Guaranteed Success: The Career Coach With a 97% Job Placement Rate

Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Jonathan Flaks, Executive Career Coach & Founder of Be the One Best

Meg Schmitz
Hello, everyone, and welcome to or. Welcome back to my podcast, the Free Agent. We’re in our sixth season. This discussion, if you’ve been following along, is all about free agency and taking control over your financial future. The mission of my show is to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, not always franchising. Jonathan didn’t, but he did land in freedom, from corporate refugees and executives tired of the desk job, to entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey. My podcast aims a spotlight on real people who stepped into the unknown, took control over their destiny and became their own I hope best boss. Someone who has had a few bosses in his past broke free from that and is now an amazing career navigational guide. Jonathan Flaks, welcome to my podcast. It’s great to have you here today.

Jonathan Flaks
Thanks, Meg. Appreciate it yeah.

Meg
You and I met a few years ago during the pandemic when people were saying virtual. You can’t create a real relationship with somebody virtually. But here we are. This is the third time we’ve seen each other, I think, this week, and we’ve gotten to know each other and what each other does. Let’s start with your history and what propelled you into where you are right now.

Jonathan
Okay. Super. So without going all the way back to childhood through, through my teenage years, I always thought I was going to be a rock star. I was very lucky enough to learn how to play the piano very early. My mother was a pianist. My grandmother was a pianist. My grandfather was a violinist. I took piano lessons from a brilliant, brilliant man who escaped Auschwitz during the Holocaust and came to America. He ended up Teaching everyone in my family and lots and lots of friends of my family, piano and had some stage presence. My parents said when I was very little, I was always going up to people at restaurants and entertaining them.

And so I really always just wanted to be in the music business as a music producer, music performer, songwriter. Didn’t matter. I just wanted to. And my uncle asked me one day, you know, why do you want to do that? He actually was in the music business. He owned and was part owner of the Record Plan Studios in New York City. I said to spread a little peace and love in the world, like John Lennon. 

Then I found out that my parents weren’t all that keen about supporting someone going into….

Meg

Rock star.

Jonathan
Unsavory as rock music. So they encouraged me to consider engineering. Electrical engineering is a profession where you might learn how electronic music and electronic production instruments are developed. I’m like, oh, I kind of bought into that. So I went through the Cornell engineering program. Two years in, I spiced it up with courses at Ithaca College, which is a music conservatory. I worked at the radio station, produced radio commercials. And then in 1986, I graduated and entered into the workforce, went to work in music studios, was writing songs, trying to make it in the music business, but always needed a day job. 

Over the course of the next 12 years, I went through 11 jobs. I got, you know, hired, got fired, hired, quit. But in and out of left the music business, went back into the music business. I did have one bit of fame. For two years, I was the organist of At the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.

Meg
Really?

Jonathan
1989, 1991. And they said, pick one. Rangers or Knicks? We’ll get someone else to do the other one. I said, I’ll do the Rangers. I’ll find someone for the Knicks. I found someone named Ray Castaldi, and he’s been there since 1990 doing Knicks Rangers. He plays for the Giants. He does music for Olympic hockey. I saw a Rangers fan recently who knows his name. I mean, I love what this guy did. Took the ball and ran with it.

Meg
You’re a natural at bringing people and opportunities together.

Jonathan
That’s very nice of you to say. The crux of the longer version of my story is that I was always able to get hired within one to three months.

Meg
That’s outstanding. So what’s the secret?

Jonathan
Well, I leaned into some networking and sales and marketing skills I was learning in some of these jobs. You know, I had to really connect with people. The music business isn’t about being a good musician. That’s the basic prerequisite. You have to really knock down doors. So I had some experience with that. When I was persistent, I would always turn on a positive mindset that’s interesting to meet people. If I can make some of the connections I did make in the music business, I can get, land a job. If I can make a sale, If I can make sales, I can make one sale that getting myself a job, something like that. 

