Would More Empathy Improve Your Marketing?

SPEAKERS
Ben Bauer, Sue Campbell

Sue Campbell  00:10
Hello and welcome, fellow Awsomologists to Awsomology. I'm Sue. 

Ben Bauer  00:14
And I'm Ben. And in this episode, we'll explore how empathy should be a major part of your marketing strategy. 

Sue Campbell  00:21
Wah-wah-wahhh, ... well, I mean in a positive way, but when I say that it sounds so cynical, to think about empathy, which is a human, lovely emotion, and think about that as being an important facet of marketing strategy. But this is not just a cool gimmick we're going to talk about this is not just pretend empathy, pretending like you care, right?

Ben Bauer  00:46
Well, you wrote this script. So you already know, I'm gonna say yes. So let's jump right in.

Sue Campbell  00:50
Okay, so Ben and I were fortunate enough to be alumni of an innovation program through Filene, the Filene Research Institute, if you're not familiar, because you are not a credit union peep. It is a think and do tank that focuses on credit union strategy, and helping credit union members. And we, as I said, we're very lucky to be able to be a part of a couple of innovation programs through Filene. So shout out to them for the first step for us to be able to create a model that captures our audience's most pressing needs. Ben-

Ben Bauer  01:31
Yes, ma'am.

Sue Campbell  01:31
You already know you're gonna get asked this, describe the model that we start with when we talk about empathy. 

Ben Bauer  01:37
Yeah, so there's this whole methodology to the Filene- I guess, the Filene method, right? And one of the first steps is creating an empathy map. And empathy maps aren't unique to this methodology, or anything that empathy maps are used in plenty of other places. But if you haven't seen one before, visualize the personthat you're trying to solve a problem for at the center of a map, or a sheet of paper, or a whiteboard, whatever that looks like, you want to get crazy. And then around that person, well, first you describe that person. And, you know, depending on what you're doing, and what you're trying to solve for, maybe down to some intimate details, but sometimes I suppose you could probably keep it on a higher level and still get some good work done. And then after you describe who that person is, you write, and bring ideas in around them, that are all done in a way to answer the question of, like, what is this person thinking, feeling, seeing doing so like really putting yourself in the shoes of the person that you just described, walking a day in their life...a moment in their life, and you know, even that might change, depending on the problem you're trying to sell for. And, and yeah, like, literally writing down, here's this thing that this person experiences, they see this happening in their community, they have to do this thing to help their family, you know, do this thing that, you know, get them buy, or whatever.

Sue Campbell  03:18
Mmmhmm...

Ben Bauer  03:18
 And so and by doing this, you, you know, it's easy to like, sit back without structure and just say, I wonder what that person's thinking about or if only I could walk a day in that person's shoes. And by doing that, you can have this nice little inner dialogue with yourself and probably do a decent job of understanding what somebody might be thinking, but you might miss the things that they have to do. Or you might understand the things that people are saying the things that they're saying to their co-workers, their community, to their family, but you might not fully think about the things that they're thinking or you know, the things that bring them anxiety or you know, whatever it might be so. So by doing it this way that's structured on this map, and it's pretty little drawing and everything, you really dig in quite deeper than you would if you did that more casual sit back, like, Oh, I wonder what they're thinking kind of approach, you know what I mean? And then off of that, I mean, now you have all of these statements, questions, ideas out around this person that you've grown to know and love so much, and you just want to solve every problem that they've ever had, right? And you can start to dive in, in the next steps of the process, which is, you know, idea... ideating problem identification, getting to solutions eventually. Right. But it does also, it's clearly very intentional, that it starts with an empathy map. So you're solving a human problem for a human.

Sue Campbell  03:41
Right.

Ben Bauer  04:02
Keeping that human... that human at the center of it throughout the process. 

