 I'm Aaron, and I'm an introvert, probably pretty important for doing this talk. But I'm also a leader, equally as important for doing this talk. I'm Director of Product over at A2 Hosting. I've led all kinds of teams throughout my career, including leading the WordPress security team for several years. I've led a number of different products, including releases of WordPress. And for many years, I led my own company, a web development agency. And I did all that as an introvert, because like almost every introvert, I was born an introvert. It's kind of part of who I am. It's certainly not the only thing that I am, that's important to understand. But it's a part of who I am. But even though I've always been an introvert, I did not always realize it. And I think that there was even a part of my life where I maybe realized it, but refused to accept it. And I want to tell you all the story of how I discovered and came to accept that I was an introvert, because along the way, I want to look at some myths, some misconceptions about introversion that many of us buy into whether we realize it or not. And it's important to address those before we talk about what it means to lead as an introvert. So when I was really young, people told me that I was just like my dad, like probably many boys. I embraced that. I loved that. I wanted to be just like my dad. In many ways, we were. We liked a lot of the same things, same kinds of food, same kinds of activities. When I was in school, my best subjects were math and science, and those were the things that he was good at too. So I was pretty convinced that I was basically exactly like my dad. And besides, who doesn't want to be this guy, right? And yes, this is me as an infant in a dune buggy at the desert with my parents. Yes, I got to ride in the buggy even at that age. That was something that's part of the DNA of my family for sure. And this other one is also me, probably about 12 years old here standing next to my dad as he sits on his race bike. Yes, I definitely wanted to be just like him. And the reason that this is important to my story is because as I was growing up, my dad owned small businesses. And sometime soon after this picture in my mid-teens, I decided that I too wanted to be a small business owner. So I paid close attention to how he ran his companies. And when I was 18, I started my first company, a web development agency. And I was absolutely certain that I was going to succeed because I had this example and my dad had succeeded. And so I was going to because I was just like him. I didn't leave any room for the potential of failure or honestly even struggle. But even though my business did succeed a little bit right at the beginning, I pretty quickly happened upon a struggle, a very difficult part of running my business. And it wasn't the web development part. And it wasn't even some of the other things that I had gone in knowing I was going to need to do to succeed in business, the finances, the taxes, customer retention. But it was getting new customers. And I'd seen my dad do this a thousand times. The way he did it, he would go to places where his potential customers were. For him this was like auto auctions because he ran trucking companies, tow truck companies, auto transport companies. He would talk to those people en masse and he would turn them into his customers. And it worked great for him. And I was pretty sure that was going to work great for me too. So that's essentially what I did. I would go to places where my potential customers were. Small business association meetings, conferences like this. I would talk to those people en masse and I would turn them into customers. And it worked, but it was exhausting. And it felt like so exhausting that maybe I was doing something wrong. Cuz I was like spending maybe 5 or 10% of my time actually doing this. And like 90% of my energy. Like really just absolutely sucked it all out of me. And in those very early years, my dad was my primary business coach, if you will. So I went to him and I said, I think something's wrong here. What am I doing wrong? And maybe he or I should have realized that there was a significant difference between us and he was an extrovert and I was an introvert. But we did not. Instead, he said, well, Erin, it's not near as hard as you're making it out to be, first of all, and second, I've been doing it for many years. You're brand new at it. Maybe if you just keep working at it, you'll get better at it. It'll become easier and take less energy, less exhausting. Sounded logical, probably sounds logical to most of us here. And so I did. I spent several years working really hard at getting better at this one part of my business that I really struggled with. And the reason that I spent several years doing this, maybe I'm a little bit of a slow learner, but I'm not always that slow. I spent several years doing this because my dad was half right. And so I thought that I was succeeding. He was half right. I got a lot better at it. But it never got less exhausting. That part never seemed to change for me. I still didn't realize that it was an introvert extrovert thing. Instead, I thought, well, maybe it's an industry thing, right? He's in trucking. This is different. I've been in the industry a while. I know some other people in the space. I'm going to go talk to some other web development company owners that are doing things kind of the same way I am. People that I see at these conferences and meetings that are getting customers in the same way I am, and I'm going to talk