S4 E56 | CXR Uncorked: The team raises a glass to 25 years

Gerry Crispin 0:00
Cheers.

Shannon Pritchett 0:04
That’s a good wine.

Gerry Crispin 2:50
Oh, yeah, I might be able to open this file.

Barb Ruess 2:55
Twist your arm Gerry. twist your arm.

Chris Hoyt 2:58
Gerry. I think because it is your 25th year of CareerXroads. You can you should absolutely open that bottle and celebrate.

Gerry Crispin 3:09
I want to I want to make it 26

Chris Hoyt 3:13
Yeah, cuz I’m with you in an evening insight as a senior drink a bottle? Yeah,

Barb Ruess 3:17
I just gonna say anybody who has been to an actual after hours. Evening with Gerry would know that drinking a bottle is not unheard of.

Gerry Crispin 3:26
No. But you know it. It takes time, whatever. And then of course, Shannon knows that we need to finish it off with a little white Russian or something like that by the end of the night.

Shannon Pritchett 3:40
That’s true. perfect thing to finish a night of drinking is a dairy nightcap. I always feel so great in the morning. But it’s just

Chris Hoyt 3:52
I just can’t.

Barb Ruess 3:53
I can’t either. I do fall out of the white Russians at the end.

Shannon Pritchett 3:57
I don’t even know how that started. But we’ve been doing it pretty much every time.

Barb Ruess 4:03
I think it’s Gerry fault.

Chris Hoyt 4:04
Gerry has a sweet tooth.

Gerry Crispin 4:05
Probably my fault because I was looking for something that is a little more creamy. That would not upset my stomach. If I’ve been drinking too much, too much wine with too much acid.

Shannon Pritchett 4:17
They’re Good. Yeah, I love them.

Gerry Crispin 4:19
It’s always nice. It’s a nice way to sip and and and tonight. You know, chat a little bit. I do miss

Shannon Pritchett 4:26
We never just have one.

Gerry Crispin 4:28
No, true. But I but I kind of missed that we should. We should have figured out some way to accomplish all of that at various points in time.

Chris Hoyt 4:39
I have some half and half in the refrigerator. You want to wrap up with a uncork session with some half and half.

Barb Ruess 4:45
Okay, there you go. That’s what we’re missing in the year the pandemic before we had with 24 and a half years of all these wonderful get togethers and nightcaps and then it came to a screeching halt in year 25.

Gerry Crispin 5:00
Yeah, it’s tough. But you know, we I do think that we’ve had lots of extraordinary conversations with people this year. So I think the pivot truly did allow for a continuation of what we were about in terms of doing all of that. So that’s kind of cool.

Barb Ruess 5:18
Yeah, I think so too. So Gerry, I got I got to ask 25 years ago, did you have any inkling of what this would look like today?

Gerry Crispin 5:30
Yeah, a little?

Barb Ruess 5:31
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 5:34
Of course, he did. Of course,

Barb Ruess 5:36
Back in the day, so we had two meetings a year.

Gerry Crispin 5:40
Well, we did, but we didn’t do that two meetings a year until 2010.

Barb Ruess 5:46
Correct. The first few years there were no meetings at all.

Gerry Crispin 5:48
That we’ve we pivoted to, to do what we’re doing now. What we did from 96 on was sell books. And consulting at three grand an hour.

Barb Ruess 6:07
Right. And taught classes and whatever computer lab you could rent space in.

Gerry Crispin 6:12
Yeah, we had one. We did. We did the computer labs with Cornell or, yeah, Cornell, their their New York facilities. They they found a computer lab across the street at the technology, New York City technology library had 25 computers online. The only place in new york city that had that. And there was only one other place we found and that was Ryder College in New Jersey also had a lab. That’s really where we did our first one. But then we made the deal with Cornell. And we were doing that twice a, twice a month, five people each were paying 500 each person was paying 500 bucks. We’re sold out for four or five years. Everybody paid 500 bucks. We got $250 per person. So we made a deal with Cornell to give us 50%. So so it was worth trucking in there and doing all of that. I’m trying to think of who one of our students was Sarah White.

Chris Hoyt 7:30
No kidding. I didn’t know that.

Gerry Crispin 7:32
Oh, yeah. One of our students was Sarah White

Chris Hoyt 7:37
That’s really funny. She had to be like, 12.

Gerry Crispin 7:43
I mean, this was late 90s. Yeah, we were doing that. And then we, and then we had one, one day where we had three companies fly in to Newark Airport, and we rented a conference room. And I think we collected $6,000 from each. And, you know, we went away from the day with $18,000. And we’ve gone it’s not so bad.

Chris Hoyt 8:18
Figured out how to scale, uh, making that kind of money for teaching people to turn the computer on.

Gerry Crispin 8:23
Yeah, that was such a pain in the ass facing all of that. I mean, think about it. Some of these people didn’t didn’t pay us until you you know, you threaten them, you know afterwards. And then then we then we got to the point where you have to give us a check when we walked in. So literally, Mark would look at me and say don’t say a word. Until I have the check in my hand.

Chris Hoyt 8:50
That’s so mark.

Gerry Crispin 8:51
If give nothing away. I said what saying hi, give me a fucking break.

Chris Hoyt 8:59
So, okay, so so we’ve only been doing the these uncorked sessions for two years, I guess.

Barb Ruess 9:07
Yeah, about two years.

Chris Hoyt 9:08
So So everybody on the call has to say which their favorite uncorked session has been.

Gerry Crispin 9:18
Hmm,

Barb Ruess 9:20
That’s a good question. I think. I think Marie Artim might have maybe laughed the most and I think partly just because I could so pick I wasn’t there obviously. But I could so picture the three of you talking. But the one I found most interesting was Michael Kannisto. I just I just loved what he talked about, like taking sewing classes and all I loved it.

Gerry Crispin 9:43
I Well, I kind of liked Dan Black at EY only because it took me it was so hard to find that bottle and and there was nothing at that level. So I had to spend $400 on a bottle that was really, really good. And it and then we took the rest of that I think up to Boston or something that finish it off.

Chris Hoyt 10:11
I like Gerry these are my air quotes had to spend to spend $400 on the Japanese whiskey. That was wasn’t that our first one that wasn’t wine? I think so. Unless, unless you count a Jessica Lee, who duped us with carrot juice.

Barb Ruess 10:29
She did because she was going through a cleanse.

Gerry Crispin 10:34
Tells you, you know, because obviously I had to spend I went out and spent using our card. Obviously on that $400 and then today, or was yeah, today I went out to get the Caymus I forgot I have that card. So I use mine.

Barb Ruess 10:56
So long said to have a business.

Gerry Crispin 10:58
Just tells you you know, I’ve been I’ve been cooped up too long. This is really the problem.

Chris Hoyt 11:04
What about you, Shannon? Do you have a favorite?

Shannon Pritchett, CXR 11:06
Oh, definitely. Susan Hensley, just because I’m pretty sure that was the first one. But that’s kind of what made me really fall in love with career crossroads. So it has this special place in my heart. And I just thought it was so out there so unique. And that was my first also introduction to her. And she was so bubbly and charismatic and I love how the call kind of trailed off by the end of it was probably my most memorable one.

Chris Hoyt 11:31
That’s fine. You fell in love with the organization that not only endorsed but promoted drinking on the client.

Barb Ruess 11:42
Yep.

Shannon Pritchett 11:43
I’ll drink to that

Chris Hoyt 11:45
Yeah for sure.

Barb Ruess 11:46
Chris, what was your favorite?

Chris Hoyt 11:49
Ah, I so I think the sake that we did with Michael was probably right up there. Yeah, I would say probably the next one would be I like to do in martinis with Daniel Monahan.

