Wage Transparency and Equity (EP.69)

Updated

April 20, 2023

In this episode, podcast co-hosts Tim Cynova and Lauren Ruffin discuss recent pay transparency law changes that require companies to disclose pay ranges, as well as the laws’ potential to shift power and information sharing in workplaces. They explore the importance of clearly defining job requirements and the benefits of fixed-tier compensation to ensure equal – if not entirely *equitable* – pay. Lauren addresses the issues of location-based pay adjustments and speculates that increased transparency may lead to more organizations unionizing. Tim highlights the ongoing reevaluation of work's value and the need for businesses to adapt to Long COVID by creating more inclusive and equitable environments. They end the episode with a cliffhanger and agree to revisit this topic as the laws’ effects become clearer.

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin


Co-Hosts


LAUREN RUFFIN
 (she/her) is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. She frequently participates in conversations on circular economies, social impact financing, solidarity movements, and innovative, non-extractive financing mechanisms. Lauren is an Associate Professor of Worldbuilding and Visualizing Futures at Arizona State University and a co-founder of CRUX, an immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). Lauren was co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. Lauren has served on the governing boards of Black Innovation AllianceBlack Girls Code, and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. Learn more on LinkedIn.

TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.


Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi everyone, Tim here. A quick preamble to this episode. Lauren and I recorded this in fall of 2022, as you'll soon hear, when we settled into the conversation by means of a fun chat about New England's fall foliage. The episode then sat in the can for several months as we worked on a few projects, including planning for Work. Shouldn't. Suck. upcoming, and podcast topic related, Wage Equity Summit. Now onto the episode.

Lauren Ruffin:

Exactly, and I mean that really at the beginning of the pandemic made me pretty furious, that whole thing where it was like, "If you leave the Bay Area and we know about it, we're going to dock your pay." Come on, you have the money. You have the money, you know you have the money, so pay the people regardless of how they live their lives. That bit leads me to, we are in the middle of the... I think actually we're the beginning of the biggest labor movement that's happened in our lifetimes, Tim.

And so, I wonder if this data coming out is actually going to have more organizations unionize. Because the organizations that are probably not going to have any issues, are ones that already have unions, because those workers know. Those workers have negotiated their rates and they know what everybody's making. And there's a standard for what the employer/employee relationship looks like, and what equitable compensation looks like, regardless of what you think about unions, period. But those are the ones that are likely to be fine.

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about, well, that. On today's episode, are we in store for a treat. Podcasting's favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin, has a brand new microphone and is using it to discuss wage transparency and equity.

With New York's wage transparency law having gone into effect on November 1st and California's own version going live on January 1st, 2023, we thought it might be interesting to discuss what this means for employers and employees. In particular, what it means for those employers who feel like their starting place is a compensation approach without much, or any, consistency, transparency, or equity.

Lauren is someone who needs no introduction on this podcast, but if you want to read about the cool thing she's been up to, including her new faculty role in the world building in Visualizing Futures program at Arizona State University, her updated bio is in the episode description. So, in the interest of time, let's get going. Hey, Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's good, it's good. How are you? Vermont, is it leaf peeping season up there yet?

Tim Cynova:

It is. It is peak leaf peeping season, as determined by both the leaves and the amount of people at the coffee shop in the morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, yeah, people who are peeping.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I asked the barista and she's like, "Yeah, we did 200 lattes yesterday."

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh my goodness.

Tim Cynova:

Which I don't know, seems like a lot to me, but I don't know what their baseline is, so I thought maybe they should have a tote board with their daily latte velocity.

Lauren Ruffin:

What's the population of Stowe?

Tim Cynova:

I don't know. Three, a couple hundred, probably

Lauren Ruffin:

Like three thousand? A couple hundred people, or a couple thousand people?

