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Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:16All right, everybody. Welcome to the CXR podcast and our expertise segment. I'm Chris Hoyt president of CareerXroads and this is where we grab 10 minutes with an industry personality or influencer to share just one thing with you, our listeners so that one thing might be a difficult lesson learned, or a career changing victory or defeat. The only guardrails are that it falls within any number of topics that hundreds of our leaders told us were a focus for them in 2020. So it could be equity, it could be ethics, leadership, you name it. Now, if you're interested in weighing in, and what's important moving forward this year in 2021, capital can't believe it's 2021. You can take part in our 2021 priorities benchmark that is actually open to everyone and found within the Research and Reports section of www.cxr.works. Now. If you're attending a live today, you get to participate via the chat feature of a broadcast. So feel free to ask the guest a question or two. And if we've got time, we'll make sure to try to answer them. If we don't have time, you can always think of something later you'd like to ask you can always join us in our open and free exchanges that are actually found at CXR.works/talenttalk. So all that I'm really excited today to introduce our guest and one of my longtime friends, Maren Hogan. Maren is the founder and CEO of Red Branch Media, a full service marketing and advertising agency. Maren, how are you?

Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media 1:36Great. I'm doing great this morning.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:39Well, it's lovely to see you. Thank you for joining us.

Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media 1:42Thank you.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:44Maren our topic. Always I I feel like I want to tell everybody that I've just been I've been jockeying to get you on on the podcast for a really, really, really long time. I think I've just really wanted you on the podcast for a really, really, really long time. But we have made it happen. So our topic today is something that while I think some simplistic at heart, I found a little bit challenging just sort of put in to the right words, right? Or at least words that felt powerful enough for me to convey really what we wanted to talk about. And I can you know, I can summarize it as doing the right thing, even when that can't be measured. But you are the maestro of vocabulary. How would you sort of position what that conversation that we had about why this is important and what we wanted to talk about and share?

Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media 2:38Yeah, so when you first approached me about what I would want to share, obviously, much of it is completely shaped by 2020. And everything that happened in that year, and I'm sure everybody's got their own horror stories and triumphs to share. But the thing that I really wanted to hone in on and I did find it difficult to articulate as, as we both did, was really, there's a lot of blog posts and books and podcasts, talking about doing the right thing, because it's good for your bottom line, or because it will increase retention, or because it will make you a better leader or whatever. And I didn't hear a whole lot of discussion about doing the right thing. Just because it was the right thing, or people who had done the right thing. And it still sucked. And so I think that that is for me one of the most important lessons that I've learned as a leader overall, but definitely through like this sort of roller coaster, that you know, running a business, managing employees dealing with the bottom line, and issues of leadership. I think that that's one of the biggest lessons that has come home to roost, but trying to find the way to put that like doing the right thing,