Sue Campbell  04:52
Yeah. And when when we talk about, you know, sort of identifying that person and to whatever level the problem you're solving requires I mean, we were talking demographics, we're talking specifics about, you know, down to what is the makeup of their family? Where do they live? What's their education? Yeah, just to really hone in on this idea of a single person who we're going to hopefully be able to help. And I think the most... probably the thing that I took the most from that whole experience of building empathy, an empathy map, really, for the first time was, you know, our tendency in business is to think, what does this... what is this person hearing about our business? What do they think about our business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it? Yes, those are important questions to ask yourself. But no, those are not the priority for that person. So to be able to say, like, what I, we did one, oooh my group did one, where we talked about someone who was a- definitely a mother, I can't remember if she was a single mother, probably doesn't matter right now. But the point is, to look at that person's situation, where we're talking about, we want to get down to what's a financial product, but this person, you know, one of the insights we had is maybe thinking about what, why can't I be a better mom? So you know, you get you compare yourself? We know that everyone compares themselves to everyone else. 

Ben Bauer  05:51
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  06:38
So there are all of these conflicts that if they make, even if they don't make sense, my my personal opinion is, even if you're never going to make somebody feel like they're a good mom. But if you can understand, you know, we're not their priority, they have all sorts of things going on, that might be a higher priority. And if number one, if we can solve a problem for them, number two, if we can be sensitive and empathetic about those other things that are swirling around in their brain. And also number three, getting down to what are the other things we can do to and this is, this is already a teaser into what I do, which is thinking about how content and copy can speak to some of those other swirling thoughts, and try and center someone as the subject of what we're doing. Right. Yeah. So it's also informative and human. 

Ben Bauer  07:52
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  07:53
And not manipulative at all.

Ben Bauer  07:57
Yeah, yeah. When, like, a pretty vivid memory that I have from doing it as part of the Filene project. But honestly, really, I think, anytime I've done it, an empathy map is like, I'm reminded every time of how hard it is to do that, like, you know, I suppose maybe some of it might just be like, that feeling of like brainstorming churn waiting for your mind to get going. And sometimes when the first ideas thrown out, then you know, they can really start to roll. It's similar. You know, what, once you're just waiting for someone to say, like, well, here's the thing that I think they're probably doing or saying, then somebody else chips chips in their idea, and then you know, you can kind of start to roll. And I do think that it's been most effective to do it as a group, right? Because you do bring everybody brings their own biases and their own information into this activity, right. So to have that discussion happening at the same time of building this portrait of a person and trying to figure out who they are and what their problems might be, to have other people around the table contributing to that checking that, you know, everybody plays an important role and bringing this together in like the most true way that we can with the information that we have, you know, but it didn't, it didn't come easy. Like, I don't think it happens easily. If, if we just knew all of these things about people, we'd be constantly trying to, like, solve people's problems, because we know everything about them. And we know that that's not how the world works, right. So okay, now that we know where we start with this empathy map, this beautiful empathy map

Sue Campbell  09:42
It is gorgeous. In our minds.

Ben Bauer  09:45
What can you do with the insights you gain from empathy mapping? And I know you tease this just a little.. I did. Yeah. So you can do so much-

Sue Campbell  09:53
It is a really good conversation. Thanks. I like, so we know, I think Isort of associate it with, with the innovation process, right with finding a gap finding a solution for a problem. But you, you know, we all we talk about all the time. And frankly, if you're not, if you listen to this podcast and have not heard us say "understand your audience, know your audience", then you need to go back and listen to some of these others because we've said it a million times. So it is it's about knowing your audience, and it's about knowing, you know, who is the specific person that I'm talking to? Because it is never - here's me preaching to the choir to you - It is never everybody, you can't talk to everyone. So you know that specific person. And yes, sometimes, and I think this is a thing that marketers struggle with, the people that have to work with marketers struggle with, sometimes that means you're eliminating people. Right? 

Ben Bauer  09:53
So much.. Right. 

Sue Campbell  10:58
Not in a bad way. But you're saying, yeah, no, I. So right now we're focused, this empathy map is a single mom, age 25. I don't know...

Ben Bauer  11:13
...has student loan debt...

Sue Campbell  11:13
...has student loan debt, whatever. So no, we're not, we're not going to talk about World War two documentaries, because it's not Sue's dad that we're talking to here,

Ben Bauer  11:24
You know, that's not a real life example, or anything like that.