to them about it. And this was the first time when I went and I talked to these people. I said, hey, look, why is it that we go to these same conferences? We talk to the same people. We come away with very similar kinds of customers, but you seem to leave just energized and ready to hit the ground running with your new customers. And I leave just ready to crawl in a hole for three days and recover so that I can get back to serving my customers. And this was the first time that I ever had somebody look at me and say, well, Aaron, that's because you're an introvert. And this should have been the revelation. This should have been my big aha moment, but it was not. Instead, my first reaction was, no, I'm not. Me? An introvert? No, can't be. And now, looking back on that time, it's because I had bought into, whether I realized it or not, many of the stereotypes about introverts. I had some serious misconceptions about introverts. And I didn't mean to, I had never even given it any real thought. But I bought into these stereotypes that said that introverts are shy. Or quiet, or risk averse, or that they don't like people, or that they're anti-social, or that they can't make friends, that they're less confident, that they're poor public speakers, that they're weird. Let me pause just a second, cuz I struggled for a moment when I was trying to put this slide together and when I started to put this word up there. I spent some time putting together this slide. I did a bunch of searches, searching for things like, what are introverts like? What are common traits of introverts? I even asked AI, right? It's 2023, I asked AI, like chat GPT, tell me about introverts. And I tried to drill in a little even, tell me about introverts in the 90s and early aughts, the time when I was struggling with this so much, and all of these things, including the word weird, kept coming up as common traits of introverts. And looking back, I do think that that was probably the kind of thing that I thought about introverts, and of course pertinent to this talk, it can't lead. And so if this is what I believed sort of subconsciously about introverts, of course I thought I wasn't an introvert. Because I'm not shy, as a matter of fact, now that I understand myself better, I consider myself an outgoing introvert. I'm not shy at all. I wasn't quiet, I spoke my mind, not risk a verse. I was in my early 20s, I'd been running my own company for several years. It's not that I didn't like people, it wasn't that I couldn't make friends. I wasn't one of those people with hundreds of friends, but I had a solid group of friends. Don't judge all introverts by me on the public speaking thing, but I thought I was capable, many are far better than I am. Skip less confident, I was oozing confidence. I was in my early 20s, it made no sense, but I was oozing confidence. That was not the issue, right? And yes, I'm weird, I'm still weird, I was weird then, but I wasn't the kind of weird that I pictured introverts being. And so I was pretty sure that that didn't describe me either. I've been leading my own company for several years, running a team to accomplish projects, I was like, this just can't be me. And this began the little part of my life where I think that I started to realize I was probably an introvert but refused to accept it. But I also recognized that I was in fact struggling with this one part of my business, and because I'd gotten better at it over the last few years, my business was growing, I began to worry that if I kept sinking 90% of my energy into this one, like five to 10% part of my business, that was going to be the thing that prevented me from growing further. And so I really did want to address and fix this issue. And I thought, well, I thought enough of these people to go to them and ask them for their advice, maybe I should give it a chance. I went back to these folks and said, okay, for argument's sake. Cuz I'm not convinced, but for argument's sake, let's say that I am an introvert. And that that is what is making this so exhausting. What do I need to do to get better at this so that I can continue to grow my company? Anybody have any guesses as to what they said? It's easy, just become an extrovert. I'm glad to hear some of you chuckle at this, because I hope that everybody today recognizes that this is not the path to success or improvement as an introvert. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I did not back then. I went, okay, I learned all kinds of stuff to get better at my business and to grow it, I'll learn this too. I decided I would become an extrovert. And looking back with the benefit of 20 plus years since then, this is probably the single worst decision I ever made in my life. It was bad for me personally, like my own mental health. My business struggled when I struggled. My wife and family didn't have a good time during this era of my life. Probably my friends either, like this was not great, but I put my all into it. I really did try to become an extrovert. I observed extroverts, I imitated extroverts. And at that time, many of you, if you had met me, would be like, Erin's an extrovert because I could pretend to be. But I knew that I wasn't because I wasn't trying to get better at this thing that I was doing. And I wasn't even trying to really look like or act like an extrovert. What I was trying to do is become an extrovert, that little magic thing that I thought was going to make this part of doing my business easier and less exhausting, that was the magic thing that I was searching