Hi, and welcome to another episode of Celebrating Small family Businesses. And today we are celebrating Shanai and Tywon Simmons of the Collective Wellness Institute and right here in Tampa. Hi, guys. How are you?

Hey, good morning. How are you?

Thanks for having us.

We are so happy you're here. So the Collective Wellness Institute, let's start by telling us a little bit about what it is and the history. How did it get to be?

Wow. So we're a group mental health practice in the Tampa Bay region, where we serve Florida and Virginia in the outpatient counseling realm.

I was a therapist for quite some time and decided it was an opportunity for me to create an environment for the communities that I identified to feel more comfortable. A lot of the community mental health spaces were notorious for having bad reputations of not being comfortable and not feeling welcoming.

And so I wanted to create an environment where our communities felt comfortable coming because it's already difficult to address mental health issues. And so started as a solopreneur, this young man decided it's time to scale and do this a little bit differently. And so we grew into a group practice.

In the current season that we are in, we are now scaling to serve businesses, small businesses and corporations because we learned post pandemic that workplace culture and burnout are highly connected. And we have a set of skills, skills and tools that can help businesses manage that in reasonable ways.

A lot of times people think that it should be left over to the insurance companies, but post pandemic, we realized that mental health is everybody's business.

And so we say at the Collective Wellness Institute that wellness is a collective effort, and our goal is to ensure that we can help individuals do that in affordable ways.

Beautiful and good prevention. Sounds like a focus on prevention there in terms of the workplace. That's wonderful, Taiwan. Yeah.

I just want to say everything that Dr. Shanae said, but also I've kind of got my license vicariously through her, you know, by being around her for the past 30 years and watching her.

We're actually going to raise your insurance 9%, and that's for corporations. So corporations now are going to have to figure out how to afford their insurance for their clients. And they did some numbers.

For a corporation, that is an average increase of $14,000 per person. How are they going to be able to Afford that. Right.

So we come in and we help these corporations create wellness programs to increase their retention, reduce their recruitment costs. And also it's a great alternative to insurance, which is obviously going up.

Wow. Yeah, that's scary. That's a big. That is a huge cost. And you mentioned, you know, retention.

I know that the cost of replacing an employee is also probably in that same range of 14,000. So, you know, just keeping an employee for another year or more would basically offset that increase.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Agreed. 100. The. The low replacement cost for an employee is $5,000.

And then you have attraction, right? Then you have attraction. Right. So you've got retention and attraction because we still know that there are many holes in the workforce environment.

So you still are now competing with other companies to be attractive for people to want to be with, be at your organization. And so that's the other element to it.

So if your client, if your employees are not well, then I don't think I want to come there because nobody over there looks good. Nobody over there looks happy. Nobody over there has balance. Nobody over there. You know, seeing those Google reviews, those.

Google reviews, they really. People watch those. They look at those Google reviews to see what's going on in the company. You know, how. What's the culture like? Right? What.

How are people talking about the management and the leadership? And if the leadership is not good and the people are saying that, then the people don't want to go there. That's. That's great point.

Yeah, yeah.

So how long have you guys been working in business together? So we're talking about, you know, family business forever.

You know, we all.

And this is kind of a side note, we always say that business saved our marriage because from the very beginning, we both identify this need and this calling to something greater than ourselves. And we banded together. We started off many, many, many years ago back. I don't know if you all remember Amway.

That was our first business venture together. They were launching a company called quickstar, which was going to be like the online version of Amway. And we wanted to be entrepreneurs.

And we really love working together. We don't know about other couples who have gotten married, but we got married because we like each other. We like spending time with each other.

I love that. I love that. Interesting the way you started with saying that business strengthened your marriage.

I think that's a theme that we hear repeatedly, that working together, it's Commonly thought that the family dynamic creates stress on the relationship, and it can affect both the relationship and the business, but it can. It also works the other way, right? The business, the working together, and what you learn about.

We were just talking to another couple, and they were saying, wow, you know, we really learned to respect the strengths of others because he can do something I can't even think about and she can do, you know, and when you find your strengths and you work to your strengths. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

It also gives you a common goal to work on when you're working together collaboratively, working as a team, something bigger than your immediate satisfaction in the moment. How many times do you find yourself, like, ignoring something that might be upsetting to you because it's getting in the way of a larger goal?

