EP 34 Your HR Value, Pooper Scoopers, and Vinagaroons with Ben Eden

The guys talk to Ben Eden about HR practitioners view of themselves, how to begin to build trust when you have a seat at the table, his partnership with SHRM around the PMQ+, and other brilliant things you'll have to listen to the podcast to learn.  Steve introduces listeners to Vinagaroons and what happens when they sting you as well as recounts his recruiting days on Tatooine.

We want to thank the children who provided the fun background sounds.  (No children were hurt in the recording of this podcast.) 

Learn more about Ben Eden at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedenspeaks/   or https://www.instagram.com/benedenspeaks/  and https://www.instagram.com/benedenspeaks/
Find Ben Eden's book on Amazon at:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVSGY2R9/?bestFormat=true&k=how%20we%20see%20ourselves&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-bk-ww_k0_1_20_de&crid=1R7D4TTVM8S01&sprefix=how%20we%20see%20ourselves
Learn more about the PMQ+ at: https://share.hsforms.com/1_IU4hQhwTfqRnr5SERjjhg2d0dt 
Learn more about Tony "Two Weeks' Notice" Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steve "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about our sponsor MegaStar HR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about all of the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Ben Eden is a leadership strategist, author of How We See Ourselves, and a key architect behind PMQ+ — a groundbreaking leadership development program built in partnership with SHRM and LifeGuides. With a career dedicated to helping people managers grow through mentorship, real-world application, and deep personal reflection, Ben brings both heart and rigor to the conversation on modern leadership. In this episode, they explore the insights behind their book and share how PMQ+ is transforming how organizations support frontline leaders.  

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:07.957)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who sells territory reaches all the way to Tatooine, where he once assisted Ben Kenobi in his search for a Jedi apprentice. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:35.99)
you have no idea. I tell you, and the good news is I grew up in a desert in Las Vegas, and so once I got there, it was fantastic. I did just fine. It absolutely did. Yeah, Yeah, the only difference was I wasn't used to the podracing. We would just do BMX bike racing. you know. You always had to be careful, though, because in the sand, there were always scorpions or vinegar runes.

Tony Benjamin (00:38.44)
You

Tony Benjamin (00:46.203)
It just felt like home to you, right? All the Bantha tracks going in single file and everything.

Tony Benjamin (00:56.617)
That's me.

Steve-o (01:05.4)
The vinegar runes were the worst because I got bit once. And let me tell you what happens is, is your taste gets really bitter for a while. It actually can kill animals because all they taste is vinegar for like weeks. so they just like go. A vinegar rune look. OK, so it looks kind of like a scorpion, but it has like this brown back and it doesn't have the tail thing. It has the pinchers, but it doesn't have the tail. And if it gets you, if you get stung in essence.

Tony Benjamin (01:05.949)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (01:16.137)
Wait, wait, so what is a vinegaroon? What is a vinegaroon?

Steve-o (01:33.804)
then what it does is it changes your taste so that all you taste is like vinegar. That's why I call it a vinegar room. And so animals, if they get bitten, they oftentimes will just, they'll dehydrate and die. They'll just die. mean, humans, can withstand it pretty well. Correct, yeah. We're, yeah, humans were pretty intelligent. We don't really die from it, but your taste is really weird for a bit. So yeah, there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:46.149)
because they're not smart enough to keep eating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Usually, okay.

Tony Benjamin (01:57.737)
You know, right, that that totally flows into the whole deal about you and COVID and your taste buds changing forever. That just flows right in.

Steve-o (02:05.354)
I know, just, and sometimes I wonder if that even goes back to that. Yeah, yeah, who knows? I mean, and there's some really big ones. Like if you look them up, there's some huge ones that are almost like the size of your hand in other countries. the ones in Vegas are fairly small. And like I said, they're very light colored. They're like this yellow pale almost see through like a gecko.

Tony Benjamin (02:13.171)
Well, that's what I'm thinking, right?

Steve-o (02:34.422)
And so they're very different in Las Vegas and they're much smaller. So they're not, they're nothing like some of the ones you might see on like online. So anyway, nasty little boogers.

Tony Benjamin (02:44.469)
OK. No, there's there's more to say there. But before we go any further, everybody, I would like to introduce you to today's guest, Ben Eden. All right. The crowd goes wild. Say, look at Steve, look at the smile on his face. You can totally tell it's it's that. That's right. He's in the red. He got the red shirt going. Right. And the crowds going wild.

Ben Eden (03:02.368)
Yes.

Steve-o (03:03.63)
I know, he's got the red shirt for the red seat.

He almost blends in, it's crazy.