Sue Campbell  11:29
It's much more Gunsmoke for him. It's more... we're not gonna, you know, there will be no Marshal Dillon in what we're doing. So it is, I think, people, maybe I'm picking on the credit union industry a little bit, but we tend to, we have these big hearts, people around us have these big hearts. And so we don't want to leave anyone out. We're not leaving people out. If for the purposes of what we're doing, we're saying, we are talking about, you know, and in our group, I imagine it was similar for you, we named them. So we are talking about Yolanda young mom. This is the person we're talking about right now. And this is who we're solving for. Because ultimately, our job is to solve human problems. And even Exclamation as a business to business... business. Businesses are made up of people. So our job is still to solve human problems, right? So there's that. The problem solving, the innovation side of it. And for me, as a content person, there is also that, you know, placing myself alongside them. As far as in a piece of content, if I am writing it for young mom, Yolanda with her in mind, then the piece of content, I'm writing changes, and it changes the flavor, it changes the things I'm saying. And you know, a particular style I use, which I would suggest everyone use it, to the greatest extent you can and use it mindfully, is to think about bringing real life situations, whether you do it for the sake of humor, whether you do it for the sake of storytelling, but bringing those real life situations into what you're doing to show well, you can show a lot of things with it really, you can show that either I just understand who you are, as a person, I understand your experience. And therefore here's this other piece of information, I can show I understand your experience, and I have a direct connection that I can give you to help you with that experience. So there's a lot you can do with it. Or you can just make a throwaway joke, which I'm fond of doing. Which that has its own strategy behind it to that that is the human touch that is saying like I am I am creating this piece of content to be colloquially appropriate. Now, when you use phrases like colloquially, colloquially appropriate, you're not being colloquially appropriate. So, instead, I will bring it into, you know, a side comment, a parenthesis, set of ellipses, you know, like, just those extra stray little thoughts that say, like, I am looking you straight in the eye, I am understanding your human experience. This is for you. Yeah.

Ben Bauer  14:47
Yeah. And from a marketing perspective, I mean, you're talking about a very specific example of like, right, like content and writing and stuff, but it does. It applies everywhere, right? I mean, thinking of like I mean, even to like ad placement, you know, I mean, this can help you help inform you, like, where these people might be and where you need to be so that they receive your message or, you know, for talking about the design of something, being familiar with that one person with Yolanda young mom, you know, you have an idea of what might be appealing to that person based on all the work that you did to really get to know them, you know, so that's not really as difficult as it might be as much work as it might be to do it. Like there's reward. Right?

Sue Campbell  15:35
Right. So, right. And that, you know, I think that's, I'm glad you brought it up, because it's always important to remind ourselves that nothing of this, nothing in marketing, exists in a vacuum. So everything, you know, really, really well formed deep and wide strategy means that I'm thinking about, even if I'm focused on content, and I'm doing a blog, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm, nobody knows, you know, what, frankly, nobody knows what I do. But I have to, my job is to also be thinking how does this thing I'm doing right now connect to other things that we're doing? Can does this, is this, is there a connection that already exists organically that I'm going to send you from this ad to this blog? Or do I need to create a connection, which means I should be thinking about taking this blog and blowing it up? And putting that information in other places? Because I think it's valuable enough to get it out in front of you? And then that whole, this holistic experience, I have a feeling I'm getting off- I am diverging a little,

Ben Bauer  16:57
It's okay, because I have a question that is totally going to diverge just a little bit. 

Sue Campbell  17:01
Okay, good. So thinking about this big idea that everything you do is of a piece, right? So you can't you know, thinking about your brand, thinking about what your brand looks like every single place it goes, and the people who support it. That's, that's really what I mean in a meta way that none of it exists in a vacuum. So I have to, if I think Yolanda young mom is an important person for me to talk to for this particular project. I also should be thinking, what have we put out that would tend to push Yolanda young mom away? And is she important enough to me that I need to make that stuff? I need to downplay it, make it go away? Or can those two things live side by side without creating conflict for each other? So to simplify that, because I know that sometimes I just say things, and Ben and I understand each other and other people maybe don't understand me. To say like, we're talking about Yolanda young mom, and we're saying to Yolanda young mom that young moms are important to us. And super simple example, if you have another ad that says we don't care about young moms, those two things conflict. And you need to really think about what's going to happen. If Yolanda sees both of those things in the wild. Yeah. Yeah. And be intelligent about it.