And so it helps to put things in perspective, like you said, valuing each other's strengths, appreciating each other as well. Because when you have to do something that you don't normally do, that your mate has been doing in the business, and you realize, right, oh, this is.

What you've been doing.

And it's kind of like the role reversal when daddy has to stay home with all the kids. You know, mom is out there cutting the grass. Like, we take for granted a lot of times what our mates do.

And so in business, oftentimes that's what you have to do. You know, the way that different tasks happen.

Managing booking or bookkeeping, you know, marketing, networking, all of those things really helps put things in perspective. Like, wow, like, you powerful. Like, you really. You really. You doing some great things out here, man. We appreciate you.

Absolutely. That's. That's good. And I just want to jump on that, because anything. It do not give to Shanae, right? You know, it is not her.

That's not her place of genius. Right. For me, though, that's kind of where I sit in for most of the time.

I was the back office administrative guy taking care of that, you know, the maintenance man and, you know, the repair stuff. Recently, when I got ordained and licensed as a minister and elder, we decided that we were going to add Christian counseling to the agency.

And so, you know, I'm thinking, you know, it's going to be a breeze, no big deal, you know, because I counsel all the time. Right? But then you got to, like, put notes down, you got to keep track of your clients and all this stuff. And I'm like, so this is what she's doing.

Like, okay, I. Okay, I get this now.

Like, you don't really have an appreciation, like she said, until you actually have to go into the space and have the same experiences that are had. And finances, like last year, she took over, like some of the finances and the budgeting, and she could tell you about her experience with that.

That's how time flies.

It seemed like yesterday, I'm telling you.

Three years ago, you went back to school, did payroll, I did accounting. Was it that long? Yes, sir.

It doesn't. It seemed like that was just yesterday.

When you did that, graduated. Yes, sir.

So. But we, we 100 understand that. And it's, it's that thing.

Instead of living vicariously, you actually have the experience, and now you can say, whoa, I get it. I understand. And so I think we both have had that revelation at different points here.

Awesome. Well, that reminds me of something.

We had a get acquainted call earlier, and I remember something you said, and one of our favorite questions to ask is about, you know, a challenge that you've overcome together that other family business owners might learn from. And Taiwan, you had said, I hope this is fair game to ask that earlier in your marriage because you're married to a therapist.

And so you said earlier in your marriage, you know, it was kind of like being under the microscope and you felt like it was a bit of a drawback. I'll call it. And then that changed. So can I get you to.

Yeah.

How much time do we have? Right. Yeah.

So.

Absolutely. So one of the things that I really learned was you have to learn how not to take yourself so seriously and in life.

And my wife, actually, who has always been this very stern, serious person, I found myself doing that when I would be getting information from her pertaining to growth. And, you know, we've been together for almost 30 years.

And so naturally the thought should be, well, she's saying this because she wants me to be better. You know, she wants me to do better, and she wants things to be well. And she's not saying it's to hurt me.

However, I have this guy called my little man that would show up, right?

And my little man would show up and really become rejected and feel low self esteem because my wife, in his eyes, was being critical or was micromanaging me and didn't trust the value that I brought to the table. And it made it difficult at first for me to see the gift and the value that I had of having a therapist in house. You're right.

Now, how many people get that as a blessing?

You have somebody who sees your blind spots and is able to help you navigate your emotions and is able to help you to self regulate and improve your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence? What was that right in the beginning of our relationship? I didn't know that. Like, emotional intelligence? Yeah.

What is this stuff? And so for me, it was really a time to process and learn more about myself.

I wouldn't have been able to do that though, if she didn't push those buttons and didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in education and learning her craft. And she's been who she's been from day one, since I met her in college. She's always been the therapist. She's always been, you know, the counselor.

She's always been, you know, the mother, you know, for so many people. Like even when we're at school, you know, she was the ra, you know, residence assistant.

And all the other kids would come to her and she'd make sure they.

Were in bed and time and they're.

Studying, you know, all of this stuff, you know, so she's always been that person.

So it took a little while, it took a little bit, but it really took some self reflection to really get that understanding of how God placed her in my life.

I'm gonna take this recording, I'm gonna edit a couple of pieces of it sections. I just need to be able to put on play periodically.

We can help with that. We can help with that.