Tim Cynova:

Who knows. But there's only one road in and out, and so it's packed. People are doing that thing where they see a bright tree, and then they just pull over suddenly and hop out with their camera and there's no shoulder. It's a two lane road. So everyone backs up and then everyone else feels like, "Oh, that's a good picture." So there's like ten cars now parked to take a picture of this tree.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Oh, man. So it's like rubber necking, but for trees?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, very much so. And having grown up in southern Indiana, there really wasn't the same vibrancy in... We thought there was, but just because you had no comparator. I'd never been to New England before, but yeah, drove around this morning and the mountains are just covered in all the colors right now. So it's in that period before that it turns to stick season, which is a new thing that I learned about last year.

Lauren Ruffin:

Hold on. What is stick season? I haven't heard about this?

Tim Cynova:

Stick season is after the leaves fall, it becomes stick season before ski season, and restaurants close, people close up shop for a couple of weeks, to give the teams time to relax between all the people coming for apple cider and hay rides, and then before the ski crowd, or the winter sports crowd comes into town.

Lauren Ruffin:

That makes sense.

Tim Cynova:

It does, but it also creates some weirdness when you go to the restaurant. "Wait, why is it closed the next two weeks?" But it is great for the workers and stuff to be able to have that time off and you're like, "Let's go to another place."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I think people do that here in August because it's 115 degrees. Phoenix, you're like, "Oh, this coffee shop has given up for a while. This restaurant..." They're out of here.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. So that's the height of the fall foliage leaf peeping season.

Lauren Ruffin:

I miss it. I do miss that part of the world. Cider donuts, man. Cider donuts.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, cider donuts. People are out in their plaid. They're getting ready for an art and craft fair down the street here this weekend. So everyone's bringing their north country crafts, kettle corn, everything.

Lauren Ruffin:

Speaking of crunchy things that white people do, I ordered some Birkenstocks for the first time. They arrive last night.

Tim Cynova:

Nice.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

That's great.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have plantar fasciitis, been working out and it's flared up, so that firm soul's working for me, but they are the ugliest things I've ever seen. They're just hideous. Once again, Birkenstocks will not be sponsoring this podcast.

Tim Cynova:

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. We're slowly whittling down to actually who might be less offended by our podcasts, in order to sponsor it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Which potential sponsors have I turned off by disliking their products? The product, it's great, but they could be a little bit more aesthetically pleasing.

Tim Cynova:

I saw an article where Birkenstocks are having another day. I guess they always had their diehard fans, but now it's a fashion thing where people are bringing out the Birks again. So it was originally, it was a hundred plus year old company, I think. And it was originally just the foot beds in shoes. And then they decided, "Well, why don't we just make our own sandals based off of these foot beds?"

Lauren Ruffin:

It's like Vibram. Kind of similar.

Tim Cynova:

Exactly, right?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

The souls of shoes. But then they made those toe shoes for a little while. They're all hot.

Lauren Ruffin:

I had a pair of those.

Tim Cynova:

Good.

Lauren Ruffin:

Maybe I actually have a history of buying shoes that are just ugly.

Tim Cynova:

You can create your own exhibit.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So what are we talking about today? What's our thing? What's on the docket?

Tim Cynova:

You know what we're going to talk about today? Wage transparency in 90 days. At this point, it's the 90 days minus four or five, because we're recording this at the very beginning of October. And last week the governor of California signed the bill, I think it's 1162, that as of January one will require employers in California with 15 or more employees, so that's around a 200,000 employers, to include in their all over job postings, the salary range that the employer, and this is the word I love, reasonably expects to pay for the position.

And just to start with, they felt the need to put in reasonably, because I can imagine someone's $1 to 80,000 is the range that we can expect. So they had to spell out the reasonable range. So yeah, this is something that I can imagine employers that don't have wage transparency already, that haven't been talking about set policies and practices, for compensating and evaluating roles, and consistency across the organization, are going to have a very challenging time come January one when they list that first salary, and that people start to say, "Wait, that role pays that? Really? I do the same thing, and I don't get paid that." So, I can imagine there's a little stress.