Ben Bauer  18:39
Yeah. So the question I was going to ask, and I think you've already started to answer it is what does one say to somebody that might ask? You know, okay, so you, you've done this empathy map you're solving for Yolanda? Isn't that too focused? Are you were too worried about this one person? I mean, you can't, like you said, you can't be everything to everyone. But you also can't focus on this one person, which I know this is, this person would be a real butthead to ask this question. 

Sue Campbell  19:05
I would say you should leave. 

Ben Bauer  19:06
Yeah. But you know, and they, somebody may legitimately ask the question, though, about, you know, like, focus, is this too focused? And, you know, are we ever gonna have to do this for every single kind of person that we might ever serve? And that's, I don't know if you've heard but there's a lot of people on the planet and that's great. You know, they're all very different and stuff. So what do you say to somebody that asks if I just asked a question asks that question?

Sue Campbell  19:31
I what I say is the same thing I say about everything, which is it depends. What is your business now? Yolanda young mom. If you have if you have a business that sells strollers I don't know. Like burp rags or whatever. You have a business that is targeted to Yolanda young mom. And you are asking me, am I not hurting Sue's dad's feelings? Because I am not focusing on what he needs, then I would tell you, you know what, don't worry about my dad. He's not your- he's not in your demographic, and it's all fine. Could he come into your store? Is there a chance that there's a life situation where he wants the product you have? Yep. Yep. So then what you need to think about is not putting out an ad that says "We hate Sue's dad. Yeah, he's a jerk." So that's a hyperfocused example. And it when we talk about industries where it could be, you know, we, we need to be open to a diverse set of people. Then you talk, you think to yourself, you strategize with your team, you have a really honest conversation of who- Man for a conversation about empathy. I really, I feel weird about what I'm about to say. But- you have a conversation that says, who's going to make us money? Who will sustain us over the next X number of years? And if, if that is a group of people, if that is Yolanda young mom, Bobby young businessman, I'm not going to try and come up with any other names that have alliteration, you get the idea? If it's five different sort of types of people, cool. You know who your people are. These are the people that are going to sustain you. You still need to be good to Oliver old businessman-

Ben Bauer  21:48
Nicely done. 

Sue Campbell  21:49
Thank you. You can't, I was about to say you can't block them out of your business. But you know what? Golldarnit, you can if you want to. If you said you know what, dude, you you're not part of our demographic, and we aren't going to put like- you're welcome here, you're welcome to use our services. But we're not putting money into you. That's your prerogative. And in some, sometimes, that's the right decision to say we're not sustaining, I think, particularly in the credit union industry, I assume every industry, we have old tech and new tech. And we have some old tech that we kind of pull along. Because we have people that we know have been using it forever. And that's what they're used to. And if we said you have to stop using our phone banking and use online banking, that they would- we know that that exists. And it is sometimes appropriate, although probably very hard to say, Yeah, we can't we're not going to invest in you anymore. And you are always welcome to use what we have. But we're not investing money in keeping you on old tech, using old, you know, ways because that's a money suck.

Ben Bauer  21:57
Right? Yeah, for sure. Well, and especially in a credit union, sort of structure where, you know, we're using members dollars for all of these things, right? We do need to be good stewards of that. Yeah. You know, to, to keep some old tech around that keeps a small group of people happy just may not be the best use of resources. Right. So, right. Yeah.

Sue Campbell  23:37
And, you know, and also, you know, when we talk about age, which I think is, it's a pretty common sort of delineator for marketers to think about age or generation, right? It's important that we think more about habit and proclivity -

Ben Bauer  23:56
Behavior was the word I was going for-

Sue Campbell  23:57
Behavior than than age. I don't know why I went to the word proclivity, because I thought, because that was the fanciest word I can think of at the moment. Because as soon as you decide that Oliver old businessman, won't use online banking, as soon as you convince yourself of that, then you're doing a disservice to those members. You are closing off an opportunity for people, you know, and the example I always love to throw out when people say, the, you know, older people, they're not going to use these things. We're never gonna get them. My aunt is 87 and she does bookkeeping for her son's business and has done an all online since online bookkeeping has existed. Yeah. Now, it does mean that my brother has provide IT support for her monthly and that's fun-

Ben Bauer  24:55
Sounds like fair trade off to me.

