Athlete CEO #031: How to Be Elite In All Aspects Of Life | Facebook VP Becca Van Dyck

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Growing a business, serving your community, taking a leap in your career, spending time with friends and family, developing a hobby - often our interests and desires overshadow the simple fact that there are only so many hours in a day. It can be hard to find time to tackle all our goals let alone find balance and mastery in our current commitments.

Becca Van Dyck has proven it can be done.

Becca jumped into her career head first with a 12-year stint at Wieden+Kennedy as Nike’s global account director.  She then moved to Apple as marketing communications executive, working on ad campaigns for the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Macs. Following that, she was named the chief marketing officer at Levi’s where she oversaw the “Go Forth” campaign. Then in 2012, she moved to Facebook where she now works as VP, Product Operations of AR/VR including overseeing Portal from Facebook and Oculus VR. In the midst of all this, she’s also served on the boards of Strava, the New York Times, and more, is a Mom of two girls, and a wife.

In this episode, she describes how she drew courage for each step in her career and seeks to find excellence in all aspects of her life – touching on topics like:

• Her team’s work on Portal from Facebook and Oculus VR and how it’s helping people stay connected amidst a pandemic

• How she considers outside opportunities for maximum impact and growth

• The principles and paradigms she uses to build and hone diverse teams

• How to take bold leaps in your career

• Finding balance amidst career, volunteering, and family

• How her experience playing soccer translates to her business career

• The silver linings found in strange times

+ Read the Transcript

Erik Averill (00:04):
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Athlete CEO podcast. I'm your host Erik Averill. I am very excited for our audience today. We have an incredible guest and interview. Someone that has no doubt already impacted so many of us through her incredible work and her hand on a lot of the large marketing and brand initiatives across some of the biggest brands that we all love, whether it's Nike and the Just Do It, Apple and the iPad, or Levi's and the Go Forth campaign, and now her role as the Chief Marketing Officer of AR and VR at Facebook. Beyond all the success that our guest has had in the business world, I think the things that we love about these conversations is she's so much more than that. We're not defined by one thing, it's about the impact in all aspects of our lives. She is a mom and she was a collegiate athlete. As we always say, "Once an athlete, always an athlete." So, with that, we are super excited to welcome Rebecca Van Dyck to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Becca Van Dyck (01:14):
Thanks, Erik. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Erik Averill (01:17):
Yeah. Becca, where I wanted to start is, as we all know, we are in unprecedented times here in 2020, experiencing something that none of us could've guessed or drawn up. And one of the hardest things I know as a community of people across the world that we've struggled with is we are so communal, we are so personally connected to our families and our friends. That had been really stolen from us, where we've been isolated and secluded. But, it's a very interesting thing that you're the CMO of AR and VR in this time when we're disconnected. I'd love to hear just how this experience has maybe accelerated that industry, or if you can share any stories of how that's playing out.

Becca Van Dyck (02:02):
Yeah. Thanks for asking. It is an interesting time for all of us, isn't it? As humans, as parents, as coworkers, as podcast guests. So, I guess I'll bring all of that to this. Specifically in our business, so let me talk a little bit about the products that we are selling today within our team. We have a group of products under the Oculus brand, and that is VR, and we have a group of products that are for video calling under the Portal brand. So, these are actually devices that are used in our home to connect with friends and family. We're also using it to connect for work right now at Facebook as well. Both of those industries, both of those categories were plugging along, but these current events have really accelerated both our business, but also shown how people need and can use these devices. I'll start with Portal first. Feel free to interrupt me if you need some explanation of it, but Portal is a hardware device that sits either in your kitchen, or can actually attach to your television, and acts as a video calling device. But, it's a little bit more. It's got a camera that fill follow the activity in the room or focus in on one person or multiple people. It's a hands free device and it makes video calling super seamless and really easy. Now, I know we're all getting very acquainted with video calling applications and platforms right now, and what that means is that's accelerating people's acceptance, this behavior change, this idea that connecting on video calling can feel as important and as significant as being right next to someone.