Tony Benjamin (03:13.627)
Okay, Steve, hold up your sign. Let's calm him down a little bit. Right. Right. there we go. You kind of do shut up. It just says shut up. So see, Ben, that the problem is, is we allow these people in and then every once in a Steve slips them a little Adderall. And so they're a little perkier than usual. And then they, they rush the stage, they rush the stage and there's this velvet rope that we use to try and hold them back. And sometimes they, they jump the rope and then it turns into this big thing. But

Steve-o (03:17.036)
I need a sign. I need one that says, quiet.

Ben Eden (03:28.67)
Yeah.

Steve-o (03:32.94)
I slip it. It's in their coat.

Ben Eden (03:42.814)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (03:43.677)
That's because they're so excited to see our guests like you. So Ben, welcome here today to the podcast. We're glad to have you.

Steve-o (03:51.009)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (03:51.391)
thank you so much. Yeah, I need to get those audience members around me more often. Just lift my spirits all the time.

Steve-o (03:55.31)
Well, and you were so hard to get a hold of for a while. We were playing text tag for months and months and months. And I realized you're extremely popular. And so I thought to myself, man, I'm just going to have to try it the new year. And so I'm excited. We're finally here. That's right.

Tony Benjamin (03:56.541)
That's... You'd be surprised.

Ben Eden (04:11.998)
Well, here we are. Excited to be here.

Tony Benjamin (04:14.759)
Well, Steve, you know, our guest is important when even you have a hard time connecting with him. Right? Steve generally has his people call the other person's people and they work it through. But you are such a big deal, Ben, that the big deal Steve here, he decided to call you directly and wow, it still took a while. That's. So.

Steve-o (04:19.406)
Absolutely, absolutely. So, yeah.

Steve-o (04:27.478)
That's how it

Steve-o (04:32.77)
Yeah, is it?

Ben Eden (04:34.91)
Wow, you're so kind.

Steve-o (04:38.878)
Hey, he's got some good presentations though. We're going to talk a little bit about that. Some of his history in HR, but he, for those of you looking for presentations out there, anybody has a, you know, like a shim conference and places like that, that you've got somebody here. So you should enjoy this episode for sure. So.

Tony Benjamin (04:44.712)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (04:52.841)
That's right. Exactly. Now, Steve, before we go too far, the Star Wars tree behind you is everything now in place. Did you find baby or the Yoda tree topper yet?

Steve-o (05:05.189)
No.

I have not because, we are about, we've decided during the holidays, we are going to officially empty our storage unit, which means over the next couple of weeks, it might be a couple of weeks, um, because my daughter, my, in fact, my mom just arrived yesterday. So my mom's in town, my daughter's arriving tomorrow. So we're going to have some family in town. So it won't be this weekend, but hopefully sometime in the next week or so we're finally going to empty it. And I'm positive it's in there somewhere. I just got to figure out which box it's in.

Tony Benjamin (05:18.534)
you'll find out.

Steve-o (05:38.019)
So.

Tony Benjamin (05:39.017)
So Ben, this is a saga. This is a huge saga. Our listeners are all dying to know where is Yoda tree stopper or topper.

Steve-o (05:46.958)
And eventually, eventually I will get a picture online. I sent you the picture, right Tony? you post it yet?

Ben Eden (05:48.52)
can't wait to find out.

Tony Benjamin (05:56.123)
No, I don't. I don't have a picture. Yeah. Yeah. Send me a picture. I don't, I don't think you sent me one. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (05:57.102)
Just of the tree? What? I did. Oh, all right, I'll resend it. It was probably when your computer was all messing up. It probably deleted it or something. It removed me as a contact, I'm sure.

Ben Eden (06:07.056)
Yeah, lost in transit.

Tony Benjamin (06:07.717)
Yes.

That's right. No, my I was giving a presentation at the vernal area chamber and the projectors weren't reading my computer for some reason. So I had the tech people of the conference center come work on it while I kept rolling with the presentation. And it worked for about 30 seconds. All of a my computer just went dark. And I was like, so I tried to plug it in really quick. Of course, that looks stupid while you're giving a presentation. But I tried to plug it in, thought maybe the no, it just didn't come on.

From that point forward, it was more paperweight or doorstop than it was computer. That was it. Gone. Yeah. So.

Ben Eden (06:46.004)
Yeah.

Steve-o (06:48.792)
So exciting. So exciting. We had to re-record some episodes, you know, the re-recordings were actually better than the originals. And so I have to be honest, it was almost a blessing in disguise, but you know, it's just, here's what it is, right? We all have those moments. yeah. yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:01.501)
That's right. I'm sure Andrea love talking to us twice. Yeah. So yeah. So okay, Ben has hardly said anything yet. We need to coax him out of his shell a little bit.

Steve-o (07:15.362)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (07:15.538)
I just enjoy this listening to the banter. It's fun.

