Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Of this streaming platform.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's Be Diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today I got an interesting topic. Our topic today is empowering success from education to enablement. And I'm so happy to have as my guest today Elizabeth McEwen. Welcome, Liz.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Andrew. I know we've been running in the same circles for a bit, so it's fun for us to get to finally do this.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: It sure is. How are things with you? What's going on in your world? What's new? Give us the story to teach the tea. Give us it all.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Things are good. I just got back from a trip to Orlando. I am a Disney annual pass holder. So I like to say that the Magic Kingdom is my second home and I'm just excited for this end of the year. Got a few trips coming up, some for fun, some for work and it's just going to be great to connect with some people and then end out the year in Barbados.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Wow. Well, that is a pretty sweet end of the year treat for you. That's pretty cool. That is pretty cool. A little bit about myself. My father was born in Barbados. So pretty cool that you are going there because I've been a couple of times and it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place for sure.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Oh good. You're gonna have to give me some pointers.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely. Is it your. For. If it's your first time going, I can definitely tell you some pointers and yeah, definitely.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: I need to know where the good food is. Like. Oh yeah, the authentic stuff, not the stuff that's for the tourists.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: You want to definitely want to get the. The West Indian cuisine there for sure. That is. That is absolutely a must. For sure.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Also the best rum. I need to know where the best ramen.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Oh yeah. So we could definitely tell you that. For sure. For sure.
So before we begin, I always. It's good thing. First of all, it's good to hear that you were having fun and you had a good summer and that trip is pretty cool and exciting to look forward to at the end of the year. So. But before we begin, I always have a fun thought provoking question to ask my guest to get things going. Are you ready for yours today?
[00:02:36] Speaker B: I am.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Okay. So my question to you is how Would you describe your communication style in three words?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Oh, that's a hard one. Three words.
Direct, empathetic and clear.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Oh, I like that one.
I love all three of those, though. Those pretty much go into great leadership communication, for sure. I love that.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And you put it and it came quick to you, so I really love that you. Your answer was pretty quick and not too much thought into it. So I love it.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: It's something I've thought about a lot. It's. It's something I've worked on a lot.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Well, that's awesome. Well, thanks for having fun with me. I really appreciate you answering that question clear and concise as your three words were given there. Why don't we start off with you telling us a little about yourself and your why?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, so I am the lead sales enablement manager at Citrix. I'm a part of a big team and Citrix is under the umbrella of Cloud Software Group.
So we're quite a big company and I have been there three years. But I actually started my professional journey as an educator and spent many years as an educator. I've taught everything from pre K to college and so spent 12 years as a high school librarian. So I. That was, you know, the bulk of my professional career and I really, really loved it. And it's just amazing how much of those skills have transitioned into the corporate world, especially into enablement. So I'm still learning some things about the corporate world, some of the lingo and, and how some things work, but I'm having a great time. It's been an awesome three years.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: That is super interesting. And it's kind of cool you're talking about this now because so many people are transitioning into different jobs and different professions. And what I love is that people are kind of realizing now that we can actually take a lot of the skills that we had from a specific job and transfer it to the next job. So it's kind of cool that people are realizing that they can do that. Not everybody is realizing it, but I'm seeing that there's more and more people that are kind of realizing that, you know, a little bit of adapting, but you can definitely transition to another profession for sure.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and for me, I was very worried that leaving education would mean I was losing my why, because my, my why was always my students, the community, the teachers that I helped, the organizations I was a part of.
But what I found is that I just have new people to help. So, you know, now instead of it being high school Students or college students or the teachers.
I've got, you know, my direct team at Citrix around me that we all help each other and that I've got my sellers, my partners and my customers that, you know, we enable. And it's just a different why. And I've got professional organizations that I've been able to be a part of and also contribute to them. So you don't have to give up your why just because you transition into the corporate world.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Did you find that you had to change a little bit of your communication style because you went from teaching, so you're communicating to students and then you now you're like, now you're a manager, so you're, you have to communicate to your, your staff. So did your communication style change a little bit?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: I think the biggest thing that I have learned is to be a little bit more concise.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: I think that especially it depends on who you're talking to. You have to change your style of communication based on who you're speaking to. So if I'm sending something to my director, for example, I've learned she prefers a very, you know, give me three bullet points and be done.
