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Well, hey, y’all. Welcome back. We’re having a conversation with Jesse Parker today.

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Now, Jesse is an amazing, amazing, amazing human being who is a LCS certified life coach and Zapier alum. Yes, worked at Zapier. And you can find all of that out if you go to Jesse’s website at LifeCoachOperations.com. But before you do that, make sure to tune into our interview.

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We’re going to be talking about automation, talking about A.I. and no matter where you’re at in your journey as an online business owner, how automation can actually help you reach more people, create a bigger impact and create the revenue and the profits that you desire in your business. I met Jesse through the life coach school as a certified coach there and absolutely love the work that Jesse is doing with their clients. So join us for the interview.

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Join us for our conversation. And when you’re done, head on over to LifeCoachOperations.com where you can also get Jesse’s free guide of 70 plus ways to automate your coaching business. Welcome to the Relationships Make Money podcast, where it’s all about the people, partners and profits.

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Each week, we’ll explore conversations around partnerships, leadership, our thoughts and profits. And now your host, Roberto Candelaria. OK, so we’re here with Jesse.

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I heard all about Jesse and we’re going to talk about this lovely thing called automation. And some of y’all might be like, what the hell is automation? Why do I need automation? When do I get started with it? So we’re going to talk about all of these things today. But as we do that, Jesse, do us a favor.

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And like what actually got you into automation? Like how did you get here? What’s your background? Yeah, so I found automation by chance. Gosh, maybe it was like 15 years ago now. And the story is actually very personal to me.

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My dad, we were living in Pennsylvania and he had been commuting back and forth to Manhattan two and a half hours each way for about 20 years. And his doctor was like, hey, if you keep this up, you’re really not going to live much longer. So you have to cut out this commute.

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And he didn’t know what to do because our entire family, like myself, my brothers, we were all about to go to college and take out all the student loans. And he’s like, I don’t feel like I can go, you know, do a home business because I’m not going to make the revenue. I don’t know what I’m doing.

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And at that time, I was playing around with drag and drop website editors. And so I thought that I was like a technical genius. I just I could do everything.

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And so I said, Dad, don’t worry, like I’m going to help you. You just come home from the commute like we’ll build your business. And he agreed and came home and, you know, he worked in the finance industry and they had a lot of regulations and specific ways that they needed to do things.

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And he just started kind of just spurting out all these requests. And immediately I was like, oh, I think I got myself into a really bad position because I’m not a developer. I don’t know how to connect all these apps together.

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I don’t know what to do. I’m panicking. And so I did what I always do when I don’t know the answer.

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I go to Google and I just started typing in like, how do I connect this to that? How do I connect this to that? And I discovered Zapier and found that it was an easy, non-technical way of automating, you know, the transfer of all this data back and forth between some of the apps that he wanted to use. And from that day, I was like, listen, you just pick whatever apps you want. They just have to come from this list, which is the Zapier app directory.

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And I helped him build his entire business, you know, solo, just on the back of Zapier Automations, which is pretty incredible. Yeah. And I mean, so about when was it? I know you said about 15 years ago.

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Is that when you were doing your dad’s business too? Yeah. Yeah. It was all around.

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Yeah. That’s how I found Zapier when I was helping him with his business. I was probably maybe just out of college or maybe a senior in college.

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That’s when, I mean, the iPhone had just come out. It kind of paints a picture of the time. Well, you know, I was laughing because, you know, like, hey, it’s got to be this list of things.

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And so when you were like, it’s got to be this list of things. Man, like the list has grown to all the things that it can connect to. That’s why I was like, I was trying to get that point of reference because I remember it’s like it didn’t used to be everything.

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And now it’s like everything. Right. Yeah.

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He had to pick from a list of about 100 applications. That’s what Zapier supported at the time. Today, they support, I believe, over 6000 applications.

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So it has grown exponentially. It’s so crazy. So crazy.

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Even things with like the APIs and all of that. But, you know, we’re not going to talk about APIs. I just know that because somebody told me once and I had to learn.

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But like when you were doing this and, you know, doing this for your dad, is that the moment that you realized this is going to be my champ? Or was there another moment that was just like, maybe I should explore this a bit more? Yeah. So it’s interesting after doing that for my dad, I definitely felt sort of like hooked on on the power that I had. But I like to think about this a lot of like was was I always destined for something like this? And when I think back to my childhood, like I just remember always being able to see patterns or create patterns and just about everything that I saw.