We can do that.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Oh, this thing is being recorded.

Who knew?

Yep. You're busted. Oh, wow. I can so relate to that. I can so relate to that.

I mean, not anywhere near the same level of academic training and certification, but this lady right here, when we met, she was years ahead of me in the. What, it wasn't even called coaching, but we were learning.

Coaching, training and all the stuff you're talking about before it was named and you mentioned 30 years ago, I think that's about the time Daniel Goleman wrote the first. The book on emotional intelligence was in the early 90s, I think, anyway, so, you know, now it's a household word.

But I can remember those early days thinking, I need to keep this woman in my life. I really looked up and I still do. And she's. She's amazing. So.

Amen. That's what you said the first time.

We're going to cut that out and.

Put it on publicly every chance I get.

That's what you said the first time.

Like John, early days. Yep.

Yeah, well, you're better than me.

Well, we've, you know, we've had this, as we all do, but we. Yeah, the teamwork we've. We've experienced that, you know, we're again, wisdom out of the.

Out of her mouth way, way early on, talking about getting married. You know, we're better together, we're stronger together than we are individually. And. And that has done nothing but grow. And.

And so, you know, I hear that in you guys as well. Shanae, is it accurate that I heard that you're just wired to be a therapist? I mean, it wasn't something that didn't come out of training.

It came out of who you are.

That I would say so. I do think there's some element to how God purposed me to show up in the earth. I do think there's an element of that.

I would also say that I was socialized to be a caretaker. You know, growing up from a traumatic background, having.

Being parentified and having to be highly responsible at a very early age, not only for myself, but for younger siblings. It socialized me to take responsibility. You know, survival will force you to think at higher levels. Right?

You gotta figure out how to innovate, create problem, solve, make something out of nothing, all of those things, learn how to. Who's. Who's safe, who's not safe.

And so I would say that's what originally showed up, like when he jokes about how I showed up at school and I would go wake people up to go to class. I was in school for a major reason and it was to escape the history. And so I thought that that opportunity needed to be taken advantage of.

And I just shared. I just thought everybody thought should think like me. I mean, you know, and most of us do.

Most of us do believe that we think right and that everybody should think like us. And so it just happened to be a pretty reasonable trait to have. I wasn't trying to lead people to do irresponsible things.

I was trying to lead people to do responsible things. It just worked out very nicely over time.

I wanted to understand a little bit more about the environment that changed, you know, the communities, how it changed as a result of drug war. And that motivated me to become curious about people and why people change or why people do things and why people do things that are destructive.

And so. And then that evolved into understanding more about, okay, how can I use my gifts, my heart, my compassion to be a tool in our community.

I try never to complain about something. I'm not willing to be a part of the solution. And that is how I landed in this young man's realm. Right? We had similar backgrounds.

We were very Felt very well connected. And we both had problems in our histories that we wanted to solve. And so we found that we were able to do that most effectively together.

And we've been doing that for about almost 30 years.

Wow, that's wonderful. And everything you just said also applies in business, in family business. All of it respecting from college.

What I heard was really respecting the opportunity that you had and maintaining an awareness of that. The curiosity. Curiosity is our superpower as humans. Oh my gosh. And the resourcefulness. Resourcefulness. All. All of that is all business oriented too.

So all good advice.

Absolutely.

Wonderful. You know, that really answers the question of the challenge you've overcome too.

I just got something as we were talking here, you know, so I've been playing chess since I was four years old. Shanae doesn't like chess. She doesn't like playing chess. She's not interested in learning, you know. No, that's okay. No, thank you.

But she and I just got this in the spirit, right? She was playing chess already as, as a young lady, you know, all the things that she talked about, she was playing chess.

And so I just got that kind of like the didactic of that and it just became really crystal. So you've been a chess player for as long as I've been a chess player?

Absolutely. Life is a. Life is a chess game. If really talk about it and I understand the concept of it, right. Business is a chess game.

You gotta make money, you gotta save money. Right. You gotta generate revenue and you gotta be profitable. You gotta cut your spend expenses, but you gotta invest. Right.

And so that's the chess game. That's offense and defense. I understand conceptually, I just don't want to learn another thing.

I only want to learn, but I have to learn for what's in front of me. And I can affirm a good chess game and be an amazing watcher and not really need understand all the, like all the things. So yeah, I just.

