The Pursuit of Truth

What should you be doing?

Everyone asks that question at some point in their career, if not just over the course of every day. The idea of unique ability, which we’ve covered in previous episodes, helps to answer that question by evaluating what you do against four key criteria — whether what you do is a superior skill, something you do better than everyone else; whether you’re passionate about doing it; whether it gives you energy; and whether you can always find ways to improve how you do it.

But no answer to the questions of unique ability will help you unless you answer them truthfully.

In this episode of Expert Marketing Matters, Chris and Mark continue the unique ability conversation and focus in on how thinking simply about the pursuit of truth can help shape who you are, the role you play, how you work, and who you can really help.

You can listen to the episode using the player embedded above, or you can read a full transcript below.

Episode Transcript

Chris Butler: Welcome to Expert Marketing Matters. I’m Chris Butler.

Mark O’Brien: And I’m Mark O’Brien.

Chris Butler: And it’s just the two of us today, which it’s been a while.

Mark O’Brien: It has been a little while. Yeah, this is nice. It’s like we’re on our own little vacation or something.

Chris Butler: Although we’re in separate places, which is still a bit transitional for us in this podcast because we used to record all in the same room, and now we’ve been experimenting with being in different places at different times and getting the tech right for that, and you’ve been able to have conversations with clients of ours that are in far flung places. And so we’re still getting used to that, but I think it’s working pretty well.

Mark O’Brien: It is. And as you say that, it strikes me that one thing we have to talk about soon is the nature of distributed companies because we’ve learned a lot about that, and we’re still in process, and we know a lot of our listeners are themselves in distributed companies, so let’s ear mark that one for later on. But that is not today’s topic is it?

Chris Butler: No, it’s not. We landed on something that I’ve heard you say many times. It’s obviously a theme that is near and dear to your heart, but also I think so relevant to how we’ve evolved as a company, how we’ve evolved as individuals, how we’ve evolved as being able to consult and coach our clients well, how our clients are. And that’s the pursuit of truth, which obviously sounds like the headline of a philosophy course, but in this context draws on so many things that we talk about on this podcast all the time, that you’ve written about, that I’ve written about, that we’ve created content about in so many different contexts. So there’s a million places we could go, but let’s start with something that you and I talked about yesterday and we can go from there, which is many of our listeners are familiar with the EOS concepts, traction, that stuff. And within that world is this idea of role breakdown within a company, a visionary and integrator. And we’ve talked about that before on the podcast as well, and we’ve talked about how it’s been hard to perfectly align with those titles in different contexts because people are complicated, and people offer a lot of different value.

Chris Butler: We were talking about that because you were asking me, “Well, hey, I’m spending all this time looking at the company in these different ways, doing projections and strategizing and looking at some documents that you put together,” which in my opinion have been incredibly powerful for Newfangled. And I think you were just sort of openly processing, it’s like, “Well, should I be doing this or not?” And my answer was, “Yeah. Yeah.” And I have many other reasons to back that answer up, but one of them was, “Look, the person who’s passionate about this who’s right to do it, is going to be the one who does it.” And no one else has done it. So it seems to me things are as they should be, aside from the fact that it has validated itself numerous times along the way.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, and we’ll get to the point of what that is, but one key thing you said yesterday, which was really interesting to me, and indicative of just the truth of Newfangled, which is something that we’re all constantly discovering and sort of falling in love with as time goes on the more we get to know it, then you had said, “Well, given the kind of organization we are and how we run, honestly…” You were speaking for yourself, you’re saying, “Well, if I’d wanted to do this, I probably would’ve done it by now.”

Chris Butler: Exactly.

Mark O’Brien: That makes sense. That makes sense. Right. Yeah. You would have done it by now.

Chris Butler: Yeah.

Mark O’Brien: In this political context, what we’re talking about is I’m a spreadsheet geek. I love taking a problem, a business problem specifically, but sometimes it actually, it’s been personal things as well sometimes, but I love taking a problem and using a spreadsheet to figure it out. In fact without a spreadsheet, I have a really hard time figuring it out. Like I just need to start typing into cells to process something. And for some reason I start… Like I’ll pull up a brand new spreadsheet, and I’ll start in the middle of it. I won’t start like at the A-1 cell. I’ll just start in the middle of the screen, which makes zero sense, and I know I have to rearrange it later, but I just want it to be in the center and just start playing with stuff and start building stuff around the center and figuring it out. And I have to do that. I have to do that.

