Emotional intelligence; why you need it and how to get it.

Commical – Episode title: Emotional intelligence; why you need it and how to get it

Published 20/05/2020 on Chasing Albert website, spotify and apple podcasts.

Marie 00:00

Brand, reputation and culture can be impacted by bad processes just as much as they can by a good marketing campaign. They are three topics that are linked and critical to business, be it large or small. Karl Treacher is the CEO at The Brand Institute and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Griffith Business School. His research into the relationship between brand, reputation and culture has led to 60 published articles, along with speaking engagements at TEDx and the Committee for Economic Development in Australia, also known as CEDA. The acronyms don't stop there. Karl has worked with NAB, MYOB, PwC and the ACCC, and many other leading Australian organisations.

Marie 00:44

What does emotional intelligence have to do with communication? Everything. Sitting behind your words and gestures are thoughts and feelings that you may or may not be able to control. You may not even acknowledge they're there. Understanding yourself, to me, is the first step to unlocking your communication potential, followed closely by understanding others. Dr Ben Palmer is Australia's leading expert on emotional intelligence. He is the CEO of Genos International, which helps professionals develop and apply skills that enhance self-awareness, empathy, leadership and resilience. Have a listen and consider whether AI is holding back relationships or effective communication in your organisation. Oprah, Steve Jobs and Andrew Denton, to me, are masters of communication. The rest of us — well, mainly you, because I'm a pro — fumble our way through. Commical examines this funny little thing called communication that can either tear us down or make us soar. Join me. I'm an amateur comedian and a communication expert. Join me and listen, learn and laugh through the experiences of my very talented guests.

Marie 01:13

Hello and welcome, Ben.

Guest 01:13

Hey Marie, great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Marie 01:17

It's an absolute pleasure. Now, do I call you Dr Ben, or is that not the done thing?

Guest 01:24

Just call me Ben.

Marie 01:25

All that hard work and no one calls you Dr Ben. I don't know.

Guest 01:29

I won't tell you what my partner calls me.

Marie 01:34

Now, you are an expert in emotional intelligence, and your business, Genos, actually helps organisations to measure and train staff on emotional intelligence. Is that right?

Guest 01:46

Yeah, absolutely.

Marie 01:47

And what is emotional intelligence?

Guest 01:51

It's really a set of skills that help you identify and manage emotions within yourself and within others. It contributes to things like our self-awareness, it contributes to things like our empathy, it contributes to things like our resilience and our capacity to be a positive influence for others.

Marie 02:09

And why is that important in business, in particular?

Guest 02:13

In business, it's important because the way we feel influences three fundamental parts of ourselves. Firstly, the way we feel influences the way we think and the decisions that we make. You wouldn't go and ask your boss for a pay rise or more resources if your boss is in a bad mood, right? They're probably more likely to say no. The more scientific term for it is mood-congruent thought, and emotions play a huge role in the decisions that we make all the time. They can be a positive influence or a negative one in decision-making. Secondly, the way you feel influences the way you behave. If you think about it, where do your emotions show up? In your tone of voice and your facial expressions, in your body language. And because of that, they're really fundamental to how we connect, communicate and collaborate with each other. And finally, the way we feel influences the way we perform. One of the most robust findings in the social sciences is that there is a direct link between the financial performance of companies and the way people, on average, feel. This is why organisations all around the world do engagement surveys. When people feel valued, cared for, consulted, informed and understood, they significantly outperform organisations where people culturally feel concerned, worried, anxious or fearful for their job. So it's because of those three things that businesses are so interested in emotional intelligence, because they want people's decisions, they want people's behaviour, and, of course, they want their performance to be as good as it can be. I think people, more generally, are interested in emotional intelligence because of that behavioural part, because it really relates to the quality of our relationships. And it's one of the things I love about emotional intelligence: you don't just help people be better at work, you help them be a better parent, you help them be a better partner, you help them be a better sibling, you help them be a better friend. And that's the real love of this for me.

Marie 04:04

And what are some of the traits of somebody with a high emotional intelligence quotient? Is that how they say EQ?