I wasn’t really clear there was a secret I just kept successfully landing new roles within, you know, every time I was looking for a job within one to three months. And then one day my mother said to me, you know, you’re so good at getting hired, why don’t you make a career about helping other people get hired? You know, you’re like a professional job hunter. Why don’t you make that a profession, actually? And my first reaction was like, yeah, thanks mom, whatever, rub it in. Yeah, left handed compliment. But she said, no, really, you’re so good at that. That’s what makes a career work, is being good at something that you can help other people with. 

And so around the same time, someone I casually had given some career advice to come back to me and said, you know, Jonathan, I. I have a friend who’s starting a business. And I said, okay. And she said, and he’s looking for a coach. And I had only peripherally, in 1998, no one knew what coaches were, but I kind of knew what she was talking about. I said, okay. And she said, and I’ve recommended you. And I said, okay, wait a minute, what?

And I asked her, what did you do that for? This was the pivotal moment that had me launch this free agency, this business of mine. She, instead of answering the question, why did you do that? She said, just go meet him. And I met this fella and some of the people he had gathered as a team and I asked him some thought provoking questions and I made some suggestions. And the next day he hired me.

And at the time, I was actually working in the music department of an advertising agency, but I had someone else, a music producer came to me with some complaints and issues he was having with his music production company. And we started talking and I asked him some thought provoking questions and made some suggestions and he hired me.

And then the Funniest story that I don’t usually tell, but since we have a little time as it’s a podcast, I was writing a song with a guy named Larry Neal while I was living in Dobbs Ferry. He was in the neighborhood. He said, hey, I play guitar. You play piano. Let’s, let’s write a song.

So we start writing a song and as we start writing it, I say, well, I got your lyrics here, but tell me what it’s really about. And he starts telling me about this broke, you know, romance that broke up, you know, and ended. And I started asking him some thought provoking questions and I started to ask him what sounded like suggestions, like, well, did you ever try blah, blah, blah.

And he stopped in the track, said, hey, Jonathan, do you want to write a song with me or do you want to coach me? And you know, back then I was so excited about the skill I had. I wanted to coach anything that had two or four appendages. I said, you know what, though? I thought about it like, you know what? I really like this coaching.

So I launched my business in 1998, made a list of about 30 people I knew who would be willing to take a phone call, reached out to them and said, you know, I’m exploring this new profession. I’m asking people about their goals, I’m asking questions that get them thinking, and I’m making a few suggestions. And it’s opening light bulbs to help people reach their goals.

Does this sound like something you want to try for a session? And if it goes well, we’ll try rhree months. And Mark said yes, and, and Blair said yes. And Steve said, I’m good. But within six months, I had a coaching practice built. And a lot of that was people looking to make career changes.

Meg
What do you like about people who are in career change? What attracts you to that group?

Jonathan
Well, we call them outstanding leaders in our internal meetings and conversations, and sometimes when I write group emails, I always say, hi, outstanding leader. 

Again and I was doing both. And I still do a bit of business coaching and career coaching. I love working with people who resonate with themselves as leaders and are interested in lifelong learning and personal growth and development as a leader. Right.

I love what we can learn about how to relate to people, empathize with people, empower people, mentor people, do whatever it takes to have others around us grow. And when that tide rises, everyone rises, fascinates me and is very uplifting to me as a student of leadership myself.

Meg
So I remember talking or reading. I don’t remember which one you had said that you maybe had started too broadly. Tried a little of this, try a little of that and then you realize more so what your your best lane was to run in. 

Jonathan
Yeah.

Meg
Talk about because this is really fascinating to to hear about putting together a practice, having never done it before, figuring out what you’re going to charge.

Now you’ve got shiny sparkly, hey, this one needs help, this one needs help. So go through for the listener who’s thinking, oh this sounds like me, I want to put my business together. Where did you begin? And then when you realize that it was too broad, how did you narrow it back down again?