That's just the truth. I don't want to learn. I know it's valuable, I just don't want to learn it.

You're a blind already?

Well, enough strategists like to live at 30,000ft. I don't want to live down here in the bottom. I want to be able to strategize up here. Yeah, Chess. He used to take so long.

I'd go and, you know, take a shower and come back out and he still hasn't moved. Or I'd go and fix dinner and he still hasn't moved. It's Kind of like, oh, dear God, just moved the damn thing.

Yeah.

So, yeah, same thing. We have a negotiation. We don't do that. We play a lot of the games.

I'm a classic overthinker. Yeah.

And our 10 year old grandson's been taking chess lessons at school for a couple years and we played a game and he said, pop, pop, you're not a very good chess player. I just smiled, said, yep, you're right. But wow, we've got so much in common.

Yes, yes, yes.

And I love that parallel. That's a, that's a really nice point of clarity that, you know, life, life is like a chess game.

And actually our mentor used to say, you know, life is a game.

It's a serious game, but it's a game and it really, it's really important to learn the rules and understand the better you understand how the game is played, the more effectively and the more fun it is.

And we take ourselves not seriously, but we take our business very seriously.

Yes.

And that is at least my motto. I like to have a lot of fun.

Absolutely.

It's interesting you make that reference because when he had said, you know how intense I used to be and it, I took myself very seriously. I took myself very seriously.

And over the course of time together, doing life together, his what can appear to be carefree, it's not entirely carefree, but it can look like that, that it's almost a judgment of view of his faith way of living. He lives in faith and by faith helped me to not take myself so seriously. And so now I'm a bit of.

A jokester, A bit.

Well done, well done. Well speaking for myself, I can't speak for everybody, but I've, I most of my life I've taken myself very seriously as well.

And I've learned that most of that was of fear of judgment, trying to be a perfectionist and not wanting to be judged. And, and so it's very confining, it's very restricting.

And when you just trust, you know, the higher power, you trust yourself and your connection to that and you trust life. That's gonna work out. If I just do my best, you can take a breath and have some fun and still, you know, get stick with the important stuff.

Yeah, that's very good.

I learned a long time ago, God showed me a long time ago that I didn't need to be in control and that when he was in control, things were going to turn out the right way. And so a lot of how we lived our lives and she made Saying that I'm the faith guy, and I mean, absolutely true.

At the same time, though, she taught me how to see things from a more real perspective. Right. Because you can be so heavily bound that, you know, no earthly good. Right. So she's taught me.

Yeah, I hadn't heard it said like that. That's beautiful.

Yeah, he's taught me that. Okay. Yeah, we've got faith for stuff, but there's got to be some practical applications to some stuff as well.

And you've got to be able to do things here in the earth realm, because how does God work? Well, he works through people. Right. And so you got to be able to do things.

And so she's helped me kind of do that as well, at the same time understanding that God said he's in control and I don't need to.

So everything that we've ever received, all of the blessings that have happened for us in our lives, have always been out of our obedience purely to what God has told us to do. And so that's how we've been able to navigate everything.

I've negotiated with God a little bit longer around this control issue. I love that conversation about that, you know, and so, you know, it's a work in progress on this side of the. Of the screen. But he is right.

Like, ultimately, part of taking myself less serious is relaxing in trusting in the things that we say we believe in and allowing those things to play out. Right. According to our faith. I'm grateful because there's a lot of things that I probably would have jacked up if my hands were on.

Oh, my. Yeah. So. So many.

We could go an hour about control, but that one of the distinctions that we've learned to make is the difference between control and influence.

Yes.

You know, what I can control is this. I can control. I can do this. Nobody can do this for me. I can. I do this. And. And how I respond is what I control. And everything else is influence.

I can ask you. I can smile at you. I. You know, I can influence you, but.

But ultimately you're in control of you and I'm in control of me, and that's where it begins and ends.

Absolutely.

And that simplifies life so much.

It does, it does. Yeah, absolutely.

John Maxwell. I heard. Sorry.

Yeah, yeah. John Maxwell says that that is what leadership is. Leadership is influence. Right.

Exactly.

Perfectly. Yeah. Perfectly said.

Exactly.

So what is something that you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?

Whether it's in business.