Whereas I can provide more details, more background with, you know, my colleagues as we're working on things. But I'm really learning that there are some nuances to executive communication.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: And, you know, it seems like the further up you go, the briefer it needs to be.
But then you have to think about what you're saying and is it the right focus and is that focused, aligned with those leadership's goals? So there's a lot of nuance to it. And I think that has been a change for me.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: I love that. So, yeah, I just love the fact that you, you know, I just love to hear people changing and, and adapting. And I love when you said, you know, different styles. I know myself, I've had managers who have certain communication style and how they like things done.
So they, they prefer to work on like a spreadsheet, for example, so that they can kind of look at it and we can kind of communicate it and see what go by that. And then there's some people that prefer a word doc. So it's interesting, the different communication styles, for sure. I love that.
So you are a lead sales enablement manager. Before we dive in any further, can you tell us how you define enablement?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah, so I like to think of enablement as the organizational function that equips individuals. In my case, that would be sellers, partners, and customers to excel in their Roles. And if we're doing it right, it's not only about their current roles, but about their future roles. And I know being an HR person, you understand that that should be the goal of any leader, to help prepare their team not just for what they're doing now, but for their career path.
It's all about behavior change and being able to help people through changes in processes, in tools, in platforms, in expectations, and using those adult learning techniques that you learn, best practices and instructional design and pedagogy to support those transitions, to support those behavior changes. And then it's all at the end about driving revenue growth. So all of those things don't matter if you can't pull up data that shows the causation between your enablement and your revenue growth.
So enablement is a lot of different things. But one thing I like to tell people is make sure you understand it's not just training. It's not just here's your course. It can be anything from a communication, a newsletter, a course, a video, any, a one pager, anything that helps people be successful in their role.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: And I imagine as the manager you're, you talked about training and so I imagine that you having to, you know, being an enablement, you have to kind of figure out what, you know, who, what different behavior changes are there and who might need a little bit extra help rather than not, or who understands what you're communicating and who doesn't and what extra stuff that you need to, to communicate out, I'd imagine.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So you have to make sure you're in alignment with the business. So in our case, enablement falls under our sales leader so that we can make sure our sales goals are in alignment with our enablement goals are really the opposite.
Making sure that we are looking at those sales KPIs and basing our enablement plans or roadmap on those things. Because you could certainly focus on many, many things in the business, but you have, there's only so much time that people are going to be able to spend on your content and on your communication. So you have to focus so finding those things that are most important to the business and then out of those things, figuring out what's going to have kind of the most consumption and also the longest time period.
So if something is going to be discontinued in a month and somebody asks us to create a course for it, no, there's no train there. You know, it's, we're going to put in all this work and all this time, get it published, send it out Communicate it. And then if that initiative or product is gone in a month, then why. Why did we put in all that work? So I've learned a lot from my current manager and director about some of the ways to prioritize enablement, because I feel like I was always the person that just wanted to say yes.
So I had people coming at me from different teams, you know, maybe. Maybe the partner team, you know, the tech team, the sales team, and they all want things.
And I just wanted to say yes. I just wanted to give everybody everything they wanted. And I'm learning with my current leadership that there are some really strategic ways to look at what we're being asked to do and decide if the effort is. Is worth the ROI or if the ROI is worth the effort. Right. So that we're not chasing our own tails, making our teams burn out and then not even getting that actual, you know, causation of growth, which is the whole point.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I could definitely see you're. There's lots of things to think about when you're. When you're in that position. You're talking about trying to help people. I mean, the first thought in my mind is people pleasing. Right. So we're, you know, I have been one, I've gotten better at it, but yeah, you also want it. You want to say yes, you want to say yes all the time, but yes, you have to figure out what, you know, what is gonna, you know, where is it, you know, what's it gonna benefit and that type of stuff and trying to use it, and is it going to benefit the ROI down the road? For sure. So I can definitely see lots of thought into each situation and trying to decipher what, you know, what would work and what's not. Right.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And part of that too, is figuring out what type of enablement is needed, which, you know, that is not something that I have to do in my current role, but I've done it in previous roles where you try to figure out, okay, based on this need, based on the roadmap, based on the consumption, the audience, do we need a course or do we just need, you know, a quick blurb in the newsletter or do we need a one pager?