for. And I couldn't seem to do that. And that was really upsetting to me. I did not love that. I was even a little offended, frankly. I looked around at all these other extroverts, I was like, they're not better than me. Why can I not do this? But now I had a name for this, introversion and extroversion. I had a thing that I could sort of latch onto. And so I did what I always do when I'm really working through a problem or an issue, I started learning everything I could about it. I went deep down the rabbit hole. Like, I wanted to know, what is introversion and extroversion? Is there science behind it? Psychology, is this a real thing? Or is this like all in my mind? Is this just something people choose, like some people choose to have the favorite color purple and some people choose a wrong color? Like, maybe I could just choose purple, choose extrovert and be that. I wanted to know. And so I dug and dug and dug and down deep in this rabbit hole, I found myself a web developer studying the human brain, my brain specifically. And one of the first things that I really discovered as I started studying the human brain is that I couldn't just become an extrovert. And I was a little discouraging because I was still chasing that magic thing that was going to make this part easier. But if there's one thing that I am, maybe more than anything else, maybe even more than an introvert, I'm an information addict. I love learning new things and I was learning so much, I was loving it. I was learning stuff about myself. And I would love to dig into all the brain science that I learned. I am absolutely fascinated by it. How the neurotransmitter chemicals in our brains work differently between introverts and extroverts. How extroverts function better when dopamine is powering up their sympathetic system. And how introverts like myself function better when acetylcholine is powering up our parasympathetic system. I became like a hobby scientist for a while. But I don't have time to dig into all of it. I have done a previous talk called succeeding as an introvert, where I get to dig at least a little bit deeper if you're interested in finding out a little bit more. But there's one thing that I do want to highlight, one of these physical differences in our brain. Because that's really the conclusion that I came to. But the reason that I couldn't become an extrovert, really was no different than why I can't just become six foot six. I'm physically different than a person that's six foot six. And my brain, my introvert brain, is physically, measurably, observably different from an extrovert brain. Not better or worse, just different. And so I want to look at one of those differences that does map, I think, directly to some of the things that make me a better leader, and gives me a chance to highlight how these brains are actually really different. Scientists did a really interesting study where they would use a, they'd inject a radioactive isotope to be able to track blood flow through our brains, and they would have the patient lay down, relax, maybe read a book, listen to some calm music. And at rest, the blood flow in an extrovert brain looks something like this. That powers up the parts of the brain that handle things like taste, touch, sight, hearing, our heart, our lungs, the stuff that's just us just functioning. And in introverts in that same state, blood flow looks like this. Shoots out to the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that we use for things like empathy. Self-reflection, memory, planning, rational thought. This is the part of the brain that we use when we're getting stuff done, when we're being productive, as we might call it. Now extrovert brains can look just like this. Matter of fact, scientists found that all they had to do is increase some external stimulus, it would raise the dopamine levels in the brain, and boom, extrovert brains were pumping blood just like this. So it wasn't that one was better or worse, or capable or incapable, just really different, and this was when I finally had my revelation. It took me a while, but I eventually got there. For me, knowing really was like half the battle, right? When I learned how my brain functioned, when I finally accepted that I was an introvert, it let me do things like set aside all those misconceptions, those stereotypes that I had previously believed. I didn't have to think that introverts were shy or quiet or bad leaders or all these other things because I was an introvert and I wasn't those things. So let me set those aside and it let me shift my focus. I stopped trying to be an extrovert and that was really life changing. Like literally, I can't even describe how life changing that was. It sounds cliche, but it was a life changing revelation for me. And instead I got to focus on being the best introvert. And if we can all agree that we can set aside those misconceptions about introverts, and if we can all now be on the same page that the path to success is an introvert or to grow or get better and improve is not to become an extrovert, but just to understand ourselves as introverts and become better at it. Now we can address the real question that we all came here to talk about, which is how do you become a great introvert leader? Well, if introverts and extroverts are pretty similar in many ways as far as like our strengths, it's really the same way that everyone becomes a great leader, introvert or extrovert. You leverage your strengths while being aware of your weaknesses. It's the same basic concept. It's just that