SPEAKER_02: 0:03

How many minutes? We got minutes. We got many minutes.

SPEAKER_04: 0:08

Let's do 30. The dirty 30. 30. I'm starting a timer right now. Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast that could have been an email. I'm Bruce.

SPEAKER_02: 0:19

And I'm Corbin.

SPEAKER_04: 0:20

Yeah. And you're on mute. We'll see you next week. Man, that was a quick 30 minutes. It was a lot of fun. Nailed it. Nailed it in three. Um, Blackjack. Clickety Clark. How you doing?

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

Piggy's up.

SPEAKER_03: 0:38

It's the holiday season.

SPEAKER_02: 0:40

It's the holiday season.

SPEAKER_03: 0:42

It's the holiday season. So de-doo. Don't forget to punch your old pa.

SPEAKER_04: 0:52

Are those the official lyrics or is that the street version?

SPEAKER_02: 0:55

Street version is the official lyrics, yeah. But yes, the holiday season. I love this time of year. It's my favorite time of year. I've got all it, it is. It is. I've got all next week off. And I cannot wait to enjoy Pruma. I'm not excited for it. So I am actually officially done. I'm done for the day. I'm done for the week. And nothing happens till after Christmas week. So yeah, man. Yeah. I'm jealous. I am jealous.

unknown: 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26

What about you? What's life look like next next week? Are you just working?

SPEAKER_04: 1:29

Grinded? It looks it looks like I'm checking my watch right now. So it looks like it's chaos followed by a nightmare, uh, awoken by sleep paralysis demon. More chaos, everlasting existential dread, nightmare. A little bit of a reprieve on Christmas Day. Okay. And then I took Friday off.

unknown: 1:56

Nice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56

And then right back into the nightmare, chaos, existential dread, horrors beyond human comprehension. New Year's Day, I have off. And then I get that Friday off because I took that. Because I'm like, I gotta get two four-day weekends in there. Yeah. And then plunging right back into the fiery pit of spikes, blood, and existential dread as the year begins anew. The moon cycle continues, the blood drips from the sky, and Bruce returns to the office.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31

I love it. Sounds like a great time. Honestly, I heard nothing but Sunshine and Ray Bows with everything you just said. Well there.

SPEAKER_04: 2:39

It's all in there. It is a Clive Barker-esque life for me for the next month.

SPEAKER_02: 2:48

Everything you just said just reminded me of the Jim Carrey Grinch when he's like nine 9 a.m., an hour of self-loathing, 6 p.m. dinner with myself. I cannot cancel that again. Everything you just did was exactly that same thing. And it sounds awful.

SPEAKER_04: 3:07

I keep telling myself every year, um, next year. It's like that Christmas rapping song that I I don't really care for. Uh, what is it? The the the the waitresses. They're like, oh, next year I'll celebrate Christmas. But then she meets a nice guy and they go on a date and she celebrates Christmas anyway this year. I'm the sad version of that song where it's like, oh, I'll I'll celebrate Christmas next year. Don't worry. And then next year comes and it's not a guy that I'm going on a date with, it's just more work. So uh I keep I keep maybe next year. Maybe next year I'll do like a nice holiday reprieve and get some time off and enjoy the season. But not this year. It's not happening. It's not happening.

SPEAKER_02: 3:53

Have you thought about this? Therapy? No, never say don't do that. That's not what normal people do. Just kidding. I'm not shaming you. That's a great thing to do. Have you thought about this? Maybe you are the Grinch and all those things you actually enjoy. Like everything you just said was what you're all about. Like that is joy to you. If it was the other way around, it would actually be miserable. So maybe you are the Grinch, and this is just you for life, and you enjoy it.

SPEAKER_04: 4:24

If I enjoy this, then please take all of my appendages and nail them to a wall because you're gonna have to stop me.

SPEAKER_02: 4:36

You're just gonna have to stop me. You're convincing me. You're convincing me that you just love this, that you love everything about this, you want everything you're saying to happen.

SPEAKER_04: 4:44

I am not the Grinch. Because I I do love the holiday season. I mean, my favorite holiday is Halloween, and like I would love to be able to actually get festive with Halloween. I just haven't been offered that opportunity. So true. The hope is just like all those holiday carols, maybe next year. Maybe next year.