Guest 04:12

Yeah, EQ is more of a popular, pop-psychology name for it. I just call it emotional confidence, really, because I like to see it and think of it not just as a point of view, but as more like a competency, a skill that you can develop within yourself, like you can develop the skill of playing the piano. If you've never played the piano before and you have 10 piano lessons, of course you're going to be doing somewhat better at the end of that than what you would at the start. So I kind of see it as competence. So what does someone with high levels of emotional intelligence look like? Well, not like Donald Trump, put it that way. They look like someone more like Jacinda Ardern — someone who knows how to connect at an emotional level, someone who is perhaps informal but informative, somebody who is good at empathising, and someone who's good at projecting calmness and confidence in themselves.

Marie 05:11

Now you mentioned Donald Trump. This is an interesting one, right? Because having emotional intelligence sounds like a wonderful thing to have that can benefit an organisation, and certainly is beneficial in leadership, but you can also be successful whilst also having very low emotional intelligence, right?

Guest 05:32

Particularly if you're deadly with money. Yes, absolutely.

Marie 05:35

Exactly. Or he was elected — well, depending on who you ask.

Guest 05:40

He's a very interesting case study because, in some ways, Donald Trump is incredibly emotionally intelligent. He is in tune, I think, with his conservative base. He knows what their triggers are, what their hot buttons are, and he is technically hopeless and popularly brilliant, I think, at communicating and at making people feel. But at the same time — and this is how he's a great example of separating, if you like, personality from emotional intelligence, values and beliefs from emotional intelligence — you can have good emotional intelligence and use it in nefarious ways. And I think that's what he also does. He plays people off. He puts fear into people. He's belligerent. He deliberately attacks people as ways of kind of getting what he wants, if you like. And I think, personally, in the 90s, perhaps even in the early 2000s, that way of doing business certainly was a way of doing business that could have brought success. But in the long run, I can't sign myself up for that kind of leadership. I think it's ultimately not good for people, and I think, ultimately, it's not good for him either.

Marie 07:04

It's interesting. I read — I think it was something that you wrote — that the World Economic Forum in 2020 had listed emotional intelligence as one of the top 10 skills that you need. In 2015, emotional intelligence didn't make the top 10 at all. What happened in those five years that made it such an essential skill?

Guest 07:26

What's happening in the world of work is a real revolution, if you like, that's coming from the world of automation and artificial intelligence. Machines, more and more, are taking over the thinking aspects of our jobs, the aspects of our jobs that have traditionally been reliant on our IQ. And so what is going to be left, particularly as we look into the future, are these more generalist skills that have to do with how we connect, communicate and collaborate with people. Let's take any thinking job — a business consultant, for example. Think about the logical flow of their work. You gather data, you analyse it, you come up with a recommendation, and you present it to, usually, the executive team, who then goes on to implement either some of it or all of it. A machine can do almost the first three phases of those particular aspects of that job very well. IBM's Watson is making medical discoveries that have stumped doctors for many years. So the world of artificial intelligence and automation is going to disrupt more and more the thinking aspects of jobs, and emotional intelligence and the skills that underlie our capacity to influence, persuade, empathise and understand others are going to become highly valued. In fact, Capgemini did a research study just at the end of 2019 showing that they expect demand for EQ skills to rise sixfold over the next three years, particularly in sectors like finance, insurance and banking.

Marie 09:02

Wow. I mean, is there a certificate in emotional intelligence one can gain at TAFE? How are they...

Guest 09:07

Oh, no. Come to Genos, you're welcome. Or get a partner or a dog. There are many ways of developing your emotional intelligence, but one of the things that's really critical to developing your emotional intelligence is self-awareness, is self-insight. If you take 100 people randomly off the street and ask them, 'How emotionally intelligent do you think you are?', almost 80% of them will say, 'A bit above average.' And, of course, that's not actually the case. Emotional intelligence, like IQ, is fairly normally distributed. So, in other words, the vast majority of us significantly overestimate how well we do from an emotional intelligence perspective. And I could probably put myself in this basket. You study what you need to know. So an assessment or having someone who can give you feedback in an informed way about your emotional intelligence is critical to developing it within yourself. Most people are sitting back at work, sitting back in their lounge rooms, perhaps even listening to this, thinking, 'Hey, I'm pretty emotionally intelligent,' when, in fact, that's not the case.

Marie 10:12

And so are employers actually testing for this in recruitment phases? When we read that organisations want, or will demand, emotional intelligence as a skill, how are they going to determine if we have it?

