Sorry.

No, I just thought it was interesting because, you know, I think both Alex and I had always prided ourselves on, you know, for me, it was like, I have to be the example.

I have to be working my ass off doing more than everybody else so that they, you know, because they're all A players.

And so I want them to see that I'm doing the same.

And I was talking to one of our guys who's really stepped up and he's one of the, you know, one of the highest ranked people in the company.

And I check in with him once a month rather than, you know, because he's not the COO or CEO.

And I said, like, how can I support you? How can me and Alex help? You know, just want to know at the end of the call.

I got this thrown around.

What do you mean by that, like respecting yourself with how you, how you behave or the decisions you make or the actions you take?

I think that a lot of people nowadays blame others, and they position every decision to leave a business or leave a job or leave a partner as this person is toxic.

And, and I'm talking, I'm not talking about, like, abusive situation.

I'm just saying generalized, right? I think it's become a very generalized term.

Like, this person's bad, toxic, all of these things.

And I think at the end of the day, what I have realized has empowered me rather than stolen my power from me is to not ask is this person bad or toxic, is this job bad or toxic, but when I'm in this situation or when I'm around this person, do I respect myself more or less? Do I respect myself more or less if I go to the bar with single girls who invite me out that flirt with men? Less, so I don't hang out with them.

Do I respect myself more or less if I allow an employee, uh, to be in my company who does not embody our values and speaks poorly to people on my team? Less, so I, I cannot have them here, right? Do I respect myself more or less in my marriage, right? I respect myself more because I have a husband who promotes me, supports me, and, and would do anything to see me succeed.

Mm-hmm.

So can you explain to somebody who's never heard of this what it means to buy back your time?

Yeah, it's essentially understanding that based on your skills in the marketplace, um, and you have to understand what those skills are worth, how much value can you create with an hour of your time? This, that's how me and Alex think about it.

So for, for us, it's, like, fairly simple.

We look at how much revenue our business does over 12 months, and then we divide that into, okay, what does that mean in terms of how much value we each create in an hour? And so then when I ask myself, "Is this worth an hour of my time?" I'm using that frame.

Well, I know an hour of my time is worth X thousand dollars, so does taking this call with this person that is probably not gonna...

Like, no, not worth it.

That is something that's been really hard for me to train because I think that there's a lot of conditioning to say yes to things and that you're an asshole if you say no to things and that saying no to people and telling them you don't have time is mean, and you're a dick.

Disclaimer.

So can you give kind of the business owners watching this gift of grace of saying that, hey, it's okay to have some directional stuff that you can fill in along the way?

You know, it's funny because when I first got into business and I was like, okay, I have to have this vision.

And, like, it needs to be, like, what's going to happen in five years? So it's basically, like, you have to be able to predict the future.

I actually think that that means a couple things if you, like, really pull the string, which is, like, if you're saying, one, I have to predict the future, like, that's just you just can't.

Nope.

That's what, like, we pay a lot of people to try and do that across the world.

And it's just like, that's very difficult.

How do you think about that story for the future? What is that going to look like for acquisition.com, specifically with you thinking about media?