Erik Averill (04:00):
To interrupt to say thank you. We're living that out as a family. So, my wife and I, we have two little kids. We're in Arizona with no family. We bought your guys' Portal as a gift for my parents during Christmas, who live in California. So, for our two little ones, that's the only way they've interacted with grandma and grandpa and their cousins. So, it's funny. They love the faces feature, I mean, the music, the studio, it's hilarious. My two year old just demands for grandma and grandpa to pick a song, put a silly hat on, and dance. So, it's really been an incredible gift to us during this time.

Becca Van Dyck (04:39):
I'm so glad. Yeah, we, even as grownups, when we're having a Portal cocktail hour or something, it always devolves to using the AR effects and the masks and everything.

Erik Averill (04:39):
For sure.

Becca Van Dyck (04:54):
The tagline I think is so appropriate for Portal. As the marketer, allow me to do this. But, the tagline is if you can't be there, feel there, and of course this was written long before the situation we're in right now, but it seems especially important and especially relevant right now. So, that line of those products are doing very well, and we are learning so much by how people are using it because usage just accelerated. That really is benefiting us in accelerating our product development, so that's great. VR, similarly, we have a really neat product called Quest, and as we're all indoors but longing to experience other places and other ideas and other concepts, and experience them with other people, VR is a great platform for that. Now, it's still in the scheme of things, it's not as accessible as video conferencing. It's still a smaller category, but it is growing in interest and the current events that we're in right now are accelerating that. So, we are selling Quests as fast as we can make them, and the developer community is really enjoying the new use cases and the new users who are coming into VR. We're seeing a bunch of really neat and new experiences in VR. As athletes, I'm thrilled with some of the more fitness aspects and fitness experiences that people are developing in VR or for VR, which is super fun. It helps you feel like you're outside even when you're in.

Erik Averill (06:39):
Yeah, I was reading a little bit, and I personally haven't tried it, but something like supernatural... I've seen that on my Instagram feed. It's just powerful. The other thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on, and this was pre the global pandemic. But, one of the most interesting ways in which I've seen you connected to using VR was actually for the St Jude Hall of Heroes, the social impact campaign. Maybe talk a little bit about how you see that just VR and AR being used in impact case studies.

Becca Van Dyck (07:16):
Right. That was a really special project for us. If you can go to St Jude's personally, it is an amazing experience to see the hope and the amazing work that's being done there. One of the parts of this project was to see if we could allow people to experience some of the great work that happens there. The other thing we wanted to do is show the amazing heroism that these young people are going through as they're combating cancer. So, we created this notion of a hall of heroes. These monuments to this amazing courage that these kids are bringing to their recovery and that these monuments are something that the kids could create and that you could then experience in VR. It just felt super powerful to allow people to experience stories, a place, and great courage of these kids without actually being there. So, it was a great way to share that story, share that impact.

Brandon Averill (08:38):
Yeah, that's pretty amazing. You know, it seems like this theme certainly weaves through at least your experiences or what we can find that was out there. One of the places that we got led to was The Curious Company, and definitely struck us just human centered design, obviously looking at impact through a different lens. So, we thought it would be really interesting to hear from you why is that so important. I'm not sure if you're still involved with The Curious Company, but just hear a little bit about that. A lot of our listeners are always looking for ways to further impact. So, I thought it would be fun for you to dive into that a little bit if you're willing.