Tony Benjamin (07:17.865)
So, well, yeah, Steve, that's that's right. Let's let's do this, Ben. Tell us about you and how you got into HR. Like, tell us your background. Tell tell us how you Mount Elvis Elvis Presley the first time. And wait, that is somebody else. Never mind. That's right. Whatever it takes. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So tell us about you.

Steve-o (07:21.72)
Kind of tell us your story. Yeah, we'll have Tony kind of introduce that.

Steve-o (07:36.942)
when you got bit by a spider and you know.

Ben Eden (07:40.608)
I'm not gonna make up some stories.

Ben Eden (07:47.38)
Well, on one of my work trips for my past job, I did go to Elvis Presley's house. That's as close as I got to meeting him.

Tony Benjamin (07:53.565)
Wow, that's pretty cool. Graceland.

Steve-o (07:53.6)
Nice. See, we can make up anything on this podcast and there will be a story behind it.

Ben Eden (07:55.326)
No, I have not been. Yeah, see, I know. No scorpions besides the plastic ones that come from Walmart.

Tony Benjamin (07:59.111)
Yeah, that's right.

Steve-o (08:02.222)
Nice, nice.

Ben Eden (08:05.642)
But yes, how did I get into HR? So originally I was very interested in computer science. I always loved just what you can do on a computer. I've been talented that way and so forth. And that was my degree at first in college. But I got a job with Microsoft selling their brand new computer stuff. This was back in the days of Zune, if you know what that is. Microsoft's MP3 player, right? So that was super cool. I got there, super nice thing. I got there. Sony Vial laptop.

Tony Benjamin (08:24.797)
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Eden (08:31.136)
which at the time was rated like 2,500 bucks. And I was like, all right, as a college kid, this is good. Making 10 bucks an hour, I was flying high. This is great.

Steve-o (08:31.969)
Whoa.

Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (08:40.393)
Right, yep.

Steve-o (08:40.802)
Ten bucks an hour, you are rich.

Ben Eden (08:42.784)
I know, it was great. I was like, hey, this is a great way to get started. But most of my job was giving demos of these new and cool Microsoft things. And after a while, I ran out of people that I knew and I ran out of other people that were familiar. So I had to go to very unfamiliar faces. And then the list just dwindled and I started to hit rejection and started to say, oh man, I don't want to do this anymore. And my friends are in class. Who am I going to hang out with? I just started to feel lonely in that position.

Tony Benjamin (08:43.689)
That's right.

Ben Eden (09:11.848)
I said, well, maybe this isn't for me. So I talked to a counselor. did one of those internet online quizzes. What do you want to be when you grow up kind of stuff? And the quiz came back and said, have you ever watched Born Identity? Yeah, Matt Damon. So there's Pam. She's the director of all the people who find Matt Damon. I was supposed to be a Pam. Interesting.

Tony Benjamin (09:25.095)
Yeah,

Steve-o (09:32.854)
Wow. Well, this is good. At least it wasn't a Disney character, because I've taken some of those and I'm like, you know, some weird Disney character that I don't even know where they're from.

Tony Benjamin (09:33.681)
really?

Ben Eden (09:37.073)
Right?

Ben Eden (09:42.624)
Well, Steve, before you take those quizzes, you got to check the URL. If it's a Disney character quiz, you got to know. There you go. Check Harry Potter. but yeah, I took the quiz. And so it was either that or it was some lawyer or it was employee relations. I had no idea what that was. So I talked to my counselor and they said, well, you should take this intro to HR class. said, sure. Still knowing nothing, took it. And it was an ACE class.

Steve-o (09:46.11)
I so.

Tony Benjamin (09:49.225)
That's right, that's right.

Steve-o (09:49.859)
So true, so true. Yeah.

Ben Eden (10:10.464)
Okay, just loved it, it was all common sense. I loved what I was learning. Now is the start of the journey. So I did very well in the classes, top of the class. Anyway, don't need to go into those details. But I got the bachelor's and the master's degree in human resources and followed the journey that most people tell you to do, right? Get your degree, get the internship, grow and climb the corporate ladder and you'll have a successful and happy life. So I tried it. I did start it as an intern at two different companies.

One, the most recent being Get Air, the trampoline park, if you're familiar with that. Yeah.

Steve-o (10:45.138)
yeah. My daughters love those because my daughter was in gymnastics. all her friends were always in those places. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (10:45.394)
yeah. Uh-huh.

Ben Eden (10:53.032)
Yeah, it's super fun. And when I started with them, they had fewer than 50 employees and three locations. And after seven years, when I left, they had 75 locations in five countries and 33 states and all sorts of fun stuff. So it was a great journey to help them grow and to grow more. Yeah. Lots of they don't teach you in college, but hey, yeah.

Steve-o (11:11.608)
Yeah, you saw a lot of growth.