Sue Campbell  24:58
So we can't ah... even as we - I think I'm coming to a point here- even as we think about that hyperfocused group of people, we also can't assume that no one else is going to be, is going to react to that message for those people. 

Ben Bauer  25:13
Right, exactly. 

Sue Campbell  25:15
And on the topic of empathy, and I'm almost done I swear,  one of the things I think about really often is, and thinking in the sort of in the DEI space, but I think it applies to this exact same thing. I think people I know, people ultimately want to be connected to people, and what they like to see as examples of other people being treated well, so I, you know, even if, so if we did, if we did something, if we promoted something that was for a relatively small group of people, there is a certain segment of the population that's gonna be like "You know what, that's not me. But that's cool. I like what they're doing for that group of people." And that expands what that audience is and expands the power of that message. And especially if it's not a one off thing, and if you're doing a genuinely, 

Ben Bauer  26:14
Right, yeah. Well done. Good answer.

Sue Campbell  26:17
I'm going to take a deep breath. As we said, at the top, before I went all the way into the bushes. We both participated in an innovation programs with Filene where we were able to take these kinds of insights, and design projects meant to fill the gaps in the consumer experience. And the whole point was to look at it through the eyes of that consumer, right, that is a pretty specific use case. So how can a business who is just hearing this today, apply that logic to their day to day, if they're not going to call Filene and be like, I want to be in your program? What can they do today? With that? 

Ben Bauer  26:59
Well, I think, you know, first off, and this maybe feels a little too big, but it is the first thing that comes to mind is like if you're not innovating, and you're not using this to help you innovate and think about what might be next for your organization, or for even like a product or a certain group of people, like, start now, you know, like, do that now, definitely, that you know, maybe bigger than the day to day, it might be bigger than a moment, or a certain group of people or a certain product or something, but start thinking big. But as far as the day to day goes, I mean, goodness gracious, like, have a notebook next year computer and every time that you question, if what you're doing is truly impactful to the people that you think you're helping, at anytime, like make a note of the thing that you're doing. And then there you go, you got a whole bunch of ideas for identifying a person that you might want to employ the map and then possibly innovating on that small step in the process, or that project that you're working on, or that campaign, you know, if you're in marketing, whatever. So I mean, I think from a day to day standpoint, like the possibilities are endless, and you can't do an empathy map for every task during your day or anything. Who, who is who was the person that I butted in front of line in the bathroom feeling? You don't have time for that. But But no, I mean, I think I can't imagine I like seriously can't think of a career or a job where you wouldn't be able to identify good, I don't need to give a number a good amount of opportunities during the day to pause and consider like, how does this truly help the person that I'm that's going to benefit from the thing that I'm doing, you know, and can I? Can this be done better? Can it be done a different way? Can it be improved? Do we need to create something totally new? And I mean, I think of I don't I? I won't go into a whole bunch of examples, but I will maybe touch on a couple just to help make the point. I think we hope it helps. Yeah, well, you will, yeah, we hope. But, you know, this sort of thinking and empathy mapping and innovation and stuff like that maybe is easier to make a connection to somebody who's like in product development, or a designer or, you know, somebody that's, you know, maybe more closely connected to the creation of something. But this can totally be applied to somebody that's doing, you know, a repetitive back office task or something that in like, almost no way but an abstract one or a loose connection. In almost no way directly helps the end class. aim to customer person a human right. But it's almost a guarantee that whatever they're doing is helping their coworker or a group of coworkers or maybe, maybe a segment of their client base or something that then does make its way down to, you know, directly impacting that person that we've identified. You know what I mean? So, even if there's some perception, like, if you're listening this and thinking we're full of crap-

Sue Campbell  30:32
That number one, you're right. 

Ben Bauer  30:33
Yeah, right. Well, you are, right. 

Sue Campbell  30:35
We are. I mean, we're right on this point. But you are also full of crap, right?