Becca Van Dyck (09:23):
Sure, that's great. Yeah, Pam Scott of The Curious Company is a great friend and mentor and just inspiration. I was on the board of an organization called PSI, Population Services International. They do great work around the world focusing in areas of reproductive health in the developing world, and this was a project that we paired up on with The Curious Company, and Ideo.org, to explore... There's a few projects that we've done, but basically, to use human centered design to use empathy and to work with the community on their needs to come up with some potentially new and innovative solutions. The one project that comes to mind was helping young girls in the developing world allow access to education about reproductive health, and specifically birth control. A lot of the access they had to information was blocked I guess we can say, was blocked by their cultural norms, the elders in their community. So, what we wanted to do was explore different creative ways of helping them get access to information and access to products and access to new ideas around giving them agency over their own lives and their own choices. Anyway, that's a long way of saying, it was a super interesting project, and I loved... One of the best parts about it was bringing in all these different perspectives, bringing in Ideo.org, bringing in The Curious Company, and then bringing in all of the wealth of knowledge that PSI brings. Mix that with the community that we were actually serving, they were the real heroes, they were the ones with the real ideas. I like that I can bring my life skills, my work skills, even my athletic skills to problem solving in different ways, not just marketing my day to day projects, but in having impact in other ways as well.

Brandon Averill (11:30):
Yeah, I mean, that's fantastic. What an impact, like you said, to bring for those listening that don't know all those organizations, I highly encourage you to go look them up. IDO, pretty much the founder of design thinking. I would think most people would attribute to. And bringing obviously your expertise and others into it, that sounds pretty amazing. I think what strikes me about that too is that this is all outside of your quote unquote day job it sounds like. Looking, you're involved with so many impactful organizations, whether on boards of the New York Times or Women's Advocacy. How do you make decisions on where to allocate your resources? It sounds like one of the big lenses or filters is impact. If you don't mind sharing that, I think that would be helpful to a lot of people.

Becca Van Dyck (12:25):
Yeah, definitely. It's a little more selfish if I can be honest. I look for experiences that will teach me and that will crossover into other aspects of my life. So, when I first started looking for boards to be on, the first board I was on was PSI, a non profit. It had to be something that I was passionate about, that I would feel okay spending valuable time on, taking away from work, taking away from my family, and that I would learn from. Then, as I added on other either boards or other work, I was looking for linkages of either industries or categories or problems that I wanted to learn about, that could help me in another part of my career or job, or that would help grow me as a person. Sorry, that wasn't expressed very well. But, what I mean specifically, if I want to... We're all always learning, so if I wanted to run a company, I need to know how companies, all the challenges that different companies face. A great way to do that is to get on a board, whether it's a non profit, whether it's my college, or whether it's the New York Times. So, it is very selfish in this notion of collecting ideas and collecting experiences. I'm picking boards or projects that I'm passionate about the topic and that I can learn from, and that will help serve me for whatever I choose to do in the future.

Erik Averill (14:04):
It's fun to hear it's... There's the side benefit, right? There's nothing wrong I say. When you say it's being a little selfish because ultimately when you have this mentality of how are you going to turn around and use it to serve the consumer, to serve your daughters, or the community, it makes so much sense. It also relates me back to... I've got to ask from the athlete background that to be successful in anything, there's thing experience of looking to your left and your right or in front of you, and seeing somebody who's maybe a little bit further along, and realizing you've got to continue to get better and to develop your skills. Can you talk a little bit about just your background as a soccer player and an athlete, and how that's formed and shaped you and continues to?

Becca Van Dyck (14:52):
Sure, definitely. Yeah, we're always learning. The nice thing about sports is it's such a leveling playing field and you're always constantly reminded about how much more you have to improve, always. But, just a little background, I started playing in... I found my voice as an athlete or through athleticism probably in middle school. I was the youngest of four girls and all of my other sisters had real clear path of what they were good at, and I didn't have anything. I latched on to sports as my thing, not because I was necessarily the best at it, but it did just become my identity. I also benefited from Title IX. I grew up, say middle school, high school, I was in the 80s, and I had access to sports programs, and I was desirable, I was wanted on teams. They needed to fill up a lot of these teams. Then, when I went to college even, it was I went for soccer, but was asked to play... I felt like I could play on so many other teams, which was so clear. That was part of the learning process too as we all know. You know, you might have one sport, but you play another to get stronger, to get faster, to work on different muscle groups. So, I like that cross training aspect that I had access to because of either the era I grew up or where I grew up or circumstances. So, I do love that. I also love that's cross training, cross learning across sports. But also, I love cross training, cross learning within a sport, and soccer for me is a great metaphor for this idea, and I use it in work quite a bit as well. But, being on a team means we all have a role and we have to know our role. But, we also equally have to know the role of someone else, the others on the team so that when, for example, as a defender in soccer, you make a run and you go up to make an offensive move, the offense or the midfield, someone has to slide back and cover your role. You have to know each other really well on the team. You have to know the positions, you need to know the game, you need to be able to see the full field. So, there's this notion of cross training, cross learning, even within a team that I have benefited from having in my life and I use that as a manager and I use that at work quite a bit.