Mark O’Brien: But historically, and Chris mentioned visionary integrator, and traction’s very, very clear about you need to have one of each, and Chris and I occupy those roles, but not cleanly. It’s always been a fun thing for us to figure out. Well, you know, oh, that’s your integrator side, that’s your visionary side. And there’s tons of overlap. It’s not two divided lines. It’s more of a yin-yang kind of thing. It’s a mix. And this is something that falls more into my integrator side. I need to get into the details and to really dig into every single detail and to parse it all out and to create a structure around it to understand it.

Mark O’Brien: And that typically would not be considered to be a very visionary thing to do. But as we were talking about yesterday saying, well, an organization like ours who normally have like a CFO who just does all the numbers, and is a master of the numbers, and that’s the whole job is just doing that stuff. But I don’t want that role because I feel like I need to go through the exercise. I need to see those numbers. I need to work through every single line of them on my own to really get it and to understand where we need to head as a business. In order to be a visionary, in order to fulfill my responsibilities there, I’ve got to get into this level of detail, and for some reason, I actually enjoy it. And so that points to it actually falling into unique ability, which we wouldn’t have guessed. Right? We wouldn’t have forecasted such a thing.

Chris Butler: Right. And I think that’s where the pursuit of the truth is messy. You said, you know, the breakdown of visionary and integrator’s not clean. For some people it probably is cleaner. I think that in the course of our company’s history, we’ve all had to grow into roles by doing lots of different things, and that’s kind of unique. As the company’s evolved, we’ve all had to play different roles at different times. Some playing to really easy strengths, easily come by strengths, and some playing to ones that are hard one. And I think that makes for a fairly complicated breakdown of aptitudes and gifts and talents and things that people like to do.

Mark O’Brien: And it takes time.

Chris Butler: And it does take time. For us it’s played out over decades now. And I think that it gives me pleasure to look at how that’s evolved for you because, like I said to you on the phone yesterday, there were times where I think any of us who have examined our roles, yourself included, myself included, there’s sort of a defeat sometimes when you’re like, “Oh, well I guess I’m not good at this thing.” Especially when you say that in light of somebody else obviously being good at it, it can be a challenge, and that’s a blow to the ego. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s not. But the truth is a little bit more complicated. It isn’t true that, for example, you’re not as detailed-oriented as other people. It’s just a matter of context and why that detail is being wrangled with. Like for example, you sit down and want to figure out the distance between a vision and a reality in the context of our spreadsheet and that’s the tool that unlocks that for you. It would never be the tool for me, and I don’t know why. I can’t explain why, but I just know that that’s true.

Mark O’Brien: Even though, objectively, 10 out of 10 people would look at the two of us and correctly identify you as the much more detail-oriented person.

Chris Butler: Perhaps so. Perhaps so. At this stage of my life, I find it very difficult to even make conclusions like that because I’ve just seen so many exceptions to rules and lived so many exceptions to rules and seen people unlock the truth of their lives through exceptions to rules. So yeah, it’s hard to say, but perhaps you’re right. I mean, there are areas of integrator aptitude where, for instance, if it comes to working out the nth level of detail around a process, yeah, my mind tends to go there first. When it comes to thinking about the detail of how the company might look three years from now, especially in regard to some extreme detail around finance. That’s your world. Your mind’s going to go there way before mine does.

Chris Butler: And I think, you know, we were talking about why it makes sense in our context for a CFO to not do that as opposed to you. And I think the context for us is that all the softer elements that make our business what it is and that make our service what it is, plays such an immediate and deep role in that visioning and that evaluation that if you had somebody who’s divorced from that reality, which a CFO would be, they wouldn’t be able to make the same recommendations or draw the same conclusions that you would.

Mark O’Brien: Right. And one thing we spoke about yesterday was this idea of a CFO’s freedom to reimagine like, “All right, well, these numbers look this way and those like that way. What if we did it differently? What if we did this thing instead?” You know, that wouldn’t happen. And so that’s why I feel like somebody in active engaged leadership has to be close enough to the numbers to be able to imagine while looking at the facts.

Chris Butler: Absolutely.

Mark O’Brien: One thing that’s interesting, this could maybe come off to the listening audience as a little bit insular, I also noticed that at some points it sounded like an episode of StoryCorps. But I think this is relevant, and hopefully many people can relate to what we’re talking about here even though we’re talking about pretty specific details about our relationship at Newfangled. But as you and I were struggling and trying to figure out what our actual skills were and how they played in the organization, we fought massively and regularly and there was constant tension because we were trying to figure out what the hell was what in a relatively wide open situation.

