Enhancing communication through positivity, gratitude and mindfulness

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire appears as a guest on Carl Richards's Speaking of Speaking podcast!

What if the secret to enhancing your professional communication lies in positivity and gratitude? That's the intriguing premise we explore in this thought-provoking conversation between Carl Richards and Jeffrey A. McGuire, a professional musician and communication expert. Drawing from his unique experiences traversing the music and business worlds, jam shares insights into the transformative power of positive communication.

The episode takes a look at Positive Psychology, shining a light on its practical application in fostering empathetic, clear, and trust-building communication. We discuss the unique communication framework built around these principles used at Open Strategy Partners, and how it has empowered us to build thriving relationships with our clients. Listen in as we unpack the importance of a positive work culture and the power of gratitude statements in shaping these interactions.

Finally, we take a deep-dive into the realm of mindful communication. We talk about how mindfulness can influence the impact of our words, especially when engaging with a technical audience. Prioritizing mental health and self-care, particularly under the pressure of tight deadlines, is another resonant theme explored in this episode. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a new perspective on how positivity, gratitude, and mindful communication can improve your personal and professional life.

More Speaking of Speaking here: https://speakingofspeaking.buzzsprout.com/

Welcome to the Open Strategy Partners podcast, "Communicate, Connect, Grow!" At Open Strategy Partners, we specialize in strategic product communication. We help you communicate the value of what you do, connect you with the people who need to know about it, and grow.

To get in touch with us, follow what we’re doing, or learn about our Writer Enablement Workshops, you can:

• Go to our website
• Email us at hello@openstrategypartners.com
• Hit us up on Twitter
• Subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts

Transcript

Carl Richards: 0:07

Hi, i'm Carl from OSP and this is Communicate Connect Grow the OSP podcast. We divide our episodes across three themes Communicate, Connect and Grow. This is a Connect episode where we share a bit behind the scenes of how we embrace positivity and gratitude here at OSP. Jam sits down with one of our members of the OSP family me, carl Richards and we talk positivity and communication. We've all heard the expression accentuate the positive. How often do we really do it, not just in our everyday lives, but in business as well. It's crucial. Jam and I explore how positivity in business is not only driving the team here at OSP, but also moving and growing clientele. The information for this podcast episode is taken from one of my episodes on the Speaking of Speaking podcast, so it may sound a bit different in places. Sit back, relax and let's explore positivity and gratitude in communication. Jeffrey, welcome to or shall I say Jam, welcome to Speaking of Speaking.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 1:31

Hey, thanks, carl, i'm happy to be here.

Carl Richards: 1:33

It is an honor having you here. I have to say it's been a fantastic year learning a lot about not just who you are, but also a lot about your beliefs and where you come from as it relates to speaking and communication. I do want to talk about that today, but I also know you have a love for music and a passion for music. Let's start there and let's talk music.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 1:56

I am a musician by calling and education and I still get paid to play music, although not so much anymore. I made the leap several years ago so that music's not my full-time income anymore and I think that's been, overall, a pretty good choice. But I'm still a professional performing musician. I still travel around occasionally, play with friends, do some recording stuff like that I am, my home base is a French horn player and I have done quite a lot of singing in my time. I think it's actually part of the thread that I followed about that ended up with this communication work that I do now. But I really do love music and I learned classical music and I've performed a ton of that Trayman Music or Christiaz Opera, all of that stuff and also a lot of jazz and a lot of other stuff along the way.