Erik Averill (17:29):
Thanks for sharing that. One of the questions I have just hearing how you say you use this as a manager today, I had read one of your previous interviews and I thought it was so insightful of just talking about the diversity of skills and the diversity of background and genders and ethnicities, it's the secret sauce of making a team impactful, and has the potential to be exceptional. But, you made certain that it also takes a really strong leader when you have different personalities because I know how it is within our company or within our own family, right? A lot of times you're not sitting there going, "Oh, they're just wired differently," it's much more can turn into being, "I want it my way, and x, y, z." How do you lead such a diverse and creative team to be successful and to be cohesive and just to piggyback off that, you came into Facebook at a time when there really wasn't this 30 years of this is the way we've done things in the team culture. So, I'd just love to hear about that.

Becca Van Dyck (18:40):
Yeah. If you'll allow me to reference, are you guys watching The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan documentary?

Erik Averill (18:48):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Becca Van Dyck (18:50):
I'm loving that. Anyway, I'm going to get this quote by Phil Jackson entirely wrong, but I remember hearing it early in my career, which was something along the lines that his job wasn't to contain the fire, contain the magic, contain the passion. His job was to keep the embers going. Point being, he didn't see his job as to squash all of those personalities, but instead just to keep blowing on the embers, keep it going at this bright level. So, I think about that when I create teams. I have an amazing team right now, and my leaders all are very distinctive. They all come from a different background, different point of view, and they bring such a different strength. It is the collection of all of us that really makes the magic of course. So, as a leader, being able to see, oh, this player, this person, is so strong in this area, not as strong over here, but so strong here, great, how do we match them with someone who can cover their blind spots and cover their strengths. It's not just then the puzzle putting these different personalities together or different skills, then the real magic has when you can bring them together and let them understand the benefit of the other, to see the strength of the other. So, to understand what they're good at, but to know their weakness and to really be able to lean on their teammate. That's when the real magic happens, and that's not always easy to do but it's fun.

Erik Averill (20:28):
Yeah, no, very difficult. But, like you said, it is magic when it all connects. Another thing that... I'd love to just hear you talk about, from your own experience, as being a woman in the marketplace that has had a lot of the success. It's interesting, the internet only likes to highlight all of the huge successes and almost makes it looks as you just had this perfect upward trajectory from the minute you dropped out of college, or came out of college, to working on the Nike account, to where you're at today. It couldn't have been an easy road, and now being a mom of two daughters, just share a little bit of what it was like along this journey at these big companies and just paving your way through your career.

