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You.
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Have you ever made some really bad business decisions, like, you thought? At the time, it sounded like the right thing to do, but only later you realize, like, oh, I should not have spent the money on that. I should not have wasted my time on that. And what was I even thinking? Well, I made some huge blunders over the last five years while I was searching for my own calling.
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And some of those mistakes I made cost me a lot of money, not to mention the time and energy that was put into them. In fact, I kind of guesstimated, and probably, I'm saying 25,000, but my guess is it was probably a lot more than that. I'm kind of scared to do the exact numbers, to be honest. But that's what I want to talk to you today. I want to talk to you about all the things I did right on my journey, and then at the end, give you the three hugest mistakes I made so that you don't fall into the same trap so you can save time, energy, and your hard earned money.
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All right, ready? Let's dive in.
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Okay. So, as I shared lately, I've been reflecting on my own personal journey, and I think I'm doing that because I'm about to launch the spring cohort of the discovering your calling academy. And this, of course, is my signature program where I take people through a 90 day journey. We go through eight different phases, and these are phases that I took myself through when I was at a place where I knew I needed to make a change in my career. And if you've heard my story, you know that I was at the height of my career in direct sales.
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And I just had this angst. I remember saying to one of my best friends in the business one day, we both had just earned the pinnacle of success in our company. We had just had our best years ever, both of us. And we were going for a walk. And I remember saying to her, is it ever enough?
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Like, is it ever going to be enough? And that was the beginning of what would turn into a very long journey for me, searching for maybe there's something else I should be doing now. And when I made that statement, I feel like that was the beginning of just opening up doors, opening up windows, opening up possibilities of what else could be there for me. Because I had been in this company for well over 25 years. It was all I knew, and I was really good at it, and I loved most of it.
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But there just started to be some things that weren't really in alignment anymore, and that's when I began this journey that is now the discovering your calling academy. But the things that I did write, and that's what I want to talk to you about. And if you hear me turning pages, you are absolutely right. I took some notes in the car recently. My husband and I were driving in the car and we were talking about all of this.
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And I pulled out my notebook and I jotted down some things, and I came up with, like, eight things that we both felt like, yeah, you know what? On that journey, this is what you did right. And then again, we came up with three major things that I did not do right. And those were the three things that cost a lot of money. Wasted money.
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Like I said, it was well over $25,000 that I spent over the course of these three to five years on those three mistakes. And I'm going to share those with you at the end, so don't miss them because I don't want you to make the same mistakes I made. So what I did do right, though, when I was at that place, and I'm like, is it ever enough? And what else could I do? What else should I do?
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I don't know. That place of confusion. And I know that's probably where you might be. And you're sitting there wondering, what should I be doing? And maybe you've gone through some of these steps already.
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Hopefully you're on the path and you're doing some of the things that I did right. Or maybe you've made some of the mistakes that I've made. But these were the things that I felt like I did right. And if you are in that place of. I just don't know if I can keep doing this.
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Is it ever enough? Is this really what I want to keep doing? What else is God calling me to do with my life and my gifts and my talents and my skills? How can I do this? To be home with my family and still make a great living?
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How can I do this so I can still have the life I want to live and do all the hobbies and travel? How can I do this so that it's the right thing and it feels good and it feels right and it's fulfilling my purpose on earth? That's where I was. And these were the things that I started to do. First thing I did was I pulled out my Clifton strengths report.
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I had been using that in my network marketing, my direct sales career. I was introduced to it because of one of our corporate trainers. And it was huge for helping me be successful. It was huge in helping me be a better leader. And I knew that I needed to go back to that and reread what it said about my gifts and talents, and which talents was I using in my company, but which ones were being dormant and which ones did I really want to lean into, which ones lit me up, which ones did I want to use in whatever direction I ended up going?
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And how could I align my next career with my natural talents and strengths? And that is the number one thing that I always tell people, just go back to your strengths report. Go back to that compass. It is your compass rose that will always guide you. So that was the first thing I did.
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The second thing I did was I started to create a vision for the life and career that would fit what we wanted to do. I'm sorry, I said that all wrong again. I'm reading my notes here, and it's like, what did I say? So I created a vision for the life that we wanted to live and then started thinking about, well, what kind of career would fit into that life now at that point? So this is about five years ago, four to five years ago, that I'm working through all of this.
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Again, it started four to five years ago, but it took me three years to get through all of this. So I started thinking about our dreams and hopes, and we had always had this vision of buying a bigger sailboat when my husband retired and being able to travel on that sailboat and see the eastern coastline. And I knew I needed something that could be flexible to be able to do that. I also knew that our kids were getting older, they were having babies, and it was still important for me to keep family first and be able to have that flexibility to be there when they needed us and be the fun grandparents and hang out with them and do all the things. I also knew that I didn't want to hustle anymore, and that wasn't the life I wanted anymore.