Ben Bauer  30:39
And you're thinking like, yeah, this just, I don't know how this could be useful to me, like, I'm telling you, you're probably wrong, right? Like, there's there is a place for this. And like, any task and any role and anyone's day to day, right, when to use it, when to activate it, you know, that might be the more challenging question, right? Like, how do you prioritize the things that you're doing? Or the projects that you're working on to say, okay, like, I'm gonna pause, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna implement this methodology, and I'm gonna do an empathy map and go from there. Because you can't do it for everything. Right, but right, and maybe the answers, those questions are driven by pain points that have already been identified, like, we know that this thing is painful, we can do this better. How is that impacting people? And then go, or maybe it's based on profit, right? Like, there's this area of the business that we know is really profitable? How do we squeeze the most out of that? Or there's this area of the business that we think should be profitable? And it's not what's going on there? Well, let's dive into that process a bit. And start with the human side of it, which is where the empathy side of things, it's just, it's crucial. It's absolutely crucial. Yeah, I, you know, I want to tell you, you done blowed my mind.  Oh, goodness gracious, it usually goes the other way around

Sue Campbell  32:01
Because listen,  I hate to brag about my bona fides. But, but I am Green Belt certified, as you know, in process improvement. And I literally never thought about the connection between empathy mapping. So what I have thought about is, we have to, and this is a thing that I shouted in your face multiple times, you have to think about the whole process, you have to think upstream and downstream, everything that's happening, and how it's affecting people. But I have never really put that connection of like, No, I, when I say think about how it's affecting people think in an empathetic way think, what are the other stressors that might be outside of this process? Or what is the what is the training that you're going counter to when you try and force them into the process or whatever those things are, you know, upstream and downstream. Thinking about it from an empathy standpoint, is probably the key to making all of that work. And if you if you are in process improvement, if you and you're looking at a process, definitely take a pause and say, you know, who are the people from beginning to end involved in this? And how can we to the greatest extent possible? Make sure everyone's happy? 

Ben Bauer  33:25
Right.

Sue Campbell  33:25
 Content.

Ben Bauer  33:27
 Right.  You know, all to the extent that we're getting the best at the end of the process, Right. Yeah. So speaking of the end of the process, like the outcome here of thinking with empathy, leading with empathy, maybe implementing practices like this into the way that you're doing things, is an outcome is exceeding expectations, right. And again, that might be for a co-worker, exceeding their expectations. It might be for Yolanda young mom, it might be for the exact person that you're trying to solve this problem for. And we know that, like exceeding expectations is what keeps businesses in business, that's what keeps, you know, makes growth happen. Like satisfaction isn't enough, you know, Right. Right. And for my money, it's never been we have never had a more fertile environment to exceed expectations. Right. 

Sue Campbell  34:25
And I, and I've been saying that for a lot of years. But I think the with the state of the world with Yeah, you know, what we've all been through in the last two, three years. 

Ben Bauer  34:39
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  34:41
It is absolutely the time to think, you know, what can, what can we do right now, that exceeds what people expect from us. And then, because it's going to be easy. It's going to be low hanging fruit. Right? 

Ben Bauer  35:01
Right. 

Sue Campbell  35:02
And then you can start at that low hanging fruit and grow it from there. Okay, now people expect us to open the door, when we say on the sign that we're going to open the door. What's the next thing we can do? You know, and, and it becomes, it becomes a habit, it becomes what people expect of you and that at the end of the day, that is what anyone's customers want. They want to, they want reliability. They want expectations exceeded. And then step four, everybody makes money.

Ben Bauer  35:41
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're getting to the point of closing the loop here on empathy, right? I think that one byproduct of everything that we've been talking about that I think is helpful to at least verbalize is that like, once you start doing this, and implementing it into how you create things, how you think, how you how you do your job, or, and I guess the point I'm getting to is how you live your life. An awesome byproduct is that empathy can become like, ingrained in who you are as a person, how you think about other people. And not only just like, with your co workers, but with your family and stuff, too. You know, so when something happens that catches you off guard, instead of saying, what were they thinking, you say? What were they thinking, you know, and you get into the person's brain as best as you can, and you put yourself in their shoes. And instead of, you know, rushing the quick judgment or something, you maybe put yourself inside someone's mind and heart and think about how they could be affected by things you don't even know about. And maybe that changes the way that you react to a situation or you react to them or whatever, you know, pretty sweet outcome of thinking this way professionally. Probably use a pretty big personal advancement too. Yeah

Sue Campbell  37:09
Yeah, for sure. And not to fluff your ego. But that that is 100% a thing I rely on you for when when I have like lost my mind, to be the person to say, Well, okay, so let's not assume that that person is inherently evil. Okay, what if they are -

Ben Bauer  37:33
Once in a while I'll go down that road be like, yes, no, that person is the devil. You're right. They are.