Jonathan
Fair question. In full disclosure, depending on my dietary intake and sleep the night before, I am somewhere between ADD, AD attention deficit, but not quite a disorder. I actually can really be high functioning, and ADHD. Like, it depends on the day.

So shiny object syndrome is definitely something I have to be very careful to manage around.

Meg

Okay.

Jonathan
But for a long while it just seemed that as I was meeting people and networking in general and telling people I could help them. This methodology could help people reach any goal.

It took a while for me to narrow in on careers and resumes as a starting point because I did get really interesting high paying executive coaching roles through my network and through their executive coaching firms.

As a small business owner and as someone who would network with other small business owners, it was a no brainer to help people in business coaching, helping with everything it takes to launch and or you know, manage well and increase revenue and scale a small business.

And then of course people would come to me looking there, making a career change and one of the first things we would do is resume. So I was a jack of these three trades.

But this is a great message for anyone starting business. It’s really important to have a primary service and primary target in the service business and you can add things on later in your relationship with clients.

But this coincided about, I want to say seven years ago or so. I met someone in a business networking environment pre Covid in New York City and he says I have a friend who’s using LinkedIn and one of their platforms to just simply encourage connections for people who are looking for a resume. And he’s doing a dozen resumes a week or whatever it is and like well we do resumes and over a little bit of time I’ll still skip some of the details.

My team and I just looked at what was available in the resume service world and found a gap and built what If I can toot my own horn a little bit and that’s what I help people do. So with as much humility, I can also balance.

We really built over time and putting effort an innovative and world class resume service that is efficient as well as effective by virtue of having different. And we have us based executives, managers and recruiters who help clients with the early stages of collaborating on the content of the resume.

And then other stages goes through something which we call the signature skills process.

Meg
Okay.

Jonathan
And it really was working. And then the ATS system came and we could build something to help people get through the ATS systems. And we can see that most jobs were secured through networking. So we built a coaching training program, a networking, interviewing and follow up.

And I was helping people negotiate salaries and I met someone through networking who’s really good at training people on interviewing. So we built this up over the last seven years to be an effective enough service that I now have seven guarantees for the resume service and seven guarantees for our leadership coach, our career transition program.

Meg
That, that really resonated with me last week when I learned about that because a lot of people offer a service. Well, you’re offering a service with guarantee. Talk about what some of those guarantees are.

Jonathan
So we guarantee someone will be satisfied with the resume or we’ll keep working with them until they say, okay, this is a final version I can take. Right.

Meg
Okay.

Jonathan
We guarantee they’ll have an 85% score on the ATS scoring. You know, any ATS scoring system, we cannot guarantee that it’ll get through every single ATS because the applicant tracking systems, the ATS are different at every company and most people who understand technology understands their difference. Software vendors that use these, that have software, but many of them use similar algorithms and similar styles.

So we guarantee they’re going to get an increase in interviews as a percentage of number of interviews they apply for. We can’t guarantee them interviews because we don’t know if they’re actually going to apply to jobs. But we guarantee an increase in interviews as a percentage of applications. So if they do apply, we can track that.

Those are a couple of examples of some of the guarantees for the resume service. For the coaching program, I’ll just give you this or the broad scope of it, but we guarantee that if people do 80% of the components of the coaching program, the way we train people on what works and why 80% because no one’s perfect. No one follows our program perfectly. 80% of our clients who do 80% of our program get more than one job offer.

So I can guarantee that they’re going to be satisfied with the process or will continue to work with them until they are satisfied. Now, in some ways we do have caveats where there can be a money back. You know, money back. But because of the level of investment most of these guarantees are will get you to that satisfaction. Whatever it takes.

Meg
Yeah, that’s. So, it’s not a money back guarantee, which I’m a big advocate of, that you put the time and effort into what you do, you’ve already invested.

Jonathan
In some of the facets there are. And anyone who’s interested, I would be happy to share the document from our terms and conditions, our seven guarantees, they’re available as a, as a clickable PDF on our website. I’m sure you’ll put that in the show notes.