SPEAKER_02: 5:06

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. I mean, that's startup life. You're yeah, you're a cog in the machine, and if you leave, things don't happen. We've talked about if I leave, things still and not really happen anyway, but it doesn't matter because we're so big.

SPEAKER_04: 5:22

That's true. You're big, I'm small. And that's that's the choices we've made for each other. It is. You made my choice for me, and I made my choice for you. Did we? Is that how it worked? I think so.

SPEAKER_03: 5:35

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're a mean one. Mr. Clark. Mr.

SPEAKER_02: 5:40

Grinch.

SPEAKER_03: 5:40

Oh, you made Bruce work all the time. You put him in a sweatshop, you turned his fists to grind, Mr. Clark. You chose this for me, Clark.

SPEAKER_02: 5:54

That made me what I am. That made me feel festive. I almost I didn't get used to mumps, but I felt like I was going to. That's that's how that just went. I think we may need to do a Christmas album. Corporate strategy Christmas album.

SPEAKER_04: 6:08

You wouldn't give me time off if I begged you with twine. It doesn't make sense, but you know, I think we could do it. I think we can do it. No, but we can make the lyrics work.

SPEAKER_02: 6:20

A very corporate strategy Christmas. Yeah. Oh, I like this. Yeah. I think this is the next side project that we say we're gonna do and then we don't do. Like the book. Yeah, like the book. Which speaking of the book, you actually let us right into our topic. Oh no. All right, okay, okay. Hear me out, hear me out. You have no idea what's coming. You have no idea what's coming. I'm about to end this podcast right now. We're never gonna do one again. We've got three weeks left in the year. So we've got this, we've got three episodes, right? And the last episode will probably air in the new year. I thought, why don't we do this retro style where we use this episode to talk about things that did not go well this last year, either for us in the corporate world or for this podcast. We use next week to talk about what we did well, what we want to do more of, and then we use the final week to say we're going into the new year, new year's resolutions.

SPEAKER_03: 7:21

Do you hate this? No, no, no, no, no, no. You're a demon, Mr. Clark. You make me want to quit. I don't want to be on a podcast. I really feel like shit, Mr. Clark. How's that?

SPEAKER_02: 7:37

That was really good. That was great. This is I mean, you're just confirming we should do this because this is like this Grinch persona. Every time you jump in, is just it's it's making the mood. It's setting the mood right.

SPEAKER_04: 7:50

All right, let's do it. Let's let's let's remind ourselves of all the ways we've failed. Come on, let's go. Lay it on me.

SPEAKER_02: 7:56

Well, I would say we have an excuse. We have an excuse for the podcast. We had some personal events that happened this year that just set us back. That's back. Yes. Nobody knows about it, but there's there's reasons, there's good reasons why things happen this year. So I give us a pass. I give us a pass for our big goals this past year. And I think you should do that. I think you should look at life and say, hey, things happen, courses change, and sometimes you got to react that way. So I give us a pass on the things that didn't go well, and I was kind of thinking, I probably can look at work-wise, what could I have done better? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 8:36

All right.

SPEAKER_02: 8:37

Rather than corporate strategy. Because I was thinking for for at least us, I feel like compared to this year and last year. At least um, we're not gonna talk about the good, we're gonna say the good. But I don't think we regressed from last year.

SPEAKER_04: 8:50

I would agree. I would agree. I think you're right there. I like that. I like where I like where your head's at. So we look at we look at ourselves in our workplace and shame ourselves this way.

SPEAKER_02: 9:01

Okay, okay. I can do this. Yeah. So sorry for everybody that was hoping we would give ourselves candid feedback in Corpus Strategy the podcast. We get passed this year, okay? You don't know why, but we we agree. We're not gonna do it. We're gonna do it. We're gonna just talk about our work life because that's different. We didn't get a pass there.

SPEAKER_04: 9:17

Agree, agree. Okay, okay. Um well, I'm an angel, so you're gonna have to kick us off because I don't I can't really think of anything I failed to do, amazingly.