Becca Van Dyck (21:22):
Yeah, thanks. Again to misquote someone else, Steve Jobs and other peoples have said this, but that you can't see your career... you can't imagine your career looking forward. It comes into sharp focus looking back. So, looking back, it does all align up, and it makes complete sense. But, early on, I had no idea what I was going to do, and frankly I still have so much more of this journey to go, I don't know where it's going to take me. So yeah, although it might look like it makes sense now or that it was easy, of course it wasn't. Every leap, every job change was so traumatic and so scary, but it is in the collection of the whole, the collection of all those experiences that has increased my value of course, my value over time. Initially, I did not plan to go into marketing or advertising. I joined an advertising agency right out of school, an agency called Chiat Day in New York, and I wasn't pursuing a job in marketing, I was pursuing an experience in learning. I had previously worked on some project at the Smithsonian Museum of American History on the marketing of Lionel Trains, toy trains, to children at the turn of the century, and I was just interested in the science and the art of marketing. I wasn't a marketer, I was just interested in it. So, I got this job, and primarily one of the reasons I took the job or I got the job is I was a junior, junior, entry, entry, entry level person on the Reebok account, a sports account. So, here's where you can see something that began to come together. So, I start out, I was curious in what this whole advertising thing was. It was sports, which I loved. Just to put it in chronological order, it was 1992. It was the Barcelona Olympics. It was the first year of the Dream Team, we were working on a campaign with Nike. So, immediately I was in love, immediately I loved the pace and the topics and the problem solving. So, I got into marketing that way. From there, that led me to work at Wieden+Kennedy, another advertising agency, which is Nike's agency. I was there in Portland, Oregon at Wieden+Kennedy for 12 glorious years. But, even those years weren't easy or one thing, it was constant change. We were always about to lose the Nike account, that fear was always wildly motivating. We were opening up offices around the world. I was able to explore concepts of victory and inspiration and transcendence, and all of these ideas of sports, and American ideals of sports, and I was able to explore and think about what they might mean in other cultures as we opened up offices around the world and started doing marketing around the world. So, what an education. I think I was in love with the sports of it, I was in love with the learning of it. That kept me going for quite a while, and then just hungry for more. Like I said, all the transitions are hard, but I took this huge leap of faith when I left Wieden+Kennedy and the world of sports to go to Apple. At that time, Apple wasn't quite what we know it to be today. It was actually called Apple Computers, the iPhone didn't exist. It was a different thing, and I went for that. I went for that challenge, I went for that learning. I was terrified about leaving athletes and the fanaticism that goes along with that, but found that tech and Apple had their own fans, had their own passion. So, I joined Apple, and that was just crazy. But again, every transition, I was like, "Okay, I need to keep learning." I had an opportunity to go to Levi's as their first global CMO, and that was terrifying. Then, after that, I had the opportunity to become the first consumer marketing person at Facebook. That was the most terrifying. These are just these crazy leaps of faith, and what was propelling me forward was this idea that I need this experience. It's not going to feel good, it's going to be painful, I'm not good at it yet, I have to leap into a territory that is unknown, but I know I need it, I know I'll learn from it, and I really have. I'm very grateful.

Brandon Averill (26:21):
That's pretty awesome, and I hope that everybody listening to this keeps picking up on the word. The word is learning. I know I'm certainly picking that up. I find it fascinating and it's the perfect filter I think, and it explains so much to why you've had such an interesting path and probably will continue to have an interesting and very successful path. I would love to hear... It's continuing along this theme I think a little bit, but probably more than half of the audience listening is a professional athlete, and something that we internally try to talk a lot about is putting that professional first. So many times, our clients get pigeonholed into "Hey, he's just an athlete or she's just an athlete," and it gets stereotyped. So, I think there's a big lesson here for everybody that putting yourself into an uncomfortable situation and always looking for that place to learn is a valuable lesson. But, I would love to hear you maybe expand upon that. I think especially coming from a branding person and this is a huge buzzword, everybody's saying, "Oh, brand yourself, and do these different things." We see certainly there are athletes, Lebron comes top of mind, but that are developing a brand. But, I bet they're also looking at it from a learning perspective. So, I'd love for you to add whatever you could, just advice for these athletes as they're thinking through this. How do they find these opportunities, how do they push into them, how do they identify them?