Yeah, yeah. Relative to your family business.

Sure.

Yeah. I wish I knew how much my personal experiences and the way I was raised and the things that made me who I am would also impact how I do business.

Yeah. And so, you know, I mentioned addressing my little man earlier.

I really had to get a better understanding of who I was and how I'm impacted by the dynamics of our relationship. Because we're talking about, you know, how good it is and, you know, we love working with each other. It's not easy. It's simple.

It's not very easy, though. And so we have a lot of meetings. And one of the things that I had to learn is how to take off hats.

A very, very prominent guy who was my mentor and I worked for a company many years ago named Ken Colgan. Maybe he'll get this video in the midst of this. I contribute and attribute a lot of my growth to my time with Ken.

And he one day was trying to figure out how he needed to say something to me, right? Because I'm. I'm a new guy in the company and he's trying to tell me something corrective and he needs to address me on something.

And I go, hey, Ken, look, I'm from New York. Just say what you need to say. And he looks at me and he goes like this. He goes. He goes, you know what? Why don't we do this?

We're building a relationship here and a friendship here. Why don't we talk about it in terms of hats? So when I need to talk to you in ITS business, I'm going to tell you I'm going to put on my VP hat.

And when we're having discussions, when we're talking collegial as friends, we'll put on our friend hat. How does that sound? And I'm like, hey, you know, that's good. Let's do that.

And that really helped me in our business to internally be able to shift what we're talking about and be able to move on to something with it not greatly impacting our conversation at home. Right.

And the things that we do at home, sometimes easier than others, because in family business, you take your business home a lot and, you know, then you go to work and you still do a business. And I think we all could get better at separating, you know, those lines and drawing those boundaries. But ultimately, though, that's the.

For me, that was one of the biggest things that it taught me was when I'm in business, I'm in business and do my best to show up there when we're in relationship, that's you Know, from home or you're going on a date, you know, do your best to keep the date.

The date.

And as Sinead has started saying earlier, keep the main thing. The main thing. Right. And the other things are on the back burner.

Yeah, we knew somebody. They even had hats made that, you know, mom hat, boss hat.

Right, yes.

And so when. When their kids would walk into the office, she would have one or the other on and they would know who they were talking to.

And then they did that, and then, you know, when it was time, she switched to the other one, and then everybody was clear. But communication, right? Absolutely, communication.

And we're just having those made as a. As a visual reference, you know, just. Okay, look. Yeah, we're switching context.

So you're talking about context, you know, the context of the conversation. And. And that the shift in the internal shift that takes place with that awareness, you know, just like establishing a purpose.

Because she's the boss for our company. Right. And I'm a boss at home. Right. You know, so from. From an accountability, you know. You know, God says, you know, I'm.

The head and everything like that.

So when we're at work, though, she's the CEO, and so she gets to make the final decision. And, you know, that could be really challenging for men to, you know, to have to be submitted to their wife.

If you don't have the maturity and submit to the. The hat and understand it's not personal. Right, right. We got to do business here. She has to make decisions and choices here.

And when we get into other arenas, I'm in charge of that, and the same thing happens. Right. So it's not. It's not something that's easy. Simple but not easy. But we work through it all the time.

It's. Yeah, you're always. You're always refining, always clarifying, always rediscovering or discovering more about who you are. And that's one of the.

You said it, but I want to make sure we underscore it for whoever's listening in the future. And that was that you discovered that the personal growth that the business. The growth of the business was.

I'm paraphrasing into my words, but tell me if I'm accurate. The growth of the business is somewhat dependent on the personal growth of the owner. That's right, absolutely. You have to grow first.

Yeah, 100%.

Absolutely.

Because we. We promote in our business that. That is, you know, if you want to. If you want to do use high leverage.

If you want to, you know, put a dollar in and get $10 of value back out. Work on the personal growth of the owner rather than, rather than trying to fix something in the website message.

Right?

Yeah.

Because that's going to be influenced by the owner anyway.

How you see yourself, how you see your business, how you see your responsibility, that's going to translate into anything you put out in the, in the community by way of marketing or branding anyway. So if you, if you're not. Well, we say this all the time. In order to have anything healthy, the parts of it have to be healthy. Right.

We're making a cake and you got raw, nasty eggs, rotten eggs. That's not going to be good. Right. And so the same thing is true, whether it be in marriage, where people come from marriage counseling.

