DIY: Home-Grown vs. Ready-Made Systems

Jose Leal (00:08):

Welcome to rHatchery Live. I'm Jose Leal. As today's guest we have Luz Iglesias… Luz, did I pronounce that okay?

Luz Iglesias (00:16):

Yes.

Jose Leal (00:17):

Welcome.

Luz Iglesias (00:18):

Thank you.

Jose Leal (00:19):

As you know you've met Matt and Matt's our other interviewer. And he usually is here, but because I left him for three weeks as I was traveling, he's probably finding a reason not to be here. But hopefully, he'll be able to join us as we've had the chance. So Luz, tell us a little bit about yourself and then we can start talking a little bit about what you've done and why you're here.

Luz Iglesias (00:51):

Sure. I would love to thank you, Jose. My name is Luz and I live in a rural part of Ontario, Canada on a farm. And the reason I met Jose and Matt was through my work in co-management or self-management. For the last 11 years, I have worked for a company that is currently called Raise. But since 1957 was called the Ian Martin Group, or Ian Martin Limited. So if people know us, they probably know us as the Ian Martin Group. We've just recently rebranded as Raise. And then to complicate things, I've also worked in some of the sub-brands, like some of the companies that, the parent company owns [INAUDIBLE]. So, if you look at my LinkedIn, it's a mass of all these different brands. But I actually have just been with the same company for 11 years. And my main work there has been leading the transformation of our company from a traditional hierarchy to a co-managed or self-managed or self-organized company of some currently 450 people in the Philippines, India, Ghana, Peru, the US and Canada.

Jose Leal (02:12):

You haven't been doing it.

Luz Iglesias (02:14):

I don't need to anymore because the people just make great decisions and organize themselves. And actually that's kind of true. The heavy lifting for me is over because largely I would say Raise is a completely self-organizing company in all of our regions and all of our brands.

Jose Leal (02:33):

That's awesome. So, and, and how did you get there? Because that's not a typical place to, to end up. what got you there? Oh, there's Matt.

Luz Iglesias (02:46):

There's Matt.

Matt Perez (02:48):

Hi.

Luz Iglesias (02:49):

So it started I think in 2014. One of the executives at the then Ian Martin Group, I think went to a conference, found out about Frederick Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations, and lent the CD version of the book or, or some interviews related to the book, to my business partner, Edwin. Edwin and I were building a small startup called [INAUDIBLE]. And John gave us that content and said like, this is really weird. You guys might like it. And Edwin and I, and the four other people that were working with us in that startup that was owned by the bigger company, we read the book, the original longer version of Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations aided up at least Edwin and I, but I think most of us had the experience of this is something we've been looking for, our whole working lives without knowing it existed. Like without having this vocabulary, without realizing that somebody out there was discovering these ideas and naming them and organizing them, this is what we've been longing for. And we quite literally, the six of us got in a room and said, you know, do we want to do this? Yes. And where should we start? Let's start with self-organization. Lalu says, there are three breakthroughs in these types of progressive organizations. Wholeness at work, so like human wholeness, self-organization, and evolutionary purpose, but self-organization is sort of the, the mechanics of it. So we decided to start there, started replacing our decision making architecture, gave up positional authorities. So even though we were a team of six people, three of us were managers. So there were three people who had managerial oversight over three other people. Like that's how ridiculous, you know, even in this small nascent business, there was already like so much hierarchy, so much structure. So we got rid of that, replaced it with practices, and eventually the parent company got interested that work to the bigger company, and we've since acquired some other companies. And so keep spreading those ideas so that more and more people can do what we think is really meaningful work. Can experience freedom and responsibility at work in a new way.

Jose Leal (05:15):

That's, wow, that's awesome. Because, I mean, the reading of that book is where most people in this space have really sort of woken up to the possibility and to

Matt Perez (05:27):

Most young people in this space us older folks who were inspired by different books.