Carl Richards: 2:51

You mentioned jazz. Is there a huge call for a French horn in the jazz world?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 2:56

Yes and no. In the jazz world there's a place for people to express themselves, and a jazz French horn is not only not unique, but it's not the weirdest thing that I've heard. I mean, i think it gets a lot stranger when you start talking about jazz bassoon or jazz oboe or yeah. However, really, really interestingly, on the recording Birth of the Cool that Miles Davis did with a nonet or dictet setting, which is a really really really fantastic composed bebop record, basically from I'm going to get the year wrong, but it's quite early Starting with Birth of the Cool, basically until today, which means, honestly, a solid 60, 70 years of practice. Right now there have been horns in bands. Gunther Schuller played with Miles Davis in that nonet, then all the work that Miles Davis did with Gil Evans, so the Porgy and Bess Suite, the sketches of Spain Suite, a bunch of other things that band has horn in it. Stan Kenton had horns Stan Kenton's Grammy-winning West Side Story, jazz Big Bander Agents, which is one of the greatest records ever. Go listen to it. There are horns on that. Jj Johnson used horns and there's this concept of the expanded big band or the concert big band, and so your regular big band setting is a rhythm section, so basically piano, guitar and bass and drums and then five wind doublers, so five reeds, five saxophone players, three or four or five trombones and five trumpets. Some people swap around instruments, but anyway this expanded big band, you get people. I played with Lalo Schifrin, i played with Jean-Luc Ponti, i played with a bunch of people where there'd be like Timpani and a tuba and two French horns and an oboe and a xylophone and you know, adding all these things on it, and horns were there a lot.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 4:52

And I had the incredible good fortune, when I was with my master's degree in New York to be at Manhattan School of Music where there's a great jazz program, and the first semester I was there there was a notice up on the bulletin board that said, hey, we're doing. It was porgy and bass, i think. Anyway, we're doing in the top big band, we need a couple horns for the semester, and so I played that project. They let me play the project, and then we toured it across. We played a few concerts across the country. We did a whole bunch of things and then every semester I was there, they did a project with horns. So I did two solid years of playing big band. I learned to read all the charts Few years later when I moved to Germany.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 5:28

There's a ton of great musicians here in Germany but playing jazz and reading swing and big band charts and knowing how to do that is not part of the standard operating procedure for horn players here in Germany. And I looked into some amazing gigs with the video. The WDR big band, which is a big radio band, big band here in Cologne, with the radio band in Frankfurt And with a bunch of smaller ensembles I played with some incredible combos, went all around Europe with it. I got super lucky with that and had so much fun And there's a few recording floating around that I'm on. They're just. I love hearing that It was a great time. I hope it comes back again.

Carl Richards: 6:08

But I am geeking out right now because I love music. I grew up around it like you. I sang, i learned piano, didn't get very good at it, my instrument was trumpet And I, you know, i try and pick it up now I don't think I have the embouchure for it, but but and I don't know how easy it is to come back, but but certainly never knew, just as you're explaining the application for, for French horn and band, and I and I, and I think it's fascinating because, as this podcast gets back to its original roots about, you know, speaking and communication and and and sharing a lot about that. Music is a language unto itself, right, and I think people understand that, but there's also a, there's a certain, not a science, but there's it, like we all gather, even if we say, oh, i don't like that kind of music. Music seems to be what, what lifts us up at what's, it's what motivates us, it helps us work through anger or whatever it is.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 7:10

Music's always there And it's that language of music that helps us through good times, bad times all the time, for sure, and I think there's a thread right through to to what I do now. I always used to say that performing music for other people is an entirely positive activity. Honestly, if I screw something up terribly, the worst thing that can happen is that I won't get that gig next time, right, that it'll damage my career. But if I, if I don't play so great, nothing gets polluted, nobody but me gets fired. There's no terrible consequences to it. If I do a great job, if I'm I'm doing some amazing piece with amazing people, there's a huge chance that that we can move the audience Right, and then we can make a special moment that we can make their day or make their life or make their year, you know, or making that special recording that I always go back to And remember when we did that. That's, it's entirely positive. Yeah, that it felt like an incredible. It still feels like an incredible privilege, frankly, to to have the ability to do that.