our strengths and weaknesses may be different from other leaders. It's okay, not every leader has to have the exact same set of strengths. The question is, how can you apply those strengths to do the things that you need to or want to as a leader? And so I want to take just a second before I dig into those strengths to talk about what I think a great leader is that we're trying to leverage these strengths to be. I think that great leaders are decision makers. They don't let themselves be paralyzed by indecision. They make decisions. They move forward. Great leaders are making decisions and moving forward. And they're direction setters. Once you've made those decisions and you say, based on this, we should be going this direction. That's one of the big things that I think every great leader does. But beyond that, they're good communicators. If you're going to lead people in that direction, you need to be able to communicate what that direction is to whoever it is that you're leading, your teams, your company, whatever it is. They're motivators. You can't just tell people, hey, this is the direction. You then motivate them to go that direction with you. That's what leaders are. People are following them that direction because we're motivating them to go that way. And one of the last things that I think every great leader is, is an empower. You don't just motivate people to go that way. You then empower them to do the things that they do best in that direction along with everyone else. And so if this is what I'm trying to accomplish as a leader, if this is what I'm trying to be as an introvert, what's my first step? What's the first thing I need to do to work toward being this? I found that in my life, in my path at least, the first thing, the most important thing was to sit down and ask myself this question. What are my strengths? And I'm sorry to say it, but everybody here has homework today, and it's this, it's this question. And if you think, it's okay, I know my strengths, I'm good, I would challenge you that you should spend some time sitting down and really thinking about this question and answering it honestly. And try to remember that your strengths aren't just things you're good at. I was good at getting customers the same way that my dad did, but that was not one of my strengths. I could do it, but it was exhausting. The people, there are people where that is their strength. They're great at that. They can do it, they can be effective, and they can do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and continue to be great at it. And just saying that makes me tired. No way, that is not one of my strengths. It's maybe something that I'm good at, but it's not one of my strengths. So sit down, spend some time thinking about what are your strengths? And everyone here, your strengths are gonna be different than everybody else's, right? I'm not only an introvert, so all of my strengths don't just come from being an introvert. There are many things that make me me, many things that make you you, so everyone has to answer this individually. You can't cheat off somebody else's sheet. But I do think that there are some common introvert strengths, some things that I think many or most introverts have because of the way that our brains function. And so I wanna highlight three of these, kind of talk through how I view them, how I apply them to being a good leader, hopefully as examples so that when you make that list, you can do the same thing. You can see how to map those strengths to accomplishing the things that you want to. So three strengths that I think many or most introverts have. The first is a heightened awareness at rest. Because of that whole blood flow thing that we were just talking about, introverts tend to be able to focus, be very effective, very productive in modern work environments, especially work from home. I don't need any external stimulus or other people around to be productive and get things done. And so as a leader, if this is you, lean into this, really leverage it. Make sure that you're spending time not in front of your teams, not in meetings, to plan, to build out your roadmaps, to set that direction and make those decisions. You will be more effective at motivating the people that you lead. If you've taken the time while your brain is in that sort of sweet spot where you're able to really think clearly and get lots done to understand what motivates each person on your team. You'll be better at empowering your team to go the same direction that you wanna go if you've clearly defined that direction. If you've sat down and spent the time to make sure that you understand it so much and you're so clear on it that when you tell them, all right, you're good, run, they're all running the same direction and you're making some great progress. Another thing, the second introvert strength is, there we go, reading faces. There's a really interesting study out of Harvard from about 10 years ago now. They studied introverts and extroverts really deeply. Tons of scans of the brains, all kinds of fascinating information if you're interested. But one of the key things that they found is that introvert brains tend to have thicker prefrontal cortices, which in many ways doesn't really mean hardly anything. But one of the things that they noticed is that this meant that in most of these people, there was what they called increased social cognition or essentially the ability to read emotions on people's faces. And this isn't only introverts that can do this, but it does seem that