Luz Iglesias (05:35):

Maverick. Yes. And now, and, and now I recommend your book, and I'm, you know, I'm, this is not a paid advertisement. I recommend your book alongside Le Luz. I really think Matt and Jose, you guys have made of a very significant contribution to the teal literature co-management literature for at least two reasons. One is that I think your book is unique in making the connection between, I'm going to just keep using the term self-organization because it's the most natural for me and co-ownership. And the other thing I love about your book is that you're not dogmatic about using any particular method to implement these principles. And that's, I think, directly related to the topic that we chose together. We at INAUDIBLE]. Ian Martin, Raise, did not, we never used holocracy or sociocracy. We never used a consultant, a teacher, nothing. We had the book and some internet research and our own naivete and enthusiasm, and we just figured it out. And I think there are pros and cons to doing it that way versus doing it, you know, having some external thing, formula product or person to help you. So that might be, you know, I thought that might be a rich topic to explore together.

Matt Perez (06:57):

Well, having, having somebody who's has had experience and has, has stumbled through the many opportunities there for stumbling is valuable. So they can say, oh, that's a symbol, but not to prescribe what comes after assemble. What are you going to do about that symbol? And, and the usual thing is, oh, we'll go back to Sophia. No, no, no. Okay. Relax. So, so that is useful, that, that would be useful to have. And by the way, so you came with the, with Edwin and those people.

Luz Iglesias (07:39):

Edwin and I built a startup business owned by the Ian Martin Group starting in 2013, I think. And it was in that little startup business where we started incubating what became our own homegrown teal operating system, which I think we'll put links to in the video. And we say we, we often get interviewed together. This might be my first time being interviewed without him, but Edwin was really the, he's the creative spark, the visionary, the big dreamer. And I'm the boots on the ground, like, but what are we actually going to do? What this, it doesn't, this doesn't work. This is better. Let's try this, let's throw this away. The sort of more grounded one. And that, that worked well for us, having both, both of those tensions or both of those values present in our experimental work.

Matt Perez (08:37):

He’s no longer Ian Martin, right?

Luz Iglesias (08:40):

He is building, I don't know, complimentary adjacent businesses. Oh. So he is still part of the ecosystem, but yeah. Out of the day-to-day Ian Martin business.

Jose Leal (08:55):

So the, the work that you did at, at what is now [INAUDIBLE]. but was something else when you first started what was, what was the work that those six people were doing? The three managers?

Luz Iglesias (09:08):

Yeah. So the business work. We were we were building a, so Ian Martin group is a recruiting, a traditional staffing business. You know, typically hiring engineering and IT contractors for large organizations. And our little startup was attempting to provide a lower cost friendlier alternative for small and mid-size businesses that didn't need big fancy contractor programs, but they needed to make a decent hire. That's, that's high stakes for a small business. How do you get the benefit of professional recruiters and professional recruiting infrastructure without the big price tag? And that business still exists, still employs lots of people, we're still very proud of it. We've just, as individuals ended up in other roles and working in other parts of the of the business as a whole.

Jose Leal (10:00):

So, when did you jump away from operating [INAUDIBLE] and working with Ian? OH, pardon me, with your partner, who's name, budget.

Luz Iglesias (10:11):

Yeah, so I, it was probably two or three years after doing the transformation at [INAUDIBLE]. that the CEO of, or the owner of the whole company, Tim tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, what do you think it's time for the parent company to start implementing these ideas? And the, I, you know, I alluded to the idea that I don't see myself as a visionary. I, at the time, my career dream was that some CEO owner would tap me on the shoulder and say, Hey, I need your help implementing these radical ideas. And I would go, okay, here we go. It never once occurred to me that it would be our own owner and CEO. Like, I just don't, I don't think 10 steps ahead like that. I just think like, you know, in the trenches, in the work, what's happening right now. But it was our own owner that asked if I would essentially bring the co-management ideas, teach the co-management ideas to the larger business. And, and I, so I've been doing that since about 2018. And now we're at the point where largely the system is mature. One of the amazing things about co-management systems is that they have evolution built right in. So anytime the employees don't like this practice or think of a better way to do it, they don't need me anymore. They, we have the pathways, the mechanisms to improve our own work over time. And so now I'm at a point where I can start to look at where else I might be useful, who else that might be useful to because by and large, the system is working at Raise.