Yeah, there is a money back guarantee for some facets of it, but once we’re really like, we really look for people who are committed to the results. Not. Let’s give it a try and if I don’t like it, I get my money back.

Meg
Yeah. Just working with you over the last week and some of the spreadsheets and the processes that you’ve taken me through to get a better idea of how you operate, it’s clear to me the investment, the brain power that you’re putting into this, how extensive your spreadsheets are and your referral networks and the work that you’re the legwork that you do does not guarantee that they’re going to put in the same amount of legwork. People are people. They’re going to take their resume, they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do with it. To your point, you can’t, you don’t control what activities they carry out.

Jonathan
Metaphorically. If you’re driving along and you use Google Maps and Google Maps says this is a better way, and if you turn this way, it’s going to take you three minutes longer and you take even a side road from that, you’re not going to necessarily end up in the same place. You might hit a dead end.

If you follow our roadmap, you’re going to get there. Or maybe they’re three minutes slower. But most cases, executives who look for work according to statistics, can take between six to 12 months to land a new job. And the clients who work with us who follow our programs typically get job offers within one and a half to.

Meg
Four months, which is just simply incredible. Drop it in right now. www…

Jonathan
www.betheonebest.com/careercoaching.

Meg
So tell me about the name of your company and how did you come up with that one?

Jonathan
Be the one best is awfully akin to an exaggeration. It sounds like an exaggeration, doesn’t it? But the reality of job search, if you’re pursuing a role, anytime anyone who’s listening this, who’s not yet a free agent. But we’ll talk about that, I’m sure.

Anytime you pursue a role, there’s usually one winner. One person out of many gets a job offer and there’s no reward for second or third place. There’s no bronze or silver medal. So we look to help position people as the absolute best candidate by far. And we share with people in our sort of a free strategy session how we go about that.

Meg
Yeah, because everyone has a point of differentiation as free agents. And I came up with the name because a couple of friends of mine, including my husband’s nephew, is an NFL free agent. And these are people, just like corporate refugees who are looking for another team. They’re looking, everyone knows what the role is on the field, what your responsibilities are. Looking for, the camaraderie, the teamwork.

That’s what happens in corporate America. You got a mission, you got a job, you know what you got to do. So free agents are coming to you to help them identify what that point of differentiation is that’s going to highlight them as the best.

Do you use particular software, writing, AI? How does technology play into the work that you do so that you can extract those little nuggets of gold that, that create that differentiation?

Jonathan
So I’m going to, if you don’t mind, answer three questions that I’ve here packed into that one.

I want to say one other thing about the name. I last week stumbled up in the rain, was looking for someone’s office, and I was in the wrong place. I happened to be in front of the new office of Vendable law firm. It used to be further up on 6th Avenue. I was like, wow. They moved down to 42nd street and I had a friend who worked there, and he said, we strive to be the best law firm in the world.

I’m like, well, how does anyone measure that? He says, well, there are measures and there’s awards and you could strive to be the best. So that also inspired me when I was coming up with the name of the company as a DBA.

Secondly, it’s funny you mentioned athletes because I recently joined the board of an organization called Glow Ball Life LLC. That’s G L O B A L L. This is an organization that’s creating an app to help athletes, whether they’re college athletes or pro athletes, find work after sports.

Meg
Oh, interesting.

Jonathan
Perfect fit for my passion for helping people land jobs they love.

We are starting to use AI. We’ve done some use of AI in terms of how we do marketing and outreach and direct messaging. I used to read people’s profiles that had an inquiry and write a little something about why I thought it would be a good idea for us to connect based on what I saw in their profile.

And I have someone helping me do that. And on occasion, we’ll feed some information into chat GPT and it’ll suggest to us some language that saves us a little time, but we don’t lean on it completely.

AI is a great tool to help. Like it’s a brainstorming partner with tons and tons of information and talent to spit out some stuff. But you must always bring your own humanity to it, in my point of view.

Meg
Couldn’t agree more on that point. As a frustrated author.

