What did I touch as I raised that as a label?

Well, because I think it's interesting how you define a successful exit.

Now, I had built over seven years, I'd given everything of my being to the career company was the name of my recruitment business.

We had the best talent in design brand innovation.

We had all the top clients.

Life was great.

Phone never stopped ringing, all inbound.

It'd be great to explore that.

Next up, we have Sally Henderson, high-stakes leadership mentor and keynote speaker and best-selling author.

I'm at MADFest because I love it.

I love the community, the buzz, the learning.

And the thing I really love about MADFest, it always brings a surprise.

You don't know who you're going to bump into.

The opportunity for learning is off the scale.

The quality of the people that they attract here, both as attendees and as presenters.

How would you say that you work that out before you even get to the top, Sally?

So I think it starts back to the basics, which most people, especially in agency life, never get throughout their whole career, which is clarity on your role.

Would you believe when I sat, I am very privileged and delighted to work with senior people, very high performers, very successful from the outside in, very shiny.

But I think I've only had one person in 10 years answer this question well, cold, when I've said to them, and these are C-suite leaders, agency founders, people very experienced.

Can you do me a favor? Yes, Sally, what is it? Can you just tell me what your job is? And they look really shocked.

What do you mean? Because I am X name of X agency or business, and it surely is obvious.

I said, no, I know that.

And then that person starts to think about, well, am I liked or am I not liked? Is that something that you would classically see surfacing as well as people get more senior, Sally?

Not at all.

Yeah.

And think about it.

Do you have an emotional lens to high stakes where you're in it for the feelings it can create for yourself and others around belonging or meaning or outcome? Are you someone who likes to take action? So do you like the fact that high stakes makes you feel like, yeah, make things happen, make things happen? Do you look at it as self-growth and learning? Do you also perhaps look at it as resistance and you, you do naturally go through the lens of what is the risk versus the reward? Now none...

all those lenses and, and a couple of others did show up in my research, but what's interesting, Helen, is one lens is not enough.

We... world is moving so quickly, so complicatedly, that just having a singular lens to high stakes, because it's, it's a marathon and a sprint, high stakes, and therefore it's requiring different gears, different resistance, resilience, energy, views, actions, pause, think, reflect, recover.

That's all gotta happen, so your lens has got to be shifting like the gears on a car.

Yeah