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, I guess we should start by talking about the distinction between wage equity and wage transparency.

Tim Cynova:

Go.

Lauren Ruffin:

Right? Because, what you're talking about is people, there are organizations that haven't thought about compensation equitably, and therefore them rolling out transparency is going to be particularly difficult.

Tim Cynova:

Yes. It's going to lead to a lot of really awkward, really challenging conversations. Even if you have bans, wage bans, people can land all over the place in a wage ban, and then you effectively have, everyone in your organization might make a different salary, and how do you determine those things?

And for those listening, Lauren and I have spirited conversations for at least two items. One is around, strict fixed tier comp, and the other one is around which pay cycle should an organization use, every two weeks, or on the 15th in the last day of the month, or the first and the 15th? And so we've talked a lot about wage transparency, wage equity, should it be bands, should you do an over and under by 5% ,or should it just be everyone at a given tier, makes exactly the same amount? And if that might fit your values better or be more aligned with your values, even though no compensation system is perfect, what the disadvantages when you can't get a raise unless the tier moves or you get promoted.

And if there's nothing available to get promoted into, especially at the upper levels of the organization, you likely will lose really, really good people. You can't comp them any higher without breaking the bands, at your own risk. For thus having been co-CEOs of an organization that is strict fixed to your comp, which made things a little bit easier in one respect, I can imagine for organizations that have nothing like that, it's going to be a steep learning curve.

Lauren Ruffin:

And I think in particular organizations... I know having worked for some organizations where comp was essentially how close you were to the hiring manager. Or how close you were to the founder. It's going to be really interesting. So just for my own clarification, Tim, is this transparency for new hires or are they requiring transparency throughout the organization?

Tim Cynova:

So, the California law also requires covered employers, employers with 15 or more employees, to provide employees with the pay scale for their current positions upon request. So, it's like all over.

Lauren Ruffin:

Upon request?

Tim Cynova:

Upon request, but as soon as you get the request... So, I think employers should assume, or reasonably assume, that they need to have this for every single role in their organization, or else it's going to be even more awkward when they don't. Come January one, people can start requesting, "What's the pay scale for this role?"

Lauren Ruffin:

So second question, is this for folks who are advertising positions? So, let's say that you're hiring a role and you want to recruit nationally, what does that mean? Are you also impacted by this role, or do you just have to advertise the salary, but you don't have to do anything else internally for your work?

Tim Cynova:

So, I was looking at this actually this morning because in Colorado, the law requires any employer with at least one employee in Colorado, to include pay disclosure in any job posting, for a position that will, or may, be performed in Colorado, including remote positions. Which is why when that first passed, we saw a number of organizations being like, "No one in Colorado." They were carve out, so no one could apply from Colorado.

So the California one, what I've been able to find is that, that's ambiguous. Someone actually said the law's silent as to whether a pay disclosure requirements would relate in the same way for California. And so, that's one of the areas where one or two of the law firms that I was looking at, who provided guidance on that, said that there might need to be additional guidance in that area.

Because, like Colorado where if you post a national role, or post for a remote role, that can happen anywhere in say the US, if you have people applying in California that might be able to perform the role, then you've got a list of salary, even if you might be located in Chicago or Scranton, which then picks up as way more than the 200,000 employers in California.

But there's also a law pending in New York state that would pick up an employer with four plus employees. So, this is one that New York City had something that working on, it was supposed to go into effect, I think April of 2022, but then the mayor slid it, or city council in New York City slid it to November, and they were trying to tweak it a little bit. But now, New York state has something that's waiting to be signed by the governor that would pick up four plus employees. And so, New York state and California in particular, are two of those states that really often lead the employment law changes from a state level, that start to impact other states.

And so, it'll be interesting to see if that gets picked up because as of right now, there's only about, I don't know, five states, five states and a random selection of cities that have wage transparency laws. But clearly, California brings a lot of employers to the mix here.