Haven’t gotten a whole lot published out there, but I do rely on my own storytelling ability, not AI to write it for me.

So with your free agents, how do you help them to get out of the silo? Because to me, it seems like people are accustomed to. On the resume. It’s. I can only write my LinkedIn profile to look like this. And there are all those transformational moments and stories that make people stand out in their career.

They pollinated from here, they fly to the bumblebee, they went over here. All these different experiences in their career.

How do you get them to expose some of those. That storytelling so you can get to the crux of what makes them the right candidate.

Jonathan
So when someone’s a free agent, whether they chose to leave a company or it was an unchosen parting of ways and they’re looking at one of two paths. If the path they’re looking at is to start a business or to start a franchise, we really look to and I asked them what’s the primary path you want to take?

If the other one comes along, you could always accept it. But it’s good to have a primary target. We look to what are they passionate about, what are they really good at, what are they looking to engage in, how much money do they have to invest?

Because starting a business or starting a franchise does take some capital. And it’s really important they understand what’s involved in starting a business or starting a franchise.

And then if they look into, you know, to do so in the most risk free way, I introduce them to you because you can really help connect them with a launching pad of a free of a franchise.

How do I help people differentiate for a role? And if I might add to that, how do I help them keep the kind of freedom, happiness and balance that they might want in their lives if they’re employed?

Well, we look at some factors and, and give people what we call our resume building resources as a starting point to break down the components that then lead to a value proposition resume LinkedIn.

Someone said I have to do a lot of work for this. Don’t. I said no. We do the heavy lifting by breaking it down into components.

You’re going to feel like you’re riding along an interesting train where you’re talking about yourself and then remembering things and you’re talking about yourself and your ideal future and what might be related to that.

And we just break it down into components to bridge these gaps. And then it’s hard to just put in language the process. But going through our signature skill system, we assemble a value proposition and our clients tell us it’s the most collaborative and confidence building process they’ve ever engaged in in terms of resume writing.

Now here’s the secret to happiness and balance every day.

Meg
Yeah, that’s a good one.

Jonathan
Outstanding leadership. Always be learning about how to be a better, truer leader.

Clarity of vision and direction. Know what you and your team are trying to accomplish. What is the company’s vision? What are the initiatives?

Have real clarity of expectations and teamwork. I know this sounds cliche, but making sure people know what each other’s doing, communicate often and can cover for each other.

Then if anyone needs a mental health day off, anyone needs a personal day off, anyone wants to take an extra week on vacation, anyone wants to leave afternoon to go to the soccer game, they’ve got coverage.

And that’s the secret to work, life, balance, success and happiness every day.

Meg
And that is what everyone I’m working with is looking for. I’ve got a couple of people right now who I was telling you about earlier this week.

Sales guys is in particular are just put through such a ringer. They don’t have quality. The one gentleman I talked to up in Minneapolis had been a medical device sales guy who stuck in the or what do you call it? Viewing area.

Jonathan
Okay.

Meg
Watching the surgery, he didn’t have a whole lot of family time.

Now that he’s been kicked out of the nest, unceremoniously dumped by his employer. Never saw it coming. He was making a really good buck, but he had no quality of life, traveling all the time.

And so he trying to make that pivot. Now I’m going to introduce you to him or him to you because I think a lot of these guys just get so stuck being siloed and those expectations that for you to say those words, better quality of life, family time.

Now, sales guys are not necessarily leaders. They’re eat what you kill out their every day. So they’re not necessarily a leader.

Jonathan
Many would beg to differ. Even if they don’t have a group that they are managing right, every conversation, they are leading and, and collaborating. Leading and collaborating like you and I.

Right now you’re leading this, I’m co leading this, we’re both being leaders in this conversation.

Meg
Interesting point of view. Yeah.

Meg
I’m excited about getting some of these people who are so unhappy over to you because as I said to you previously, a couple of my people in my network have now retired and I’ve got some openings that will allow me to collaborate more closely with you.