most introverts are very good at this. And if you're good at this, like I am, then lead into this as a leader. For me, video calls with my team, some of these people who are sitting right over here, are not just to keep them engaged. It's because it's important for me, for my own self-awareness, to be able to read and see if I'm pushing too hard or not hard enough to understand if my people really are motivated like I hope they are, or if they feel like they're not empowered and they're not able to do the thing, or maybe even if other things outside work are coming in and causing them pain or problems that are distracting them from work, all this, this is important to me to being better at leading my team. And so as much as it takes additional energy, for me as an introvert to be camera on all the time and talking to people face to face in all of my meetings, I do because it's better for me to be a better leader in this way. And the last thing that I wanna touch on is the introverts tend to be strong communicators. This one was a little bit of a struggle for me at first to understand why so many introverts seemed to be really good, solid, strong communicators. But looking back at my life, I realized that especially when I was younger, like in a school setting for example, communication with a class talking in front of a bunch of people or even just a round a bunch of people sucked up a lot of my energy. And like we all kind of naturally do, we tend toward energy conservation. We spend it on things that we really like, but we tend to try to conserve it in other areas. And so even though I didn't realize it at the time, I was getting way better at communicating because I was trying to conserve energy. I made sure that I was concise and quick so that it was done and over with. I made sure that I was clear so that I didn't have to do it again. And I got a lot better at written communication because sometimes that prevented that and needing to talk in front of people at all. And so now I like many other introverts without even realizing it just sort of naturally grew up to be very good communicators. And obviously this maps directly to one of the things that I said makes a good leader. But it also helps you in many areas in making sure that your teams are more empowered because they have the clear, concise documentation of where you want them to go, whatever it is. But lean into this. If this is your strength, lean into it. The biggest thing that I want everybody to take away from this talk is that introversion is not a weakness. It's just a different set of strengths. Because when I didn't understand this, it was a painful, struggling part of my life. And so again, introversion, not a weakness. You don't have to become an extrovert to get better or to improve. You don't have to buy into any of those stereotypes. It's not a weakness. It's just a different set of strengths. It's why you're all gonna do your homework, right? Go and what are my strengths? You're gonna spend some time thinking through that, being real and honest with yourself. So hopefully I gave the introverts among us a little nugget that will make your path to being a better introvert shorter, less painful than mine, ideally. And maybe some of you extroverts that snuck in. Maybe I gave you a little peek into what the introverts around you are like and maybe even a better way of sort of communicating with us or functioning with us. And with that, I'd love to take some questions if anybody has any. Yeah. So like you were just saying, one of the main things that I try to do with is this limited social energy, like a colored social battery. Yes. How do you deal with the challenge? Especially as a leader, I feel like you are always on the spot. You always have to have these social interactions, regardless if you want them or not, you have that energy or not. So how do you deal with just keeping that at least base level of social energy? So the question, cause I think that my mic's the only one that hits video is struggles with the social energy levels kind of calls it social battery, right? You're gonna run out of energy. How do you maintain that energy? How do you top it off regularly? And that is definitely a struggle. I think that there are a few things that I do regularly to try to keep my energy levels up. One is being real aware of the things that suck down my energy. And trying to be careful. If I've got a bunch of things scheduled in the same day that all suck down energy, it's time to think about reworking the calendar there and adjusting stuff around, right? I think the more aware you are of what costs you energy and what's easy for you, the better you can manage that. But there are plenty of times as a leader, like you said, that you have to spend that energy whether you would like to or not. And I think the biggest thing that I do around that is I plan accordingly and plan time on my calendar even. It's literally just blocked off as like I'm not doing anything here. And those are my time to, yes, do work, plan, work through some things, but do work that is not energy sucking work. And if I were to pull up my calendar, I have blocks that are for that. And when I come to events like this, I make sure that I'm not also doing events right before, you know, I'm not going to a wedding the day before I come to something like this because that would be too much for me. And I give myself permission to step away and recharge. For me here, I want to interact with everybody. I love learning new things and being around people like