Barb Ruess 12:06
I was, I bet. If you told me to guess which one you’d pick, I thought you’re gonna pick Daniel’s

Chris Hoyt 12:11
It was fun. I’m sure that my Martini was just straight. gin. But, but but it was a really fun conversation. And we had a good time.

Gerry Crispin 12:22
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 12:24
We did that one this year.

Gerry Crispin 12:25
She was an interesting, interesting. She is an interesting person. Right?

Chris Hoyt 12:31
Yeah, she’s wonderful. She’s back in Arizona. And I think she’s no longer here in the Bay.

Gerry Crispin 12:37
Oh, permanently. She made a permanent move.

Chris Hoyt 12:39
Well, she had a temporary apartment here. I think for a little while that just was located. She loved the location. Just doctor yesterday. location was wonderful. She had a wonderful time there. But she was sort of stuck because of COVID. So I think she finally managed to shut that down and get back home so.

Gerry Crispin 12:54
Yeah. You mean in Seattle?

Chris Hoyt 12:57
No, I think she’s in Arizona. She has a place in Seattle, I believe.

Gerry Crispin 13:03
Okay, that’s interesting.

I think it’s Arizona.

Barb Ruess 13:05
So I think I think the uncorked are the closest we get to the after dinner talks.

Chris Hoyt 13:12
Yeah, I agree with that.

Shannon Pritchett 13:13
Yeah. Oh, totally.

Gerry Crispin 13:15
Oh, yeah.

Barb Ruess 13:18
I mean, we have happy hours every week, which are pretty fun. But I honestly think the closest we get, because after dinner at our meetings, when we get to do the in person meetings, there’s always a balance of completely not work related stuff. And then like, project ideas, or I mean, we’ve got stuff on the website that was inspired from after hours conversation,

Gerry Crispin 13:40
I think some of some of the best conversations we have ever had been the after hours pieces, with with our members, etc. But the difference is we chose we choose our members. And we choose the people we have a nightcap with as well. And they choose us to some degree. The Happy Hour is like, you know, it’s like anybody can come and and they’re, they’re coming for totally different kinds of reasons, whether it be you know, somebody like Randy Bailey, or somebody like Debbie McGrath, or whatever, and it may not focus in on some of the things that that are kind of near and dear to our heart. It’s what’s near and dear to their heart at the moment.

Barb Ruess 14:24
Sure. Sure.

Chris Hoyt 14:27
Well, I think some of the best friends I’ve got in the industry actually came one way or the other came through CXR.

Gerry Crispin 14:39
Cool,

Shannon Pritchett 14:40
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 14:40
Whether it was before whether it was before I was actively, you know, part of CSR as a company and I was just a member or or after that, right. Just kind of interesting. I was thinking about the other day, like some of my dearest friends are actually part of CXR. One way or the other.

Barb Ruess 14:59
I think it says a lot about I think it’s just a lot about our community. Like when I when I talk to people about the community, and I talk about how, you know, these are people that you want to spend time with, not just because you’re going to learn from them, just because you’re going to enjoy being with them. And I think that’s something that’s, that’s kind of something that has definitely come together over the past twenty-five years,

Gerry Crispin 15:20
I think they all reflect a passion about what they’re doing and recruiting that they really, really do love and care about this profession. And so, that kind of affinity, even if there’s many differences between us in a lot of different ways, we have something in common that really, I think sparks really good conversation.

Shannon Pritchett, CXR 15:44
For me, it’s a little different. You know, I, as the newest member, I’ve always been included on the CareerXroad dinners. And what I’ve always liked about members was that they’re extremely intelligent, they’re great to have conversation with, they have an affinity for food, and obviously beverages. And they know how to have fun. And so any event I went went into, you know, course, I would always find Chris and Gerry, you know, as soon as I can. But I always love going to the dinners and being included in that group because you have this the best conversations and was so, you know, for me as a company environment, I came and it was so nice to sit down and talk to a head of talent and listen to what they have to say, and then get into trouble with them afterwards. So, to me, that was always really cool about CareerXroads, you know, event or whatever, you guys read a conference or something like that. It’s just shows something about the members that, you know, they work hard, have fun.

Chris Hoyt 16:41
No duds, We got no duds.

Gerry Crispin 16:44
We we sort them out one way or the other? That’s right. Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 16:50
Well, it’s funny because we’re, we’re, we’re different as an organization than we are than we were five years ago than we were 25 years ago, which we were talking, I think we were taught this a little bit earlier. But it’s fascinating to me. And I didn’t mention this. So you guys will have to suck it up. But because you heard it before, but it’s fascinating to me that, you know, we’ve heard from our college recruiting leaders that they were shocked that the feedback that came back from the interns was that it was some of the best rated internships that they had conducted in recent years, they were blown away because it was such a pivot, and they had to, you know, this pandemic, and not being able to go to the campuses, and some colleges completely left out of the plan that were already part of it. And they were blown away, they were ready to take a bullet and some bad feedback. But But scores went up double digits in some cases. And then, you know, we’re hearing from our members that way, we have pivoted from sort of a, I wouldn’t call us a conference, you know, but we do these meetings, we’re doing eight to 12 meetings a year. And and fostering this online community via email site. We have made this pivot to where we’re almost a media company, that is a community of talent professionals, they give a shit about each other. And I like that I got to get Gerry’s tackling in their hearing now, anecdotally, from our members that they feel more connected than they’ve ever felt. And that I don’t know about you guys, but I would that surprised me. Because we’re just hustling to try to give them what they need. And when they give a recommendation, we build on it and you know, get them to collaborate. But the result of the lockdown and the pivot that we’ve done, they feel closer than ever. I don’t know, Barb, Gerry or Shannon, if that surprised you guys as well, but I was blown away.

Shannon Pritchett, CXR 18:37
Yeah, yeah, not at all. Um, in fact, I was thinking about earlier today was how much the various different communities came together, I think this year was a undoubtably a change for everyone. And it’s really nice to see that college community come together. Because, you know, we were having meetings with them to talk about what they’re doing for their summer. And we hosted what four or five meetings so they can come together and they can plan how their summer internships would look. And if you’re not in the CXR organization, you know, odds are, you’re out there on an island by yourself trying to figure it out, it was really cool to see all of our members come together and solve these challenges and these problems together. And it wasn’t just a college recruiting community. Look what we did with recruiters, recruiting recruiters, and being able to help for example, you know, some of our good clients ramp up or ramp down. And so I think that was prime examples of how we all were able to lean on each other and come together for a little bit more security and tightness and solutions. So I wasn’t surprised to see those numbers that were presented in our college recruiting community. And I was surprised to see that so many of our members are also enjoying their experiences on the site too, because the engagement within a community in the sharing has really, really increased and overall that just makes for such a better experience for all of us.

Gerry Crispin 19:54
Yeah, I think the attention that we’ve given them, but that they give each other And the numbers of times that they’ve been able to do that. Either either, you know, in an exchange or in one of the meetings, whether it’s considered a colloquium meeting or not, it’s still a CareerXroads event. And so they they’re seeing each other way more than they ever have. And at least our core group, you know, and it’s a pretty broad group. So I’m, I’m, I’m real comfortable with that, that helps that bonding feeling that they’re willing to support each other.