Carl Richards: 8:13

I want to jump off that that positivity note that you mentioned there, Because one of the things that in your current role at Open Strategy Partners as a partner that you and Tracy Evans Tracy Evans will be a guest, by the way, on another episode, If not this season, because we already have a jam-packed season, but then certainly maybe into season five, but hopefully this season One of the things that Open Strategy Partners is very good at is focusing on or emphasizing positivity. And I want to cover this in a few different ways, because, as a team member at OSP, we focus a lot on gratitude and their other things. So let's start with gratitude. When did you and and Tracy, or or when was that decided that we're going to really focus on gratitude as a team?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 9:03

When we were figuring out what, what business we were going to run, you know, when we were gaming out different business models and stuff. Tracy was reading a lot about positive psychology, which I think some people might say that's been a little bit discredited, but I think there's a wonderful grains of truth in the whole positive psychology movement. And what does it mean to be happy? and is happiness the goal and all of that stuff? Positive psychology very, very interesting And there's very legitimate sources that talk about it. So she was reading a lot about that And once we figured out what the company was going to be, we kicked off officially in September of 2017. And things went well enough that by January of 2018, we were able to hire our first team member.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 9:51

The three of us had all had very different, but all very difficult work experiences in the past across a lot of different times and experiences, and it's not important what that was, but one thing that was very clear to us is that we wanted to be the place where we would want to work. I was very concerned about not repeating the mistakes of my past. I didn't want to be the abused. Can you becomes the abuser kind of thing. That sounds really really dark, right, but and at the time I was becoming aware I did that was my chance to start to learn about leadership, and leadership is really different to management, right. Leadership is a different thing and you know still were were all a bunch of people doing a bunch of things that enhance each other. Even now, there's more like 10 of us. It felt very important to us to create a place where we would want to work, and Tracy was very adamant that that would start with culture first, and a lot of this Positive psychology stuff came in at the base, alongside mindfulness and so on. I think that reinforced some of my ideas about communication. But a bunch of the things that we do every day now at OSP crystallized out of that moment of like who do we want to be, not who do we want to work for and what do we want to deliver. But what is this place and how do we want to feel when we're working here? gratitude statements so we have a whole gratitude channel in our internal chat.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 11:28

Communication. Saying thank you is incredibly powerful and important. Giving someone a compliment or saying thank you for something when you're feeling really down empirically makes well, i feel better and it's another positive psychology move Gratitude. Just I don't know it helps, it helps, it helps so much. And then, in parallel to this, we do not write negative copy, we don't use violent language, we don't use more metaphors. We've made a bunch of choices to be Well at OSP, when we talk about our authentic communication framework, it is building communications based around empathy and clarity and trust.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 12:07

Empathy of language, empathy of subject matter, empathy of helping you understand whether this is even whether you even need to be reading whatever I'm writing. And clarity means being honest, right about like. This is what we do well and this is what we don't do. And and not not making up stuff or obfuscating or or or exaggerating, which I think is a big problem in a lot of tech marketing. And trust right. Build trust with your audience. If we have a client who wants to build up a long term sales relationship over time, the best way is to tell them exactly what is going on, exactly what we can and can't do, be logical, be reasonable, help them through the tough times right. And by applying empathy and clarity we build trust over time and that seems to work. So Empathy, clarity, trust work really, really early concepts. Long answer to a very good question.

Carl Richards: 12:54

I'm really glad you took the time to explain that and we're going to move on from that, but I did. I did want to mention, by the way if you're listening to this podcast and you want to find out some of those details about what Jeffrey was talking about really some of their, their communication strategies at OSP. It's, it's on their website, it's a, it's a part of their, their DNA. So we'll make sure the links are all in the show notes. After today, we'll also link to the OSP podcast because, firstly, it's a great podcast. I'm not just saying that because I'm a part of it and work through it, but there's also a lot of great communication that happens with that podcast and there's three different channels of that show. Actually, when we talk about that for a moment, seeing as we're on a podcast, why don't we promote the?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 13:40

OSP podcast. Let me give you my, let me give you my shameless pitch. right, yeah, exactly, so it's.