this, this is where I get to learn all kinds of new things, things that I never even knew I wanted to know, but I do. And I'm better at that. If I take some time and step away from everybody for 20, 30 minutes, even an hour, and then come back, then I am if I try to marathon through it. And so I would rather have a really functional couple hours and a really functional couple more than super mediocre time across the way. And so I try to plan like that. Absolutely, yeah. In your circle of closest friends, are your friends also introverts or have you reached out to the dark side? To the dark side. First of all, so the question was, in my circle of closest friends, are they all introverts or have I reached out to the dark side and made friends with extroverts as well? I think that the first thing there is that I think it's pretty rare for us introverts to reach out to the dark side, but it's pretty common for those extroverts to adopt us introverts as friends. And I definitely have some very close extroverted friends. As a matter of fact, one ends up at a lot of these conferences with me pretty regularly. And she is often my savior when I am like stuck in groups and need to get pulled aside and have some of that recharge time. She just comes writing in out of nowhere and says, hey, Erin, we need to talk. And then like 10 steps later, she's like, oh, we don't really need to talk, but you can go do your thing, right? And it can be great. So yes, I have friends that are both introverts and extroverts and I get extreme value out of both of them. Anybody else? What is it like to lead extroverts? This one was hard, like really hard for a while because it took me a long time to understand myself as an introvert and it took me even longer to understand this really confusing thing called extroverts that I just, I really struggled to understand as an example, the one good friend that I said saves me all the time, I jokingly call her an energy vampire because somehow we come to these conferences and I come in with all my energy stored up and ready to go and somehow throughout the conference I lose it all and during the conference she somehow just gains more energy. I'm like, you are stealing it from me, I'm convinced. So it took me a while to really understand extroverts and it's still a struggle, right? Leading anybody that's really pretty dramatically different than you can be challenging but just the same way that I would want extroverts to work well with me and to understand me I work hard to understand them and to understand that their energy comes from different places and so as much as I maybe don't want to do team activities I recognize that if I have extroverts on my team sometimes team activities are great and I just need to store up and then invest that energy because it's important for those people. Anybody else? It's also okay to come up and ask me these questions later I will be around for the rest of the day. I mean, I may disappear for a little while but I'll be around for most of the day and I'm happy to take more questions as we go. Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, another one. Do you, I apologize, I came in a few minutes late. Do you think that there is a difference between being shy and being introverted? Yes, I definitely think that there's a difference between being shy and being introverted. I describe myself as an outgoing introvert. I'm not shy at all. I'm happy to meet people but it sucks a lot of my energy up to do that and so that's where I really think as I looked at like the differences in the brains between the introverts and extroverts that I talked about earlier. There are things that I can be good at or even enjoy like meeting other people, talking to other people but because it requires my brain to be in that sort of state where it's not at its most efficient, where it's not like at its peak functioning, it just takes more energy to do that. I can do it but I have to really work at it and that's okay. Like I'm willing to spend, people are, we spend energy on all kinds of things that we like doing. I mean some people that I know love running and so they go out running long distances, right? Not me. So I don't wanna spend my energy doing that stuff but if you like it, you're willing to invest that energy. I like talking to new people and learning new things. I really enjoy it. So I'm willing to spend the energy on it. So I'm not shy but I am introverted and so I do think that there's a difference. That's not to say that there aren't shy introverts. They're just not the same thing. Yeah. Have I put extroverts to work for me? Absolutely. One of the best reasons for having extrovert friends is because they like to do those extroverty things and sometimes they'll just do that stuff for you and you don't have to. Without a doubt, it's the same reason that you might be a designer and hire a developer because you don't wanna do the code, right? Same thing. I don't wanna do that. They love doing that. Let them do the thing they love and let me do the things I love. Fantastic. Yes, absolutely. I definitely recommend finding you some extroverts that you can put to work for you that way. Anybody else? Well, awesome. Thank you all for giving me the time. Oh, we got one more. So what strategies do you have when you have extroverts on your team? What strategies do I have for extroverts on my team? It's been different over the years with different positions that I've been in. When I'm around those people a lot, for example, I tend to have some certain strategies like