Lauren Ruffin:

And once you get to New York and California, it seems like that's just the way the world's going to have to go. I'm curious about demographic shifts. Once people start to see that, do they begin to think about relocating differently back to these places?

If you're making $80,000 in Mississippi, you could in theory, know that you could make a lot more money in New York state, and have a decent quality of life. So let's say that you're in a role in an organization, you're the CEO, or you're the chief people person, the CPP, what are you thinking about? Are you sweating or are you prepared right now? You're an organization that doesn't have any sort of wage equity. Let's just go right there, let alone transparency, we've spend fairly ad hoc what people get paid. People are negotiating their salaries left and right, you know there are people in the organization who are making more than they should, or less than they should. Where do you start? How do you get going on this?

Tim Cynova:

I think there might be two buckets here. And the work that we do is focused on organizations who have active commitments to anti-racism, justice, equity, and often aren't working with organizations that have no connection to that. It's if they're not even in the ecosystem of, "We need to be working on this," I imagine if you take those different buckets or those two buckets, organizations that have no understanding of equity, justice, anti-racism, anti-oppression, they're going to approach it in a completely different way than organizations who understand at least a little bit why this is important.

And then from rolling it out, it is what it is. Wherever your organization is right now, is where it is. You can't go back and fix it. And if you find out you have 40 employees, and 40 people are making 40 different things, than it's your balance sheet, you might not your cash position, but the balance sheet is the balance sheet. And then it allows you to figure out, "All right, what do we do to improve that?"

And so, I think for most organizations who might be in this position, it's like, "Okay, how can we get clear about where we are, and how we're going to get to something that's different, that's better, that's more transparent, and equitable, so people know?" Because I think the question that we get a lot of times is, "How do I get a raise? How do I get a promotion? Who do I talk to? What do I have to say? What time of year does that need to happen?"

And so as an organization, really getting clear on what those things are, and what you're going to do about roles that might be drastically different. Two people working in the same role that get paid $20,000 difference, and it's not because someone's been there for 30 years. So how are you going to handle those differences?

I've seen a number of organizations who saw this coming in different ways, are starting to get external comp assessments. "We need an external firm to tell us where these roles should be comped so at least we have internal equity." Even if it's not external equity, we know that, so on the whole, maybe every role is if you look at median, or you look at the 90th percentile, or 75th percentile, we want to get everyone to the same place, and then we can go from there. But that might be a two year process.

We know this as well. We are doing this at Fractured Atlas, and we're like, "That's a chunk of change to move everyone in the same year to where you need to be, so maybe it's a three year process, and then what happens going forward?"

And so I think right now, you can't fix what happened yesterday or in the past, but you can get ready for how you're going to do this in a consistent and fair way in the organization. So I think organizations that are tuned into this from a values place... Talked to a number of organizations who are like, "How do we infuse 15 different components to make sure it's equitable?" I'm like, "That's going to get break on you at some point." Because, who chooses those? Do you reevaluate those every year? So I think right now, it's deciding, maybe take a couple weeks, to decide what do we need to do? And then, I can imagine external analysis firms are in getting inundated, or will be shortly.

Lauren Ruffin:

Feels like that might be an area of work we should get into, right? As if we're not doing enough. But-

Tim Cynova:

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

... I got time.

Lauren Ruffin:

What you just said brought up a couple of things for me in particular around harm, because you said you can't fix it. And, knowing what we know about the data for women, people of color, people with disabilities, we know that they're paid less over time, and that this has such a huge impact on just their lifetime. How do you repair that harm? I have to say, having workplaces where I learned that I was making less than folks who were less talented than I was, most certainly, and less experienced.