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And, you know, I later found out, you know, as an adult, this is probably due to some, you know, of my own neurodiversities. But I was always able to kind of like construct and organize data with a lot of different pieces and a lot of different variables. And, you know, doing that, taking that skill set and doing it through processes and systems, I think is what makes me so great at at business operations, which is really, you know, where automation shines.

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So I I also knew at that time that I was a very visual learner, like that’s something that stayed with me. And so getting into like your traditional development and like being a coder, right, like a textual coder was really overwhelming. And so, like I said before, the drag and drop websites, I was really into that.

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And so when I found Zapier, I was like, OK, I can create these systems visually. And and I know now that I have access to a set of tools that is really going to allow me to create anything that I can think of. And I think that that’s when I was really hooked.

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Like automation started becoming like Lego pieces for me, allowing me to build out of anything I really could imagine. Yeah. And, you know, I think like let’s play with that a little bit.

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So I think that there’s probably a lot of confusion in the marketplace right now. You know, AI is everywhere. And it is, I’m not even going to say changing by the day, changing by the second.

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For somebody that maybe hasn’t explored automation or they’re hearing the word, what actually is automation? Yeah. So automation, the way I like to describe it, it’s just a process that happens automatically. That’s the most simple definition I can give you.

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Yeah. And so in saying that, maybe what are one or two things that, let’s just say coaches, right? Coaches, online business owners, we, you and I know that automation is something that can definitely benefit them. It benefits us in our own businesses.

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What are some of the things, ways that it can benefit them that they just may not be thinking about right now? Yeah. So that’s a great question. And I think that if we want to understand some of the benefits of automation, we first have to take a step back and understand the concept of leverage.

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So leverage refers to the amount of impact or the results that you can achieve relative to, you know, the time and the effort and the resources that you’re investing in trying to achieve that result. So, you know, high leverage activities are things that take, you know, very minimal resources to produce really big results. And low leverage activities are those that require just a significant amount of resources and they tend to produce smaller results.

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So the name of the game here really is in operations and scaling and things like that is how can we continue to produce bigger and bigger result with less and less effort and resources? And I think that that’s where automation comes in, because automation, it’s always going to be cheaper, it’s going to be faster and it’s going to be more consistent, you know, than human effort. And I do want to say that that doesn’t mean that we replace human beings altogether with automation, but we automate the pieces of the business that pull us away from stepping into our most human required responsibility. Yeah, and I’m looking at a piece about, you know, it doesn’t mean that we’re taking away humans.

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You know, I think that we’re always going to like, why to be like, especially online business owners, coaches, consultants, like we are in the people business, so we’re not going to take away people. I would say personally, in my own business, I found that automation actually allows us to hire more people because when there’s just things that we’re not going to do. And what I’m going to give an example here, because I think a lot of people hear automation, they think, I got to go build the funnel.

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I got to build the funnel. And that’s like one of the first things that people hear in automation. But, you know, let’s think about like when somebody buys something from you, whether it be, you know, like an online course or a group coaching program or, you know, any one of your products, programs or services.

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You know, if you have three or four or five emails that that customer gets once they buy, you know, like at some point, your business may want to not send to those manually anymore. Right. I’m sure you’re in great use of that, y’all.

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Because there was a time it was like somebody bought y’all and you start where you are with the tech that’s available. Like, and I’m laughing y’all because I remember like we used to sell some digital products. We literally had a PayPal button.

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It’s not a sales page. It’s literally a PayPal button. And like I’d get the email and we’d literally tell people like within 24 hours, I’ll send you your PDF ebook.

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Like, because we didn’t, I didn’t know the tools. We didn’t have them. And so literally people were sending us money on PayPal to buy something.

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I’d be like, we’ll email it to you later today. As soon as we get around to buying it now. That’s just an example of automation that we use.

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So like, what do you think are some of the mistakes that you see people in the coaching space and online business owners make when it comes to actually starting to use automation? Yeah, I think that they forget to start with the process first. That’s always where I’m starting with my clients. And so if you’re taking like really messy data and really poor processes and you’re putting that into an automated system, then all you’re doing is you’re just amplifying your inefficiencies.

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So again, when I’m working with clients, we always start with the process first. Whether that’s flow charting or listing it out, just having some kind of understanding of this is what happens and this is when it happens and this is where it happens and this is how it happens can be so, so helpful. And then once we understand what that process looks like and where some of the manual, repeatable, recurring steps are, that is when we start talking about automation or maybe if we have to switch some apps around later in the process.