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: So trying to figure out which triggers would help you, you know, figure out which resources people need is. Is a really important part. Because if you're going to put 15 or 20 hours into a course and it could have been a one pager, then that's a waste of time.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And then just figuring out the longer that it is sometimes the, the, the bigger of a chance that we end up losing people and their concentration and their interest and their engagement. So I'm, you know, you take that into consideration, I'm sure as well.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And everybody, my audience, they're, they're all trying to sell and, and that whole time is money thing is real. So if I can't say to them that this thing I'm asking them to do is actually going to help them grow their business, then they're not going to be engaged if they don't see that it's actually going to benefit them or their partner or customer, you know, depending on who's taking it.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: They're not going to be engaged. And really who wants to be doing something just for people to, you know, press play or fast forward through it or multitask while it's going on? Nobody wants that. We want the things we do to actually have meaning.
So it's really important that we hit the mark on what they need. And the only way we can do that is by being in alignment with, with sales goals, with the company goals.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: So Liz, in your current role, you manage the learning platform for your organization. Why is it so important to pick the right learning platforms and what are some of the best practices on this topic? I know we kind of talked a little bit about it, but let's kind of delve into a little bit further here.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's so many different platforms that a company like mine uses. Learning, learning management system, content management system. Some companies have PRMs just for their partners. We have a CRM which actually we use for both our partners and our customers.
And then there's even more. I mean, you can really list all kinds of things, but those are some of the basics. Right. For me, I'm managing our learning management system, our lms and there are so many things to consider. There's the technical side as far as does this integrate, you know, with your single sign on. So before you ever delve into purchasing an LMS or really any kind of platform, you want to work with your IT team and make sure that it's going to be able to support single sign on.
One hard way we learned this was we had a new learning management system adopted and it was kind of out of our control, kind of came from above. And then we found out that the single sign on we use for partners was not compatible with it.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: So our partners have to have two sign ons, one for most of the things they access through us and then one for our learning Management system. And that created so much complexity and so much work.
When we adopted that new platform, it was honestly hell. And so I am a huge proponent of do the hard work now and save yourself the crazy in the end.
And that's one way you do that is by really preparing with it, you know, making sure that you have a way to pull data, whether it's a data warehouse that they own or you own, you know, figuring out how that's going to work on the back end, how's it going to get into Power BI or using Snowflake, like all that stuff that is really a little bit above me, to be honest with you, needs to be asked. You need to make sure you pull those people in who know all of that stuff. Stuff. So that's a huge piece that, that IT piece, that highly technical piece.
After that, you know, you can make pretty much any learning management system work to your benefit, but you're going to get what you pay for. And I think people need to understand this. With all platforms, we all want to save money, we all have bosses that want to save money.
But if in the end it's going to create a ton more work for your team, or it's going to slow down the user experience, or it's going to prevent your users from even being engaged, are you really saving money in the end? So that's one thing, you know, really think about getting what you pay for. Do your research. You know, take a look at what Gartner has to say, take a look at what Forrester has to say. What are companies that are similar to yours using? You know, grab somebody on, on LinkedIn and ask them. And don't only ask them what they're using, ask them what they think about it. What are their, what do you like about it? What do you hate about it? What are your pain points?
So really, really doing your research is important. And then using, you know, the strategies of instructional design and of adult learning to make sure you are, you're focusing your learning on, on roles. Role based learning is really important.
So you know, you have Personas and you have roles and you want to make sure that things are targeted to the right people and that you have learning paths that are targeted to the right people and that they're easy for people to find. So you don't want it to be complex. They should be able to log in and know right where to go and see a path that makes sense to help them grow.
So, so I mean, those are just a few bits and pieces. I mean, there's so much more you can get into, including assessment, badging, low stakes certifications, high stakes certifications. But really what you have to remember is you have to involve everybody. You have to involve it. You have to. If you're doing something that includes partners, you need to talk to your partner team, you know, your partner enablement team, your partner programs team, your partner ops team. Find out what the partners think of your current platforms and what their pain points are.
Same thing with customers. You know, if you're pushing out technical training through a certain platform, find out if they like it.
And you know, we, I know that we, we've had some wonderful experiences with some platforms and others we've struggled with.
But one thing I will say is very often we blame platforms for things that are our own fault.