Barb Ruess 20:35
Yeah, I felt like we were built for this, like we were built for this moment, to to bring these people like, like, I talked to so many people in the past six, eight months who have said, there’s no blueprint, I don’t know what to do. And they nobody does. So like having a format or forum, I should say, where they can come together, and, you know, brainstorm and talk about what’s going on. Like, we had all of that sitting here. So like, if I really think we were built, we were built for this. And

Gerry Crispin 21:03
The pandemic actually created decision making under extreme circumstances. And no one likes to be isolated thinking, oh, I’ve got to make a decision about what to do. And what I have to do is never been done before. Do I really feel comfortable making that decision, not knowing what everybody else who has to make that decision is doing? I really hunger to talk to others who will tell me the truth about what they’re doing and facing. And I think that that plays really into our model, in a huge way. And I think we’ll continue to for at least another year, and then we need to think about as as it settles out, you know, how do we maintain those that stream?

Barb Ruess 21:55
Yeah. Yeah, where’s where’s our balance to the fun in person stuff and still getting people multiple opportunities to get together in a digital format? It’s gonna, it’s fun. It’s always fun.

Gerry Crispin 22:08
We started doing this in 2002. It was because there weren’t that many conferences. There were a number of them, certainly ERE and others. But it was really clear that people who spoke at those conferences, were under restrictions from their legal and PR departments about what they could say. And so there was there was cautious information. There was fake data being presented, in the sense and they would admit this is this is not the real data, I can show you the real data. So I’ve made up some data. And so here you go. And, and then they would tell you, this is what we did a year, year and a half ago. And I’m going What are you doing now? Okay,

Chris Hoyt 22:54
Nobody’s ever pulled a bigger switcheroo on data at a conference than Rob McIntosh. room only at an era on measuring the quality of hire. Rob, if you’re listening, I’m talking to you. You go to his session, you’re packed. You’re literally packed in. I’m surprised the fire marshal didn’t show up. You squished against the back wall, like it’s some sort of South by Southwest session with Jimmy Fallon. Right? Rob gets up, fires up his slides, opens them up and apologizes, because at the last minute, his boss said he had to redact all of the information. So what you get is this slide with all these markers through it, and no calculation. That’s when I knew I really liked Rob.

Gerry Crispin 23:40
Oh, and that’s, that’s the kind of situation we’re in. So I remember. I remember talking to ah, at GE. She’s retired down in Carolina. And she she basically said, you know, GE doesn’t allow any of us to talk,

Chris Hoyt 24:02
Kim Warren,

Gerry Crispin 24:03
Kim Warren, talk publicly and I said, Well, you’re not going to be in public, you’re going to be, you know, in a private group of just, you know, practitioners, so take a shot at it. And she, she managed, managed to get permission. And that’s how that’s really how that works. But that’s what it was, like, in 2002. And so the gap was pretty wide with what we were doing versus what others were doing. I think there’s much more there’s more transparency about what people are doing now. When they give a talk at a conference if if if they get somebody to talk, but but there’s still not enough opportunity to really engage them and to you know, fully have a dialogue or conversation that’s open it’s still much more presentation

Chris Hoyt 25:01
Well, do you want to talk? So Shannon brought up recruiters recruiting recruiters that, you know, we sort of helped lead to fruition, but we did with an awful lot of other participants be they are members. Yeah. You know, who came together from an ideation stage and a support stage and sort of helping with that. But that has and several vendors, obviously, in the space and solution providers in the space that generously gave time and resources and all that for for the all to come together and really exciting project. But that sort of led the way to something Gerry and I have been talking about for a while. And I don’t know if we can talk, I guess, because we announced it this week, but we can talk a little bit about it. And that’s the nonprofit CXR foundation that’s gone out which I’m excited about.

Gerry Crispin 25:52
I’m excited about two, I think it’s got got a lot of potential, certainly, in terms of covering some of the things that we’ve been doing in the past, we should think about how we present that day before in a way that might attract a lot more of our members to show up and participate. When we look at that issue, the ability to bring recruiters recruiting recruiters under our wing. But we still have to prove that it can it can provide stuff, obviously, there’s an awful lot of need out there. But I’m not so sure. We’ve got all the data yet that helps us understand whether we’re helping that community. So there’s there’s that but there’s there’s an opportunity to do that for sure. And then I do think it provides a foundation for opening up our community or pivoting our not pivoting our community but but creating a secondary community that’s more industry focused, if we can vet them properly. And I do think it’s going to be important to vet because I was asked that by several. So does everybody get to play if they’re willing to pay? And I said no, I said, you know, we’ve got a list of right now 60 or 70 vendors, that we think there are people in that vendor community who actually care about our industry and work, not on selling but on solving problems with members who also care about doing things beyond their own employer, not all of our members are going to be able to carry on a conversation about what we need to do in the industry versus what they need to do in there as an employer. So I think that if we can tee up some really interesting, industry wide challenges, pay disparity, the kind of tools that recruiters really need in order to be accountable for diversity and other kinds of things. I’m convinced that we, we could come to some kinds of agreements, where we could be promoting the shit out of that with all of the companies and people who are willing to step up and say, This is what good looks like for this kind of practice. This would increase the fairness of recruiting, this would increase the product, the likelihood that candidates would think well of this profession. And we would be much more proud of being part of that profession. And if we could, you know, bring people together to do that, I think. I think it’ll add a hell of a lot to our model. On the other side, as well as satisfy I think some of the needs to build some connections between good quality vendors out there. And members who, you know, want to get stuff done.

Chris Hoyt 29:10
Yeah, at least the leaders within those organizations, right. I mean, I think one of the things we do our members know, and maybe some people don’t, but I mean, we have three conditions of membership from a CareerXroads standpoint. Because we interview anybody who wants to join a company that wants to join CareerXroads, you don’t just get to, like you said earlier for the foundation work, you can’t just pay to play. And the three rules are pretty significant. It’s you got to be doing the work. You got to be able to share the work. And then we’ve got the really strict no asshole policy. Right, and we interview for those and all our members will tell you they’ve been interviewed for that. But I think that that sort of methodology, the spirit of that carries over to the foundation as well. We’re not we’re not looking for people who want to just drop some coin and pay annual dues. We’re looking for for people who want to get in and solve some problems and deliver some standards to ATAP, or get some stuff published online, or you know, build something that is a solution, like recruiters, recruiting recruiters, or the new one project or you know, stuff like that. So that’s, that’s what I’m excited about.

Gerry Crispin 30:15
My fantasy was getting 100 companies in, you know, vendors and, and obviously practitioners employers to actually sign something on a, you know, full page, Wall Street Journal article, article, if you will. I asked Joe Shaker to tell me how much a full page Wall Street Journal article and that article page, full page.

Chris Hoyt 30:44
We don’t say how much did he tell you? How much Oh, yeah. Okay, are we talking Sunday or Wednesday,

Gerry Crispin 30:52
Wall Street Journal, come out on Sunday comes out on Tuesday. Okay, so that would be Tuesday, and not color.

Chris Hoyt 31:00
So black and white

Gerry Crispin 31:01
They have color too, but not so black and white, full page. And imagine it’s, it’s got some really cool way of saying this is what good light looks like from a fairness in hiring in 2021. Or, you know, these key principles apply and, and then there’s, you know, signed, you know, J and J and all these other companies, etc. all around it.

Chris Hoyt 31:28
Okay, so we’re gonna take turns guessing. I’m gonna say it’s $45,000.

Gerry Crispin 31:34
Okay.

Chris Hoyt 31:35
All right, Barb.

Barb Ruess 31:36
I was going higher. I was gonna say $52

Chris Hoyt 31:41
$52? I love the 2, $52.

Barb Ruess 31:43
Why not, it’s like the price is right, you have to be specific.

Shannon Pritchett 31:50
You were playing the price is right. I’m gonna say $50,000. But I think I think it’s crazy high. Like, I’m gonna go with$ 150,000.