Carl Richards: 13:47

Tell me what the podcast is and where. Where did it come from?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 13:51

in our earliest workshops with a coach that we had to help us found and plan what we're going to do with open strategy partners. The company motto or the pillars, it's a communicate, connect, grow. So we say we help agencies and technology organizations communicate The value of what they do to connect them to the people who should know about it and grow. So communicate, connect, grow. And then we do strategic communications to help growth, whether that's sales, whether that's Downloads of your open source package, whether that's building a partner network, whatever it is. And we have a bunch of moves where we're not a content agency, we are a strategic communications agency. So, in a nutshell, we work with clients to translate from the complexity of their products and services services To the value that they deliver, and we try and we communicate that so that other people can find it. So we do strategic consulting and we have our own strategic framework and tools in there that are very powerful and very interesting. It's classic marketing stuff with personas and buyers and so on, but we also have a couple of tools of our own, including what we call the value map. Then we have a whole communication planning exercise. So, essentially, once you have your strategy, your goals, clear. How can that be supported by communication. If you want it, we can create the common communication with you or for you audio video.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 15:16

We mostly do writing in words blog post, white papers, etc. Etc. So those are our practices. And then, because of the way that we've approached especially writing, but everything that we do is very process oriented, so everything is somewhere between quite well and very well documented And modular, so it's repeatable. We can hand off tasks between us and our clients, between our team members, or do it all one person. It's gonna be done the same way and that gives us consistency and repeatability and that's a certain level of quality that we can Guarantee.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 15:46

And in the writing practice that goes from you know, having a content brief that tells you what you're going to write about before you start writing. You never stare at a blank page and we never sit down and blog for someone. We understand This piece of communication is promoting that, with this focus for that audience who face these challenges. Right, it's really great as a writer to have all that already set up for you. All of that works really really well. And it works so well that our fourth area of business activity is writer enablement. So, if you would like to never stare at a blank page again when you start writing. You can come and talk to us about about our recent templates and how to use them and sign up for a workshop or ask you know, ask one of us to Explain it to you. A lot of these things were also putting them on our website, piece by piece, so that other people can take advantage of these systems. We come from the open source world and I feel we can help more people in the world then we could ever have his clients. So we also have writer enablement workshops. We have workshops to build fun things like teen profiles for your website, but there's a bunch of. We do a bunch of things on the how to communicate side Which are fun and interesting, alongside strategy planning and creating communications.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 17:00

Now the podcast fits squarely into this writer enablement thing. The pieces that we've done so far Are talking about how we write an edit and then going, episode by episode, through our Sixty plus editorial codes. We have a system of editorial codes that are the result of several years of work of people trying to extract my editorial brain And turn it into something usable and repeatable for other team members and the world. Now the things actually online. What is good writing?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 17:34

I've written a lot and I've been edited a lot and I used to talk about living in the editorial process and the fact that I know in my bones that any piece of writing worked on by two or three people is going to be better than Any piece of writing by any one of us. I am not precious about my words. People who don't write so much have a hard time accepting things being ripped out and reordered and changed and whatever. But I've really lived in that editorial process. So we worked really, really, really hard so that an editor can explain themselves when they make changes. Do this because it's a more logical way to explain it. Don't say that because it's a war metaphor and we prefer not to use violent language and so on and so forth. And these are codes so that the editor is forced to show their homework, to show their thinking to the writer And, very importantly, we never say this was wrong and now it's right.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 18:29

Here's what you wrote and here's how I corrected it. We make suggestions and offers. Here's what it was and here's how I think it would be. Here's how I've changed it And I think it might be better for these reasons, because this rule or that, whatever it is. So we use a lot of comments.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 18:44

So our editorial process is not black boxes, it's a conversation, and, as an author receiving that kind of editing, i have three choices.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 18:52

If you change something, i can say, whoa, that's so much better, thank you.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 18:58