So when you take a look at a platform and they show you all the bright and shiny things that they can do, you need to ask the right questions.
How did that happen? Who supported that on the back end? Where did that data come from? If that was aligned with your, you know, your CRM, how did that happen?
You know, these things don't just appear by magic. It takes work on the back end. And I think sometimes we get very wowed by the pretty things that the vendors show us. And then once we own it, we realize we don't have the bandwidth to really make it what it could be.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: So many things that you said that have interested me first off, when he's just now we just said ask the right question, that I think it's super important.
If we're not asking questions and we're unsure, then that's usually when we run into problems for sure. You talked about the tech side.
I wasn't sure if you were going a direction as far as the, as first tech or as far as employees, but I could definitely see, you know, employees, if it's not something that's easy access for them, you mentioned earlier that they're busy and they have busy schedules. If they're having problems getting into it.
And in the after a while, some people have a little bit more patience than others. But I know for myself, if I was trying to get into something a few times and I couldn't get into it, I probably would stop trying to get on it. And I just say, hey, I can't load this, I can't get in. It's not, it's not working for me and it's taking my time and I have other, you know, other things I need to, to take care of.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: So, you know, I mean, yeah, that's true for our internal teams for sure, but the difference is with your internal teams, you can say, okay, this is mandated, and you can have a manager hold them accountable for it, you can run a report, but with your partners, you're really not going to be able to do that. And they may have 10, 11, 12 different vendors who are throwing content at them. We want them to look at ours because we want them to focus on selling our stuff. Right. So it needs to be easy for them to access.
And so I felt like that was a big miss for us when we weren't able to get the SSO working with our learning platform. And it's like that little thing that you never live down that you're like, even though I tried to make sure that didn't happen and it was out of my control, it's going to go down as like huge enablement fail in my mind forever.
But I will say this.
I went ahead and stepped in and did a ton of the labor to make it as easy as possible and create processes and procedures for our team for partner ops, for it to help those partners that were having trouble logging in. So in a way, it's a good lesson, right? If there's something that for whatever reason, you can't make work in an optimal way, what do you do to mitigate risk?
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Right, for sure, for sure. No, I definitely see that. And I love when also too, when you said asking people on LinkedIn, I. I feel like people on LinkedIn are always so helpful. So, yeah, you know something? Sometimes we're afraid to ask for help because we think we can figure it out, but that kind of takes a lot of time too. If you can't figure it out, if you're just taking more time. So why not ask for help? That way it's going to be a little bit more smoother transition for you and you'll be able to get to the, to the training a lot quicker and get it done a lot quicker, rather than trying to fiddle with it and trying to figure out how come I can't get into this. So I'm all for asking questions and asking for help when needed. For sure.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And that also your professional organizations can help provide you guidance there. Right? The webinars, the conferences, you know, just, you know, having those contacts on the back end, all of that's been really important to me. Being new to the corporate world, I have leaned really heavily on Women of the channel, the channel company, iPad, Achieve Unite, channel focus.
These people have been, you know, My, my eyes and ears in the field to know what's happening in the industry, and then they've also been there for me to bounce things off of.
Because sometimes, you know, yes, it's wonderful to work with your own teams and talk to your own teams, but you really also need to know what's going on out there in the wider world.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yep, I 100% agree with you on that one.
So what do you think, Liz, are some of the future trends that will affect enablement and the SaaS industry?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So I know everybody loves to talk about AI, and AI is already having a huge effect on enablement and on SaaS on learning platforms. But one thing I don't hear enough people talk about is that AI takes preparation.
So if you want, you know, to build a large language model, an LLM that has, you know, your company's content and, and, and the basics and, you know, maybe all of your product manuals, you know what? Okay, all of that stuff has to be accessible to have somebody create that for you.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: And it has to be tagged correctly. The metadata on the back end needs to match. So, for example, we have a learning management system and we have a content management system.
So if, if we have the topic of, let's say, partner programs, well, we need to make sure that partner programs is tagged on both that course that's in our learning management system and on, you know, whatever handbook or deliverables can, you know, exist in our content management system.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So that if we had an, an AI LLM you know, working for us, it could say, when somebody asks about partner programs, it could say, oh, we've got this course and we've got this content, and point them to both places, even though it's actually in two different platforms.
