Speaker 2:

You'll edit this out, okay, everybody who's in our Discord right now. If we actually hit 10,000 a year, we buy everybody a baby onesie. Send it directly to your home. We will never financially recover from that.

Speaker 1:

How many people are in the discord? Hold on, hold on, let me, just let me do it.

Speaker 2:

I know the number and I can tell you it's going to be potentially I don't remember how much the onesie is, it will be in the hundreds, near a thousand dollars for us to do that to buy everyone a onesie if we get 10,000 downloads a month. With or without child, I don't care. You're getting a onesie Gifted.

Speaker 1:

Could they opt into a mug? Okay, is it everyone who's in the Discord right now today?

Speaker 2:

Because if we get 10,000 downloads a month, I think Discord's going to have a lot more people in it At this time of thinking. The new person who just joined January 3rd well, they joined January 2nd. You're the cutoff Everyone there right now. If you guys get us to 10,000, we're getting you something.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Is there any way we can actually track who is who? I have no clue. We're just cashing checks. I'm not editing this out, by the way.

Speaker 2:

I. The reason I went on a solo podcast earlier is because I knew you'd have to do work If I didn't talk. I knew you'd have to edit and I didn't want to do that to you, so I just, I just let it rip.

Speaker 1:

It's not so I'm able well. Firstly, again you did great. I was really proud of you. I was like dang he's just really carrying the torch right now by himself. I am so proud. I've heard the whole thing. But you know, like you did good and it's not so much work to edit. Don't ever feel that I can't do the job. But at the same time, you know this is staying in.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, hopefully we can catch that check in the future, just like all of the podcast segments we do that we never hold up to. We'll see if this works when we do it in retrospect. By the way. Yeah, we got to do that. I think we do it next week, okay.

Speaker 1:

Maybe we ask some friends. Do it with us, give us some candid feedback.

Speaker 2:

Join the community if you want to roast us Open invitation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So we'll do an open call to feedback on CAC. We'll do an open call to feedback on the podcast retrospective. Tell us what you feel, hate us, berate us, just don't date us. I think we can do all of this and it'll only be in the Discord. So get your butt in there right now and I know you're not in there because there's way more of you listeners than there are Discorders so join us.

Speaker 1:

The math ain't mathin' we know, we know you're not in there. We know we know where you listen from. We know, yeah, is that it? We did it? I think we did it. I do think we did it. Happy New Year. You already did this.

Speaker 2:

We already did this. No, I want to do it again, though, because this is the first time we're seeing each other in the New Year. Happy New Year.

Speaker 1:

We can't do this again, I'm not going to say it. I refuse to say it.

Speaker 2:

You get one, you get one and that's it. First of all, you're the Grinch. Now you're not wishing Happy New Year and New Year. It's going to be a bad year. You really are going batty, bruce.

Speaker 1:

Why do we celebrate again? Why do we celebrate New Year in the middle of December? Why is New Year not starting in spring?

Speaker 2:

Maybe because in so many northern states winter is just depressing. You've got to have a break in between and this like gets people you know out of their wintertime depression yeah just thought just.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you literally had like three different religious holidays, that all kind of overlap in the month, depending on what you practice, and there's a non-secular version of one of those holidays too. So if you still have the depression, then it's time to go to a therapist, because new year's ain't going to do it for you. It's not going to pull you out of it, agreed.

Speaker 2:

Well, on that note, on that note make sure you grease those skids and happy corporate strategy 2025 New Year.

Speaker 1:

I'll grease the skids after you souped in nuts. That's what I'll do. How about them apples?

Speaker 2:

that's disgusting souped in nuts just falling right out oh, that's so gross.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to have to edit this out. I'm going to have to censor half of what you just said, because I don't want this podcast to be labeled explicit for the algorithm it's too late, we're getting cancelled. I'd like to see him try. Uh, my ears are ringing because of the cold, like there's a vibration in my ear right now. It's great. I'm just sharing with you real time biological updates updates are we still live?

Speaker 2:

yeah, we're still live and I'm yeah, it's still going and you're on mute.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next week.

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