working in groups and doing things that are good for them but also having time where I pull away from that group to do my own things separate. I honestly do find it a little bit more of a struggle when I'm only leading remote teams. Some of our extroverts, I see them working from home just like I am and I know that I love it but they probably need to do some other things. And so for that, I try to do things like encourage flexible schedules. Hey, you don't have to be around this whole time. It's okay if you wanna go to a coffee shop and have some people around you for a while and come back and work again in an hour, that's fine. I think that giving them that space to do what's best for them as extroverts, just like I want that space to do what's best for me as an introvert, it looks a little different for each person that I lead but that's how I try to do it. Yeah. How did it work for the whole group to talk to extroverts and like dominate the conversation? Have you ever find it harder to... So this question was, is it sometimes harder to talk to introverts because extroverts can just dominate the conversation and run with it and you just kinda get taken right along but when it's a couple introverts they're together, somebody's gotta put forth the effort. Yeah, I suppose that's true. I do tend to be one of those people though that I like to try to draw information out of you cause I want to learn. So that tends to be kind of my go-to thing in a conversation between me and another introvert. I'm gonna try to ask you some questions and get some info out of you. And so I think that that can help but yes, it can be a struggle. It's sometimes awkward being an introvert. Of all the things that I love about being an introvert it can sometimes be a little awkward. And again, I'm awkward in a lot of ways so maybe it just doesn't feel that weird to me but yeah, it can be a little harder sometimes I guess. I wish I had a better answer for like, hey, you solved that by doing A, B, and C but nah, maybe you just get a few more of us together so that you only have to carry 10% of the conversation instead of 50%. I don't know. Yeah. I found that what I'm talking about introverts is that if I, the personal, at least when they started it's more about what you do, where you live, you know that the conversations can just be a little bit more comfortable about it. They have great answers for those things. That was a great example from an extrovert I think. No? Another introvert? Okay, from another introvert who basically said try not to dig into the personal stuff, kind of keep it at things that are easy for the other introvert to answer so that the conversation flows a little better. There are definitely things that I think are easier to share, easier to talk about, take a little less energy to do so and so if you can identify some of those things as conversation points, might make it easier to, yeah. Let's grab one in the back and then over here. It's funny because that's, as an introvert and knowing that before coming to places where I knew I was gonna do a lot of social interaction, I would practice those questions so they wouldn't be like, where are you from and what do you do? And so essentially says practices the kinds of questions that he might ask in those kinds of situations before coming to things like this and I'm curious who here, aside from myself who also does that, practices questions like that, like thinks it through, plays those things through in their mind ahead of time. Yeah, see that's one of those things that we just, like we shouldn't feel like that's a shortcoming. We're just planning and preparing and being ready for it. Like that's fine, that's perfectly acceptable. I absolutely do that. There's one more right here. Yeah, so like we were saying, I love hearing people talk and gathering information from them and learning but it appears to me like sometimes I can come off as a gardener. When I just listen, I know he's shared that much. So really, do you feel the same way and do you have any sort of ways to deal with that? Or just to open up a little more? That's a fantastic question and it was essentially he too likes to get information from people and learn things but sometimes it means that he can come off as a little guarded in the conversation like he's just trying to take all their info and not share anything himself. Well, I guess my laptop went to sleep. And I think that one of the things that I have had to work consciously to do at first but has become a little bit more natural over time is try to share at least half as much as I'm sucking out of other people, right? I don't try to match one-on-one although sometimes that happens but I do try to share and over time I've actually begun to enjoy letting other people learn things just like I like learning things and sometimes like that comes from me but for a long time that took a really solid conscious effort on my part. And it felt a little weird because sometimes I'm listening and trying to learn a thing and I'm also trying to think about, okay, what can I say that I can share that's somewhat related to this, to add my part to this conversation. So that's another one of those things I sort of practiced over time I guess sort of practice ahead of time, get better at it. I think that as much as I would love to just sit and take question after question after question we probably should have a little time before the next speaker. But again, I'm around, come find me the hat should be recognizable. Yeah, well thank you all, thank you all.