Steve-o (11:17.004)
Yeah, imagine that. That's cool.

Tony Benjamin (11:17.257)
Right, right. Yeah.

Ben Eden (11:22.432)
So there's the beginning of an HR journey.

Tony Benjamin (11:22.867)
Yeah, I was going to say the first lesson you learn is don't do business in California. The second lesson you learn is don't do business in New York.

Ben Eden (11:29.266)
my goodness.

Yeah, all the states that follow Washington and Oregon and New York, Pennsylvania and so forth.

Tony Benjamin (11:35.375)
Right. Yeah, exactly.

Steve-o (11:37.166)
So were you there when they went to the other countries as well? Wow. So, cause we had some of the HR sisters from Dubai on the...

Ben Eden (11:40.266)
Yeah.

Steve-o (11:49.55)
And so it was kind of cool because I've never really dealt with outside of the U.S. And so it's kind of fascinating how different it can be. So, yeah.

Ben Eden (11:58.878)
Very different, both in business and HR, right? So I did Brazil and Israel and Finland. Those were my specific, we did Mexico too, but I got to travel to Israel and Brazil, no Finland, unfortunately. But yeah, you're thinking, okay, I know US law generally, and then there's the California and you're like, that's a different world. But then you're thinking, okay, Finnish law, you can't compare. You just have to find out what their rules are and figure out how to follow them and match your culture.

Steve-o (12:06.559)
wow.

Steve-o (12:14.071)
on.

Steve-o (12:27.16)
Well, and how did you read the handbooks in Finnish? I'm just curious about that.

Ben Eden (12:31.518)
You know the great thing was I just had to go like this on the keyboard and it looks finished. I'm just kidding.

Tony Benjamin (12:32.005)
Rotaminsk.

Steve-o (12:35.566)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (12:35.593)
The hand wavy is what we got there. Yep. That's right. Yeah, you will understand this handbook. That's, that's, that's, that's right. Well, that's, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. jumping to an international thing is is a leap in the dark for sure. And some countries, it's easy to find out the laws and some not so much.

Ben Eden (12:43.476)
Yeah, let's start with Star See, they'll figure it out.

Steve-o (12:47.042)
Nice, nice.

Steve-o (12:55.212)
Do you realize?

Yeah, you realize Tony was totally thrown out dad jokes there. Jumping, leaping, mean seriously, wow. That was about as subtle as it gets right there.

Tony Benjamin (13:06.409)
I was gonna, I was gonna joke around that he bounced around. I was gonna, I was gonna make the joke that he bounced around a little bit for seven years, but that the opportunity didn't.

Ben Eden (13:14.164)
Well, I was hard to keep a straight face when I interviewed people, because when I said, it looks like you bounced around now, I guess you'll fit in.

Tony Benjamin (13:20.925)
Yeah, that's That's perfect. That's perfect. OK, hold on.

Steve-o (13:21.91)
Nice, nice. But you said seven years, right?

Ben Eden (13:27.679)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (13:28.945)
Wow. Yeah, okay. That's pretty cool. I bet there's some really cool trampling accident stories that you have.

Ben Eden (13:40.372)
Well, I stayed out of that world. Mine was more in the world that we all understand in the employee behavioral accidents as it were, right? The other world, I mean, that was legal and compliance and I was happy to just keep developing people. So no, unfortunately, I can't share those stories.

Tony Benjamin (13:42.185)
Here we go, here we go.

Tony Benjamin (13:51.41)
Right, right.

Steve-o (13:51.66)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (13:57.747)
There you go.

the NDA still lasts.

Ben Eden (14:02.762)
Hahaha

Steve-o (14:03.576)
Darn.

Tony Benjamin (14:05.917)
So, okay, I'm going to do our ad read here for us. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR. With expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power, we do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit Megastar HR and let's grow your business together.

Steve Steve's heard that a few times. That's right. Shout out to Becca for for being our sponsor. appreciate it. OK, so go ahead.

Steve-o (14:36.888)
So fun. We love it, Becca.

Steve-o (14:45.688)
So why did you bounce out?

Ben Eden (14:49.408)
Yeah, we're going to see how far we can take that. That's going to be our new strategic word.

Tony Benjamin (14:50.729)
That's right.

Steve-o (14:53.95)
There you go. So I gotta get... Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (14:55.823)
Thank you. I was thirsty. Thank you.

Ben Eden (14:57.856)
That's right. So here's what's interesting. Am I actually going to take from Becca's blurb there about bad HR? I went into HR and this company thinking HR can solve things, right? They're the solution. They understand the people, the strategy. You hear about the good companies and they have good culture. They have good values. Everything that HR brings to the table. say, great, I'm successful guy, a high achiever. We're going to make this happen. Because I was doing my master's degree.

as I was growing and as we were growing the company. So it was like perfect timing just to implement. But I faced the situation where the CEO had hired his family and some friends and they followed the line of Toby in the office. They said, well, that's what I'm doing, right? mean, what else? And then they had the general definition of hire and fire and policy kicker around her. That's it.