Sue Campbell  37:43
So, so thank you for that. Yeah. It's, it's a great point to think when you start to think about everything through the lens of what does that person need? 

Ben Bauer  37:54
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  37:56
It opens up. It makes, I think it makes a lot of things you do in business and personally, easier,

Ben Bauer  38:05
Right? For sure. Yeah. Well, let's just keep this train going. I think by doing that, and, you know, flexing or strengthening that muscle, right? You, you also gain this skill of being able to tell people what you were thinking or, you know, tell people what you need, you know, and so it's just like these little steps that kind of create healthy relationships, healthy communication. And so, so we can just keep the devil out of it, you know?

Sue Campbell  38:35
Yeah, not today, Satan.

Ben Bauer  38:37
Yeah. Okay, so we will have lots of goodies to share about empathy, and maybe to get people going on this sign, the links and all that stuff, which we'll talk about when we wrap up. But before we wrap up, let's dive into our something awesome segment where we share recommendation for things that happened to us that are awesome, great. And we just have to tell. So I am going to share, I'll share with Sue, who will then share a link to a super cool article that I don't know, it's mind blowing. To me, I still like don't know if I can honestly wrap my head around it. But what it's about is the James Webb Telescope, which was launched in the later part of 2021, and is now sending us back amazing images of the universe. And so I saw I did the thing where I saw, like a social media headline about this and just kind of kept scrolling by it. And then for some reason, it popped back in my brain and thought, oh my god, I that's kind of amazing. I needed to figure this out. And the headline was something like, X number of galaxies in the size of a grain of sand. And I was like, okay, so what does this mean? Are we going like men and black where we're like reversing, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, So people that know many black will-

Sue Campbell  40:02
Get that the galaxy is in Orion's collar. 

Ben Bauer  40:05
Exactly right. So upon doing a bit of Googling and figuring out what they were talking about, there's an image of I should have had the exact number, but I mean, it's hundreds of galaxies. So galaxies, which contain billions, or trillions, whatever, of stars and planets, and all that all the other Gallic galactic goodness, right. And so the James Webb Telescope is incredibly powerful can see super far into the universe. And this picture that shows all of these galaxies, to put it into scale, if you were on an ocean, or on a beach, and you picked up one grain of sand, which sounds really hard to do, actually, and hold it between your fingers, and held it out at arm's length, the grain of sand would be the size of that picture. So like, you know, I mean, and then, like, put that up against the size of our sky, you know, and just to add, like, as I'm saying it, like, I can't wrap my head around, like the vastness you know what I mean, and it makes you feel incredibly small, you know, like, compared to the rest of the universe, the rest of humanity, and I guess that's, you know, I guess the thing that I think is beautiful about it is like, when you start to scale it back from the vastness of the universe, to the vastness of our planet, to the size of our communities, the size of our families, and bring it back to yourself, like, I mean, you can't help but feel like this really, really small part in this huge system. And might be daunting on one side, but also like on the other side, I think it's incredibly powerful to know how, like we, as a single human being can provide huge influence on the people around us on our communities around us and, you know, at the end of the day, and maybe influence a whole planet. But to keep that in perspective of where the planet is, and in that whole vastness, you know what I mean? It's, it's interesting how it's both like empowering and also allows you to, like, let things roll off your back, because you're just this just this one person

Sue Campbell  42:18
And just like a part of that piece of sand sand. 