Matt Perez (11:50):

So let me ask you a question, cause you said it a couple of times, your boots on the ground and and that one was the visionary, blah blah. So you make this distinction. So what happened to you? You, you read the, the Lalu book and that was part of it, it sounds like, what, what happened to you? What did you make that, I mean, that's a hell of jump.

Luz Iglesias (12:17):

Why was I attracted to it?

Matt Perez (12:19):

Yeah.

Luz Iglesias (12:21):

I think, I think that throughout my career to that point, I had experienced a lot of pain at work. I I had had good leaders and not so good leaders. And I had been on healthy teams and unhealthy teams. And when I was on unhealthy teams or working for people who I didn't think were talented leaders or managers, I really suffered. You know, some people are able to compartmentalize that and say like, whatever, that's my job. I don't need to take that home. It doesn't matter. But I, I wasn't that way. I really felt those wounds of going to work every day for someone whose visions or values I didn't trust. I didn't believe in that I thought didn't treat people well. And I think at the time I might have said, well, that's down to the person. You know, we selected a bad leader, or that person is not a, is not a skilled leader. Now I have a different lens for looking at that. And, you know, those people are smart and well-intentioned, but the system is set up with certain power dynamics and it yields certain results. And it's almost like if that book hadn't interrupted my career, my thought, my ways of thinking, maybe something else would have. But, but that was such an interruption of, it's not that, that that guy was a bad leader and he was out to get us, and he was doing bad things. He was trying his best, he was a, a smart, capable person who was trying his best at work every day. But the system created such an artificial imbalance of power between me and that person, or the team and that person or whatever, that it, it, it was just doomed to fail for some, someone like with the sensitivities that I have around what it means to show up at work every day and how important that is and how beautiful it can be, how important it can be. So, so to me there was a, there was a wound there that this work, rest in some ways.

Matt Perez (14:24):

But you discovered that it was the system, not the individuals.

Luz Iglesias (14:29):

By and large. Yeah. Yeah, sure. There are some bad operators and but no, I think it's the system.

Luz Iglesias (14:37):

Well, we all promote the system. I mean, the system is us.

Luz Iglesias (14:42):

Yes. Yeah. We're all complicit in it.

Matt Perez (14:45):

Yep. We're all complicit.

Jose Leal (14:47):

We can't blame it for something that we don't. We are the ones that create it. We're the ones that make it and support it and keep it alive every single day.

Matt Perez (14:57):

We are wearing these glasses, right? These are fi glasses. So everything we do has to be visible in this color, you know? And when you, when you, you, the book evidently did a little bit of this. Yes. Yeah. And you can see now clearly, but it tends to close ourselves down again. So and that's what we have struggle with. So we're, we may be the pioneers Hmm. And, but we're going to get all the arrows in the back.

Jose Leal (15:38):

And how was that process for you, Luz? Because what, you know, what we call the system is, is the fiat system. And you probably didn't have a term for the system. But you, you've identified different aspects of what the system is made up of that that really create the problems, right? When you started to identify these problematic areas, these symptoms of fiat how did that, how did that come across to the 200, 300, 400 people that you worked with at Grace? Yeah. To, to, to show them these things?

Luz Iglesias (16:25):