Chris Butler: Well, yeah, I think that’s obviously what you meant when you said it wasn’t clean. There was hair pulling and kicking, spitting, scratching, biting. Honestly, there was more tension at that time in our relationship than has been since, obviously, and I think that’s wonderful.

Mark O’Brien: But it’s because we had to learn. We had to figure out and gain confidence in our own skill sets and get comfortable with the ambiguity of it. Like it’s not a clean line.

Chris Butler: Yep. You referenced a book about ego in our preamble conversation before we started recording, and I think part of it has to do with accepting where control is appropriate.

Mark O’Brien: Yes, and what you can’t control, yeah.

Chris Butler: Yeah, for you, for your colleagues. To sort of turn this outward for a second to the people listening, although I think you’re right, I think there’s a ton of what we’re talking about that based on our conversations with our clients I know is going to be immediately relatable, but I think that pursuing the actual truth and acknowledging it and then building on it is something that is required for marketing purposes. It’s required for making the right choices about how you represent yourself to the outside market and to your prospects and your future clients because there needs to be correspondence between that reality that you start to create in that context when people are starting to get to know you, learn from you, envision working with you, and then when they actually work with you, it needs to be consistent. The words that are on your website describing who you are and what you do, if they don’t actually correspond to the words that you use when you work with clients and the tone in which you speak with them and work with them, then they’re not the right ones.

Chris Butler: And I actually was just talking about this with a client yesterday where I was reading some copy that they had just approved for their website, and I pointed out, I said, “This tone is consistent, and it’s all well-written, and it’s interesting, and it doesn’t throw me off or anything, but it doesn’t sound like you. I’ve been working with you for a couple of months now, and perhaps there’s somebody else that this sounds like, but the people that I’ve met from your organization don’t talk this way.” And so it’s a rhetorical question. It doesn’t mean it’s the wrong copy. Only they can decide that. It’s their prerogative. But I will point out that correspondence between the projected reality and a marketing context and the reality that someone will experience working with you as a client, it needs to be there. And that’s true of everything we’ve been talking about up until this point. You know, correspondence of reality.

Mark O’Brien: Yes. And the way I so often describe Newfangled’s role and mission to prospects and clients is that is just helping you chisel away at the organization to find out what the truth actually is, and that’s the only thing that matters. All that matters is what the truth of the organization is. There is a truth, there’s always a truth, but typically, most firms aren’t very in touch with that truth. And it takes a lot of work and oftentimes, it takes an outside voice, an objective viewer to help somebody see that. Like what you just mentioned, you know, this copy that checks all the boxes, there’s nothing objectively wrong with that copy at all. In fact, it’s good copy, but it’s not as true as it needs to be.

Mark O’Brien: And we see that with our site, right? You’re working on a redesign of the site, and that’s going to lead to me working on some copy. And what I find, it’s always so interesting, whenever we readdress the copy of our visiting pages like the About Us, About You, the Services pages, that kind of thing, it’s a refreshing exercise and we do it about every 18 months or so. And it’s so exciting because it marks the passage of time for me because since we are an active, alive organization, the truth is changing for us, as it does for everybody and everything all the time. And it’s always so interesting to go back to that copy and read it and like, “Wow, I remember when that was true,” but we know so much more about that now. We’ve learned so much more about the truth of what’s actually going on in the marketplace. This is not it anymore, and it’s this.

Mark O’Brien: And it’s really fun to go through the exercise to see the growth and see the chain and see the deeper insight that we’ve developed as an organization by helping firms do this exact same thing. It’s enjoyable work, but that part of the work, specifically, can be very ambiguous because this is an ambiguous topic and there’s not a method, “Okay, you do this, this, this, and this, and you get this answer and we’re good to go.” It’s something that cannot be done on a spreadsheet. This is not spreadsheet work at all.

Chris Butler: No. Although the things that you put in a spreadsheet could represent a measure of change. They could represent the point a and the point B. You’re trying to get to. I think that anyone listening to this, the predominant message is okay. That correspondence reality of pursuit of truth of what’s true right now and is that radiating out through everything it needs to? Is it present in the spreadsheets I’m relying on? Is it present in the copy on the website? Is it present in the way that we interact with our clients? All those questions can be answered by some objective measures.