Barb Ruess 32:00
I was gonna say I almost wanted to say six figures. I haven’t priced in a long time.

Chris Hoyt 32:05
This show Barb, how out of touch. You and I are with print media from ever how long? It’s been since we placed the print ad?

Gerry Crispin 32:12
Yeah, I do. And Shannon’s closer to $277,000.

Chris Hoyt 32:19
Holy smokes.

Shannon Pritchett 32:21
Funny, my guts at $300 thousand

Gerry Crispin 32:24
Joe said, but but that’s their, you know, that’s their ticket price. He said, I’m sure I can negotiate something less.

Chris Hoyt 32:35
Like 20,000?

Gerry Crispin 32:37
No, I don’t think so. However, let’s get so it may not be the Wall Street Journal, maybe we look at Forbes or something, you know, we look at something else.

Chris Hoyt 32:51
But like the penny sheets.

Gerry Crispin 32:53
I mean, look here if we had the money. And we wanted to do something that, you know, reaches CEOs, it is the Wall Street Journal that will have that impact. But but there’s a there is a trick. And the trick would be that it’s a region there are regional buys. And the cheapest regional buys the West and that that full page is $67,000. So there’s, there’s games one could play, and still say I bought a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.

Chris Hoyt 33:29
A shadowbox gift for your retirement.

Gerry Crispin 33:31
Well, it’s you know, that’s.

Barb Ruess 33:35
That’s right. That’s right.

Gerry Crispin 33:37
But there are there, you know, the the idea of funding, not just the figuring out the solution, but trying to leverage us as a collective group to influence how corporations think about what good recruiting looks like, would be or fair recruiting looks like, would be something that I think would strike a chord with almost any ta leader, anywhere in the world.

Barb Ruess 34:12
Yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited. It’s kind of like, I tell people, when we have our in person meetings, or honestly, even the online ones, I have the best seat in the house, because I just get to sit back and listen to all the cool ideas and conversations and things that come up. I can’t wait to have that same experience with the foundation. Because I think that there are things that the people who want to get involved, they’re going to bring them up as a passion that we haven’t even thought of.

Gerry Crispin 34:38
Right. And just to put it out on Facebook is not what we end up doing. Yeah, we need to we need to capture enough money that it makes sense to spend some of that in promoting it in ways that will make people sit up and think, however, that that that occurs and I’m I’m convinced that we have the capacity to do it, I think we’re the right place to do it.

Chris Hoyt 35:03
Well, we’ve got the right people already interested. I mean, we’ve got recruiters, recruiting recruiters and the folks that did that one of the things that the board of directors for the foundation offered is all of you just come in with a first year no dues, all in to continue to manage that project and be part of it. And under the wing of the foundation, we’ve got the one project that’s already been brought up where the effort there is to provide coaching. So asking every employee recruiter to dedicate one conversation to one person to make one difference, to give a little bit of coaching to a recruiter who’s looking for work, right, whether it’s resume review, or just having a discussion around their career journey. And then we have another one that popped up yesterday, I’m probably going to overshare because this came, this is really, really good. We got another one that popped up yesterday about establishing a template or a methodology to build a recruiting roadmap and, and build that staple up and and deliver that, like publish that. And I imagine that’s one that would then we would do probably hand in hand with ATAP and give that to them from a standard standpoint. But that’s three,

Gerry Crispin 36:09
What we want to look at them, you know, from whatever the board does, we’re, you know, the group that makes some choices about how that should be moved forward. Some of those might be better served by again, a partnership with ATAP and our members rather than the vendors. But I do think there’s, there’s potential here for some extraordinary opportunity.

Chris Hoyt 36:35
For sure. It’s exciting. So I’m halfway through my Caymus

Gerry Crispin 36:43
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 36:44
Has anybody talked about caymus yet? I mean, I don’t even know we named it by name in the beginning that we

Barb Ruess 36:48
That’s a good point. Like,

Gerry Crispin 36:51
Halfway through mine too

Chris Hoyt 36:57
All right. So so so. Okay, which Caymus do we all have the same year? Caymus except Barb. You have Stag’s Leap. That’s awesome. 18 I got 18

Gerry Crispin 37:09
I have 18 also,

Barb Ruess 37:11
I have a 2017 I’m different in all ways over here.

Gerry Crispin 37:15
What what was yours? What was yours Shannon?

Shannon Pritchett 37:20

2018. Same

Gerry Crispin 37:21
Oh, you’re 18 also okay.

Chris Hoyt 37:24
So Gerry one of the reasons why I like Caymus with you. Is because the back of Caymus Yeah, those who have never had a bottle speaks to me as though if Gerry were to bottle of wine. This might be something similar he would back maybe maybe Nana would be on their Nana secret sauce recipe maybe he’d slide that in there. I don’t know. But there might be a picture of you and Diane or some sort of little This is kind of how I think you would bottle some wine.

Gerry Crispin 37:54
This goes a little bit before me you know that though? Right?

Chris Hoyt 37:58
1930 Yeah, but not much.

Barb Ruess 38:06
I love that you just gave people a reference Chris now they want to go get a bottle of Caymus they’ll pick a CareerXroads and they look at the back of the bottle.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 38:14
I feel like that’s sort of a jury style bottle like when you didn’t post right on the light like so lovely picture of the dinner that had taken place when you were a child. And then again, when you were a great grandfather, same tables, same room.

Gerry Crispin 38:30
That’s really no no, i i agree. I think it looks good like that. It’s sort of like, Yeah,

Chris Hoyt 38:38
I like Caymus. It’s, it’s not heavy for me. I wish I had a steak right now. It’d be really good with a steak.

Gerry Crispin 38:46
Yeah, it would be.

Shannon Pritchett 38:49
We got to get to because Chris and Gerry, I don’t know if you remember this. But I invited you to come over once for appetizers at my house a couple years ago, and Caymus was one of the wines we drink.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:02
That’s right. And we had cheese.

Gerry Crispin 39:04
Like it was after I think a game of golf with Chris.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:09
Did we play golf? Did we do golf that day?

Gerry Crispin 39:11
Yeah. The the one that has these weird holes around the world or something like that

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:16
was Joanna Clark with us.

Gerry Crispin 39:19
At that time? I don’t think so. Not not in Texas.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:23
Oh, we put was not the Scottish course. This was to her 18 in Dallas, right. And all holes are modeled after like, PGA Yeah, I remember that. That’s a wonderful course.

Barb Ruess 39:36
Yeah, back back when you guys used to play golf, that you guys used to play golf the day before meeting started. And then I started making you do service projects and stuff.

Chris Hoyt 39:48
We did before Gerry gets a chance to say yes, Gerry beat me every single game of golf we ever played there. I just had to get that out there.

Barb Ruess 39:57
Yep, there were a couple years ago.

Gerry Crispin 40:00
Only only because you don’t practice and you know, that’s all. But I would say that, you know, maybe in the future if we do fewer meetings, and you know, we’re committed to going in a day early and we have more people coming in. We could do a golf championship the day before that.

Barb Ruess 40:26
I like I like how Gerry just adds more stuff to the plan

Gerry Crispin 40:28
Just as a way to raise money for the CXR foundation.

Shannon Pritchett 40:32
Okay, okay. Gerry, who would your foursome be?

Gerry Crispin 40:36
I think we should we should have them. We should have them bid on them.

Chris Hoyt 40:43
I like Gerry skirted all responsibility for selecting a golf course.

Gerry Crispin 40:49
I don’t give a shit who I play with, you know, but they ought to, they ought to paid some money to get you know, for the CXR foundation.

Barb Ruess 40:57
Oh, my gosh.

Chris Hoyt 41:02
Oh Barb I’m sorry.