Steve-o (15:46.838)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (15:48.659)
All

Ben Eden (15:55.808)
So essentially it was a necessary evil that I had to fight, okay? To the point where, long story short, the CEO, great guy, right? This isn't anything negative about him, that's what I wanna make clear. But part of my story was, as I tried to make HR super valuable and really change, well, meet the goals of the company, my boss came to me one day and said, Ben, we have nothing against you, we just hate HR.

Tony Benjamin (15:59.465)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (16:25.262)
That's it. No other reasons, right? That's what they call at will employment. OK, good.

Tony Benjamin (16:26.399)
nice.

Ben Eden (16:27.816)
Yeah. Okay. Now here. No, I was not being terminated at that moment. what happened was, as I had taken all these years, and this is a story, I'm going to jump into this actually. I wrote a book called How We See Ourselves, and here's part of the reason why. Because most of us are taught that our identity is based on our results. Okay. Nobody tells us that, but.

Tony Benjamin (16:37.479)
At that moment.

Steve-o (16:55.758)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Eden (16:57.278)
but experience this, when you're in elementary school, what results are you supposed to get? Just shout it out. Yeah. A's, good grades and so forth. And if you get A's, for example, how do people describe you?

Tony Benjamin (17:03.689)
Are your grades, are you quick?

Steve-o (17:04.681)
A's, B's, C's,

Steve-o (17:13.688)
Good student, really smart, yeah, all the things, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (17:13.704)
smart.

Ben Eden (17:14.772)
You're smart, you're an age 10. You notice those are U statements, identities. Okay, now follow me here. If you get an F, what does that mean about you?

Steve-o (17:23.491)
Failure.

Tony Benjamin (17:25.577)
Well, you're a trouble. You're troubled or a troublemaker or you're slow.

Ben Eden (17:29.696)
Yes. So all sorts of meanings that come with it, but literally an identity statement. Yeah. Nobody stops to say, that's just a failing grade. Let's talk about your effort or how we can help you or so forth. And it's like, Nope, you're a failure. Can't tell mom and dad. They'll be upset. Can't tell my friends. Can't show me whatever. It really defines us because of the result and what people attach to that result. So here I was going through my life thinking, all right, if I want to be a great successful person, label identity.

Steve-o (17:32.43)
Lots of labels there. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Eden (17:59.732)
I need to get good results. So I was top of the class in the bachelor's degree. I finished the master's degree a year early. I climbed the corporate ladder, became an executive in my 20s, traveled the world, did all the cool things that you're quote unquote supposed to do to be successful. And I thought, great, now what? Because I had finished the master's. I didn't want to go get a PhD. I was already a senior certified professional through SHRM. So certifications were done. Now what?

clear growth plan was gone. So now I was inside saying, what's next? Well, this company hates HR. And guess what? I'm HR. My identity. Yes. My identity was HR. So therefore, yeah, they hate me. And I seriously took that as personally as you possibly can because I was 100 % HR because I thought 100 % HR would bring the value that HR can bring.

Steve-o (18:41.56)
So therefore, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:41.587)
Yeah, yep.

Tony Benjamin (19:01.127)
You know, that's a fantastic thing. you know, I live in Vernal and it's a small town and I was in a position with my church to help with people who were unemployed. And it was, you know, a few years ago when we were watching the economy kind of slow down and all that sort of stuff. And so I was the person that went around and helped. And what I found out, at least here locally, was that everyone, if everyone looked at your resume and you had too many past positions on it,

they looked at you as a job hopper and a failure. Why can't you just get a job and stay there for 10 years? Right. And you're like, well, that's not really how the modern economy works. no, no, no. If you're and then what the reverse of that was is if you're unemployed, there's something wrong with you because a good hardworking person doesn't do that. Right. They would never. And if you if they did, they could just find a job tomorrow. Right. And

Ben Eden (19:36.926)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (19:48.565)
Right.

Steve-o (19:51.734)
would never be unemployed yet.

Tony Benjamin (19:58.311)
And it was shocking to me, you meet some people who have been employed for 15 years straight. And I would come to them and say, hey, I can help you get, you know, they're out of work and suddenly, and they're thinking, I'm, you know, bad things about themselves. I was like, I can help you. And they didn't want help because they felt like to admit it, that they were out of work and may need help finding work was, was a blow to who they were. Right. To your point, they identified their value with what they did at work.

And if that wasn't appreciated, then something was wrong. Right. And it took a long time for me to just reiterate over and over and over and just try to get that through people's head. No, no, no, this happens. This is the modern economy in the South.