Guest 10:27

Yeah, so they are using tools in recruitment. They're using interviews, they're using role-play-based simulations and many things like that to test for it in recruitment. They're also using it to develop their existing workforce. And I think an organisation that takes both of those angles is going to get the best return on investment from doing so. In a lot of sectors, even with high levels of unemployment as we're starting to experience them here, emotional intelligence is kind of in low to moderate supply, interestingly. So even though you can look for it in recruitment, you don't always find it. One executive said to me the other day, 'A hot body is going to be better than nobody.' And what they were kind of saying is, 'Let's use it in recruitment, but if we don't find someone, we're going to have to take someone.' And I said, 'Yeah, and this is the whole point about using it in recruitment too: to know what you're getting on the way in and what support you're going to need to give to people as you onboard them.' So sometimes we're using it to look for an emotionally intelligent person. Sometimes we're using it to determine whether it's something we need to develop within the person as we onboard them into the organisation.

Marie 11:38

What are some symptoms of having a leader that has low emotional intelligence?

Guest 11:48

One is what I call ups and downs — an incapacity to effectively regulate emotions. So you might get yelled at, or you might hear a door slam, for example. Sometimes it might be a more inward thing, if someone just goes off the radar for a few hours. I think the other thing you see is a real lack of empathy, a real incapacity to understand people. So you see a very singular approach, often, to their leadership, as opposed to an agile approach. I think someone with high levels of emotional intelligence picks up on the person and adapts their behaviour to get the best out of them. Let's take someone with a high need for control, for example. It's your emotional intelligence that helps you determine that you shouldn't micromanage that person, that you're going to really annoy them if you do. Someone who has a very low need for control likes being micromanaged. And, again, it's your emotional intelligence that can pick that up and say, 'Okay, this person likes process. This person likes to know where they've got to be, how they're going to get there,' and so on. Let's take another big need that drives who we are: our need for affiliation. Some people have a really high need for affiliation. They get their energy from being with people and connecting. In fact, I would say you've got a high need for affiliation, Marie, having known you for a little while. Some people have a very low need for affiliation. So again, a leader with emotional intelligence, using their empathy, is saying, 'This person's got a low need for affiliation. They're more task-focused, objective, critical, challenging. They like me to be direct. They like me to move quickly to task. They're not interested in coming to the staff barbecue,' right? And lead them accordingly. On the other hand, I've got staff who, if you jump into task and don't ask them how they're going and what the world is like at the moment, and take that more human approach, you'll make them feel like you've got an empathy deficit and you're a mongrel, so to speak. Low emotional intelligence is typically not picking up on these subtleties and adapting leadership style to get the best out of the person.

Marie 14:08

You know, I listen to what you're talking about, and I think back to scenarios throughout my career where we've been brought in on a brief for a large organisation, and the brief had everything to do with improving culture and improving relationships. Working in comms, our response was always one that was founded in communication. You know, what can we do? How can we get these people to talk to each other? How can we get them to engage? And how can we get people to meet others on other teams or other floors, et cetera, and make this company feel united? It never occurred to me that maybe one thing that could be done is to measure or train people in emotional intelligence to build better connections. What is normally the trigger for somebody, or a decision-maker in an organisation, to say, 'No, this is something that we need to look at from an emotional intelligence perspective'?

Guest 15:06

It's a really great question. I think, traditionally, it hasn't been a frame that a lot of leaders have come at problems from. The best example I can give you is John McFarlane. Some people might remember John McFarlane as one of the former CEOs of ANZ Bank. When he took over ANZ Bank, he recognised that the banking industry back at the time — this is the late 90s, early 2000s — was very transactional with its customer base, and he decided to run a classic service-profit-chain strategy, which is to be nicer to people within the bank so that they'd be nice to the customers, and therefore customer loyalty and profitability would improve. And he saw emotional intelligence as the solution to that. Indeed, the program was called Breakout. It was about becoming the bank with the human face. And the way they were going to do that was to become more human on the inside, and they used emotional intelligence and other things to help people get more in touch with their authentic self and to turn up and be their more authentic self at work. And that strategy has been replicated many times now. But they won Bank of the Year eight years in a row. Employee engagement went through the roof. It was an incredible time for ANZ, one that has never been replicated by people who succeeded him. Mike Smith was not there from an emotional intelligence perspective, in my point of view. And I think organisations are beginning to see emotional intelligence as a problem in their labour force, for example, in their existing workforce. Just as the Capgemini report predicted, we're seeing very much an uptick in interest. We're seeing an uptick in organisations now lifting the emotional intelligence of their people and their skills. In the past, it's usually been because of a very deliberate business need, like to become the bank with the human face. We've seen that now shift to, 'We need it as a mental health strategy. We need it just because care and empathy are so important.' So the need for a real thing to latch it onto is almost gone, if you like, and people are just looking around saying, 'We need to develop EQ. Let's get some people in here to do this.'