Chris Butler: And the question, back to the pursuit of truth is, “Have you chosen the right plumb line for you?” It’s in the context of spreadsheets and that’s been true gold, honestly, because there was a time where we relied on more monolithic systems to do that for us and it never really jelled-

Mark O’Brien: Right. No, it didn’t.

Chris Butler: So I think that’s pretty interesting, especially in light of the kinds of things that we do with our clients. There’s always that balance between like, “Okay, is this an objective truth or is this a subjective truth? Both of which we’re beholden to. Like, what’s the difference here and how do we actually ascertain that?” And that’s kind of a mysterious thing. And as you pointed out, a moving target.

Mark O’Brien: A constantly growing and evolving target, and that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. And that we’ve mentioned a number of times. Agencies, I think, oftentimes feel like positioning is a singular exercise. You do it, you’re done. You did all the hard work. That was awful. Okay, let’s move on. And then thank God we’re done with that thing. And that’s not the deal. It’s the first step. And the first step is, like with as many things the hardest, but it’s just an endless path, and that’s a beautiful thing. That’s a good thing. It’s positive.

Speaker 2: You’re listening to expert marketing matters, a podcast about generating ideal new business opportunities by creating and nurturing digital marketing systems and habits that have a measurable impact on your bottom line. This podcast is brought to you by Newfangled, a digital marketing consultancy focused on empowering experts to do better digital marketing. You can learn more about Newfangled’s digital marketing method at Newfangled.com.

Mark O’Brien: Let’s get into something else that you’d mentioned in the prep, which was the idea of being yourself, both individually and professionally and as a corporation.

Chris Butler: Well, yeah. So I think it does sort of work its way out like that. For instance, I mentioned in the same context that I was looking at the redesign of our About page, About Us. I’ve added some material to this page that we’ve never had before, at least not publicly, that corresponds directly to some internal documents we’ve had around core values and things that we share for visioning purposes as a group.

Chris Butler: And the reason I’ve done that is because there’s some stuff in there that has been true since the day it was written, that is something that we all hold ourselves accountable to every day, and that stuff actually has more to do with how we as individuals on a team plot our way forward than it does how we as this like corporate entity exist in the market. Or in other words, let me rephrase that, that the standard we hold ourselves to as individuals is to constantly evaluate something like unique ability, which we talked about in the last episode, to evaluate ourselves, what’s working and what’s not, and to hold ourselves accountable to the core values that we’ve articulated as a company. And if we’re doing that as an individual and we’re doing it honestly and we’re accepting the critiques and accepting the claim, then that will work its way to the individual teams that we work on within Newfangled to the group as a whole, the company as a whole, and then of course our clients. So it’s the opposite of trickle down. It’s the radiating out effect.

Chris Butler: But it doesn’t go the other way around. You can’t define the perfect public Newfangled, for instance, and then assume that that reality is going to work its way back down to the individual. I think there is a degree to which sometimes, especially with marketing, where you have to sort of declare your intent maybe before it’s a reality like, okay, all of a sudden we’ve evaluated our positioning and we want to move more in this direction, but the majority of our past work is in a different field. That’s true. You have to sort of claim that direction and then head there and know that eventually things will fall in line and correspond with that, but that’s not true when it comes to individual sense of purpose, sense of unique ability, a clear sense of strengths and weaknesses. You can’t assume that a sort of collective vision that isn’t personally imbued is going to then imbue the person. It’s not going to work that way.

Mark O’Brien: That’s really, really, really, really well-put. So the idea of really positioning our organization being comprised of the positioning of each individual based on their strengths and everything we spoke about last time with unique ability. We might revisit that topic because it’s a deep one and we sort of got the first half of that and then maybe we’ll come back to it again.

Chris Butler: Yep.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, that’s intriguing to me. And the idea of being yourself, and we’ve seen examples of this, you know, people who have worked with Newfangled internally, people we’ve worked with externally, even with ourselves.

Mark O’Brien: A funny thing that you bring up once in a while in a kind way is just like with me and the way I’ve dressed over the years. And dress is a manifestation of one’s understanding of oneself.

Chris Butler: Of course.

Mark O’Brien: And you liked to talk about, this is a long time ago, and I would wear Crocs and a golf shirt and khaki shorts, and I would come to work dressed like that in the summertime in North Carolina.

Chris Butler: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Mark O’Brien: Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just, I haven’t worn that outfit in probably 12 years. But I did, and it made perfect sense for me at that time. I was very comfortable in it.