We talk about you have to be individually healthy in order for this union to be healthy. So there are times that we send people like, you both need to go get individual counseling, then come back and let's do couples work.

The same thing is true in business. If, and this is why roles can change at times. Right. Like if some people, someone could get sick, someone could need to go.

He went and got his master's mba. That's going to help the business. Right. So the growth, the individual growth of the individual is absolutely essential for the business growth.

Yay.

Amen.

That's right.

Because especially entrepreneurs lose that because they're so busy hustling and thinking that they've got to, you know, just one more customer or just one more dollar, just one more whatever, forgetting themselves in the whole process. And that if. Yeah. And if they're not healthy, the business is not going to be healthy.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And part of that, I think, because I was thinking about the last question, part of that is the community that you're around, you know, having, having other accountability outside of the business to kind of help you recognize. Like, I don't, I think you're off on that. Or when's the last time. Day off or every time we supposed to connect.

You can't, because you, you know, when are you going to stop working in the business and start working on the business? Or you know what you might need to stop working on and get back in because you, you got to tweak some things in there. Something's not right.

That comes from people who understand the nuances of business and are and are in good enough relationship with you. Right. To, to have that kind of conversation.

I think it's incredibly important to nurture our community where people can actually help you see high level because when you're thinking by yourself, you're strategizing by yourself. We all think the way we think is right, but there's the blind spots. Once again, the blind spots can sneak up and really hurt your business.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I call that breathing your own exhaust.

I like that.

Good.

I like that.

We don't have to use that.

Yeah, I'm gonna use that one.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I like that. That's good. That's good.

Or believing my own bull.

And that comes. That really reflects back to what you were saying in terms of the growth. It ties back to the growth.

Part of that growth is embracing feedback, getting to a place where you can hear that as information, as data, and not as judgment, and then seek it, you know, build that community of people.

Like, we've got friends that, you know, just getting to know people over time, certain friends, they will ask these probing questions, you know, and it's right on the edge of uncomfortable. It's like, wow. And they, you know, but they're genuinely curious and they genuinely care, and that comes across and that matters.

It makes the difference.

And we think differently because of those questions. You know, it's a great disruptor to say, oh, wait a minute.

Whoa.

Never thought about it like that. Let's do that again.

Yeah, we, you know, we. We have a couple that does that for us, and we used to spend a lot more time with them.

Even when we haven't spent, we could be out of pocket for a year or two years. And then as soon as we get back together, Jim and Martha bringing Verge, I work for him.

Immediately, Jim starts firing away these questions about, okay, well, you know, what are you guys doing? Well, you know, how did you believe that? What's going on with that? And he immediately puts us in that accountability mode of evaluating.

Okay, well, whoa. I don't know, Jim. We didn't think about that. You know, it's that. And we love them so dearly because they have been that for us ever since we.

We developed our relationship. So as you were talking about, you know, your earbuds, I was really thinking about, who's that for us.

And I thought you were talking about somebody else.

Did you. Who did you think I was otherwise?

The cunning.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, that's. That's a whole nother story, but yeah, absolutely.

And isn't it nice, too, to have those other people that see aspects that you cannot see? Because we all have our blind spots. Even as perfect as I am, I have a few blind spots.

Exactly, exactly.

So you know, it's, you know, and sometimes I don't take it well from somebody.

There you go. Agree.

John.

John is going to agree with you. He disagree. Yes. Yes.

And everybody needs an accountability partner.

No room.

Everybody needs. And, and even. Especially I even think, especially coaches.

Absolutely.

Because we do, you know, because we get in a. In our own little lane and we think sometimes we forget that the lane is not this way. It's this way.

Yeah.

So cool.

Well, we are. This has been so much fun and we're getting close to our time. I want to ask, what's next for your institute? Sorry, what's the next.

What are you excited about? What's coming up?

So we are actively building our product line for the corporate wellness initiative that's current and active. I would say what is next would be our digital products that allow us to build a different revenue stream that doesn't require our physical presence.

And so diversifying as a business owner is important. The economy is incredibly interesting these days and that 9% increase, I wasn't aware of that. That was news for me.

So it is incredibly important to us that we are giving back to our community and that we are filling in gaps. We've always looked for ways to fill in gaps and to continue to demystify and destigmatize the topic of mental wellness.