SPEAKER_02: 9:28

You know, I've been reflecting a lot on this here. You are an angel. I know. Me, on the other hand. I'm not a demon. I'm gonna stuck a clock. I feel like I gotta find ways to like tee this up more, so you just have to jump in with the like 15 sound bites of you just jumping into the Grinch.

SPEAKER_04: 9:52

I'm gonna I'm gonna write an entire song and I just upload it as an episode. Don't worry. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 10:01

Alright. Things I didn't do well. One, I don't think I worked on culture enough in my team.

SPEAKER_02: 10:12

Oh, interesting. It was a really busy year. It was like one thing after the next, next big priority, giant launches that were happening that we talked about early in the year. And I think it was just like all about the work. And what I've been thinking about, like and reflecting on CAC, Culture Autonomy, Challenge Compensation, I'm like, this year was all challenge. Yeah. Which is high on my list. Like, I actually enjoy that a lot. But I look at my team and I'm like, man, we did not make enough time for each other just to get together, just to get out of work, just to do things to build culture within our team. I mean, I have 17 people, and I think we only got together this whole year, maybe four times.

SPEAKER_01: 10:58

Like once a quarter, which is kind of sad. Do you know how many times my team's gotten together, Clark? Oh no.

SPEAKER_04: 11:08

Is it gonna be way more? Granted, uh, you have an excuse because you've got 17 people. So, you know, it's kind of hard to get 17 people together. I've got four. Uh, we got together one time this year.

SPEAKER_02: 11:20

Wow. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. Clarify getting together. I'm talking out of a work-related context, or you know, you're remote. So, you know, you guys just taking time to connect as people.

SPEAKER_01: 11:32

Uh-huh. Once? Oh no, sorry. If it's if it's taking time to connect as people, it's zero. We don't value that here. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 11:44

So it's just not on the priority list at all for you. No, not at all. I hope no one on your team has culture high. I hope when you hire them in, you're like, listen, you're gonna hate it here.

SPEAKER_04: 11:55

You know, I think it is safe to say, and I I think my team would agree with this, I am the culture at my workplace. So if you like being around me, you're getting the culture.

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

I don't know that it works that way. One. You say that, and yet, and yet.

SPEAKER_02: 12:19

Well, I've been thinking about it. It's like we ask our teams to do so much. Yeah. Especially this year, like more, more, more, more. Like every waking minute is work, work, work, work, work. We got big goals, like all that stuff. But we we only took four times to kind of say take a step back and say, hey, let's just have fun. Forget the work stuff. Let's just have fun. We're gonna go out, do an activity, we're gonna hang out together, whatever it is, we're gonna play a game, we're gonna do whatever, to actually just make time to connect as people, to build a team rapport that should build a culture around supporting each other, having each other's backs, seeing each other outside of Bruce just does this thing in the workplace. And actually, as Bruce is a person, and if he needs help, I'm gonna help him because I like him as a person.

SPEAKER_04: 13:09

So at least 27 times my team has asked me, can we get together as a team just to see each other? And at least 46 times I told them no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

You are the Grinch. I mean, this just confirms it.

SPEAKER_04: 13:24

The um we do have a weekly meeting where we get together and complain. I mean, and I do see that as an opportunity to, you know, really allow them to be themselves.

SPEAKER_02: 13:34

I mean, that's a start. It's an expression of emotion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 13:39

During that meeting, they're like, hey, are we ever gonna see each other in person again? And I said, You better not hope on it.

SPEAKER_02: 13:48

I'm convinced that you are the Grinch, and this is just in your in your being. You just enjoy pain and suffering, and you think everyone else does too. Well, you're just resonating. You are reflecting to your team what you think they are enjoying, but I can tell you they're not, Grinch. Let me tell you.

SPEAKER_04: 14:08

Uh no, I'm not gonna say. Uh, let's move on to the next one, shall we?

SPEAKER_02: 14:18

Oh, then and you know, I just want everyone to remember this was my thing I want to do. And somehow it just reflected on something you probably need to look in the mirror about like right after this. You should be disgusted.

SPEAKER_04: 14:33

I'm looking into the mirror. It's have you ever uh have you ever looked into a whirlpool in the ocean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So imagine a whirlpool in the ocean, but below the surface of the water is another whirlpool that's just an abyssal blackness that descends infinitely into a never-ending void that absorbs both light and sound. Okay, that's about what it looks like for me when I look into the mirror. Good.