What, that's a great question. And one thing I've learned in eight, nine years of doing this work is that I have very little influence over how another person sees the world or what they hear, what they don't hear. You know, they might read the same book and have a completely different reaction to it. I do remember one woman one coworker, I think, I think it's okay if I say her name is Diane. And in the very early days of introducing these ideas at the Ian Martin Group, she really thought, they were like, these ideas are terrible. This's never going to work. You have to tell people what to do. You have to control what people do at work or else they're lazy and they won't get things. I mean, those might be, that's my interpretation of, and the very first thing I did at the Ian Martin Group was a study group. So we would read a chapter of the book and get together and discuss different ideas and how could this work in our business? And after reading the Wholeness at Work chapter, Diane came to my cubicle in or near tears with the book Open. And she said, my whole career, I've been told my feelings don't matter at work. I can't bring my whole self to work. It's unprofessional. It's bad. It's unwelcome. And she went on to describe her sort of how the, the book met her woundedness around that. And she said to me at the end of the, the conversation, you can't put this toothpaste back in the tube. Once you've unleashed these ideas, they won't go back in. And that's my own, like, I have no, I have no idea why some people get there, some people don't. Some people are attracted to this, some people aren't. But once, once the toothpaste is out, you can't put it back in. I don't, I think there's no way I could go back to having a fiat owner manager telling me what to do, disregarding my own unique perspective. I don't need to get my way all the time, but I want you to at least accept that I have a perspective on. On what's happening. And it'd be nice if you listened to it and honored it, even if ultimately we go a different way. Because that's, you know, we got to be practical. We got to make real decisions. But each of us has a valid perspective on every topic we encounter at work. So let's create a system where people can at least say like, and that, that, it's so silly when I say it, but it's so radical in the fiat world, like, to, to believe that each individual has a valid perspective and that it is okay for them to express it.

Matt Perez (19:06):

And, that's fundamental to our humanity. That, you know, when you're seven or eight or nine years old and you discover It is the first time you go, well, I don't, and then your parents don't listen to you and your grandma does, but your parents don't. And but that, I want to say something, I want to contribute something that may help the survivability of the community is very fundamental. And of course, when you're a kid, you may not be able to contribute much that hasn't been already thought out or whatever, but you have to be listened to and you have to be taught to get the stuff out in an intelligible way and [INAUDIBLE]. And we don't, we say, well, kids, what is it? Kids are chicken. Oh, I'm confusing Spanish. Just saying Spanish about kids talk after chickens crap or something.

Luz Iglesias (20:17):

I don't know that one.

Jose Leal (20:19):

I think the in, in English, it's kids should be seen but not heard.

Luz Iglesias (20:24):

Not heard. Yeah. Seen but not heard. Just like employees.

Matt Perez (20:27):

And it's just like employees. And if I can't contribute to this community, then you're not a community. You're just people I hang out with for eight hours a day and then go home. Hmm. Interesting.

Jose Leal (20:42):

Well, and, and, and as Luz said, in the radical world, we don't recognize the wholeness of ourselves much less each other. So if we don't think we have the room to express ourselves for who we are, our feelings, our lives, our reality, how the heck are we going to accept that from others? If I don't get to you don't get to. Right. And so we've got a system where we imprison each other. Right. And, and it's only because, well, if I'm forced to feel this way, then you also need to feel this way. Even though I know as a, as a manager in Toronto where you were born I would feel this huge tension with the team where I knew that what they were asking for was absolutely right. It would be what I would want in that situation, but I wouldn't give in because, well, I don't get that. And I can see that now looking back. But in the moment it just felt like that's the way it is. I'm the boss and that's the way it should be. And it was me acting out what was being perpetrated on me by others. Yeah. And per and acting it out on them, and they on their teams and their teams on each other. And it was this whole thing. And then what I look at it now, and you experience this having worked with different divisions all over the world, that the top dictates what, what the other layers are going to do. Because if I'm treated in a certain way, then I'm going to treat my people in a similar way. Right. Is that something you experience? Is that something that you can reflect on?

Luz Iglesias (22:49):

I think my reflection on that would be that in any transformation towards co-management, and co-ownership, both parties have to unlearn those power dynamics.

Matt Perez (23:03):

Yes.

Luz Iglesias (23:04):

People that have had power, positional power, and the longer they've had it, the worse it is that, that people that have internalized that power, they need to learn how to work without it. And that's almost like you almost have to rewire your relationship to privilege. Your immunity from real feedback is a big one. So, so if you've been powerful, you have to go to power therapy. And if you haven't been powerful, you know, you're the little guy, you've internalized powerlessness, and or you've learned how to benefit from that you've hidden in order to, to be protected in certain ways in that system. And I just show up at, at work every day in these conflicts where, you know, the little guy's blaming, well, the leaders suck, and the leader's like, well, the people aren't, they're not ready. And I'm like, you are, you're perpetrating this on each other. And one or both of you has to take a courageous action to do something different here because you're both actually just adult human beings. You're both intelligent, whole adult human beings trapped in this.