Marie 17:28

That's interesting, because I was reading about this whole concept of psychological injury and how it can happen to you at work, and the real impact that it has on people for a very long time. And it did strike me as surprising — it's going to sound horrible — that a corporation would care, right? Are they forced to care? What is it?

Guest 17:57

They're forced to care, and that is causing a lot more organisations to take stock. There are many cases in the courts now, and indeed legislation for directors of business to make sure that they have mentally healthy workplace conditions and a mentally healthy workplace culture. And if you don't, and you have somebody who goes out on a stress-related leave claim or something like that, and it can be shown that you didn't have a mentally healthy workplace, you can be negligent and not be covered by your insurance company. So this has caught the attention of a lot of directors of business, and more directors of business need to step up and realise this need and this void. We've got the banking Royal Commission, the aged care Royal Commission, we've got our 7-Eleven disaster. There are still disgusting, repugnant habits by corporates out there, and I think they're living on borrowed time. They really need to think about stepping up and making sure that people are being treated fairly, equally and with compassion, particularly as we come out of this COVID-19 environment.

Marie 19:10

What about smaller businesses? Do they have to care? I mean, they should. I think it's a wonderful thing, but not everybody has that in them. I see it every day with a lot of small and medium businesses. Some of them are just in a mindset where we have to scale, we have to grow, and it's all about the bottom line right now. Psychological health doesn't really matter so far as the results are coming in.

Guest 19:34

Yeah, and businesses go through different phases and are in different contexts, and I get that. But the data is there in abundance. When you look at large data, and you know how to look at it properly, you'll see that organisations who, in the long run, make it and make it great are those that have fantastic workplace cultures. They're just a no-brainer.

Marie 19:58

And it's not just a matter of the leader having emotional intelligence. It's the whole organisation.

Guest 20:04

Yeah, absolutely. You've got to have people around you with good emotional intelligence, just like in the old days you had to have good, bright people around you. You still need good, bright people around you, but how do you bring that brightness to life? You need the oil, which is really emotional intelligence in this world.

Marie 20:23

How does emotional intelligence in an interpersonal scenario impact one's ability to communicate effectively?

Guest 20:32

I think a lot of communication, as you know — I think you've even taught me this — is non-verbal as much as it is verbal. And so this is why emotional intelligence relates so strongly to sales performance. Because just like the leader who is picking up on the subtle feelings of a person and adjusting themselves accordingly, in sales, in interpersonal interactions, people who have high levels of emotional intelligence are adjusting themselves to make that connection and to build that affinity and rapport and to make that spark happen, if you like, interpersonally. So it's very fundamental to sales performance.

Marie 21:13

Does it come naturally to some people more than for others? Is it an innate skill for many?

Guest 21:20

Absolutely. Some of us have it in abundance, and some of us don't. Let's think about John McEnroe versus Björn Borg, for example. I myself never thought of myself as not having really good levels of emotional intelligence, but through studying the concept, I've really seen that it's not something I naturally have in abundance. It's something I've had to work at a lot, and it's something that's quite infinite. The more you study it, the more you feel like you're just at the tip of the iceberg. And I've learned a lot of really practical little things to do that have helped me. I'll give you one little example. My partner, Georgia, says to me that I'm quite defensive when she criticises how I'm managing our kids. And I usually respond with, 'No, I'm not,' and usually go on to provide long-winded mansplaining-style explanations of the context and how she hasn't picked up on certain things, and yada yada yada. So she's helped me step back and say, 'Well, when you do those things, firstly, you disconnect us, and secondly, there's no learning. So there's no reflection. There's no real thinking about how differently this could be done.' So for a while at our house, we had two big words up on the fridge — 'defensiveness' and 'openness' — and two big words up on the back of the pantry door — 'defensiveness' and 'openness'. And those two words were there as reminders for me, because a lot of this stuff happens in the kitchen, as it does in any household, that when criticism is coming about how I'm managing the children, to, without sarcasm, say, 'Oh, thank you. How could I do that differently?'