They come along so often. My referral network is really great at identifying people who want to be their own boss. Tired of the bad ones. See if they worked with you then they would have better bosses to work for. But when they come to me, then they can be their own best boss.

Jonathan
And some people might be following you and thinking about when am I going to start my franchise business and or out of work and a free agent and can I do it now?

And if they can qualify and substantiate the investment that you can help them make, it’s just a matter of courage. And courage builds confidence.

And some might need another two or three years of a good employment situation, a leadership role where they could put some money into the savings and build up that sort of ground floor operating expense foundation so that they can launch a franchise or series of franchise operations from a position of strength.

Meg
Yeah, definitely.

I see here a lot of angst. People coming out of a bad corporate situation, bad leadership. Oh my gosh. One guy I’m working with right now, he walked off the job.

He just, his boss. I heard six weeks of stories about what she was doing to create this really toxic environment.

And once he was this close to signing his franchise agreement, she went off on him one day. He hadn’t even signed yet. He was done out of there.

So it made it even more exciting then for him to sign his franchise agreement because he’s flying without a net at the this point.

Jonathan
Yeah, it’s so frustrating that there are still businesses in today’s progressive world that operate with old school toxicity.

Like I, we hear people saying they’re in a toxic situation. I mean the Devil Wears Prada, not Prada, the brand. But I had a client who came out of a fashion company and a fashion retailer and she said it was just like the movie.

It’s amazing here we’re about to tip into 2025. But the good thing is there’s a wonderful. How many businesses are adopting more up to date balanced, equitable, diverse cultures and progressive attitudes like remote working, like hybrid working, like women in leadership, like diversity and inclusion and equity DEI diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

They literally have policies and procedures and practices to be progressively supporting people being happy because happy employees, especially millennials, demand it.

A lot of it came out of the demand of employees when it was a candidates market.

So if you’re not happy and you’re in a role, it’s not going to work for you. There are companies that do support. You can have that kind of life and that kind of freedom. And if you’re not in an environment that. If you’re in an environment that disrupt that, find one of the companies that have disrupted that old school thinking.

Meg
I wish that for everyone to have. Dennis Prager wrote a book called Happiness is a Serious Problem.

Jonathan
I loved it. I love the duality of that.

Meg
I as well. It’s. It’s a great book to get through. It’s your personal responsibility if you’re married, in a relationship, any, if you’re into integrated, in a family, to show up as your best self every day. Happiness.

Jonathan
My mission used to have the tagline, life is serious when I was just like a life. When I was calling myself a life coach. Life is serious. Have fun with it.

Or is it life is fun. Take it seriously. And even that little joke at the end, which is it? It was part of my mission statement.

Meg
I love that. Well, and I don’t know if you know my, my three three letter words that guide my work every day and have since 2012 are Joy, Fun and yes.

Jonathan
Joy, fun and yes. You did tell me that. Yeah, I love it.

Meg
Yeah. Because if it’s not joy, fun and yes to work with somebody, then it’s No.

Jonathan
There you go. It’s a two letter word.

Meg
That’s right. But then on top of the three three letter words, if it’s really going well, then you know what we’re doing. Then it’s play.

Jonathan
Yeah. Excellent. My favorite four letter word 

Meg
Is it?

Jonathan
Now It is.

Meg
I know one of your favorite three letter words is one which you said you had a hard time picking out one. What’s your favorite band?

Jonathan
Yes. Three letter word.

Meg
Really?

Jonathan
For a very, very long time.

Meg
Well, how do you like that? Okay.

Jonathan
Not so much anymore. They kind of withered, but someone said they’ve kind of pulled themselves back together. The bass player Chris Squire, passed away several years ago and it hasn’t been the same magic since. But someone said, no, no, come see a show. They. They’ve gotten some magic.

There’s been about 18 different personnel that have been in and out of the rock group yes since the 60s. And here we are 60 years later. They’re still a band. So.

Meg
And your favorite music venue?