Matt Perez (24:19):

System.

Luz Iglesias (24:21):

Yeah. In this role play almost. And certain kinds of people, depending on your gender and the color of your skin and your sexual orientation and whatever, then you're piling on e in either direction. And so I think there's a real, there is a real intersection between this work and justice equity, diversity, inclusion. Yes. That's not automatic. It's not like, oh, if you just implement these practices, then everyone is the same and everyone has an equal voice. But it gives you the tools, I think, to start picking that apart a little bit.

Matt Perez (24:59):

Not equal, equitable is, is not equal in the sense that, that, you know, I may say something, you may say something, I'll, you may say something. And, and we're not equal, we're just, but we get to say it. We get to be listened to. And I get to laugh for yours and disregard Jose’s and whatever, but…

Jose Leal (25:22):

We always, he always disregards mine.

Matt Perez (25:25):

He always, it's, it's a, it's a being listened to at the same time. It's not. It is, but it's not equal.

Jose Leal (25:36):

So Carlos realized that we are 26 minutes into this, and we haven't even talked about the topic. And that's because we're enjoying having this conversation so much. So let's talk about the topic. Do it yourself. Homegrown versus remedy made, already made systems. What did, what is it that you see as the benefit of doing it yourself?

Luz Iglesias (26:06):

Thank you, Carlos. Thank you for the discipline. First we did it ourselves out of naive optimism. I remember being aware of holocracy and from a distance, I'm no expert in holocracy. I've never used it from a distance. It seemed bureaucratic to me. So it wasn't attracted to it. And at that time, I wasn't aware of any other system. I had never heard of [INAUDIBLE] I had never heard of Sociocracy. So it was like, either we buy holocracy or we just make all this stuff up ourselves. And so that's why we chose to make it up ourselves. I think the biggest advantage of that is a feeling of ownership over what we've created. And it's sort of like when you build the computer or you build the car, you know, like, okay, yeah, I just, I stuck something in there. And that's not a long-term fix, but you remember that. And at some point, you go in and so the, the builder of, of the car knows where the, the strengths and the weaknesses are to at least to some extent. And so there's a sense of ownership, there's a sense of, well, we built it, we can unbuild it or we can improve it, or we can keep what we like and throw away what we don't like. And so over time, I think there is a stronger sense, a stronger sense of ownership, stronger sense of evolutionary influence over the system that you have. I've worked with organizations that have implemented one of those systems I've talked about, and there are lots of advantages of hitting the floor running with something that's been tested that, that somebody that an external expert can come in and say, start with this. Try this, do this. Here's what other similar companies have experienced. So I, you know, I, we didn't pick this topic to say one is definitely better than the other. But in the long term, you know, I probably have a bias for just figuring it out yourself.

Jose Leal (27:55):

Well, and, and you know, you know about where we stand with co-management and co-ownership, part of the ownership is the system itself. It's not just owning the assets of the organization and the profits but owning how that organization lives. If you yourself have been dictated a model of operating, then you don't own it. And you're, you might own the money, but you don't own what's operating. And so, part of our view is that coal ownership extends to how we do what we do. Not just what we do. And so, I think your topic of do it yourself hits very much down our path of seeing that, at least now as this shift away from fiat towards something more radical is happening, that it, it needs to be happening by the people involved. Will it become a new system that will become the norm that people will learn in university and will go out and do it? Maybe but we're definitely not there yet, and, and that ownership of that transition, I think that you point out is a very critical part, of ownership.