So the only way you can do that is by having good data hygiene on the back end. And we often talk about good data hygiene when it comes to CRMs and PRMs. And yes, that is extremely important.
But what we don't talk enough about is the data hygiene on our content.
And if you just throw a gigantic, you know, bucket of content, you know, in and say, okay, figure it out. Okay, well, garbage in, garbage out. If, if Your content is 5 years old and you're not, you know, auditing things correctly and removing things when they're out of date, if you're not updating, you know, the titles and the lingo and the names of products, I mean, you are going to create a mess that nobody will be able to use. So what I like to say is it's probably going to take. And I actually, I asked a CEO of a company that creates AI for, for partner companies, has AI for PRMs. I said, how long would it take, you know, most companies to get from point A, you know, to Z where they actually have AI embedded? It's all working correctly. He could, he said it could take upwards of two years for most companies.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Right. Oh, wow.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: So your company may not be ready today to be all in. And that's okay, I understand. You know, people are waiting to see that, you know, see what comes up, you know, in the top platforms and what people are using and what people are not using. That's okay. You can start preparing on the back end. You don't have to go buy a fancy platform to make sure your metadata matches. You don't have to buy an additional platform to do some data hygiene on your contacts.
It's just really important that that stuff is clean on the back end. And I used to think we were the only ones with this problem because I'm kind of new, you know, to the field. So I was like, oh, this is an us problem. And then I found out when I went to conferences and webinars, this is, everybody has this problem, big companies, small companies, everybody has issues with data hygiene, with metadata, you know, with keeping things updated, with governance of their content.
And this is something you can tackle today. You don't have to wait until the CEO agrees to buy you the $10 billion AI tool. You can start tackling this now. And then when you're ready, you won't have a two year ramp time. You'll be able to say, hey, look, we're ready, our stuff is clean, we're good to go.
So that's, that's something that I think people don't think enough about. They're so excited about AI, but they don't think about the fact that that information has to come from somewhere.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: And it's like I said earlier, garbage in, garbage out. You got to be prepared for it.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I could see the prep being something that is something that is very, very beneficial to anybody. I mean, it would almost be like, you know, prepare, you know, preparing dinner and you want everything hot, but you're doing the things that take longer, you do those after the things that you do, the things that take a shorter amount of time. So those things that are shorter are going to get cold, but the things that take longer, they're going to be hot. So you're going to have some things that are hot, some things that are cold. So prep is.
I'd say it's key to anything.
You may not know fully, but you can start to like. I love that you ask a lot of questions and to find out what could be possibly coming, you're never going to know fully until it's actually there. But actually doing the steps to get a little bit prepared so that you're not like, oh, my God, like something's thrown at you. You're like, oh, my God, I didn't expect this. And then you're like running around, you know, trying to figure stuff out. It's prep is definitely for sure. The way to. I agree with you. The way to go. For sure.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And I like the cooking reference. You know, I kind of started to think about if all of my seasonings were labeled wrong.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: You know, and the recipe said one thing, but the labels on my seasonings said another. I. It's going to slow me down. It's going to make it hard for. For me, me to complete that recipe. And that's kind of what happens when your stuff isn't in alignment on the back end. If your matadata doesn't match, if your data hygiene isn't good, it's going to slow everything down.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. It'd be also be like building a house. Right. We, you know, there's certain things that got to be done before you start building it. So you got to put the foundation. If you start building before the foundation, you're gonna have a house that's gonna fall apart pretty fast. So.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I actually think this is a huge business opportun. People that have the technical knowledge to go in and do this for companies.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: To make them AI ready.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: I. I think, you know, somebody's going to be doing this or it's going to be like an added service for these AI platforms and. And this AI technology they're going to have, you know. Okay. It's this much to have this technology. Oh. But we're going to charge you this much to give you access to our team that comes in and prepares your data for this technology.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: So as we wrap up, Liz here, let's talk a little bit about corporate citizenship. I want to know, why is it so important to you and how do you personally give back?
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think corporate citizenship is extremely important.
We need to be connected to our communities.
We cannot just live in our corporate bubbles and our family bubbles and our conferences and our vacations and forget that there's a whole world out there.