Barb Ruess 41:05
I just add that to the list, just add.

Gerry Crispin 41:07
Aaron Mattos would help us do that. He would probably arrange with his people to have the whole tournament going and everything else.

Chris Hoyt 41:15
Now we’ve played golf with Aaron.

Gerry Crispin 41:18
Yes, we did.

Chris Hoyt 41:19
Twice I think we played twice. Yeah, we played once. We just went out and had a good time. And then another time that there was an organized event we all took part in. I just I don’t know if Aaron was a good golf or not, though.

Gerry Crispin 41:31
He’s so so.

Chris Hoyt 41:34
So he’s on your team not on my team.

Barb Ruess 41:38
You know what’s gonna happen now? My house is gonna be like, wait, there’s a golf outing before every meeting. I’m coming with you.

Chris Hoyt 41:44
We have played golf with your husband. He can be on my team.

Barb Ruess 41:50
Yeah, that was the meeting where we stayed at a hotel. It was on a golf course. And Matt invited himself

Chris Hoyt 41:57
Well play very well played.

Barb Ruess 41:58
Yeah, he does like the golf.

Chris Hoyt 42:01
It’s so funny.

Barb Ruess 42:04
I do like it. I’m really hoping that. Yeah. For anybody who might be listening to this when we actually posted out I’m hoping we’ll be announcing our calendar here in the next week. And I’m really hoping we have some in person events at the end of next year.

Chris Hoyt 42:16
I’m not sure how many will tech golf on two. Although I did. They did take Gerry we went somewhere and golf got rained out. And so instead we went to Top Golf and that is the only time I’ve beat Gerry at golf.

Barb Ruess 42:30
I could play Top Golf, Shannon do you play golf?

Shannon Pritchett 42:33
Yes, yes. I don’t know if I could I need to check with like Rob Doherty. Yes, same injury as I did, but I don’t know how you could swing after shoulder surgery but we’ll figure it out.

Gerry Crispin 42:48
Oh, you you can you know it’ll time. In time, there’s plenty of ways you’ll be fine.

Barb Ruess 42:59
Drinking helps everything. That’s what we learned CareerXroads means? No, but I all I have to say is that the next time we are anywhere near Polaris, one of our one of our good members of the community. I think that more than just Chris and Gerry should be allowed to go right down the course.

Chris Hoyt 43:16
I agree.

Gerry Crispin 43:17
Yeah, I do. I do think I do think there’s certainly a gender discrimination.

Barb Ruess 43:24
There was, I was at that meeting!

Gerry Crispin 43:27
I admit it, and I fell into it. It was only after the fact that I realized that that was probably a mistake.

Barb Ruess 43:35
It was me I was discriminated against Shannon you’re part of this yet, but it was me.

Gerry Crispin 43:41
But But we know that both you and Shannon are pretty good at stepping up for yourselves and your and your gender. And so we will try to remember but I know you’ll remind us that next time they invite us to go on the course in all of those things that there are four people in CareerXroads.

Barb Ruess 44:02
Joe’s on board Joe what Joe would invite me in a heartbeat. I know he would.

Gerry Crispin 44:06
Joe Joe would be embarrassed. But if if we had to remind him

Chris Hoyt 44:10
I got to tell you this the one of the biggest disappointments for me from a work standpoint, and the pandemic is the fact that this year we had planned to go back out to Minniapolis to the Polaris headquarters and do a live podcast discussion from a sport vehicle. So from one of these outdoor vehicles like the I forget the name of some of these, but they were crazy, like these four wheeled vehicles where we’re talking about challenging talent acquisition topics on GoPros while we’re driving through this crazy mud course.

Gerry Crispin 44:48
Well, I gotta tell you, this could be a hell of a marketing thing. So when we can do that.

Chris Hoyt 44:53
It was approved the marketing thing, legal approved it for everybody approved it

Barb Ruess 44:58
We had it scheduled.

Gerry Crispin 44:59
In Minneapolis and go out and do this, you know, north of Minneapolis and Polaris or whatever, do our thing. And then and then Barb can figure out how to how to juxtapose the messaging. As you know, we’re back, you know, in.

Barb Ruess 45:17
I’m texting Joe right now, and he doesn’t believe that we’re really talking about him. So I can’t wait for him to listen to this and realize that he’s on the hook for this whole big CareerXroads adventure

Chris Hoyt 45:28
marketing plan around this, I think it was him and Roger Coker and a couple of their other team members. When we when did the ride for fun. We said it if we were having beers afterwards, and having lunch and we set it sort of off the cuff, you know, it’d be fun. Nobody was more in than Joe. Joe’s who called us back a month later and said, Guys, it took some work, but my legal team signed off on it. You just gonna have to sign these death waivers. But other than that, everybody feels really good about it. We’re excited.

Barb Ruess 45:58
He gave you a helmet?

Gerry Crispin 45:59
It was no, we had helmets. We have we have we have helmets. We have all kinds of great stuff for this. And and I will say that, you know, he you also set up that this whole thing we had to have training. And the woman who trained was really hardass she was a industrial engineer in charge of safety at Polaris, and was she she was the most dangerous driver I’ve seen on that course. She was kick ass for sure. And she had to slow it down for for at least for me so that I could I could keep up with her. She kept on looking over his shoulder like who’s that old asshole who just can’t cut kind of keep it up?

Chris Hoyt 46:49
But we rode, we wrote everything except the slingshot.

Gerry Crispin 46:56
I thought we did the slingshot.

Chris Hoyt 46:58
No the three wheeled motorcycle you see it kind of gets thrown

Barb Ruess 47:03
Off road. Yeah, I bet you did not write those.

Chris Hoyt 47:05
Yeah, we the only because the one it was out for maintenance or something. But we literally rode like the razor we rode.

Gerry Crispin 47:12
That’s what I’m thinking like razor

Chris Hoyt 47:13
We rode four or five different things.

Gerry Crispin 47:15
Oh, yeah. It was cool. Shannon, I would I would have to say that as an athlete. You You’re gonna have to kind of pull back some of your competitive nature on these courses, because

Chris Hoyt 47:32
No your not

Barb Ruess 47:37
Yeah, Shannon will win, I’m putting my money on it right now. Shannon’s gonna beat all of us.

Chris Hoyt 47:41
That’s the new mantra for CXR. Just put your helmet on and go.

Barb Ruess 47:45
Yeah, yeah. Look here. We’d have such fun members.

Gerry Crispin 47:49
We had some pretty good pictures from that, by the way. That was pretty cool.

Barb Ruess 47:54
Yeah.

Chris Hoyt 47:55
Yeah, we have GoPro video.

Barb Ruess 47:56
Yeah. Joe just said he’s all in whatever you want. Yep.

Chris Hoyt 48:05
Amazing.

Barb Ruess 48:06
I know. So before we’re done, I mean, we could talk for more than an hour, but I know that it’d be willing to listen to us for more than an hour. before we’re done. Should we talk about I mean, other than our private Polarius, apparently that we’re going to be scheduling in 2021 or 2022. Ah, should we talk about some other some other fun stuff that we’re going to be doing soon?

Chris Hoyt 48:27
Hmm, I’m gonna open a second bottle of Caymus when this call is over.

Barb Ruess 48:34
It’s a good plan to good plan.

Gerry Crispin 48:36
Good plan. I’m going to have some leftover from Wednesday when I made bucatini all’amatriciana

Barb Ruess 48:49
Oh, Gerry, you got you peaked my interest because I don’t know this sauce.

Gerry Crispin 48:55
Oh, it’s it’s a classic Roman sauce. Tom Becker did a fabulous job with that. The base for this is guan-chale.