Becca Van Dyck (27:59):
Yeah. I think I'll go back to that point earlier about you don't quite know what your brand or your career will be looking forward, it's easier to see it going back. I want to bring that metaphor into this conversation because this is the advice I give a lot of people, either starting out in their career or maybe midway in their career and they're making a change, is to recognize that they don't have to pick the perfect job. They don't have to be really stressed about what's the perfect fit for me, what's the perfect job, what's the job that is the most aligned with my brand, because what is going to happen throughout the course of your career is you're going to get a bunch of jobs. You're going to have a bunch of experience, and it's the collection that creates the whole. It's the collection of the different experience you get that make you the most valuable. So, if you are an athlete and your brand is some version of that, that doesn't mean your first job or your second job or the career change has to serve the brand that you're bringing into it. Just remember that this is going to be a journey and you're going to add a lot of experiences. It isn't until you've collected quite a few experiences that your real value will emerge and your real brand will emerge. So, I guess the point is don't stress about it early in your career, bring yourself, bring your skills, try out that job, and if it's not the right job, you're going to go onto another job and you're going to try that job, and that transition in and of itself will be valuable, and then the next experience, and the next experience.

Brandon Averill (29:43):
Yeah, I think that's awesome advice. Yeah, and hopefully everybody listening heeds that, not just the athletes, but even the founders or the investors. I mean, I know I'm sitting here, I've got two pages of notes, trying to jot it all down, and we'll have the fortune of going back to the tape. But, the other part that I'd love for you to maybe lean into is I know for myself, when I was looking at your background and I think so many of us, and probably this is a curse of trying to be a high performer for everybody listening, but is time. Time being the limiting factor that we all have, and looking at this, I'd love to hear... Obviously impact's important to you, and probably mostly important is your family, so to your willingness, would love to hear just how you balance things being a mom, having teenage daughters. Where do you draw the lines? How do you put all this together?

Becca Van Dyck (30:44):
Yeah, I want to point out that it doesn't... I have the benefit of having daughters who are now older, so I can do more. It wasn't always that way. My mother has given me a lot of good advice, but one really great piece of advice is when I think my girls were really young, I had a good career, but I felt this yearning to also have impact in a larger way, to volunteer, to be on a board, to do something outside of work and outside of my family. And my mom, to her credit, said, "The most important thing you can do, Becca, is to raise those girls." That just alleviated the stress that, oh I feel like I need to do more, I feel like I need to volunteer, I feel like I need to have impact. She just reminded me that of all the things I was doing, my job, anything, of all the things I was doing, the most important thing I was doing was raising those girls. That just brought everything into sharp focus and allowed me to make some really good decisions, and not to burden myself or feel like I was inadequate for not doing more. It wasn't until the girls got older that I began to realize I did have a little more time, and that part of being a good role model for them would be to show how I can balance being a mom and being a businesswoman and giving back or being involved in some board work. But, I can't stress this enough, especially for parents with young children, you don't have to do it right now, there's plenty of time, it will come. So, yeah, I have been able to add on to what I call my extracurricular activities. I've been able to add on to those as my girls have gotten older, and the nice thing is they have benefited from me adding those on because they see me happy and healthy and learning new businesses, new categories, new concepts, new areas, and I like recounting those stories for them. So, it's this virtuous circle. They of course remain my primary goal in life, is raising those two girls.

Erik Averill (33:13):
That's great. You know, and maybe we can push into this a little bit more. I think what you just shared is super helpful for me. I have a young daughter, and then I have a wife who's very aspirational and committed. She's a chef and a personal trainer. It's interesting, so much of society makes these absolutes or these extremes, like you either have to be just killing it in the marketplace or you've got to be a stay at home mom or you've got to just be perfect in everything. So, I just think hearing a little bit of, what's the advice that you give to your daughters as they are in this midst of probably headed towards college or athletics, of how much is enough? How do you instill the right values in them as they launch out into the world out of their teenage years? I would just love to hear the way in which you process and the conversations you're having of what... How do you define success or help them discover what success means to them as they launch out into the world?