Matt Perez (29:36):

So, I want to go back off the subject for a second. And to the part of, so you read the book, you had this naive, you call it naive, I call it supervisor thing of, oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do it ourselves. And you didn't choose a package solution like holocracy or whatever. And I, I know organizations that have a 47-page constitution. And the problem is, somebody remembers what that is, and they're always arguing about the constitution, but so you decided to go that way. What impact did he have on you? What, what was, because there's something in you that's, that's not normal. So what, what made that happen?

Luz Iglesias (30:26):

You know, one thing that's not normal about me that my collaborators in this work often point out is that I really like simplicity. Like there are no 47-page documents in, in the stuff that we created around co-management, it's our essential teal operating system, which Carlos will link is one diagram. It's one flow chart that I drew on a scrap piece of paper, and I tacked it up in my cubicle. And I thought, oh, that's beautiful. That's so simple. They didn't, at that, at that stage have the confidence to do anything with it. But then I kept looking at it and thinking, that's good. And I showed it to Edwin and he was like, that's good. You should, yeah. You should start showing that to people and see what they think. And I took that to another collaborator, James, who's the one who we, he and I really developed the, the branching questions and then, it's sort of, it's a flow chart. It's a so yeah, what the branching questions were, and what exact language did we want to talk about sensing problems and opportunities or noticing them is it a problem or opportunity? So, we really like, you know, debated every word in that one simple diagram. And it has evolved. It, it has evolved and I hope improved over time. But the basic idea in our organization is that any person can notice a problem or opportunity, and then this little flow chart guides them through our six common practices that they would use to address the thing that they're seeing. That's it.

Matt Perez (31:57):

By, by the way, the, the, the drives of simplicity, I often ordo it, but it's something that's very much part of the book, the radical is not radical. I'm going to kill the bad people and stuff like that. It's radical going to the roots. And, and, and that brings you simplicity in my book. It brings you more than simplicity. It brings you an easy way to remember mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. if you don't remember something, you can't live it. You know, if I have to remember the 47-page commitment that came from somewhere, I can't live it. I get to page three and I get bored and whatever. So maybe that was the basis of it. And that's why I identify with you in a lot of ways. Okay. So it was simple and, and now we can, we'll give you a back on topic.

Jose Leal (33:00):

Yeah. Well, I wonder how when that OS started to emerge, how much did it physically change the organizational structure, of what is it now? Sorry…

Luz Iglesias (33:24):

Raise.

Jose Leal (33:25):

Raise, blanking out. Did it, did it start to change roles?

Luz Iglesias (33:35):

You Yes, to some extent. Although often when I'm talking to other people who have experience of co-management, one of the things they'll point out, or I'll point out about our organization is that our role work is probably less evolved or less advanced than it is in other co-managed organizations. I think some of that is around the business that we do. We have essentially three jobs, recruiters, salespeople, and the people who support our contractors. And those rules are so different from one another that it's unlikely that people will hybridize their roles. They can, the t o s gives them the tools to mix and match, but different people are attracted to those like fundamentally differently skilled people and different, different people with different attributes are attracted to those roles. So in terms of role distribution, actually we're barely similar to how we were when we were hierarchical. And that would be one, you know, I think when people start this work, they think they have to do everything perfectly. All that you have to do. Lovely. Says roles, so do roles. This says decision-making. So do decision making. And my advice would be start where your pain points are. You don't, you might not radically change your rules. You might not radically change certain aspects of your decision making. I think I've lost track of what the question was, Jose, but I would say we're not, our rules did not radically change in the way that they might have had other self-organized companies.

Jose Leal (35:14):

Right, right. And, and obviously you didn't tackle the ownership issue as well.

Luz Iglesias (35:20):

We have a robust profit sharing program. We distribute a percentage of our annual net income to all of our employees in all regions, but we are still single owner owned last week, I recommended your book to our owner Tim. So let's see. Maybe I'll read it.

Jose Leal (35:41):

We'll see. Maybe he'll tap you on the shoulder.

Luz Iglesias (35:45):

Help me do co-ownership.

Jose Leal (35:47):

Exactly. and that's because we feel that co-management can't really, really be fully experienced until there is co-ownership as well. Cause there, at the end of the day, there's always, even in the case of race, a benevolent yes. Leader. Yes. But that benevolent leader could, something can change their mind.