Chris Hoyt 49:11
That’s a lot of A’s in there

Gerry Crispin 49:13
And it’s the cheek of a pork. Um, you get a big pork cheek and you have to you learn how to cut off pieces of this that’s you know, that’s not eatable and then cut it it’s like a it’s like a bacon.

Barb Ruess 49:32
It is like bacon, I mean, I’ve had it before it is like bacon.

Gerry Crispin 49:35
And so it’s cut the particular way. And then um, and then that starts the sauce off there’s no oil for the sauce because the guan-chale has an enormous amount of sauce when you when you crisp this sucker up. And it has what else is in this? There’s no onion. There’s no garlic.

Barb Ruess 50:01
What?

Chris Hoyt 50:02
There’s just no garlic.

Gerry Crispin 50:05
There’s no there’s, there’s the guan-chale

Chris Hoyt 50:10
Does it go in a skillet.

Barb Ruess 50:14
Stop making fun of the way Itallian people talk.

Gerry Crispin 50:17
There’s wine.

Shannon Pritchett 50:18
You sound like Borat

Gerry Crispin 50:20
I know. And then there’s and then there’s tomatoes. And then

Chris Hoyt 50:27
Tomatoes

Gerry Crispin 50:28
Your pasta which is bucatini and bucatini is a thicker spaghetti with a hole down the middle.

Barb Ruess 50:37
I’m with you, Gerry. Herry, I with you.

Gerry Crispin 50:40
That’s good.

Chris Hoyt 50:41
Barb makes her own pasta, I’ve seen it.

Gerry Crispin 50:42
So then you put in the bucatini and the last thing you put in when you turn the heat off is Prima Donna, it’s it’s a it’s cheese. So cheese.

Barb Ruess 51:00
We were hoping you were going to say guan-chale again.

Gerry Crispin 51:03
No, cheese, and then you eat it. And it’s really really good. Much, much more flavorful than I thought for a 40 minute sauce. Unbelievable.

Barb Ruess 51:16
Interesting in less than an hour. Because you’re right. It is hard to make a really full sauce.

Gerry Crispin 51:22
Unbelievable.

Barb Ruess 51:24
Yeah, I don’t know exactly. So what part

Gerry Crispin 51:28
If you guys want to see the recording. I’ll send you a link to the recording.

Barb Ruess 51:35
I saw pictures

Gerry Crispin 51:36
Of Tom Becker making this thing

Chris Hoyt 51:38
Only if Tom Becker says tomato and skillet

Gerry Crispin 51:42
Yes he does.

Shannon Pritchett 51:44
Every time they say guan-chale I’m gonna drink.

Gerry Crispin 51:46
You don’t have to watch the whole thing because you’ll immediately watch the first five minutes. He starts it at the point at which I’m introducing myself. And I say cuz everybody on the on the thing I know. So I go, um, well, I’m celebrating my 25th anniversary. That’s that’s basically it. That’s all I said. And then and then we start but I’m wearing er so when we when we do our cooking class, Chris. I have a chef’s outfit that I wear

Barb Ruess 52:22
With the hat too.

Gerry Crispin 52:23
I have a hat. I have a I have a chef

Chris Hoyt 52:26
You did not buy this from the Catholic Church. Did you?

Gerry Crispin 52:29
No, but it does look a little bit like there should be a clerical collar along with it. Yes, that’s true.

Chris Hoyt 52:36
Inside joke for our listeners and followers.

Barb Ruess 52:40
I will say why but I’ve seen some pictures.

Chris Hoyt 52:45
That’s fantastic. I am I am. I’m on the fence here guys. So as we get ready to exit our call here. I have something to present to the team as an idea. Okay. As you know, we have a meeting the last week of October. And I’m just wondering, like, who’s gonna dress up for Halloween for that meeting?

Barb Ruess 53:08
Technically, we have two meetings we have we have our analytics meeting the 28th and we have an EMEA meeting the 29th.

Gerry Crispin 53:18
Do they understand Halloween?

Barb Ruess 53:20
They have Halloween in Europe? I think you just offended a bunch of people.

Chris Hoyt 53:26
Oh, no in Europe. It’s Halloween

Shannon Pritchett 53:32
I have been to Rome over Halloween before and nobody celebrated.

Barb Ruess 53:37
Oh, well, maybe they don’t trick or treat but Halloween’s not a thing?

Chris Hoyt 53:44
Day of the Dead. Something like that.

Gerry Crispin 53:47
I really up for some kind of creative costuming and I would challenge our members to come prepped for that as well. Okay, can

Barb Ruess 53:59
they all dress up like you Gerry?

Gerry Crispin 54:02
They they could but I won’t be dressed up like me either.

Chris Hoyt 54:06
I think it’s celebrated differently in Europe But it’s it’s still celebrated. A little different, but maybe not every year, obviously. Now

Barb Ruess 54:15
I feel like I need two costumes one for the analytics people and one for our EMEA people separate.

Shannon Pritchett 54:23
I’m gonna bring a surprise the analytics meeting. Oh. A little Simba. You know what I mean?

Barb Ruess 54:31
Ah, excellent. I like it. I like it. Yep, yeah, it’ll be fun. We got we got good stuff. Not just in October. We got good stuff going on.

Gerry Crispin 54:43
What do I still want you know what I still have from from you, Shannon.

Shannon Pritchett 54:49
Yay, the robot we control the robots.

Gerry Crispin 54:53
You might notice that the arms are now gone. This thing is is seriously damaged. But

Shannon Pritchett 55:00
This is why you can’t trust automation?

Gerry Crispin 55:02
It’s still it’s still there. It’s still one of my things. I obviously have my clicker

And you know what this is right?

Chris Hoyt 55:20
Ah

Barb Ruess 55:22
I don’t

Shannon Pritchett 55:23
I don’t know.

Chris Hoyt 55:23
I wasn’t sure when it was upside down

Gerry Crispin 55:27
It’s its job boo. I have all of the failed, folks out there this is we think this is?

Barb Ruess 55:42
Waiting to see a waiting to see some some swag from the company that I work for.

Gerry Crispin 55:46
What do you think this?

Barb Ruess 55:47
Pre 98 that is no longer around.

Chris Hoyt 55:50
Wait, don’t tell us. Let’s see it. Move closer to the camera.

Barb Ruess 55:54
Oh, isn’t it moves? Is it a dog?

Chris Hoyt 55:57
Yeah, but hold on. It’s a, he’s showing us

Gerry Crispin 56:01
No, I didn’t do it. Alright, it’s there’s not enough. There’s not enough energy in the batteries. This is

Chris Hoyt 56:09
Flip Dog. I knew it, It’s the search engine Flip Dog.

Barb Ruess 56:13
Yeah.

Gerry Crispin 56:15
And it actually flips

Barb Ruess 56:20
Not anymore.

Hey.

Gerry Crispin 56:25
Right now.

Chris Hoyt 56:31
Hi, Gerry. I’ve been in your office 100 times. I’ve never seen within arm’s reach 15 years of tchotchkes? So I don’t know if you prepped for the call.

Gerry Crispin 56:41
No, no, they’re all here. You just didn’t. look I got everything. Shit from forever. 15 years. Some of Mark’s famous whatever things that you look through and see.

Barb Ruess 56:57
Oh, I actually have I have some old career Crossroads gifts in my office too.

Shannon Pritchett 57:02
I just have coins

Barb Ruess 57:04
I know I’ve got a kaleidoscope I have. I have a funky vase. I have while the wine glasses are not here but I have those those custom blown wine glasses.

Chris Hoyt 57:15
You have the wooden books that you open and they have all the mini CDs in those.