And Coming from education, it was really important to me to stay connected. I used to manage an entire mentoring program at the high school where I was for 12 years. And so I've kept involved with that by continuing to mentor myself, but also creating a scholarship that is given to students who successfully complete the mentoring program and then meet some other, you know, requirements.
And I think we've given away over $5,000 in the last three years, which I think is pretty great for a new program. I'd love to grow it even more.
And then I'm still connected to the literary world. Being a former librarian, I'm on the team of a books, art and music festival.
I've been involved with that festival since its inception, and I've stayed involved with it. So I help them, you know, bring in authors. I use kind of my connections to reach out to author friends and publishers and agents and try to bring people in.
And then those authors don't just attend the festival, but they go to the local schools. So it's all about getting those authors into the communities and into the schools because I have seen firsthand how effective that can be for students to meet an author face to face and hear them speak and hear their story.
I'm still friends with former students and very often one of the things they relive with me is remember when blank, blank, blank came. And it's, you know, when Jason Reynolds came, when Sharon Draper came, when Jeff Sentner came.
You're creating memories for them that can affect them for a lifetime. So that's huge. And then now, through Women of the Channel, I have been able to co facilitate their Women of the Channel book club. So that's been really great. And through that, we ask the author for the organization of their choice. And so when we have our culminating meeting about that particular book, we invite the author to come. And so far I've gotten a bunch of authors to come. I know it won't always happen, but so far so good, knock on wood. And then we, you know, share the organization of their choice so that people can donate to it. So in this case, we actually have a meeting this week with an author and they have chosen, we need diverse books as, as their charity of choice. So, you know, when we have the event, we'll share that link out with, you know, our, our members and they'll have the opportunity to donate just kind of to honor that author's time and participation. Patient with us.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: I love that you create engagement. So I, you know, it's so important when you're doing Stuff that you, you want to create like an excitement so that people like you. And you just said it peripherally here, that people are talking about things that happened in the past. And that to me just tells me that you created so much excitement that they were totally into it. And it, you're, they're going to remember that for, for the rest of their lives. And that's super cool that you were able, that you were able to do that. And I don't know, for myself, I would think that that's some, that'd be something truly memorable and inspiring for myself. So I'm sure that it is for you as well.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I've tried to transition that into the corporate world as well. Working with, you know, some vendors that are high energy and really, really good at what they do and honoring, you know, my seller's time by exposing them to people like that instead of, you know, here's your one pager, you know, so the more that you can do that, even in corporate enablement is great. I realize they're not, you know, high schoolers, but that's okay. We all want to be engaged. Right?
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: So good content is good content, but that does require some investment.
So having leadership that is willing to invest in tools that are engaging and vendors that are engaging, all of that plays a part in, in how successful your teams are going to be and whether or not they're going to hit their revenue targets.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Any final thoughts today?
[00:39:09] Speaker B: You know, we, we discussed a little bit about we need diverse books.
And you know, we have some big decisions coming up in the US I don't know how much of your listenership is in the US and how much is in Canada, but I will say this really, really think about access to technology, access to literature, and if you look at history and you see times that books have been banned and information has been withheld, it never ends well.
And so I know people always say, like, don't bring politics into business, but I just, I feel like as somebody who has a history in education and librarianship and technology, I am somebody who has to speak out for intellectual freedom.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: And I will continue to do that. And if that's considered political, well, then keep your politics out of my books.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: No, I, I agree with you 100 and I, I love that you, you're so passionate about the stuff that you do, the stuff you've done and the stuff that you do, and it's truly inspiring. And I'm sure it's inspiring for others as well at the, I'm a huge believer in passion. And I, I can sense and I can feel the passion of the things that you do and, and the things that you believe in and that's truly important. And I wish that more people had as much passion as you do. So I really, I really admire that. So I wanted to take the time to thank you for, for coming on today. I felt like this was a really good conversation. I really felt like it was an interesting conversation. It was in depth think it was informative and truly inspiring and engaging. So thank you for your time today and, and thank you for letting us know a little bit more as far as enablement goes and, and, and what things that we can be looking for for sure.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: You're very welcome. So on behalf of myself and my guest Elizabeth, I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to listen today. And until, until next time, be safe and remember that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything you have been listening to.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Let's be diverse with Andrew Stout to.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Stay up to date with future content.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Hit Subscribe.