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So I really looked at all those things as, like, what did I want for my day to day? What did I want my week, my month, my year to look like? And how could I create something that would fit into all of that? The other thing I did is I started planning my 16 month exit strategy, because this took a long time to do. And I think sometimes we want that instant answer, and we want to be able to put in our two weeks notice and have it be okay.
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And that's a scary place to be, and I don't recommend anybody do that unless you are already financially set and you have things in alignment to just up and quit your job. I needed a long term plan. I needed a plan that would. One, allow me to make sure that my team that I worked so hard to build and so hard to nurture, that they would be okay, that they would have somebody else to step in and guide them and lead them. I also knew I had to take care of my customers and what was that going to look like?
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And then I had to take care of myself. I needed to have a plan. I needed to know, well, how am I going to earn money? What am I going to do? So from that moment of having that thought, is it ever enough?
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I just sat with that thought for about six to nine months. And then when I really, after the course of the time and just different things started happening and I really realized, no, this is it. I'm ready. I know I need to make a major change. It was 16 months before I actually, I call it retired from being a leader in the direct sales company I was with.
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So it was 16 months of me working towards that day of saying, I'm done. So I did create that exit strategy. So is that a step that you need to do? Do you need to have a longer term exit strategy? Doesn't have to be 16 months.
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Maybe it's six months for you, maybe it is two weeks. But you have to have things in place so that you feel good with how you're leaving, where you are, and you feel good about what you're stepping into. And you have a plan of what you're stepping into. And it may not be crystal clear. I didn't know when I retired what exactly I'd be doing.
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And I knew it would take a while before I replaced my income. Because I was making really good money. And to be honest, I haven't got there yet. But I know I'm getting there and I'm much happier with what I'm doing. The other thing I did is I tested things.
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So once I made that exit strategy, and actually, even during the exit strategy process, I just started experimenting with who I wanted to work with, what exactly I wanted to do. I knew it would be centered around the Clifton strengths. Even though I wasn't even a coach yet. I was very passionate about that. And I knew enough about it that I could use it with coaching women and men.
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I knew. I love strategic thinking, actually. During COVID I started just working with some entrepreneurs to help them keep their businesses solvent. Because my mind just always goes into high gear of, well, you could try this, you could try that, you could try this. So my husband was the one, well, use that gift and help others keep their businesses going.
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And that torrential, I can't say the word. But that time of, like, this craziness that the world was experiencing.
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So I did that a while, and then I thought, well, maybe I'll work with some leaders and do some leadership training. And I did that for a while, and I tried this and I tried that, and I found what fit and what didn't fit. And I was willing to just experiment with trying things, because we don't know what we're really going to enjoy until we start doing it. And I always recommend that to people. That's part of the.
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Well, all of these steps really are now, what is the discovering your calling academy. But we do that in there, and that's one of the phases, is like, go try it. Go shadow somebody. Go take somebody to lunch that's doing that business. Go try it for a while.
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Even if you have to volunteer to do it, you don't have to do it forever for free, but you got to test it out, and maybe you could make money. I was making money testing it out and just figuring out, like, oh, yes, that feels really good. Oh, no, that definitely was not for me. And it's all part of the experiment. It's all part of the testing and trying to find the right fit.
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The other thing I did was I finally invested in actually becoming a Clifton strengths coach. Now, as I just shared, I was using it for myself and coaching other people, but I wasn't certified yet. And I had put it off. Put it off. Put it off.
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Because it was a hefty investment. A hefty investment. It was well over, actually. I thought it was going to be $7,000. I ended up getting a little discount.
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So I think it was like $5,600 to become a certified coach. But it was thanks to my daughter in law, Lauren. Shout out to Lauren, who finally said to me, and I'll never forget this moment, we were standing in their kitchen around their large center island, and she's like, just look at me. She's like, jess, go get certified. You talk about this all the time.
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It's what you love to talk about. And I had had her take her. Well, her son had took it for the military. We did. We talked about Clifton strengths all the time.
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So she finally gave me that nudge. I needed to just figure it out. How could I pay to become a certified coach? And that was the best decision I could have ever done, because, again, I already knew I loved it because I'd been using it. So it made sense to go ahead and invest in getting that certification.
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The other thing that I did write is, I was willing to fail. I was willing to fall flat on my face. Now, nobody likes that. That's not a fun place to be. But again, it's like that experiment.