Ben Eden (20:30.239)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (20:43.09)
Mm-hmm. So let me, let me, focus on a couple of things here because I love the coaching world. So I pay attention to people's language. So everybody listening can learn here to what Tony just said, even in his story that he just shared, it was talking about somebody who bounces around and we might label them. Hey, how was the interview? I mean, he's a bouncer.

Tony Benjamin (21:04.625)
even the ones that didn't work for trampoline companies.

Ben Eden (21:07.072)
Exactly, right? And notice this language. And I point it out because it's so prevalent and it affects our subconscious to the point where most of us don't realize. We say, I'm unemployed. Instead of a description of a status, we take that as an identity. When really the meaning we make is, I don't have a job right now. See the difference? I don't have a job versus I'm unemployed.

Steve-o (21:07.17)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (21:32.105)
I am and I don't have.

Ben Eden (21:36.564)
Yeah.

Steve-o (21:36.878)
Yeah, yeah, that's a big difference in the actual wording. That's that's intriguing. I've never really thought about that before. You're absolutely right.

Ben Eden (21:41.694)
and it's a good.

Ben Eden (21:45.438)
Yeah, because here's another thing in HR and I experienced this at a recent HR state conference. I asked people what do they do? And one person who's a chief HR officer said, I'm the chief pooper scooper.

Steve-o (21:59.822)
Nice. Is that like an official title?

Tony Benjamin (22:01.801)
There's some reality there.

Ben Eden (22:02.602)
Okay, thankfully, well, that's what he told me. But we laughed, right? Because, yeah, I know, right? We laughed because.

Steve-o (22:07.502)
That was totally on his card, I'm sure.

Tony Benjamin (22:10.897)
Yeah.

Steve-o (22:13.004)
No, you're right. We laugh. We laugh. But in all seriousness, I bet he was very serious about that. Yeah.

Ben Eden (22:18.504)
100%. And it's so unfortunate because it tells me a lot about his mental state, which affects his physical and his relationship and so forth and how he enjoys his job. But I also know that he's feeling stuck. What can I do about it?

Tony Benjamin (22:31.077)
And how he views employees, how he views employees because he's picking up their poop. Yep.

Ben Eden (22:33.664)
And there you go. Exactly. Yeah. So then imagine, we're just going to talk two differences of HR here. If one person views themselves, okay, how we see ourselves as a chief pooper scooper, as we've just mentioned, it affects everything that we do. How we see ourselves affects how we see others. And it affects the strategy and the results that we bring to the company. So then if we view ourselves as a chief pooper scooper, how do think the CEO is going to view us?

Tony Benjamin (23:03.41)
Exactly that.

Ben Eden (23:03.424)
Okay? Yeah. Yeah. And so even in the world of HR, what do we do? say, well, I do HR. I'm HR. I'm just HR is a common phrase. I don't know of any other profession that does that. I'm just marketing. Oh, I'm just the CEO. Nobody does that. But HR does. Why?

Steve-o (23:03.544)
Same way, because that's what we're given. That's the vibe we're given.

Tony Benjamin (23:25.843)
Well, because people hate us. Right. This is this is the Michael Scott quote. Yeah. I talking about Toby, this is the Michael Scott quote. And I put this in almost every presentation I do. And it is where he says, if I was in a room with bin Laden, Toby or Toby bin Laden and Hitler, and I only had two bullets in my gun, I'd shoot Toby twice. And yeah, right. That we have a perception problem. No, this is exactly right.

Steve-o (23:27.886)
We're the ones delivering the bad news.

Ben Eden (23:50.137)
you

Tony Benjamin (23:54.995)
This, and to your point, I think this is where you're going. We're imbibing that. We imbibe it. Yeah.

Steve-o (24:00.28)
We are, we are absolutely doing that, yeah.

Ben Eden (24:03.636)
Yeah. So it starts with, and Tony, this goes back to your example and why I wrote the book. Because I've been passionate about all the motivational conferences and reading the books and even some in the world of coaching, where they talk to you about, just think differently, be positive, try something else. If you're getting the same result, then you just have to try something else. So literally I created a model that if we had video, I'd show you, but most of the world focuses on behavior.

Even if you want to lose weight, what do you do? Well, exercise or change your diet. Okay, that's not gonna work. Why? Because of the core of everything we do is how we see ourselves. It goes through, I'll just explain it super quick. You have results, you have behavior, you have emotions, because everything we do is based on how we feel or how we want to feel. What causes our emotions? Our thoughts, literally. What underlies our thoughts, our beliefs?