Marie 23:02

Yeah. And it's really, it's not easy.

Guest 23:05

It's not, it's not. But that's just one little example. Developing your emotional intelligence is something you've got to do on your own, but it's also something you've got to do with the people you work with every day, because ultimately they're the best barometer, aren't they, of whether you're turning up in an emotionally intelligent way — as are your children, as are your pets at home.

Marie 23:26

I once was in a media interview, and my client at the time was talking and what have you, and the journalist was asking him questions. She would talk to him, and he would answer as he would stare at his computer and try to bring things up to show her. And you could see visibly she was getting more and more frustrated, and he missed all these cues. Then eventually she actually slammed his laptop closed and she said, 'I'm fucking sitting right here,' in the most aggressive tone. Anyway, the article didn't go ahead, which was a shame, because it was with The Australian, I think, at the time. And I remember thinking, how did he miss that cue? Because for me, he would look up from time to time, and I could feel that I was getting quite anxious — like, if I could just take over in this moment. How do people miss obvious cues like that?

Guest 24:22

Unfortunately, some of us miss them more often than we'd like to. But to be fair, you can be having an off day, can't you? As you were telling that story, I was thinking about some client engagements I've had where people have sort of said, 'What else have you got?' Or you just haven't picked up on the subtle cues. But yeah, it can be a real problem. And I think it speaks to one of the real practices of emotional intelligence, which is when you meet someone and you're engaging with them, to really try and still your own thoughts — to come into engagements with a learning mindset, thinking, 'What can I provide, and what can I get out of this meeting?' To not lead with your deck or to not lead with your pitch, but to lead with a mindset and language around, 'How can I be of service or value here for you today?' It might not be exactly those words, but certainly that's the mindset. And I've learned that — I do a lot of my own sales and business development — just like elite athletes, I sit out in the car and I visualise how I show up. I think about who I'm going to see. I try and get myself into a mode where I'm going to be open and be appropriately vulnerable, where that's necessary, and really focus on how I'm going to connect. Because once you've got that connection, everything else just becomes so much easier.

Marie 25:54

That's very true. And so this is stuff that people can learn, how?

Guest 25:59

Go through an assessment, read books, get on the internet. There is so much stuff around how to develop your self-awareness, how to be more empathetic. Let's take empathy by example. The first starting place for empathy is YouTube. Look up 'Look Beyond Borders' and the four-minute eye contact experiment, if you've seen this Amnesty International piece. Go look it up after the call. When refugees were fleeing Tunisia and other conflict zones and going over the borders into Poland, Germany, Italy and so on, Amnesty International ran some initiatives where they brought people from the community, put them together with refugees, just opposite each other, like we're sitting now, and just had four minutes of eye contact. And it's a great metaphor and great learning about empathy. We've all got the mirror neurons and the biology for empathy, but what we fail to think about is the context we need to be put in to make that biology come to life, and for that natural empathy to occur. If you go and watch that video, you'll see that natural empathy occurring between people just from sitting there and being still. You look at someone and their story, particularly when they've come from a conflict zone, is written all over their face, and you just start to feel for it. The other thing I really recommend people do if they want to develop their emotional intelligence is do things that move you emotionally. Now I've got a little secret to make: I love America's Got Talent. I love Britain's Got Talent. I love Australian Idol. There's something about those shows that moves me emotionally. I'm one of these people who cries very easily, and I love sitting down at night — not every night of the week, but some nights of the week — and searching for those golden buzzer moments and shedding a bit of a tear and having a bit of a laugh. That's what I mean. If you want emotions, feeling emotions in that kind of safe way — whether it's watching a movie, going for a walk in the bush, whatever it is for you — it's the experience of emotions that makes you contemplative, that helps you become more self-aware, labelling and defining the way you feel. These are the sorts of things that people might not read in the textbook, but I can tell you will really help you develop your self-awareness, your empathy and things like that. When we develop empathy at Genos, we sort of look at the four-minute eye contact experiment — the Amnesty International video only takes five minutes — and then get people to think about it as a metaphor for how they can bring their natural empathy to life. They'll say things like, 'You've got to just sit there and not be judging. You've got to be sitting there and just be quiet, not talking. You've got to sit there and just try and connect with the person emotionally.' And lo and behold, it's not as hard as you think.

Marie 28:57

I mean, is it something that somebody who is older and set in their ways can learn, and can they change?