I can say I've thought about it and I considered it, and no, i want to keep mine original, but here's why. So having a justification, having thought through again and then made the same choice, even with the new editorial input, is a legitimate reason to keep it as it was. And then what very often happens is a sort of third option will appear out of the exchange about the first two, and it's better than all of that. So our editorial process is not hierarchical and it's not about seniority and it's not black boxes, which is everything that I hated about professional writing in the past. It's a conversation and the editors are learning as much as the writers and we have a lot of I want to say fun with it, and that's the sort of stuff that I'm extremely keen to share with the world. And that's where our first two podcasts are, and it's explaining, piece by piece, parts of that system and we're just going to keep going with it because it's going really well and I really appreciate your help with it, carl.

Carl Richards: 19:52

Oh, i'm thrilled to be a part of it. There are some amazing things that I've learned and I've applied, having learned about these editorial codes that I knew nothing about.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 20:02

I mean, i thought Wait a minute, Carl, that costs extra sorry, no, no, you can't.

Carl Richards: 20:06

It's like putting my hand in the cookie jar. right now, you can't have a cookie.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 20:10

Oh, now I want a cookie.

Carl Richards: 20:11

I've learned so much because so much of our language and I wanted to talk about this. I really wanted to get to this point because I know you've spent a lot of time on stage but so much of our language, not only in writing but also in speaking, comes from you mentioned war metaphors or other writings that are put more of a negative emphasis on it. I also like the fact that when you're going through that editing process, there's no wrong or right. There's suggestions, which I think is a completely different concept than what most corporate worlds do. Obviously, it's like no, this is the way we do it. Don't ask why, just do it that way. But let's take it from a speaking perspective. Do you find yourself putting more of the positivity and has your speaking changed? COVID notwithstanding, but when you're speaking on stage now, are you more cognizant of where you're going with your language and the words or metaphors or things that you're choosing as you're, even if you're recording a podcast episode, are you more cognizant of that?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 21:15

Yes, i have done a lot of public speaking and a lot of interviewing and a lot of podcasts over the years. What we're talking about at OSP is, in the end if you have to boil it right down to its essence it's being mindful, it's being aware of what we are saying and how we're saying it. I was an okay editor before. I'm a better editor now because several of our colleagues over a few years watched me editing texts and asked me why I did a thing and asked me why I did a thing and asked me why I did a thing. We got these principles out of it. A lot of it matches up with reasonable editorial thinking and a lot of it is this other world that we're somehow building. That absolutely led me to considering my words and considering my topics and how I get there. I appreciate that outcome. I think mindfulness in general is better place for me to be than mindlessness.

Carl Richards: 22:17

It's important to make sure that when we are communicating our ideas, whether they're on a stage, whether they're on Heaven forbid we stay on Zoom too much longer. But whether it's on a Zoom call or whether it's in our writing that we are aware of that mindfulness that we're aware of there is an end user to what we're creating. How is that messaging going to be received? I think it's one of those things that maybe has been not missed, but maybe we've gotten away from it a little bit. I'm not saying because of COVID-19. I just think that the world itself has gotten away from it. I'm hoping, if I could gaze into my crystal ball and say, during season four, we're going to become a more positive world and we're going to focus on being more mindful of how the end user is reacting to what we're sharing with them.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 23:08

There's a really interesting anti-pattern that I don't have a name for. I want to figure out. It probably has a name, but there's something that we really hit early in the company in the OSP time. There's a way of writing for technical audiences which is not exactly fud for your uncertainty and doubt, but it's so close It's when you're telling the reader that they're doing something wrong. Essentially, the thing is like if you're still using so-and-so, you're wasting however, many hours of your day, especially developers who are very opinionated, very smart people. If you say, hey, come read my article about this super cool thing, and you go into the article, it's like if you're still using technology X, you're just a dummy. That's like the quickest way to turn someone off and it's such a subtle trap, right. And instead of saying if you're using X, you could be wasting two hours of your day, you write, hey, if you try, why our thing here? We'd love to know what you think about it, and our experience has shown it. That is, it's saved us a couple hours a day And that's the same information. but I'm not talking negatively about something else. I'm talking positively about the thing I'm trying to promote and I am Signaling to my reader that my reader is an intelligent, open-minded person and if they feel like trying this thing, i've seen benefits from it, and why don't they come have a look? right, and it's just a matter of a couple of words And I think it makes all the difference to what it's saying.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 24:46