Those are the rules we have about the world. And then ultimately, all of this falls onto our identity. If you do it the wrong way, which the world teaches you, your identity is dependent upon the results that you get. That's why we define ourselves based on, hey, I made a million dollars, then I'm a successful business person. If I don't reach my goals, I guess I'm a failure. The other way to do it, which is counterintuitive to how most people live,

but it's in the visualization categories, the manifestation categories. It's talking about yourself, how you want to be, and then things will come to you. Here's just a quick example that I've given on a few HR podcasts. Instead of saying, I'm just HR, you say, I'm a business professional who happens to work in the HR department.

Big difference.

Tony Benjamin (25:53.893)
It works. Yeah, yeah. The viewpoint of it. It's a little long. It's a little long, but it gets to the point. Right, right, right.

Ben Eden (26:00.69)
true, yeah. You won't put that on your business card, but you get what I'm saying.

Tony Benjamin (26:04.733)
Yeah, No, that's so I tell it right, right. I tell everybody that HR is the art of management, right? That's my what is HR, HR is the art of management. So that makes me a management expert. That's right. That's a fantastic idea, right?

Steve-o (26:04.814)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not just a title in a sense, so.

Ben Eden (26:20.106)
There you go.

And if you show up to a, you don't want to seat at the table, if you show up to that C-suite table and you introduce yourself as a management expert, they will see you very differently as, I'm the HR guy.

Tony Benjamin (26:34.641)
Right. Yeah. No, that's right. When I was doing my MBA in class once, they asked all of us, where do you expect to see yourself in five years after you graduate? And immediately came to me, I don't want to be the HR guy. That's I have to be at least a director or above in the org chart, because no one wants to talk to a 50 year old HR guy. If you're female, sometimes that's creepy.

Right. So that's the official term, but that's, it's into your point. It's how people see you and you see yourself.

Ben Eden (27:04.991)
you

Ben Eden (27:11.828)
Yeah. So, so crucial. So this is based on my personal journey of thinking that was my identity, having my identity crushed, and then going to different behaviors to try to feel better, even in the world of addictions. And then I started to hate myself more and my identity became worse and worse. Long story short, I did go through the therapy. I did discover coaching, reinvented how I saw myself. And then I went back to my HR world and my professional friends. And I'm like, wait a minute.

Steve-o (27:20.131)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (27:41.696)
If I was a successful professional, executive in my 20s, traveling the world, seemed to have what people call the picture perfect life, and yet I suffered in silence, she can't tell anybody if things seem to be fine, but you're HR, mean, people go to HR, who are you supposed to go up to if you're in HR, right? So I had that world, but I suffered in silence. So I asked my friends, do you feel this way at all? And they said, dude, we all do. The problem is nobody talks about it.

That is why I left this executive role, bounced out of it in February of 2020. Good timing. I know. Yeah.

Steve-o (28:15.95)
Literally.

Tony Benjamin (28:17.725)
Jump, leap, bounce, right.

Steve-o (28:20.174)
That's a great time. Way to go.

Tony Benjamin (28:22.889)
Right.

Ben Eden (28:24.574)
Yeah, and I've been on the entrepreneur journey ever since doing speaking and coaching and writing a book because it's a big need.

Tony Benjamin (28:32.317)
That's really cool. That's really cool. And that entrepreneurial spirit is really cool. we, and Rachel Child, if you're listening to the podcast, you'll notice I didn't say the word fantastic there. I controlled myself. Sorry, Rachel teases me about that every once in a

Steve-o (28:47.256)
He said it earlier though, so you know.

Tony Benjamin (28:49.981)
Did I say it earlier? Dang it. Keeping me humble. Yeah, it's you. should. should. I want to Ben before we before we kind of pivot here a little bit. I want to talk about your your view of the state of HR. Like what is the what is the current state of HR in American business? How do you view it as a good bad? Like what is the state of it?

Ben Eden (28:50.696)
Are you telling me Steve?

Steve-o (28:52.59)
I have to give him a hard time.

Ben Eden (29:18.24)
It's a great question. So I'm going to mix some thoughts here. First of all, I do think it is going in the right direction. A lot of conversations are happening on the big scale and the big stages that says HR needs to and can be more strategic, right?

Tony Benjamin (29:33.233)
Thank goodness I needed more caffeine.

Steve-o (29:34.409)
Let's get our drinks.

Ben Eden (29:36.416)
So that's good. People are talking about it, but it has to do with inside us, right? How we see ourselves first. I speak on a lot of the state stages and the crowds are big in these sessions where we talk about self-perception, how we see ourselves and so forth. So I know it resonates, but ultimately if HR starts crying out loud and not crying with tears, but you know, speaking.

Tony Benjamin (29:37.83)
Yes.

Ben Eden (30:03.826)
and saying, well, I'm strategic. You should let me sit at your table or I can be more valuable. We're still in the category of proving ourselves. Nobody knows what HR does. We're the VP of everything. If it needs to be done, we'll try to prove our value by trying to do it. Hey, the world's changing with AI and policies and so forth. Everybody else has their role figured out. Since mine is the everything else person, I'll take up AI. I'll figure out the policy. I'll do this.