There's an actual emotional thing that happens when you're like, "Wow, they don't value me at the same level they value this person." And then there's the real thing, knowing that maybe for the last three or five years, I've made ten or twenty thousand dollars less, it could have a thirty to sixty thousand dollar impact on what I'm taking home to my family. How do organizations navigate harm? Do we think people are going to be having those conversations? Do folks have the skill and emotional intelligence to be able to have those? Because, this could be really hurtful to folks.

Tim Cynova:

And when I talk about fix it, you can't change the decisions that were made. You can't go back and change that decision. You can certainly from this day forward, think about how this is impacting people right now. Yeah, I think there's a lot here. And I imagine, if you look at the Venn diagram of organizations who are approaching this from an equity and justice lens, even fewer have the skills internally, to be able to navigate those conversations.

So I can also imagine there's a lot of organizations who are trying to figure out restorative justice facilitators, and how do you actually talk about this work? Because someone I know said, they might even be on this podcast, said, "Everyone's for equity until it comes to their own salary."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, it's so true. That person's a genius.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, that's right. They may not be the podcasting's favorite co-host. Going back to that number means so much. People put so much into that number, that compensation number, and it's not just what you get paid in your check, it's your-

Lauren Ruffin:

It's your value.

Tim Cynova:

That's my value, my worth. I'm spending most of my waking hours doing this thing. It's things like Adams' Equity Theory and Broom's Expectancy Theory comes into play. And looking at the lifetime earning potential of someone in a role, it's like the compounding interest. If you're not making the same 10,000 that the person you work with makes, over the lifetime of your role, or your lifetime of your career, that's going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars that you would have earned.

And so we saw things around many states and cities prohibit asking people what they made in a role, which for us is like, "Just pay them what you're going to pay them." What does it matter what they used to get paid? So, I think when it comes to harm, I think that's part of what organizations need to do right now, is figure out how that fits into it. Where is it going to show up?

We've talked before about how excited would he be about a role if you get into the organization and find out you could have been making $5,000 more? What does that do? You can have an amazing hiring process that's building trust, and psychological safety, and then on day two, the person's like, "Yeah, they could have paid you $5,000 more," and all of that goodwill disappears.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Yeah. You and I have talked so much about hiring people who make you happy and you're excited to work with and really being committed to treating them well while they're working with you. And I just think nickel and dimming someone, not paying them as much as she possibly could, not being transparent about that is actually a pretty awful thing to do, because it does have that cascade.

And in particular, if you're an organization that is actively trying to hire, because so many of them are trying to hire people of color and women of color, in particular, queer women of color in particular, particular. To me, it's just exploiting a community that has historically just been so undervalued. So, thinking about it from a harm restoration and repair piece, and if staff are holding employees accountable in that way, I think it's going to be a really hard time for some folks.

Tim Cynova:

Because there will be some things, I think, that get picked up now, as people start to know what everyone else makes officially. Because we know people talk about their salary already. So, now the company's officially saying, "This is the range for this role." And then how do you decide who gets paid the lower end of it, and the upper end?

Lauren Ruffin:

That's where I'm like, "If your reason for not paying someone is because they're single..." It's just all of these are... They have kids and you assume they're going to have more sick days. So, there's just all this weird, awful stuff that people do, above and beyond the covered pregnancy, gender, all that stuff. It's an interesting, interesting can of worms to open.

Tim Cynova:

This is where I find it's really important to go back when you're hiring for the role, to clarify the knowledge, skills, and abilities, that people in this role have to be able to perform. Because, I find it can be an antidote to, "Well, this person, we have to pay them more because they've been doing this job more, or they have to an MBA." Versus, this other person's going to do just as good a job, and maybe they've been only doing the work for two years. What's the output? What are they bringing to this role?

And so, getting really clear what those knowledge, skills and abilities are, does this person clear the bar? Great, then pay them the way you're going to pay anyone who clears that bar, and don't try and noodle on, "Well, they need an extra this or that." And this is where I found fixed tier comp was really helpful. "Is this person clearing the bar? Great. Pay them this."