Guest 29:03

Yes, but the older we become, the harder it is to learn. When I say the older we become, I mean quite a bit. One of the things that age brings you is maturity, as I'm sure you'd love...

Marie 29:18

I've only just uncovered maturity.

Guest 29:20

Yeah, but with really advanced age — I'm talking like post-70 — our affect tends to drop off. And I think every year after 45 we lose a gram of brain weight as well. So it naturally does become harder to learn some things when we become quite advanced in our years. But it's never too late really to tune in and try and learn these things.

Marie 29:46

And I really do believe it's important. I've seen it so many times when I'm trying to say, in effective communication or even in media training, one of the things that I spend a lot of time on is empathy. And I was mentioning this to you before: I can sit and say, these are ways that you can demonstrate empathy. You've got to actively listen, you've got to be present, you've got to ask questions. And I find that some people take that quite literally and almost have it like a list of things they have to tick off, just to get it done before they can move on. And it's not authentic. So learning to be empathetic, it can't be faked. It can't be something that your PR or your marketing or your comms trainer or whatever can just write for you, to help you appear empathetic. You genuinely have to be that way and learn to get in touch with not just yourself, but connect with other people and care about what you're hearing.

Guest 30:45

Yes. And once you've learned a process, or something like what you're talking about too, you've got to hone it. You've got to finesse that, just like playing the piano. You've got to put time and effort into getting that right, and you will get there. It's not about learning to ride the bike on the first day, but it's about putting the time and effort in to get there. And for those who are thinking about empathy, one little technique that I would recommend: six deep breaths before you meet with someone. You really need to engage your parasympathetic nervous system if you want to connect with someone. So take a minute for yourself. Inhale for three, exhale for six, or something like that — twice as long on the exhale as the inhale. Think about your yoga. And once you learn to be able to do that without thinking about it too much, much like you can drive a car without thinking about it, then start setting an intention to be empathetic, and use the self-talk: 'How am I going to be empathetic with the person I'm meeting?' And then, once you've done that, start the visualisation process. Imagine yourself being empathetic. What do you say? What do you hear? What are you seeing? There's a whole range of things you can do around that. I think everyone has the capacity to be empathetic, unless you've had a brain injury or something in your development that's not there.

Marie 31:57

I would love to use that in a meeting one day: 'Have you had a brain injury?'

Guest 32:01

Empathy gets drummed out of us as we become task-focused, as we get stressed, as we get loaded up with stuff to do. So you've got to relearn how to naturally bring your empathy out.

Marie 32:11

Can you use some of that process in conflict resolution?

Guest 32:15

Oh, this is my favourite topic.

Marie 32:19

It took me so long to get to conflict resolution, I'm sorry.

Guest 32:23

Well, I think Australians in general are inherently conflict-avoidant, myself included. And learning the art and the finesse of leaning into difficult conversations, learning how not to leave things unsaid in your relationships, is incredibly important and incredibly difficult. Getting books like Crucial Conversations would be a great starting place. Having a framework, a bit of an approach to it. But I think it's one of those skills — being able to say, 'Stop it. I don't like it,' or whatever your version of that is — with confidence, with finesse, in a way that engages the natural empathetic response from the person you're with, is incredibly valuable. I just pointed — you see the pointing? I'm learning not to point and to use the whole hand. The point is a way of saying, this is kind of where I'm trying to come to.

Marie 33:19

Has someone said to you that pointing is not acceptable?

Guest 33:22

Yeah. No more pointing, right? Somebody, in fact, called Peter Fisher, who I've been working with, is an actor teaching me the kind of skills that actors get taught in terms of how to project emotions, whether it's openness, calming down, things like that. So yeah, I'm learning all these body language things at the moment from Peter, and I'm finding that to be a real hoot.

Marie 33:46

That's awesome. So you've nailed the stuff that happens on the inside, and now it's just about how they manifest on the outside.

Guest 33:52

It's a great lifelong journey.

Marie 33:56

Thank you so much for joining me tonight. That was really interesting. And a lot of the stuff that you covered and the videos that you mentioned, I will include in the podcast description. So if anybody's listening and wants to tap into those, I shall include links in the podcast description. Thank you so much.

Guest 34:12

It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Marie 34:19

And that's Commical for this week. If you'd like to join the show, suggest a topic or ask me a question, hit me up on Instagram at marielou_... or email me at comicalpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening. See you.