And so the way that we are doing that now, our next is looking at the ways that allow us to get a wider. A wider reach. And so it will require us to have some digital products.

Okay. I love that. Yeah.

Because it's good for the business, but it's also increasing your impact because you reach a wider audience and in a way you can kind of prepare people. You can start building that foundation that people need.

Like you were talking about the couple, you know, you each need to get individual before you can prepare, do some of that pre work so that when they do then connect with you one on one, they get much more faster.

Absolutely.

And so just to kind of echo what Shanae said differently, you know, we're looking for contracts, we're looking for opportunities to come in and help corporations and small businesses and non profits keep their good people. Right. Because mental health, we, we understand that it's kind of a buzzword now and everyone is addressing their mental health and we want to do it.

And when we have these conversations about mental health, a lot of people are thinking mental illness.

So to Shanae's point, we really want to help them make the clear distinction of what mental health is, how they can actually add it as a value add in their corporation so that they can make sure that their folks are not bringing what's going on outside of their office into the office. And if they are bringing it in there, there's something in place to make sure that it doesn't impact that bottom line.

Because it's a lot less expensive to keep your good employees than it is to have to hire new ones to retreat them.

I love the mention of buzzword because those are things that become so commonly used that they lose their meaning or that so many people assign their own meaning to it that nobody really knows what they're talking about. But we're all using the same word. And so bringing that back and clarifying and saying this is what this really means.

Yeah.

Super, super important. Thank you so much. Any last words of wisdom for family business owners before we say goodbye? For now?

I'll start. I'll say it's the toughest, most challenging, most rewarding and self processing experience that you will ever have.

Proverbs 13 and 22 says a wise man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. And so it's also where you have the foundation for legacy.

And you know, that was something that we've always talked about, is building legacy and developing. Developing something that a generation, two generations from now can stand on its own merits because of the work that we put in. So keep working hard.

Know that although it's a challenge, that there's great rewards.

I will say piggybacking it is difficult and it's important to recognize that. And so part of being able to retain your tenacity is being able to connect and be refueled.

And one of the best ways to do that is to find your community.

I think that something like your podcast, Celebrating a Small Family Business Podcast is a great way to find community, to be reinforced and fortified in this work because it's necessary. Most people don't realize it's the small businesses that really sustain the economy, not the large corporations, the small business.

And so in order to do that, we need staying power. And this one of the ways that we can have our staying power is by being in community.

And I greatly appreciate you all for what you're doing the podcast because it is a way that people can affordably stay in community because sometimes your community is not necessarily geographically defined.

Right? Yeah, that's true.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You nailed it. As far as what we're hoping that this podcast does and becomes, thank you.

Absolutely.

Wow.

Well, we will look forward very much. We'll make sure that we let people know how to find you and reach you in the Tampa Bay area and Virginia.

Thank you for Virginia, by the way. We know several up there that need some help.

Absolutely. Our pleasure.

So we will. We'll stay in touch and yes, maybe we'll circle back at a future, future date and have another episode.

Oh, absolutely. We'd love to do that. We so appreciate you guys and all the work that you're doing for. For small businesses. It's amazing.

Thanks so much for having us on.

And if you ever got. If you ever need a place to host your meetings, our location is Mailbox. We do have a community room.

Did not.

We did a community that you can meet at. Coffee is complimentary and we've got great parking and a beautiful water view.

And for the techies? Yeah, for the techies. We've got a green screen in there. We've got a projector and a whiteboard.

So, I mean, we've got all that text up in there as well.

See, right away my training brain and my tech went right into. Wow.

You could also use some of that for upskilling people that want to learn new skills or practice doing some of that stuff and do some training sessions, workshops.

It's our training room. It's often rented out for like ccr. Someone just taught enneagrams, like coaches. People do those kinds. Someone just did their workshops.

There we had somebody do and create crypto digital content. There we had somebody who's in the videography business, somebody who taught cryptocurrency. And so it's a great space for about 20 or under.

It's well located in the middle of the Tampa area, right outside of Loose.

I'm so glad that came up.

Thank you.

I see collaboration in our future.

Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you again. This has been so much fun. We appreciate all you do. And talk soon.

Yes, sir. All right, we're. Bye.