Barb Ruess 57:19
I didn’t get one of those. I ordered those for you all, but I did not get one of those.

Chris Hoyt 57:24
Thank you Barb.

Barb Ruess 57:24
Your welcome.

Gerry Crispin 57:25
So if you want to know who I might look like, this is my grandfather.

Chris Hoyt 57:31
Is that Billy the Kid?

Barb Ruess 57:34
It does look like a kid.

Chris Hoyt 57:36
Looks like a badass Gerry.

Gerry Crispin 57:38
He does look like a badass, doesn’t he?

Chris Hoyt 57:42
Except for that hand on his hip part

Gerry Crispin 57:44
Yeah.

Barb Ruess 57:48
You know, whatever.

Chris Hoyt 57:50
He probably killed the photographer that told him to put his hand on his hip.

Barb Ruess 57:57
Yeah, well, I can’t wait till we’re all in person again. So we can take some some pictures, Gerry of you and all of us together. That’ll be fun.

Gerry Crispin 58:05
That’ll be a lot of fun.

Shannon Pritchett 58:06
It’s been almost a year since we were all together to get it’s almost been a full year.

Barb Ruess 58:12
It has. It had wait was no the source of meaning wasn’t a full year, in October.

Gerry Crispin 58:19
When was our last actual meeting?

Barb Ruess 58:21
Washington DC. Analytics.

Gerry Crispin 58:25
AARP

Barb Ruess 58:26
Yep AARP hosted that was her last one. I don’t think we’re quite I think we’re like a week away. But yeah,

Chris Hoyt 58:31
We’re we’re five days from a year, I’m giving it to Shannon.

Barb Ruess 58:35
Yes. Right.

Gerry Crispin 58:37
We have to send Grant a note that he needs to celebrate with us our last day you go face to face meeting or something like that. So Thursday.

Barb Ruess 58:49
Yeah, AARP, they were great hosts. We’ve had a lot of great hosts. I can’t wait to have more great hosts.

Gerry Crispin 58:55
Yah we have?

Chris Hoyt 58:56
Yeah, yeah, very fortunate.

Gerry Crispin 58:59
Yeah. If the redwood forest doesn’t burn down, we might even try go back.

Chris Hoyt 59:06
I’m hanging out in California lately. And if we just quit putting all of our water into the ocean to save a silly little fish.

Barb Ruess 59:12
I know what that was a very strange comment. I saw that too.

Gerry Crispin 59:16
I will say so. I had a wine dinner. Three weeks ago.

Chris Hoyt 59:23
Everyone every night.

Barb Ruess 59:25
Me too.

Gerry Crispin 59:25
No, a wine dinner with a group of people on zoom from my restaurant stage left that they sent me the food and all that kind of stuff. So it’s kind of neat. And for two hours, the fellow who owns the vineyard in Napa, talked about its wines, their hourglass wines. They were very, very good. And then unfortunately, two weeks a week ago he sent a note saying everything burned his entire vineyard, his home. All of his all of his winery. It’s all burned. Down to the ground.

Shannon Pritchett 1:00:01
Awful, just awful

Gerry Crispin 1:00:03
And I mentioned it to Gallo because they said, you know, are you helping out? You know, and providing some resourcing to some of those folks, because number of wineries are offering their wines at a discount with some percentage going to help the winery and wineries and he said 23 wineries have burned to the ground.

Barb Ruess 1:00:27
Oh, my gosh,

Gerry Crispin 1:00:28
In Napa. That’s, that’s a lot.

Chris Hoyt 1:00:35
So, so, I’m in I’m in downtown San Jose. And about a week ago, we can half ago. It was the first two or three days I could see the mountains and the hillsides that are miles and miles away. Because before that the smoke was so bad. I can only see maybe two miles. I’m on the 19th floor, so maybe two miles. And then all of a sudden, the smoke was back. And it looked like a thick fog that when you walked outside. I mean it was you could smell it was stuff burning when fog but it looked like a very thick, thick, thick, thick fog. And only just today has it has it cleared up where I can see. I can see maybe two and a half three miles and then the hills and the mountains are in haze. But that that fire resurgence at Napa. I mean just all of that blue. It’s just It’s It’s surreal. At least we don’t have any more orange days but it’s really surreal. My heart goes out to not just the families but those entire vineyards. It’s incredible.

Gerry Crispin 1:01:42
It’s It’s It’s really pretty extraordinary in California is going to take a while to recover from all of that for sure.

Chris Hoyt 1:01:50
If only we just swept the forest floors.

Barb Ruess 1:01:54
Okay, I think I think as a closing, we gotta we got to do a round robin have a favorite? Should it be a favorite? It’s not a favorite meeting. But like one of our favorite experiences at a meeting. I don’t know something I said we should do a round robin have a favorite experience at a meeting. And we should let Shannon go first because she said fewer meetings. And we don’t want to steal her thunder. Yeah, I feel like we should have a favorite experience at one of our meetings that could that could be a fun way to close things out. Shannon, are you ready

Shannon Pritchett 1:02:32
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a meeting.

Barb Ruess 1:02:33
Um, it could be your favorite CareerXroads experience. How’s that? Yeah. a CXR moment? Oh. Okay.

Shannon Pritchett 1:02:44
Hashtag. CXR moment.

Barb Ruess 1:02:46
Um, there you go.

Shannon Pritchett 1:02:47
I would say I would say last year right before the AARP meeting, we were at ERE in DC, and we went out to a fabulous fabulous meal. I forgot the name of the restaurant but amazing meal. Then afterwards, we wanted to go meet up with Ben and a couple of a Gosh, ATAP people to watch the nationals clinch. Yes. The nationals clinched the playoff title or whatever the pin it. So anyways, so we’re getting ready to go. And Chris and I had this great idea of the best way for us to get there as one of those rental scooters like so we all we got. We left Gerry alone to figure out how to work bird and Chris and I went probably 20 minutes later, we found a bird on the line going back and Gerry is still in the exact same position we left him. And here’s where it gets funny, because throughout the whole journey throughout Washington, DC, Chris and I picked the fast birds. Well, Gerry, and Pat happened to pick the slow birds. And every time we go through an intersection, we would turn around and Gerry was probably 50 yards behind us. But also you see these flashes of light because Gerry would run the red lights, and the cameras would automatically take a picture of him. And all we would hear was it was so freaking funny to watch Gerry. Red light and in laughing Chris and I must have fallen off persecutor so many times. Oh, and then of course we get there. All right. And so we get there and it’s a whiskey bar. It’s a famous whiskey bar in DC. And we’re on ATAP’s money, of course. And so Gerry goes out there he goes. I’m like, I’m gonna get a whiskey. What would you like, and what was the name that whiskey Yama Gase. You have a coffee, something like that. I was like, and he ordered one for Chris and I was like, What about me? I want one too. And so Gerry’s like, Okay, fine. I’ll get you one. I’m like, this is a double Gerry’s like, yeah, yeah, I got a double. He’s like, it’s the I forgot what it was. He’s like, it’s the 12 year and I’m like, I saw him for the 18 year. So the guy was pouring doubles 18, which was a $600 tap for just the three of us, courtesy of ATAP.

Chris Hoyt 1:05:10
You really shouldn’t until now ATAP didn’t know that. Thanks, Ben.

Shannon Pritchett, CXR 1:05:18
They did, because right afterwards, that’s all sudden guy goes out. But oh my gosh. And Ben was so cool. He was like Gerry for everything you did to us and all that. So it was it was a fun moment, but just him running the red light us on the scooters together. And then of course, over indulging in a glass of whiskey. It was just it was a fun evening.

Chris Hoyt 1:05:37
Gerry did you ever get a ticket from the city of Washington DC.