Jonathan
Capitol Fieder in Port Chester, New York.

Meg
I’ve never been there, but I’ll.

Jonathan
I would say Red Rocks in Colorado, but I never saw a concert there. I took a hike there once or three times.

Red Rocks in Colorado is a beautiful venue out in the outdoors, but Capitol Fieder in Port Chester, New York, was a great venue. Then it fell into greatest prepare. And then it was renovated and Phil Lesh, the recently passed Phil Lesh, bass player for Grateful Dead, was like an artist in residence.

And there’s a bar, restaurant connected to it called Garcia’s. And they would often have bands in there, sometimes great for cover bands. And so they have terrific artists there. Neil Young’s played there.

Meg
Fun.

Jonathan

I saw. I think I saw. Yes. And Sticks on the same bill there. 10,000 Maniacs. Big Head, Todd in the Machine.

Meg
Oh, yeah. I’ll fly out and we can go to a concert. We listen to the same music. You’re talking to some of the same people.

Jonathan
So naming that band incorrectly. Big Head Todd and the Machine. No, that’s not great.

Meg
Florence and the Machine, Big Head Todd. God. Well, I’m. I’m out of my element at the moment. Who’s your favorite pionist?

Jonathan
Rick Wakeman. I mean, the very short bucket list I’ve had since I’ve had a pretty rich life included having dinner with Rick Wakeman, the keyboard player.

Meg
Yeah. Nice. Well, you have lived quite an interesting life. I had, frankly, until today, no idea about your musicality and career beginnings. That. That was an eye opener for me. Marrying that artistic, creative side of your brain to what you’re doing right now.

I love what you’re doing right now. The last week has been so eye opening for me to get to know you at a much deeper, much better level. You do like to have fun. You do like to play. You got a great sense of humor.

I can’t wait to get some of my people who are in transition in your hands so that they can experience an outcome like what you have been talking about today.

So I want to thank you very much for being part of the show. And I don’t know what I’m going to do next week when I don’t see you at all, because it’s been four or five, four or five times in the last week that we’ve had a conversation or been on a zoom meeting. So great to see you.

Jonathan
I have two suggestions. One may not be appropriate if you edit this after the fact, but one of the things I’d love you to do next week is have a very merry Christmas.

Meg
Thank you. I love your video this morning. That was super fun. Very off the cuff.

Jonathan
Thanks. And the other is, if you want to, let’s make another plan to see each other because I love seeing you too.

Meg
Well, absolutely. And just an aside, one of the gals that I’m working with, she and I have had so many referrals going back and forth that now we talk once a week.

She’s a little bit allergic to zoom. She does not like to be on camera. So we just for half an hour every week, catch up about our referrals going back and forth. It’s been super fun to get to. She’s also in New York, by the way.

Jonathan
I actually mentioned you this morning to another client who we’re going to be speaking again next late next week and possibly getting started on, first of all, career direction.

So he’s right in that question, do I get a job or do I start a business? And he’s been out of work for two years with. With some luxury to travel.

So I think he’s actually a really right candidate for if. If franchise is a possibility. He’s never looked into it deeply, he said, but it’s been been suggested to him, so I think he’s a good connection for you.

Meg
It sounds awesome. What I appreciate about both of our styles is we’ll talk to people without any obligation, without any pretense that this is going to be the right fit. Let’s just get lay of the land and get the conversation started and see where it goes.

To me, on my end of it, I love yes, but I think a well researched no is an absolutely fine solution.

Jonathan
Yeah, for sure. For sure. It sure beats indecision. 

Meg
Jonathan, I want to thank you again for being on the show today. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for quite a while.

I hope you had as much fun as I did. And have a great holiday week next week with all of the different celebrations that are going on. Whether your mom wanted it or not, you are a rock star.

So from start to finish, that’s the cap for this program.

Jonathan
Thank you very much. It’s been a lot of fun. I feel a great amount of joy. And if there’s anything you need, the answer is yes.

Meg
Yes. Thank you.