SPEAKER_01: 15:06

That's great. I'm happy for you.

SPEAKER_02: 15:11

So yeah, um I need like I need to be on a call with your team, and I want to just say to them, blink twice if you're in pain.

SPEAKER_04: 15:21

And if you won't work, we have removed their eyelids because it's more productive when they don't blink. We just moisturize the eyes with drops every 30 minutes to keep gel drop. We're not we're not brutal, you know, we're not like monsters. We do use gel drops, so they get the nice icy cool mist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:41

Well, and then they can't sleep either, so it's even better for the workplace, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 15:44

Oh, you've figured it out. I mean, this is really how you ramp productivity. This is how you do it. Okay, next one. Uh, what else we got? You know what I could do better? Um in all honesty, I I really could. What didn't go well for me is I'm just too damn important and I'm not willing to give that up. Uh there's been there's been some opportunity this year when I could say, like, you know what? I could step back and let one of my team do this. And instead I said, nah, I'm gonna do it anyway. And, you know, like they would have been miserable had I let them do it. And they might have even failed, and it would have reflected poorly on me, and I would have regretted letting them do it had I let them do it. Because the expectations are impossible, and again, when you look into the void and you know how to deal with it, you know, it it kind of becomes a little bit of a relationship. But uh, I think I shielded them too much, I think I cared about them too much, and uh, I really should have cared about them less in retrospect. I think that would have probably played out better for me as a human.

SPEAKER_01: 16:58

Alright, let's break this down. On one side of the coin. It's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02: 17:07

You kept them in their little bubble, protected from I did try. Yeah, from mass chaos. You you protected them from the incoming projectiles, and they didn't even know. You're like, you're like the the little meme thing with the giant dude that's taking yeah, he's hovering over the little people, and he's taking all the arrows in the back, and they can't even see it. They're just happy they're protected by your by your volumptuous belly just hovering over them.

SPEAKER_04: 17:31

I mean like on one side through the face with arrows because I'm not that big, but I was there taking them in my back, just as many as I could. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:41

So, like on one side of the coin, that's positive. Like sometimes, depending on the chapter or stage of your company or situation, if you know what the result is going to be, sometimes you just gotta bite it and be like, uh, I know what's gonna happen. I've seen this these this hand play out a few times. I'm just gonna take it. Uh-huh. I could give it to them, and my leaders might even ask me, Why don't you just have this person do it on your team? And I'm like, no, no, no. Don't worry about it. I got it. I'm gonna take it on because you know it's gonna be pain. So I think that's actually that that's a good thing. But on the other side of the coin, that can also be a very bad thing because you're either doing it because of your ego, because you want attention, whatever it might be. And I'm not saying you specifically, but maybe the Grinch. I got it.

SPEAKER_04: 18:32

I'm reading you.

SPEAKER_02: 18:33

Yeah, I'm reading you. Loud and clear. But unfortunately, as a leader, in in bad places, this isn't true, but in good places it's true. Your success is your team's success. So actually, them doing better reflects better on you. So giving them the opportunity, letting them succeed or fail, not only gives them that experience, gives them that visibility, but they'll probably surprise you and do well if you hired right. And then it's just gonna reflect to be like, not just they did a great job. It's like next time you're in your one-on-one with your boss, hey, Kathy did an awesome job. Absolutely crush that. And then it's like you're crushing it, Bruce, because obviously you've been coaching Kathy up. She's night and day different than the last time I saw her. So, in a lot of ways, that's super important of what you said, that you don't do that as a leader.

SPEAKER_04: 19:23

Yeah, no, I mean, and if I'm retrospecting on it, if I'm being honest with myself, like I I can think back to things that I could have passed on to my team. And it is truly, I I could not put you know, t shirt size story points on that card because I don't know whether or not they would have been able to handle it. Uh, just given their skill set, what they're good at. And I think it's it's a it's a bigger problem in general, just because at a startup with a small team that is expected to do kind of everything, when you when When you can't do something, there's an expectation that someone can and does. And given the subject matter expertise of my team, I don't want to point them at things that are outside of that expertise to find them in a potential fail state. Because then that will just reflect poorly on them and me. So oftentimes I fall into, well, it's just easier if I do it. And that is a problem, but also something I do defensively to save them and myself. And I don't, you know, I I see it as a as a as an opportunity to do better, but also I just don't know. That isn't I feel it in my jellies, if that helps.