Becca Van Dyck (34:26):
Yeah, I might have them listen to this podcast, but I imagine it's all stuff they've heard from me before, which is the value of collecting experiences and the value of learning, the value of knowing your strengths and your weaknesses, the value of understanding you don't have to do it all, the value of understanding that success comes in little bite sizes and bits and pieces over time. So, I think a lot of these themes are the same themes that maybe they actually... yeah, they probably taught me and that has formed how I talk about these notions of success and leadership. I do want to, if I may, just point out another thing that makes me unique and my success unique, which is my husband. He is a stay home parent, and he is the foundation and the stability for all of us that allows me to go and learn, that allows me to go out and experiment, and is an amazing role model for these girls also. So, it is just a really... When I think about what is success for these girls, they're seeing my career, they're seeing all the things I'm involved with, they're seeing me continue to play soccer, they're seeing me on a team, they're also seeing my husband, they're seeing their father play a range of roles. I'm going to get a little weepy here, but they're going to be some pretty strong and pretty amazing girls.

Erik Averill (36:06):
Yeah. That's incredible, and it's an encouragement I think for all of us listening and a reminder too of the impact, right, and the value of the closest relationships we have today. I think it's the silver lining that's come out of our experience in 2020. In a world where you can feel like everybody is pressing the accelerator at extreme levels and you can feel inadequate, it's been this return to if you already have a great family and spouses and kids and loved ones, don't neglect those. I think it's great advice for all of us, that we're only successful because of the people that we surround ourselves with, and to count our blessings. So, that was super impactful.

Becca Van Dyck (37:02):
So true.

Erik Averill (37:02):
Yeah. Just being respectful of your time as we close out, one thing I would love to hear is, staying on those silver linings or the crazy crystal ball projections of coming out of this experience is I think it's also going to force us to accelerate things. We've just always done things the way they are, we know that most people don't love change, we're late adopters on a lot of things. If you had to make some just curious predictions or things that you're experiencing, and it doesn't have to even be work related, how do you think life looks different for us coming out of this experience?

Becca Van Dyck (37:47):
Yeah, at work with my team, as we're checking in with everyone, we're doing a lot of conversations around what's really hard and let's talk about that, but what's working and what are the things we want to bring forward. So, this is top of mind. In the work setting, I'll start there. The work setting, we are learning how to be more efficient in our communications, how to use the tools at our disposable, how to figure out which meetings are really required, which are things that can be done more concisely in writing. Also, the importance of just getting everyone in the room at once to get the shared learning and the shared language. So, there have been some really great learnings that we will bring forward for work. Personally, the connections that I'm having with my family, who all live far away, and it is primarily on Portal, on video calling, is we're just so much more connected. I don't know why we didn't do this before, but I do think that there has been some forced behavior change, a lot of forced behavior change that has come out of this. Some of it of course is very hard, but there are some silver linings. Some of it is really great. So, the connection with family and taking the pressure off of just doing a quick video call or a quick check in on Sundays. The other thing I'm really loving is the return to community in our immediate neighborhood. We have great neighbors, but we're all so busy, and we are congregating every Friday night out in the street, six feet apart, to be grateful, and to check in, and to see how everyone's doing, and to share experiences. So, there is in this strange time when we are physically separated and physically distant, it's amazing how we are coming closer together and connecting.

Erik Averill (39:46):
Yeah, no, those are great takeaways, and we've seen it internally. It's interesting. We have the privilege every day to be trusted with families, really their hopes and their dreams through their financial management, and we've talked about the silver lining is we have become closer to our clients because it isn't just a business driven conversation, it's getting on a video call and really connecting, and asking a very simple question of just, "How are you?" I think a lot of times when we're in the hustle to get to the next thing, a lot of times we miss the person in front of us. I think hopefully that's definitely the silver lining coming out of it.

Becca Van Dyck (40:36):
I love that.

Erik Averill (40:37):
Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Before we go, are there any asks of the audience or any parting words that you want to leave them with?

Becca Van Dyck (40:48):
Well, I don't know exactly who you are, but you inspire me. I'm excited about where you've come from and definitely where you're going. So, thank you for letting me be a part of this community and a part of this conversation.

Erik Averill (41:01):
Yeah, well, thank you so much. For all the listeners, thank you guys for your attention. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it. As Brandon said, we have probably 10 pages of notes that we will upload to the podcast show notes. Of course if you guys have any questions for us, you can find us on all the major social channels. But, until next time, as we always say, "Stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro."

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