Mark O’Brien: Anyway, people evolve, but we’ve seen lots of examples over the years, including within our own selves, of people not being themselves, where they are amazing people and when they’re just sitting down speaking with you, it’s flowing and they have so much to offer and they’re really smart and very witty. It’s just a pleasure to talk to, but then you get them on with a client and they become professional person, and then it’s like, “Who the hell is that person?” And as soon as they make that switch because they think they’re supposed to, everything that’s wonderful about them disappears. It’s like a gate that shuts. I think businesses have the same issue. That professionalization of an individual and organization is really dangerous.

Chris Butler: Yeah. There shouldn’t have to be a dichotomy between being professional and being oneself. You know what I mean? Like I think everybody has the capacity to let it all hang out at certain points or to sort of be more buttoned up at other points, depending on the context, right? But I think that when we talk about what is the professional manner of being in this context, whether it’s the way that you speak from a lectern in a public speaking environment or at a meeting with a prospect or with a client you’ve worked with for five years, I think that you should be able to be 100% yourself in all those contexts, and there shouldn’t be any masking or any donning of a false suit that goes on there. But that’s really difficult because the person observing from the outside can’t really make a judgment on that until they’ve gotten to know the person. But the person who’s in the midst of it can absolutely make a judgment on it in the first second if they have enough insight. And that’s what we’re talking about is the pursuit of truth, it’s not the pursuit of someone else’s truth. It’s the pursuit of your own that matters the most because that keeps you, honestly, exerting less labor. Like it’s hard to fake professionalism if you’re not feeling like yourself. That requires a lot of labor and energy.

Mark O’Brien: Lot of effort. And it’s a behavior that’s learned slowly over time, over all time, from the time we’re very, very, very young. And it’s very hard to undo. It’s involuntary, almost, as we’ve seen it in different individuals and again, organizations. Like you said the person who doesn’t know this individual on the other end has no idea that they’re putting on. They just come across as not very interesting or not very there. Very kind of stayed and reciting from a template, perhaps, that kind of thing. Right? And it’s such a shame when that happens because if these people who have all this knowledge just relaxed and knowledge would flow so much easier.

Mark O’Brien: And that can even point to this podcast. We’re guilty of this and have been forever, and it’s constantly a process. But we started this podcast, we were trying to figure how to do a podcast and we figured you have to sound like this or whatever. We all had our own preconceived notions. We didn’t really talk about it. We started doing it. And as time’s gone on, we’ve just become more and more and more of ourselves, and it’s gotten a lot better because of that. Being yourself is an incredibly difficult act that takes lots of attention and energy.

Chris Butler: Yeah. I would hope that anyone listening to this who became a client at some point in the future would feel like there was a seamless transition between listening to this and talking to us on the phone. And honestly, I do believe that that would be the case because I think that you have to make these sort of aggregate deposits towards your intimacy balance with clients. It can’t be done immediately on day one, but you actually do have to be proactive about it.

Chris Butler: For instance, the client I was alluding to just a moment ago about copy, that person is constantly making these little deposits, investments towards intimacy with us in little ways, just the ways that they write their emails, the ways that they talk, the way that they engage one-on-one. And I can tell that it obviously comes easy to this person because it’s who they are, but it also is a decision. It’s a decision somebody makes to do that and it makes the world a difference because, to your point a moment ago, that makes the knowledge flow. I get truth from them, they get truth from me. And I don’t have to spend 30 minutes of an hour long call level setting. I get it right away, and that’s because this person has developed insight as a person. And I would imagine that what’s true about that interaction that we’re having in a business context, I would assume is true in whatever other context this person is in.

Mark O’Brien: Right. If you were to meet them, bump into them in the street in three years, and you sat down to have a coffee or beer or whatever, you would pick up right where you left off because you actually were engaging with that person as a human.

Chris Butler: Yeah, I would hope so.

Mark O’Brien: And that’s so much more rewarding for all of us as individuals. It’s like your energy flows better, you’re more intelligent, you’re more interesting, all those things, but you’re also receiving so much more energy from the other person. Because once someone’s being themselves, that’s so apparent, and the other person’s more likely to be themselves. And it just creates this wonderful thing. But again, it’s not just at the individual level, it’s at the corporation level and that’s this work of chiseling away to understand, “Well, who are you in the first place? What should you be and what should you be doing?” And I just think it takes a lot of paying attention, and paying attention is really, really difficult.