SPEAKER_02: 20:50

It does. I always want to know what's going on in your jellies. So I appreciate you breaking that down. Yeah, you're welcome. What about you? Yeah, you know, it's interesting too, because you know, looking at that, you could say, okay, you've got a team of experts, you're gonna ask them to do something out of their comfort zone. Does that mean you have a hiring gap? Like if you're always being asked for something, you have no one that can do it but you, like you probably have a gap on your team. You probably shouldn't be hiring somebody to do that stuff, or be more of a generalist with you, so you can use them as kind of a Swiss Army knife. So you may have a gap on your team where you've got a bunch of specialists when you need a generist. Okay, no comment. No comment. All right, understood. Understood. Well, on to the next one for me. I'll give you my last one. Reflecting. This one, this one is actually tough because I don't have a full thought out or understood feeling on where I stand here. Yeah. Challenge for me on the CAC scale is high. Like I love to have a good challenge. I always got to be learning. I get bored easily. So it's important I'm looking over the horizon and seeing what's coming next. Let me make sure I'm ahead of that. In a lot of ways, I buried my head so deep into that that I think I inadvertently lost like the joy of what I do in the end result of what I do. Like my head was so far underground. And it was just work, work, work, work. See, that that's the thing. It's it's something I'm still working through. It's it's almost like I was so deep in challenge that I never stuck my head up and said, what's the end result? What am I actually doing? What's the purpose of doing all this? And so I never like saw the fruits of the labor. It was just like move on to the next thing. And I think that hurt my mental state and happiness in the workplace. Because I never took a minute, never took a minute to finish something and say, all right, cool. Like, let's just enjoy this for a minute.

SPEAKER_04: 22:50

Did would you say your CAC changed this year? And and just as a reminder, I know we talked about this earlier, but just like a reminder, CAC, culture, autonomy, challenge, compensation, right? That's how we measure uh sort of not employer, employee happiness, but also just fulfillment, well-being, what you're into, how you like to work, where you like to work. It's a catch-all. Would you say that you've changed?

SPEAKER_02: 23:12

Maybe. I'm almost kind of thinking, you know, maybe, and this goes back to my first one, maybe culture should have been higher. And I didn't even realize that it needed to be higher.

SPEAKER_04: 23:23

Yeah, maybe on your CAC, you have started to appreciate culture more and challenge less, and have it factored in how you go about actually achieving that for yourself.

SPEAKER_02: 23:35

Yep. Yeah, that could very much be it. Because I I had a point I talked about on this on an episode, way maybe middle of the year, where I was like, just not having fun, just not enjoying it. And like, why? I'm still doing the same thing, you know. I'm still like, I'm still working hard, I got more work than ever. It's challenging work, I'm learning. Sometimes I wasn't learning, but for the most part. But it's just not not as fulfilling, you know? So there's like something deeply wrong with like, eh, I'm not enjoying it as much. And so, is that I just didn't know culture was always important all along, and it took a while to realize that, or is it just changing of how I view work and life and fulfillment?

SPEAKER_04: 24:20

I think as we get older and as we become more leader and experienced at being a leader, kind of like we talked about in one of the previous episodes, about how you get like that leader experience, the the peak have we peaked episode we did a while back, which I I really enjoyed the conversation there. But I think as you go through your various peaks and the decades of your corporate tenure, your CAC changes. Because if you recall earlier, an earlier you know, year ago's episodes, I really valued autonomy. And then it was probably culture, and then challenge was the least, and then you know, compensation obviously I care deeply about. But if I had to like rank myself now on a CAC scale, I would say CAC no longer works because I don't care about any of those things except for compensation. So it's interesting, and I you know, I think this is a phase, right? This is a phase of my own development. I think you're going through this too right now. Is as you become more of a leader and you you see the impact of your team and the impact of your leadership on your team and your organization on your team, you're realizing like, hey, culture is really important to help these people feel like they're part of something bigger. Like, challenges taking a back seat for you. And for me, I just don't want to do any of it and get paid more. Yeah. Different stages of career development, right? But you know, that's where I am versus where you are. But I think that's interesting. I think it's reflective in both of how we feel about what didn't go well for us, is like attacks not aligning with how we're living and operating in our workplace.