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We've got to try it out, and you have to be willing to fail, and you have to learn to embrace failure, because failure is not bad. It's what we think about failure that makes it bad. But failure is how we learn. And I remember hearing from one of my mentors in the direct sales world that, and let me think how it went. You're never failing.
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You're either growing or succeeding or learning or succeeding.
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If you can twist how you look at or shift how you look at failure and realize it's just data, it's just research that showed you, well, that's not the right way to do that, or that's not the right direction for you to go. It's not a bad thing. It's part of the process. And you have to be willing to fail in order to find your right path. So be willing to fail because failure is not bad.
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Reframe how you think of failure. Okay. The other thing I did right, I have two more things that I did right, and then I'll get into the huge mistakes I made, the very costly mistakes that I made. I sought guidance. I did hire some good coaches.
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I did seek other people to network with who were doing the same type of thing I was doing. I hired a podcast coach who actually I'm working with again right now. I hired a marketing coach. That was a good investment. I also just got myself in the space of other people doing what I was doing or had already done what I was doing, wanted to do so that I could be encouraged and see how to do things.
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So seek wise guidance that's so important. And then the last thing I want to share that I did right was I quit feeling like I had to justify my reasoning when logically it didn't make sense for me to walk away from this career. I felt like I always had to justify it to everybody because I was making really good money. I was very successful. I was looked upon as somebody who had made it, even though there were still lots of levels for me to go.
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And that was the thing. There was always going to be more. That's why I had that thought of, is it ever enough? Because there was always something more to shoot for. And I love to compete.
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I love to win. I love to achieve. But eventually that gets exhausting. And I just knew in my gut it wasn't the right direction for me anymore. It wasn't what I was called to do anymore.
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And I just knew inside that God was calling me to step away from that and to do something else. And it was really hard to justify it. Super hard to justify it. My husband still looks at me sometimes. It's like, why did you give that up?
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Why did we give up those paychecks? But he understands that I'm a much happier person now. So do you feel like you have to keep justifying your decisions and maybe you don't? I feel like the only thing that we have to, who we have to listen to is God. And what is he telling you to do?
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What's that? Nudge inside of you. Listen to yourself and to your higher being and just follow that. And maybe just don't talk about it. Like, I didn't talk about it to a lot of my direct sales friends because I knew they weren't going to understand.
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I just kind of did my own thing and put the blinders on when it came to that. Okay, so those were some of the things that I did right on this journey. And that's the steps that I now take people through in the discovering your calling academy. But I also want to share these mistakes, these very costly mistakes that I made so that you can avoid these. So the first one was, I hired a website designer way before I was ready for it.
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I spent a lot of money. And sadly, I did this twice. Like, I didn't even learn the first time and paid twice. I paid people to build me a website. Now, the first one was absolutely beautiful, but the problem was, I wasn't crystal clear on my business plan.
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I wasn't crystal clear on what I was even doing yet, or who I really wanted to work with. Remember, I was still testing and trying, experimenting and failing. So I shouldn't have created a website yet. I could have just had a simple landing page that I put together, saved myself thousands and thousands of dollars. And then, like I said, I did it again.
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And that website, I didn't even like. But I paid somebody to create it as it sounded like the right thing to do because one of the experts I followed told me I needed a beautiful website. So that's what I did. And I wish I hadn't listened to that. I wish I had just minimized what I really needed.
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Something out there. We need something that shows the world that this is what we're trying to do. We don't tell them we're trying to do it, but this is what we're doing now, and we can do that on our own today. So wait for the beautiful website. Eventually, when you're crystal clear and you're making great money, you can hire somebody to do it.
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But wait until you're really ready for that kind of expense. And that goes along with any other major expense you might feel like you need to run a successful business. If that's the direction you're going, really discern whether or not you need that right now and if you're ready to spend the money on something like that right now. The other thing I did is I chased the shiny objects because of the income potential. There was a program that I invested a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy for almost nine months.
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I went in that direction, and it cost me a lot to get into this program. I spent. I don't even want to tell you how much time trying to figure out this program, and it's an awesome program, but it wasn't the right one for me. It was geared towards people who want to go in and do corporate training. I have never been in corporate America.
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I've been in direct sales, where I was still a solo entrepreneur, really under the umbrella of the company. I've always been an entrepreneur at heart and I love leadership, so I thought I would enjoy that. But I realized after doing a couple of sessions, this isn't where I belong and I don't need this program. If I did want to do this kind of workshop, I could do my own. So it wasn't the right move for me, but I did it because there was huge income potential with it.
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And that's the only reason I said yes to it. If I'm really being honest with myself, I thought it could be the huge money maker that I was looking for, but it wasn't the right one for me, and that was a major detour. It's so funny now as I look back on some of my journals and I realize, like, oh, I wasn't that far off before I invested in this, of what I'm doing now with helping people find their calling. I was really, really close to it, actually. And I just needed to pivot slightly or in sailing terms.