We've touched on positivity and gratitude, but we also were really. We want to be human first. We want you to take care of yourself first, right, and that's the most important. And whatever happens in your family and whatever happens like our work, i love it. I think that I am helping. We are helping our clients, who I consider peers and friends and colleagues in technology. All of that's great and Important. At the best times were because of the strategic nature of our work. I think we're helping them have better businesses right, which is awesome and fun and so interesting. My side of the house is kind of communications and then there's the strategic side as well, but none of this is life and death, right, if your dad is dying or you're sick or There's whatever it is, it's the weekend. Go do the important stuff, right. Go be with your family. Go do something with your friends. Go cook right. Honestly, deadlines are important, all that kind of stuff, but that's not what comes first, i think that was a huge potential clients.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 25:51

Disclaimer We're super good at delivering on time, just say, and Also we sort of joke about it. But as a founder here I do find myself breaking those rules sometimes.

Carl Richards: 26:02

But it's, i don't know, it's okay, it was my choice, i think there are times that if you're working on tight deadlines, yeah, okay, you might have to pull a Sunday afternoon because it's a client deliverable that happens. But if it's consistently, you know, every Sunday or during a vacation period or something like that And that's one of the things that I've learned to appreciate is that work It's done, it's a great environment, It's, it's fun to be in. I'm so thrilled to be a part of it. But at the end of the day, yes, the client deliverables are important, but so is my mental health. So is my weekend, my, my, whatever it is.

Carl Richards: 26:41

Because at the end of the day, you know that you're going to get more results out of and I'll say me, because I'm part of that, that team, you'll get more out of me. If you've let me sleep enough, let's not interrupt at my vacation. No, all those things that seem to be forgotten. Sometimes I'm gonna go on a limb here and say, in the Western world, because that's where I am. I mean, you're in Cologne, germany, i'm on Canada. But sometimes we forget that and We think, nope, has to be done right now, even if it's Saturday afternoon. We need to have this conversation now. We need to do this right now.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 27:14

Yeah, there's a difference between quote-unquote Europe and North America, but we're not gonna call you after hours unless it's really important, you know.

Carl Richards: 27:24

And oh, say hi. I mean, how many times have you called me on a Friday afternoon at four o'clock, knowing that it's well, maybe not four o'clock, because that's probably ten o'clock your time, but you know three o'clock or two o'clock in the afternoon going? hey, carl, how's it going? Just wanted to say hi and say thanks for all your help this week and things like that, which is just, it's so cool. I love phone calls like that.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 27:48

Okay, all right, i'll admit it, i'll admit it. But, um, you know, when you go on vacation, you should just turn yourself off, like all that stuff just seems to be. You know what that comes from. Circling back, that comes from some of my old work experiences. I was in a very high-growth startup where I had a lot of wonderful experiences and some terrible ones, and I watched some of my American colleagues turn on their out-of-office messages between 8, 30 and 10 am Saying I am currently at a dentist appointment, but I will get back to you as soon as I get back to the office and if it's really important. My cell number is this and you can call me right now and we'll figure it out. It's like 90 minutes of your life. I just it's not. We're not the police and we're not surgeons, and I just don't. It was, it's too much, right, it's too much and and so, yeah, that was another thing of like. How do we feel human here?