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Yeah, you know, like one of the things that, you know, like automation, it’s so funny, like automation I feel sometimes falls into these categories with, you know, like getting an assistant or getting an attorney or getting an accountant, you know, people are like, they go when there’s a pain point. Like, this is broken, I’ve been pain, ouch, hurt. It’s like when they go to a physical therapist, it hurts when I move, help, not hurt, when I move.

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And I think that, you know, sometimes they wait because it’s just like, oh, I need to hit that six-figure mark or I need to wait till I have thousands and thousands of dollars or I need to wait till my mailing list is at whatever number they magically come, you know, pull out of the air. But why do you think business owners wait before, like jumping into automation? And in your experience, like why could that be a mistake for some people? Yeah, that’s a great question. And so I think what I want to do is talk about both automation and operations here because they’re so, you know, closely tied together.

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And I think that they’re, you know, when we think about operations, I think there are some misconceptions. I think even the term, you know, business operations, it sounds so complex, right? So sometimes, you know, we think that this is for more established businesses with many, many, many clients and, you know, internal team members and all that. But the simple truth is that every single business has operations from the moment that it exists.

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So operations are just simply how our business operates. So every, you know, function of your business and, you know, every function has a way that it operates. So, you know, when we’re in the first year of our business or let’s say, you know, below, you know, six figures, we’re typically figuring out our operations.

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We’re figuring out how we want to deliver value and what those processes, you know, look like. And once we land on consistency, even if it’s not consistency 100% of the time, but you’re like, okay, this is generally the way that I’m doing this. That’s when we look to automation.

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And, you know, from working with clients, I’ve found that this typically happens like kind of this switch over to maybe building an automation on Zapier or, you know, having processes that are consistent enough for automation. That typically happens around being in business for about a year, regardless of your revenue level. Sometimes it’s a little bit more than a year.

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Sometimes it’s a little bit less. But, you know, in the meantime, what I always encourage folks to do is that you don’t have to go to Zapier or things like that right away. You can look at the automation that already exists inside of the apps that you use.

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So your scheduling app and, you know, your email apps and things like that, they have built-in automated features that you can take advantage of. And then when you, you know, you notice that you’re spending more and more time actually managing the business, then you are innovating and strategizing, you know, for that business. Then, you know, that’s also another good time to take a look at some of those activities that are pulling you away, you know, from what it is that you really want to be doing.

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And then seeing if you can automate those things. So, you know, again, that’s a huge piece of what I’ve been doing with my clients is figuring out what are the biggest inefficiencies, regardless of revenue level, again, impacting them. What are those, you know, what are the inefficiencies that are impacting their clients and, you know, the business as a whole, and then solutioning together.

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Yeah, and I know you mentioned, you know, looking at the automations available within tools you may already have. So whether that be something like Macuity or Calendly or ConvertKit or whatever platforms people are using. So when you think about this, and people like to overwhelm themselves, I’ll say, with an automation and make it something way, way bigger.

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Because like you said, something simple, right? And so what are things that people could, if they’re new to automation, start doing today to start getting some of their time back? And actually, you know, I’m on a complete side note, y’all. So like before we hit record, one of the things Jesse and I were talking about is, and I’m saying before we hit record, and I’m not gonna give a timeline because, you know, I don’t know when this is gonna air. But, you know, we were talking about how Warren and I are gonna be able to do some traveling this year.

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And Jesse was sharing about being able to go up to the Northeastern states and visit family and friends. And, you know, we’re able to do some of these things that we were talking about before we hit record because of automation, because things that have allowed us to rebuy, not rebuy, but, you know, regained time in our lives. And so what are some of those things that people can think about simple ways to start regaining that time? Yeah, so I think that that changes based on the business and how that person, you know, chooses to operate and have their schedule.

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But generally, you know, I think this is a process somebody could follow is one, I suggest committing to putting the things that you’re working on on your calendar. It’s important to understand where exactly you’re spending your time. And then like for me, I always reflect on, you know, the past week, the past month.

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And I’m looking and I’m thinking, okay, what took me the most time? Like, and out of all those tasks that I worked on that were very time consuming, which of those tasks were also, you know, reoccurring? And then I’m like, okay, this is something I’m doing over and over again. This is clearly a manual process. I’m going to write it out.

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I’m going to write the steps. And then honestly, I just go to Zapier. And I’m like, okay, in the tool that I’m manually performing these tasks in, are those supported on Zapier? And does Zapier have, you know, the triggers and actions, you know, that mirror what I’m doing? And that lets me know if I can automate something and how much of something that I can automate.