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I just needed to adjust the sales a little bit. And by taking the time to invest in this other program, I pretty much took down the sales and turned my sailboat into a power boat. Like it was so not in the right direction for me. And that put me behind almost a year because it was nine months of really trying to make this work and then three months to get back on track to, well, what do I really want to even do now? So it's almost a wasted year.
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And like I said, not to mention the money that I spent on this program and the energy, it was a lot of energy because it was a lot of tech stuff that how they had it set up. And like I said, it is a great program. And I know friends that are using it in the Clifton strengths world, and they're doing phenomenal because that's their thing. That's what they're supposed to be doing, but it wasn't mine. So the third thing that was a costly mistake was investing in the courses that I didn't need.
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I love to learn and I love to enhance my skills, but for a couple of years, I didn't have any strategy behind what courses I should take. I was just like, oh, that sounds good. Kind of, again, shiny object thing. That sounds good. I'm going to take that course.
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Or, that sounds great, or I like what she talks about. Let me take that course. And I wasn't discerning what courses to take. I had, like I said, no strategy behind it. It was almost like a shotgun approach, just like, whoo.
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Let me just try all these different things and see which ones land right? And that is not a way to invest in your learning. You need a strategy behind it. Now, I am all about learning. I'm all about professional development.
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I'm all about investing in courses. But you need to take the right ones, the ones that are really going to align with how you want to create your life and your business, and not just helter skelter kind of approach to it, which is what I was doing. And this is the one. I'm scared to even go back over the three years to really look at what I spent on courses. Many of these courses I didn't even finish.
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I mean, how many of you honestly let me know, have you ever taken a course and never finish it? And I think that's like 85%. They say of people that sign up for different courses never even finish it. Like, oh, my gosh, think about that. How much money we've wasted on those courses?
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Or I got through them and think, well, I'm not going to do this, or I'm going to hire somebody to do that. So why do I even need to learn how to do it? So I wasted just a lot of money on courses that I didn't need because I had no strategy behind it. So those three mistakes, that hiring to have something like a website way before I was ready, chasing the shiny thing and the money and not having a strategy behind professional and personal development that well over $25,000, well over that, that I spent on that, not to mention again, the time and the energy that it took to do those things. Now here's one I want to wrap up with my friends and maybe you can identify, like, oh, that's where I'm at, that's what I've been doing.
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Or maybe you've been doing the right steps. And I want to let you know that it's because of all this that I'm so, so passionate about the discovering your calling academy because it was created to help you get to clarity on what you're supposed to be doing, whether it is running a new business or maybe it's a career change, maybe you love corporate America and that's where you belong. Or maybe you want to step into entrepreneurship, maybe you already know even what product you want to sell. Or maybe we need to start from scratch. You have no idea what direction you'll get there through the discovering your call in academy.
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And it's not going to cost you $25,000. It's not, I mean, not even a fraction of that and you will finish it. This will not be one of those courses that you don't finish because it's a very small, intimate group of twelve or less women on the same journey as you. I don't let people not finish. I mean, obviously if you have health, reason, something like that, that's a different thing.
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We'll get you in the next group, but you will finish this and you will come out with more clarity and it's going to save you time, money, energy. So you don't take those detours and make the same mistakes I made. We're going to stick with the things that work that I know can lead you to where you want to be and avoid the things, those costly mistakes that I made. So if you're curious to just learn more and save your seat at the table, because, my friend, there is a chair waiting for you with your name on it and I want you there. I want you to be one of the twelve women that steps up and says, yes, 2024 is my time to find my calling.
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I'm tired of making these mistakes. I'm tired of not knowing what direction to go into and I'm ready to step into what I'm being called to do. I don't know what it is, but I'm ready and willing to find out. That's what we're going to do in this program, and I want to invite you to do that. So head over.
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I finally can say this. Head over to discoveringyourcalling.com. Don't forget the ing. So discovering ing thereouryourcalling.com and you can read all about the program, what it entails, what you're going to get out of it, all the awesome bonuses I'm offering right now. And let's get your seat saved.
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There's just twelve seats available, and we get started March 5. So depending on when you're listening to this, if it's past March 5, 2024, the doors might be closed, but we can still do one on one coaching for the program until the next cohort starts up again in the summer or the fall. All right, my friend, as always, I'd love to hear from you. Have you made these mistakes? What mistakes have you made?
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They're like, oh, yes, I'm with you there. Or what things are you doing right? To help you find your calling, shoot me an email. You know where to find me.
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Bye.