Ben Bauer  42:22
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  42:22
So yeah, as you were talking, I was trying to Google this, I picked up my phone. I'm not, like, catching up on my texts. That'd be pretty rude. But it makes me think of that Einstein quote. And if I could get there-  for those of you don't know, we record in the basement- So getting good quality Wi Fi can be a challenge 

Ben Bauer  42:42
The Wi Fi's tough in the basement.  Yeah. I want to find a quote from Einstein. That that made me think of that. It happened to pop up in my Facebook feed. Here it is. Great. Okay. Once you can, once you can accept that the univers is matter expanding into nothing, that is something, wearing stripes with plaid pants comes easy Yes. Yes, the vastness the enormity of all of that of the universe makes you kind of go. Well, you know what? I dropped my coke today, right? Doesn't really matter. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I suppose the danger of this slippery slope is maybe falling into a place of like, with no hope. Nothing. Doesn't matter. We're just part of this deep ever expanding nothingness. Yeah, that would be a dark place to go, I suppose. But let's stick to the warm and cozy side. Go check out that picture. Even like the the photo of the galaxies is just absolutely amazing. And super cool.

Sue Campbell  43:55
And feel free to wear plaid and stripes. Right? 

Ben Bauer  43:58
If that's what you gotta do. Yeah, for sure.

Sue Campbell  44:02
Okay, so my, my something awesome. I, I am still kind of like, I'm still getting over the rush of this thing. It's an experience we had from a company. It's it's a company. It's a group of actors. They do this thing called the Dinner Detective. It is a murder mystery dinner, which we went in Green Bay. It was at the Hyatt. You do like, you know, convention chicken. It's fine. It's a good meal. But the experience, the live experience in the conference room area where everyone's seated down to dinner, and they have actors. Somebody gets murdered. Some detectives come in. I think they're, I think they're doing improv.... I don't know. I hope they are. Yes, yeah, they're improving. They bring people out of the audience. It was funny. It was scary while you sat there wondering if they're going to pick on you, the audience, they did pick me out of the audience.

Ben Bauer  45:07
 No. 

Sue Campbell  45:07
And which, and it was so funny to me. Because the pretense that they picked me out of the audience was they, you know, once they the one detective guy comes in and says, you know, once it gets this far into an investigation, you have to have a lineup, so we're gonna get a lineup. And it was like me five foot four, brown hair. A guy, six foot two blond hair, another woman, probably 5'11" long blonde hair. And they like they stand us all together and I turn to the guy, I'm like, you can't hardly tell us apart. And the guy playing the detective goes "Exactly. And that's why we have to do so we had to go through these things where we had to, we had to do an evil laugh. We had to show how we sneak and then we had to pretend to stab someone because the murder victim was stabbed. 

Ben Bauer  46:13
Wow, you had to do all this in front of the audience?

Sue Campbell  46:16
You're like, right center in the room. So everyone is like turned around so they can see you? Yeah, do that. Yeah. So highly recommend. And also they told you, so you could win. You could fake if you figured it out, you would get a prize. But you could also get a something to take with you if you just did a positive review. So I definitely did that. I got a shot glass. But I don't know if I get extra points for shouting them out on this podcast. Probably not. But this is my review. Highly recommend. I will add the link. And I think there are troops like this all over the country. So it was a really fun evening. Yeah, and you definitely should do it

Ben Bauer  47:00
Super cool. The Dinner Detective.

Sue Campbell  47:03
The dinner detective. 

Ben Bauer  47:03
Love it. 

Sue Campbell  47:04
Yeah. So much fun. Speaking of links, we will have links, oh, we got the links. Also, you will be able to find them pretty much wherever you find this podcast, you can go to always go to our blog, exclamationcuso.com/blog. And you'll see this episode and you'll see the links that we share. And you can also find us on your favorite podcast app and the links will be included there as well. If you head over to our blog, we always encourage people go back and look at our other episodes or on your favorite past podcast app and smash that subscribe button. I don't think I've ever said that. But now I want I just wanted to do that. Smash the subscribe button. Subscribe to us. We do this if this is your first time listening we do this monthly toward the end of every month. And we are hoping to grow that.

Ben Bauer  47:54
Yeah. 

Sue Campbell  47:55
So please like share comment, smash that subscribe button

Ben Bauer  48:01
for real let us know how we're doing let us know what you want us to talk about or who you want to have on the show and we'll do our darndest. Yeah, yeah. Heck yes, you can be on the show. Awesome. Well, thank you friends for tuning in. Thank you Sue for all your work putting together our episodes you do such a nice job. We had a great discussion today. This is Sue and Ben your self proclaimed professors of Awsomology reminding you that life's awesome if you make it awesome. We'll see you next time.