Carl Richards: 28:47

I'm really glad you shared that, because I think that's something that you know We can take a page from over here in the Western world. So thank you, thank you, jeffrey, for bringing, for bringing that out. I would give you the opportunity, though, to Pass along something to our listeners. What would you? I mean, we've shared a lot, but is there anything that you'd like to pass along to them that they can use as a tool, or what's the best way for them to Hold?

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 29:11

you. We have a website. It's a lot to type. It's open strategy partners dot com. We are sharing piece by piece by piece what we do and how we do it. There are a few pages dedicated to showing you what a workshop might look like and some of the services that we offer. Our blog is full of how to and information and insights. There's some stuff now about writing good case studies and why and how, and Every podcast get supposed as well, so a lot of the editorial codes are going up there. We're speaking in late twenty twenty one. In early twenty twenty two were turning on an entirely new section of the website that's gonna be full of documentation and all this writing and editing stuff.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 29:53

I want to share how we do what we do so that you can also do it. And if you'd like to come be a client, you'd like to learn how to do something better, or you have a A complex topic that needs explaining in terms of the value it delivers. That's what we're here for. We love technology. We come from the world of open source. We love agencies and product companies. I love that sort of stuff. I'd love to talk with you, but if I can just help you, then go check it out, get in touch, tell me how it helped and you know, i'd love to know if you know this stuff makes sense to other people. What now that it's outside of our heads?

Carl Richards: 30:26

And Jeffrey loves coffee as well. So if it's, even if it's across borders, he might be having a coffee with you, although it might be a smaller cup, because he does like his espresso.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 30:38

So yes, i don't have my stunt espresso cup in front of me. well, yep.

Carl Richards: 30:44

Jeffrey, it's been fantastic chatting with you today. Thanks for taking the time. Before I let you go, any final thoughts or words of wisdom you like to impart.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 30:53

I don't know about the wisdom department call, but thanks for thanks for inviting me on here. It's it's really great to talk with you and I have. You know, i'm really glad to say you and I talk several times a week and it's great To have you on our team. I really, really like it. I really like having you around and the help that you. You know the work that you do is great. So you know, it's kind of cool to hang out in your. Actually, i don't know, are you moonlighting with us or is this your moonlighting now? I don't. Anyway, it's great to talk with you. I'm really happy to be here and thank you. Just say it's great to talk by moonlight.

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire: 31:28

So, romantic.

Carl Richards: 31:30

Jeffrey, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you, carl. If you want positive change, positive response and positive results, it starts with a positive, filled with gratitude outlook. How are you embracing positivity and gratitude in your environment? Share your examples or questions with us via Twitter at open underscore strategy or email hello at openstrategypartnerscom. And speaking of time, yesterday I bought six watches. You could say I have a lot of time on my hands. How do you use date in your writing? Share your examples or questions with us via Twitter at open underscore strategy or email hello at openstrategypartnerscom.

Carl Richards: 32:34

This was one of the editorial codes we use at OSP. If you'd like to learn more in the meantime, come on over to openstrategypartnerscom, have a look at our writer, enablement workshops, case study offering or get in touch to talk about your strategy or product communication needs. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this podcast All the P's at OSP. Thanks to our clients who believe in us. Shout out to Patrick Gaumont for our high energy maple syrup flavored theme music And to Mike Snow for additional horn arrangements. Thank you for listening and subscribing About our three themes on the podcast.

Carl Richards: 33:14

You'll hear different members of the OSP team hosting episodes over time. Communicate all things. Communication We share how we tackle writing, editing, word choices, formats, processes and more, but in depth conversations with interesting, smart people about who they are, what they do and how they approach their life and work as communicators, technologists and leaders. Grow We cover approaches to understanding and expressing the value of what you do, including tools, templates and practical applications. We also feel strongly about building a mindful, positive, human first culture at work. It's bound to pop up from time to time too. This podcast is us figuring out communication, connection and growing together. Subscribe now on YouTube, apple Podcasts or the podcast channel of your choice.