SPEAKER_02: 26:06

Yeah. In the true fashion of these last three episodes, they're retrospectives, but they often turn into introspectives. And so I think that's what we're doing. It's like very introspective of us to like think through this, think of how we're changing, and then that's the whole point of what didn't go well, what went well now. Like, what are we going to try to see if it makes things better? And so it's all just like iterating through that series to try to figure out, you know, what is that thing? How do I do it better, and does it have an impact? And so I think we're at the first stage of like just talking it out, realizing these things, seeing the signals, and then having someone to bounce it off of so that way we can take it into okay, well, so what well, like let's talk about all the good stuff, and now let's figure out you know, what can we do better? So I like that we're doing this. I like that we're doing this stage.

SPEAKER_04: 26:52

No, I think it's a good conversation. You've really got me thinking about how terrible of a person I've turned into. Uh, I like this. And you know, I'm I'm embracing it. I am the Grinch, I'm the Grinch of corporate strategy in the workplace. Uh, you know, we used to joke and still do, and will continue to, but that, you know, eventually you you you either you either retire a hero or you become an OWG. And uh need I remind you, OWG stands for old white guy, which I'm very much on the path to becoming. And I think my cack reflects that now. And you know, maybe this was uh this was like a swan lake moment for me. You know, when the swan little duckling comes out of the lake and it's like I'm a swan now. Yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_01: 27:43

That's you. I'm old, I'm white, and I'm a guy.

SPEAKER_04: 27:51

I think I might be heading in that direction too. Savor savor what you have left, Clark. I I didn't realize it until right now. And I feel like you're on the you're you're a little bit younger than me, even though you're my father. You you've got time to savor it and maybe even prevent it from happening. But it might be too late.

SPEAKER_02: 28:10

I need to fight it. I think it might it could be too late for you, but I think I still got time. I think to your point, I gotta think about how do I fight this every day. I don't want to turn into an OWG, but my internals, my natural instinct is going to become one.

SPEAKER_04: 28:28

In true Christmas fashion, uh, in the spirit of Dickens, uh, I'm going to visit you as a ghost of corporate's past. And I'm gonna remind you of when we used to work together on the same team in development, coding up fun little automation utilities all named after animals with weird uh acronyms tied to the front of them. Screaming Eagle, flaming octopus. Great stuff that did great work. And then during the day, we would get up, we'd go out, we'd hit a starby, we'd ride a frickin' ribstick around a local park, throw a frisbee, go into the lab, yank crap out of servers and whip it across the room just to watch it shatter. Those are your good days. And think about your cack back then, Clark. Think about it. How would that how would that change who you are today if you reminisce on that? And now I fade into the background like all ghosts do, and you will be visited on the next podcast by the ghost of corporate present to remind you who you are and how things are going for you.

SPEAKER_01: 29:39

This is an incredible saga. I would watch this. I would watch this movie series.

SPEAKER_02: 29:55

Nothing better than that. Nothing better than that.

SPEAKER_04: 29:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: 30:00

Well, I think that was the that was the crux of this episode. I think we we got to it, we had a productive discussion, and we had fun at the same time. And now I think we are primed for the next step, which we can talk about all the good stuff that we did.

SPEAKER_00: 30:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:17

The present. Let's do it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:21

Uh hey, Clark. Speaking of present. Is is the present the pro uh called the present because it's a gift? The ghost of Christmas present? Because you should be thankful for the gift, which is the present. Like you get what I'm saying? The present, the present. They're the same word, but they're different things.

SPEAKER_04: 30:43

I see that you're calling out the folly of the English language, and I, for the most part, agree with you. Uh, I I think in the case of Mr. Scrooge, the Ghost of Christmas present was really meant to show him the impact of his greed on those around him, specifically the Cratchits, little tiny Tim carving into his little tiny feast, because he doesn't have a roast feast. You know, like it's I think that was the present of the the ghost of Christmas present was the he was giving him the gift of showing him the impact he had on those around him.