Luz Iglesias (36:17):

Yes.

Jose Leal (36:18):

They can move on, and things change. And we've seen it many times where benevolent leaders for some reason flip right? They sell, they move on, they do something, and things don't stay as they were. And so how do you die? Or they die or they die. I was trying to be nice and not say that Tim's going to die, but <laugh>, but it happens. And so do you see that to be true? Do you experience that yourself? The idea is that if we long-term are moving towards co-ownership as well, that the, the, the chances that this transformation towards something more radical and away from fiat is not a viable long-term solution.

Luz Iglesias (37:16):

Yes, I agree. And I think it's a really significant contribution that you have made to the conversation and should continue making more people need to hear that and consider how to make it real. And I don't know, in your, in your worldview, if you consider profit sharing a form of co-ownership.

Jose Leal (37:38):

It's a step towards I think, but, but Matt's the one that did a lot of the research on that.

Matt Perez (37:43):

It, it, the, the thing about profit sharing, we had it at, at the previous company that I had, and it was, it went like this. My partner would call me and go, hey, I think we're going to take so much for this and so much for that for next year. And that leaves so many dollars to give to people. And I go, okay, that was it. So the owners decided how much to give her a year. We didn't have a fixed percentage or anything like that. K2K has a swift fixed percentage, and, and that's what they go by. But the problem is the owners make that decision and your, on my behalf, and so that's not ownership. And the other aspect of ownership is that I own everything. I own the brand, I own the reputation I own, and I own everything about the company myself. I co-own that. And that never enters into profit sharing at all. So, if we said, oh, we're going to print sharing everything, the whole company, boom. And we recommend that we take 50% for next year because we have to fund next year. And people go, yeah, yeah, 50% is fine, 45 I vote 45%, then whatever you end up with the percentage or whatever. But so long as there's a human being benevolent, nice, always smiling, always feeding their dogs and all that stuff, making those decisions, it's a fiat decision. Like that person, and I said, you may be, and all that stuff because eventually he will die and his children will take over the place and they may revert the whole thing. They may say, oh, this is. And, and put it all back. So that's why it's a fiat decision. You're building wealth for a family and no, you we're building wealth for us and for this community.

Luz Iglesias (40:01):

Our practice is slightly different in that the parameters are consent-based. So even the owner cannot change the existing parameters of the profit-sharing plan without the whole company's consent.

Matt Perez (40:15):

Oh, that's good.

Luz Iglesias (40:16):

And if you interview me or Tim or Edwin again in 3, 4, 5 years, I bet you will have found some doors to open to go further,

Jose Leal (40:28):

Right. And that's the thing. I mean, there's no, no, nothing is wrong about any of this stuff, it's just moving in that direction and we know where the path is. It's just that we can't take all the steps at once. We've got to take one step at a time. And every organization is different and every group of individuals is different. Now we've been 41 minutes. Yeah. Amazing. Is it Luz? This has been a pleasure. I really enjoyed our conversation. Matt, did you want to introduce our guest for next week?

Matt Perez (41:04):

Yeah, let me plug in. For next week we're going to have Fernanda Guerra. That's the English version of the, the, the, the Iberian version of it is Fernanda Guerra. And she says regenerative practices attorney. And we don't know what topic is, but I'm sure it's going to be fun. So that'll be the guest for next week and I'm really looking forward to it. I've seen a lot of stuff from her contributions to other areas and, and she seems to be in the right path. So yeah, looking forward to that.

Jose Leal (41:48):

Awesome. Luz.

Luz Iglesias (41:50):

Thanks so much for having me here.

Jose Leal (41:51):

I was going to ask you anything you want to say before we drop off?

Luz Iglesias (41:55):

You're doing, you're doing good work and count me in for whatever I can do to, you know, help spread the message.

Jose Leal (42:03):

Well, we're good at roping people in, so you're roped in. Thank you again. It was a pleasure having this conversation with you and we'll see you again soon.