Chris Butler: Well, and back to our context, this is especially critical and true if you sell knowledge. If what you’re offering to clients is knowledge and expertise fundamentally, then there is no conduit for knowledge other than relationships. Not really a good one. I mean even if you read a book you’re building a relationship with that author. Even you, Mark, just mentioned when we were prepping a book and an author that you’re really you said falling in love with because a relationship is being built. You could say that the book is the technology, it’s the conduit for the knowledge, but it’s not really. It’s that person’s personality coming through. And I think that that’s critical.

Chris Butler: In regard to a podcast, I was listening just yesterday to David Baker and Blair Enns’ podcast and they were talking about what they’ve learned from making a podcast and it was interesting that David, I think, holds them to a pretty high standard for how much chit-chat they’re going to do and how much personal disclosure. And they’ve said that at times they’ve erred a little too hard on that side. And I was thinking, “Wow, that’s a pretty hard standard because I really appreciate when they veer off course because I start to see aspects of who they are that I’ve experienced one-on-one, but I haven’t done the podcast yet.” And when I see that happen I’m like, “Oh, right. People who haven’t met these guys are missing out on this part of who they are.” And so I actually feel an enormous amount of freedom to go those places in our podcast and on behalf of other podcasts that I listened to because, to me, that’s just as relevant and valuable information as when they start giving me a list of things that I didn’t know. Discreet pieces of knowledge.

Mark O’Brien: And if you’re not talking about clogs and golf shirts, what are you talking about?

Chris Butler: Amen. Amen.

Mark O’Brien: Right? And since you’ve referenced this other author a number of times, I’ll just plug it here. The book you’re talking about is called Ego is the Enemy. And it’s part of a trilogy, actually, by Ryan Holiday, who I describe sort of as the father of the modern stoicism movement. So he’s just this modern day conduit to this philosophy that was created 2000 years ago, and he does it in an incredibly relatable way. And the trilogy, the first one’s called The Obstacle is the Way. The second one is Ego is the Enemy. And the third one that just came out that I’m almost done with now is called Stillness is Key. And they are all three, they get progressively better, and I find myself just highlighting the entire book. It’s like I highlight so much that my highlights are meaningless. It relates to everything with life, your personal life, professional life, all of that. Just taking the higher road with everyday challenges that we all face and having strength to do what’s right in tough circumstances. And we all are in tough circumstances all the time. Right? I couldn’t recommend him and all those things enough. He’s got a bunch of other books that I’ve also read and I do love, and he’s got various daily emails and all kinds of things. He’s incredible thinker and he’s very, very accessible, to me, at least. I think he’s incredibly accessible, so I’ll plug that.

Mark O’Brien: But this was fun, Chris.

Chris Butler: Yeah.

Mark O’Brien: Thanks for exploring this. I really enjoyed it, and I hope this was useful to the listeners. In our effort to be really transparent I hope we’re touching on things that maybe they’re not hearing from other people in their daily lives or in other podcasts.

Chris Butler: Yeah, I hope so. I hope this creates a desire for more, whether you get that through the podcast is irrelevant. I think it’s just if it opens something up for you, that’s the way to go. And I just think it’s so important to have other voices come into your life at whatever point and share a direction or a little bit of a nudge or maybe even a complete paradigm shifting wisdom like for you, Mark, you’ve had with this author because it’s what we assume we’re going to get from community, and it’s hard to get that from community in the year 2019 to be honest.

Mark O’Brien: Very hard.

Chris Butler: So however you can get it, whether it’s a podcast or a book or your neighborhood, whatever it is, or your family, it doesn’t matter. But you must seek it out. And I think that it’s very difficult to pursue truth without the assistance of other people, maybe even impossible.

Mark O’Brien: Well, right. Back to that thing we were talking earlier, the objectivity, it takes other people to see the truth in you and to hold you accountable in that way. It’s very hard to do that in your own body.

Chris Butler: Yeah, absolutely. I’m grateful that you and I have done that for one another so many times.

Mark O’Brien: Absolutely.

Chris Butler: In our almost lifetime of knowing each other at this point. And thank you also to the people we’ve alluded to, clients and colleagues and David and Blair. You know, all those voices have been in my head for so long, and the number of times we’ve referenced them on this podcast I think we owe them an official shout out of thanks. But thanks for listening and I guess we’ll be back next time.

Mark O’Brien: Right. Thanks, Chris.

Chris Butler: Thank you.