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But if you, I’ll just add on to this, like if you’re in that stage, like if you’re a coach in that stage, you know, you’re still working on developing your processes and you might not, you know, have things on your calendar in that way, you can always start with your planning and scheduling process. That’s something that I think most of us do. So I actually use an AI planner called reclaim.ai. And there’s automations built in there, AI built in there.

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And basically, you know, I set rules ahead of time that tell this calendar how I like to prioritize things and how I like to work and how I like to spend time. So it makes sure that I’m always working on the most important items without me having to set that schedule up myself. Yet it’s flexible enough to change as, you know, things as they do just kind of pop up in my life.

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So, you know, if you, again, if you don’t have that kind of like, I’m spending a lot of time here on this process because you haven’t developed them yet, then, you know, your own planning and scheduling is a great place to look for some opportunities. I love that in terms of the schedule. And there’s, I hadn’t heard of reclaim.ai and there’s so many of these different calendar apps.

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And I think it’s just wonderful how much automation is coming to make our life simpler. I’m not gonna say easier, y’all, I’m gonna say simpler. Because when we can put the right information in, it can give us a good output.

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And I think that the key here is fitting the right information. And so when you talk about things like calendaring and the systems or, you know, even emails or anything like that, right? How can automation actually, hold on, like I was gonna say, like, how can it help people scale more effectively? But I know business owners, and some of them may be like, how can automation actually help with someone’s profitability? Like, how can automation put in place, help someone make more money and keep more of it? Yeah, well, if you wanna make more money, you probably wanna spend your time figuring out how to make more money. And so the more time you have to do that, the more successful you’re gonna be at doing that, right? And the more time that you’re spending manually executing pieces of processes or managing or micromanaging for some of us, the less time that we have to strategize and think about those things.

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So it really comes down to what I was talking about before with leverage, is how are you leveraging your time? What is the impact that you’re producing every single hour that you work? And that comes down to how you spend your time and how you spend your time comes down to what you’re able to, delegate off of your plate so you can focus on the things you want to. So stepping away from automation, as we now come here to the last couple of questions. One of the things I appreciate about you is it’s just how you show up as you everywhere.

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And so I’m just, you know, again, outside of automation, you all just see the human. Like if you could give a piece of advice to people about just being true to you and to your identity in business, whatever those identities may be, what would you say to people that are maybe in a place like, it’s not okay to show up as me? You know, I think that that’s another great question. And I do think about this a lot.

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You know, when I was going into this business, you know, serving coaches in this way, you know, from this identity, I mean, I don’t see a lot of folks, you know, in the industry that look like me or that do what I do, but inside it’s something that I’m really passionate about. And I think that if you have something, you know, to offer and value to provide, then it’s worth maybe some of the discomfort you might feel of maybe some of those, I don’t know, internal judgments that you have on yourself. But I find that when I show up and do things the way that I want to, people notice that and they appreciate it rather than judging me for it because it is different and it is new and it is refreshing.

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And I think that people really appreciate authenticity in others. Yeah. And I think it’s so beautiful the way that you do show up as you.

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It’s like, hi, here I am, this is me. And are you going to show up as you too? And I think it’s just one of the beautiful gifts that you bring this space and you bring this industry. And so thank you for showing up as you.

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And if you’re listening, y’all, I hope that maybe that’s an invitation to you or if there’s something that you’re just like, hey, I don’t know if people are going to judge me. Like, you know, reach out to Jesse, reach out to me, like, hey, we’ll chat with you. Like, it’s okay to be you.

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So in closing, where can people find you? Where can they learn more about you, the services you offer? Oh, and I have a post-it note somewhere, but you probably know too. There is an opt-in. You do have something.

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And I forget the name of it right now. Y’all see also that’s okay to not have to put your shit together all the time too. That’s okay.

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I’m happy to tell folks about it. So to learn more about me, you can go to a couple of places. One is my website.

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So www.lifecoachoperations.com. And that is where you can grab my guide. It’s 70 plus ways to automate your life coaching business. It’s right there on the homepage.

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And then I also have a Facebook group completely free. It’s called Automation Mastery for Life Coaches. And within that group, I run weekly automation hours, also free, nothing you have to join, where you can come and get your automation questions answered.

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I’ll walk through a process with you. I can recommend tools. So those are some, you know, free resources for y’all to take advantage of.

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Awesome. Well, Jesse, thanks for being here. Y’all, I hope that y’all learned something about automation today.

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Of course, you can find Jesse online, like Jesse said, over at lifecoachoperations.com. Also the Facebook group will have all the links in the show notes. Y’all have a great day and we’ll see you on the next episode. It might be next week.

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It might be this week. We’ll see what y’all say. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Relationships Make Money podcast.

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