Because the other thing we've seen is organizations who are like, "Well, we'll pay you this if you live in San Francisco, but we'll pay you this minus 25,000 if you live in Benton, Arkansas." So now you're trying to balance your budget based on where people are living. And rather than saying, 'Pay them what you're going to pay them, if they lived in San Francisco and let them decide how they want to structure their lives."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that really at the beginning of the pandemic made me pretty furious, that whole thing where it was like, "If you leave the Bay Area and we know about it, we're going to dock your pay." Come on. You have the money. You have the money. You know you have the money, so pay the people regardless of how they live their lives.

That bit leads me to, we are in the middle of, I think actually we're the beginning of the biggest labor movement that's happened in our lifetimes, Tim. And so, I wonder if this data coming out, is actually going to have more organizations unionize. Because the organizations that are probably not going to have any issues, are ones that already have unions, because those workers know. Those workers have negotiated their rates, and they know what everybody's making. And there's a standard for what the employer/employee relationship looks like, and what equitable compensation looks like, regardless of what you think about unions, period. But those are the ones that are likely to be fine.

Tim Cynova:

This is a moment in our lifetime, in particular, where people are questioning what is work, and what is the value to work, and what is my value in work, and my value to this organization? And I think of Sarah Jaffe's book, Work Won't Love You Back, and all of the research that she includes, is how and why stuff works the way it works, where power exists. And all of this is operating in a capitalist society, how do you reconcile this? And so yeah, I think there's some really interesting stuff that's happening right now.

It's going to be two years, three years, to look back on all of this, will be really interesting. In the course that I'm teaching at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, this past week was spent really studying disability justice and ableism. And one of the articles that I shared with the students was around on long COVID, and the impacts of long COVID on the workplace. And the article, and I think this was probably in August, it was using data from July or August of 2022, saying that there are 4 million people who are unable to work, because of long COVID symptoms.

And that doesn't include people who are able to work, but have to change up how they work and accommodations based off of this. And there are many articles that are calling this, "The largest mass disabling event in our times." And so as we think about inclusion and equity and justice and workplace design, and how you might have the same 40 people who worked with you in February of 2020, now working... But it changes on how you approach the work.

And all of this stuff is intertwined in a way that for organizations that aren't spending time with their teams talking about this, how are they designing? How are allowing people to show up in the way that they need? People are going to vote with where they decide to spend their time.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have a feeling that you and I are going to be talking about this again in six months.

Tim Cynova:

Probably. Right? We're going to see what happens after January one, and if many organizations do anything before January one, who are the organizations that might be doing something? Our colleagues at Common Future just posted about two weeks ago around their arc to get to wage transparency, and the firm that they used, and the process that they used, which I think is helpful, because so many organizations are trying to figure out how do you actually even approach this, because they haven't given much thought to it. So, it's going to be a mess.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, man. Well, I don't know. As someone who was prone to saying, "I told you so..."

Tim Cynova:

You are prone to saying, "I told you so."

Lauren Ruffin:

We have been telling people that maybe they should pay folks equitably for their work. So I lumped you in. I said, "I," and then, "We," so if you decide not to say, "I told you so," on this one, in six months, after everything goes to hell in a hand basket, I'm happy to do it for you. It'll make me feel doubly good.

Tim Cynova:

Great. Well, we will do a recap of this one in six months to find out how it's playing out and good, bad, and not so great.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Good, bad, not so great. That's a good way of putting it.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Also that could be a t-shirt slogan, so let's put that one on the list.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Okay, good. It's on the list.

Tim Cynova:

Cool. Lauren, always a pleasure, my friend, to spend time with you unpacking these conversations, and hope you have a great rest of the week. And thanks as always, for being Podcasting's favorite co-host.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, thanks for being the best host in podcasting.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation, or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or a five stars, or a phone or friend, whatever your podcasting platform or choice offers. Until next time, thanks for listening.


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