SPEAKER_00: 31:20

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02: 31:22

I love it. Well, we will do that on the next episode. Oh, also because we have a lot of European listeners. Yeah, English makes no sense. We're talking about like present, like here now. But we're also talking about like present, like a gift, like you wrap it, you give it to somebody.

SPEAKER_04: 31:36

Like right this moment. We are presently talking about a present. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:39

Yeah. Yeah. Right now, we're in the present talking about presence. But not present. But not presence as in not presence as in P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E. We're talking about P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S.

SPEAKER_04: 31:55

Yes, because you're presenting those present facts in the present. Can you present the presence in the present? Well, the presence is the ghost of Christmas present in this case. He was a presence that showed up in the present of Scrooge's dream, showing him his current present. But it was also a present.

SPEAKER_02: 32:23

Holy cow, this made me just realize how terrible English is. I'm so sorry for terrible English. Anyone that is learning this actively, like, I'm sorry. That's tough.

SPEAKER_04: 32:34

You know what else is a present? If you go on our Discord, there's a brand new Is It AI in our Is It AI channel. Clark, if they want to open their present presently, how would they do that?

SPEAKER_02: 32:47

It's real easy, guys. It's real easy. Just scroll down. You scroll down. There's a tree. There's a tree, a Christmas tree, also known as a link tree. Where are they scrolling? Where's this tree? Oh, podcast uh listener of your choice. Any of them? In in Detail? In the show notes. Click on the show notes. The show notes. Click on the show notes. And then there's a tree, a Christmas tree, if you will, that you click on that expands into a list of links, and you're able to see the Discord. You click it. You click it. That's it. You just join. That's how easy it is. But and how do you get to the as a i channel? Uh you literally just find the as a i channel and you click on it. That's and what what will they see in there? You're oh man. This this month's is a good one. And we got votes fast. Like everybody voted in like an hour. Yeah. So is this one too obvious, or do you think that everyone's just wrong? And our one listener who picked the other one is actually right.

SPEAKER_04: 33:47

I I'm pretty confident based on one key clue. Okay that I'm right. Uh, but I would love to be wrong. I would love for AI to get good that I can't I can't tell.

SPEAKER_02: 34:01

I would love it. I would love nothing more than everyone being wrong. But I'm not gonna give any hints. I'm not gonna give any hints.

SPEAKER_01: 34:08

When that happens, when the AI has beat us, ooh boy. I'm done. We're both done. I'm I'm done. I'm done. I'm out.

SPEAKER_04: 34:19

I'm out e9,000. So make sure you join our Discord and check out the channel and vote on which one you think is AI. It's a fun game that Clark always brings the heat for. Thanks for doing that, Clark. And you can also just get in and talk about all kinds of other things. We have lots of people, including our previous guests on the show, in there. You can join the conversation, ask questions. Uh, you can give us anonymous confessions in the Is It Me or Is It Corporate channel. You can uh if you if you listen to the show, which who does, you can do a summary of that listening and put it in the what do you meme channel and uh we will describe that meme with our mouth parts. And I think there actually is one in there that I should take a crack at, but we'll do that next episode. We'll save it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 35:00

We'll save it. Save it. Christmas miracle.

SPEAKER_04: 35:03

If you want to give us a Christmas miracle, you can support the show by clicking the Buy Us a Coffee link in the aforementioned show notes link tree, the Christmas link tree, you can do that. Uh the show is not free, does cost me specifically money to keep afloat. So anytime you help the show, you're helping me and keeping the show alive. And if you can't do that, the best thing you could do is give us a Christmas present and share this podcast with your friends. Uh truly, if you work in a corporate workspace and find what we do valuable, funny, or if you just like making fun of us, these are all valid options. Share it with people who will do the same. And we would thank you so much for doing that. So much. So much. That's all we got time for. I gotta run. Clark's gotta run too. He's gotta go enjoy his vacation, I gotta go back to work. Uh, and until we see you again next week to meet with the ghost of Christmas present and discuss why uh what we what we did well this year.

SPEAKER_01: 35:59

I'm Bruce. And I'm Clark. Oh, that was close to my ears. And you're on mute. We'll see ya next week.