Gerry Crispin 1:05:42
I never did. I will say though, that one of my major accomplishments in life has been driving literally across the entire city of DC. on a scooter I thought this was going to take forever to do it. And chasing after you two was was obviously a bit of a challenge. And as long as I ignored the rules of the road, and there wasn’t anybody coming in the opposite direction. Screw it.

Chris Hoyt 1:06:14
It was late, there was no traffic, but you caught every frickin light.

Gerry Crispin 1:06:19
I know, right in the middle of it.

Chris Hoyt 1:06:22
I thought I was gonna die when that (noise effect) they thought for sure they find you eventually you’d get you know, five $300 tickets.

Gerry Crispin 1:06:31
That was funny. I will say that was funny.

Barb Ruess 1:06:36
Okay, Chris, you got you got a fav or not a favorite one of your favorite.

We are going to make Gerry go last,

Chris Hoyt 1:06:45
Because I know what Gerry’s gonna say. And it is also one of my favorites. I’m gonna pick another favorite. When we did our 100th at Disney, and I have emotional connection to that, obviously, our 100th meeting and when Mickey Mouse rolled in with the cake, and Gerry had no idea that Mickey Mouse was gonna come in with the cake. And the look on his face was pretty priceless. So that was a favorite moment. And then of course, it was complemented we did the evening. Walk around, we did the food. Right The tour. When we were in the park and ended at a we had private, a private showing area to watch the fireworks right on the water. So VIP access for all of our members to sit and watch the amazing firework show that Disney does every night. So that was kind of an emotional kind of fun meeting for me. So that was a good one.

Barb Ruess 1:07:49
Yeah, it was it was a good one. And Gerry’s gonna go last. Um, and yes, it was pretty fun to surprise him with that one, Chris, because he right he You and I were the only ones who knew that Mickey was coming. Nobody else. So that was fun. So it’s funny, you stole a little bit of my thunder. I was going to talk about that meeting. Because I wanted to also leave him to the fact that Roger Coker and I, for anybody who knows who Roger Coker is, I talked him into going on soaring at that particular event. We were at Epcot, and he’d never been on a Disney ride before. So that was one of my favorite things. But I will say one of my favorite Disney, I mean that Disney CareerXroads moments is that we wish Nike the first time we’ve been there more than once. But when we went the first time, and we had a tour of campus, and then we got to go the employee store, which is a pretty cool bonus that they gave us. So we got to go shopping. And I personally had a lot of fun shopping. I bought a lot of Christmas gifts for my kids that year at Nike, but just walking around and watching our members and the number of them that had their phones up because they were like facetiming with their family members like showing them all this stuff like what do you want. And then, you know, we go out it was a bus waiting for us to take us back to our hotel. So we get ready for dinner and the number of times I had to go back into Nike and do a sweep to try to get all of our members to come back out. It’s just fun to share. It’s just fun to share moments like that with their members where we’re all like, it doesn’t matter anymore. Like what our job is we’re all just experiencing something together. You know, whether it’s shopping at Nike or driving up the hillside Gallo and finding a bar for tasting at the top. You know, it’s it’s cool. I really like those moments, but I missed those moments. I can’t wait to go back. Okay, Gerry.

Gerry Crispin 1:09:39
Well, a couple things. I think one if if I had one to pick and and Chris had not picked the hundredth I probably wouldn’t pick 100 because I thought you pick an important benchmark, you know that that we had 100 different meetings with people that built these kinds of relationships over over the years. So that’s powerful. I mean, just powerful as just a long term. You know, accomplishment, if you will. So that was that was great. The the two that I would I would I would mention would be, would be first. You’re not going I will go there, but I’m not going there now.

Barb Ruess 1:10:38
See us, Chris. and I are like, we know, what do you

Gerry Crispin 1:10:43
know, I’m going to delay, I’m going to delay it. So the first one is in halfmoon. Bay. Oh, which I think was a, I think it was the second meeting that we had,

Barb Ruess 1:11:01
it was your second because I play I’ve planned them all.

Gerry Crispin 1:11:04
So I didn’t get to go to. So see, I’m good. That tells me that despite my age, I can remember something. Yep. So it was our second meeting halfmoon Bay, and we had this this event at marks brothers Art Gallery Art Gallery, which was extremely, I mean, it was it was the kind of a high end, you know, Art Gallery and to have to have a whole bunch of people connect and engage. There was just, it just sparked this is this is what we have to keep doing kind of thing. And in the middle of it. A woman Jo, How is her last name? Nina Nina Johansson from Microsoft, who was not on not scheduled to come. And she was the head of some part of Microsoft recruiting. And she simply showed up and said, I really want I really want to check this out. And we welcomed her and Microsoft actually started working with us from that point on. And that was that was kind of cool. And and she actually, I think heads up all of executive search at Microsoft right now. And then, the one that obviously, you’re expecting me to pick was this past year at Gallo.

Barb Ruess 1:12:42
Yeah. With your new best friend Kate MacMurray.

Gerry Crispin 1:12:48
And yes, I mean, there.

Chris Hoyt 1:12:52
He may have had three sons, but he had one daughter, we’ll never forget.

Barb Ruess 1:12:56
He might have had other daughters that we don’t know. But Kate and Gerry definitely hit it off.

Gerry Crispin 1:13:02
If we there is no way we can outdo. Having dinner in a redwood forest,

Chris Hoyt 1:13:14
You don’t know that.

Gerry Crispin 1:13:14
Strong between the trees. And and people cooking steaks on outside, whatever, Shannon if she knew what we were going to go into, would have quit early told, told David to go to hell and have and have hitchhiked to to to this. Because it was without peer in terms of just a place where you know, you just could never you can’t buy that. You just can’t buy it. It was expensive for us. It was expensive for them.

Chris Hoyt 1:13:56
I feel like we bought it.

Gerry Crispin 1:13:57
And there’s no question about that. But I think our members will probably remember that remember that experience forever.

Chris Hoyt 1:14:10
They’re not. I’m not gonna agree with you that can’t be topped. I think that is absolutely a challenge we give to our existing and future members. If we signed Tesla expect to do a meeting in a space shuttle. There are things that could be done to top that.

Barb Ruess 1:14:26
I know. Props to Ryan Cook, and the Gallo team didn’t just treat us well, then they could I mean, they have done some amazing things for this community.

Chris Hoyt 1:14:34
They have been so good to the entire company.

Barb Ruess 1:14:36
Yeah, I like all very much.

Gerry Crispin 1:14:38
It’s been fun and what you know, Gallo is an extraordinary company with a lot of really great things going for it. And the ability to be able to better understand and and really, they’re, they’re an example of what we’re trying to accomplish with our members in that every company has this kind of unique culture that that is that has grown based upon their founders, you know, the kind of work that they do and everything else and, and to be able to share that with our members who can see what people who are going to work there go through both the good and the bad. I mean, it’s not an easy work environment either. But, but the fact of the matter is, it gives you an appreciation for how you build your employment brand and start to message why you would want to work here and how it attracts some might reject others. And I do think Gallo did a extraordinary job in terms of doing them.

Barb Ruess 1:15:48
Yeah, so I think that was done I feel so I’m gonna do a little segue here. I think we should all raise our glass because Gerry you create a culture not just for those of us who are on the team but for this community. And I for 1 am excited to be part of it and I’m excited for what the years ahead will bring so happy anniversary to CareerXroads.

Chris Hoyt 1:16:07
Yep happy anniversary to CareerXroads guys.

Gerry Crispin 1:16:09
Let’s go change the world.

Tagged as: E & J Gallo, Uncorked, cxr25.