Tony Benjamin (30:13.853)
Yes.

Ben Eden (30:33.992)
And then what translates from I'll do everything is people don't know what you do. So that's kind of the world we're in where people are talking about it better, but we're still stuck. Why? Because we're only talking about behavior and words. People have to be taught and experience how to see themselves differently. I know it sounds super simple, but literally this is the core and I've watched people do it in my coaching sessions.

When I can help them talk to and about themselves differently, they show up differently in a room, they get different results, they get different responses, and people react to them differently. So then they become the trusted business advisor that we all want to be in HR. People have to see through the title of it's just HR and we'll just use them for hiring and firing. That's it, right? Yes.

Tony Benjamin (31:26.121)
including the HR person.

Steve-o (31:28.696)
Yeah, exactly.

Ben Eden (31:30.558)
Yeah, what's funny, I mean, I did an HR well-being week. I've done that a few years now. One of the years we got a bunch of their emails. We had about 1,200 people register for the event. And six months later, we start emailing them again to tell them about the next event. We've got so many, I don't work there's anymore. A ton of turnover in HR.

Steve-o (31:48.206)
There has been a ton of turnover in HR, even in my own industry like my business. I've had, I mean, I was tracking it at one point and I stopped tracking it because it was just getting too high. I had over a 60 % turnover rate over the course of two years of my clients. Cause you know, I have so many clients that I work with and when they move to another company, I usually

Ben Eden (31:53.608)
Yeah.

Steve-o (32:13.622)
reach out because if their new company needs software services or what have you, I would love to have that conversation. And I had almost 60 % of my clients over the course of two years change a job. Some of them changed a couple of times. And I just thought that I have never in my life seen it that high. And I've been in this industry now for 18 years and I've never seen it that high before. Cause I tracked it. Like I think the highest I ever saw it before was back in 2009.

Ben Eden (32:24.97)
Wow. Yeah.

Steve-o (32:42.55)
as people were kind of coming out of the funk and they were going back into work and all that. And it was about 20 % back then. So it was much lower. But yeah, 60, this is the highest I've ever seen it. So it's fascinating that you say that because I'm seeing that as well and it has nothing to do with any conference or anything. It's just, it's just my normal clients that I work with day to day and seeing the actual transition in them. So.

Ben Eden (33:07.784)
Yeah, so super interesting, right? The HR professional is at the table talking to the CEO, hey, how's it going with our employees? What should I know? Well, we have a turnover problem. But what HR is going to say, the biggest turnover is me, right? That's one of those worlds where we have to live behind a mask. But people, I'm going to say two reasons, right? Number one, HR can be very tough because so many people experience to be in.

Steve-o (33:14.958)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (33:25.693)
Right?

Steve-o (33:28.686)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (33:32.785)
No, it's easy. The lazy people all become that.

Steve-o (33:35.064)
Ha

Ben Eden (33:35.388)
You know, surprise, I hope this doesn't ruin the podcast for people. But the other is, the other is we are getting to a point where we don't accept what we're getting. In other words, we're raising the bar. So a lot of people I coach end up changing their job or changing their role because they've outgrown it.

Steve-o (33:38.231)
Hahaha

They'll never listen again.

Tony Benjamin (33:43.539)
Yeah.

Steve-o (34:01.038)
Yeah. And they're no longer willing to accept it. You know, it's just like as you it's almost like in our own career paths, right? You know, we're making the $10 an hour and then we finally get to a point where I shouldn't be making $10 now. I should be at 15 now. I should be at 20. You know, I mean, we get to that stage where I've got enough experience and background. mean, this is why recruiters are so successful calling in to people and saying, hey, I got a company over here offering 30,000 more. People are going to jump at that because it's like, yeah, I'm not even paid what I'm worth here anymore.

Tony Benjamin (34:02.023)
No, that's.

Ben Eden (34:14.526)
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Eden (34:30.944)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (34:31.44)
That's real. That's very real.

Tony Benjamin (34:32.969)
You know what I wonder in in Steve Jaffe, who was on with us before and talking about, know, being laid off and stuff. Yeah. I wonder though, Steve, if that isn't a feature, not a bug, meaning I wonder if that's not just part of the business calculation of modern America that you it's you don't grow through ranks anymore up through a company. Like if you get hired as an HR consultant,

Steve-o (34:39.906)
Yeah, about layoffs, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (35:01.519)
or an HR associate, right? And I don't know whatever your next level is, you're you're a generalist, then you're HR, BP or whatever it is, right? You don't generally go through those, you move a job to get the promotion. Generally speaking, to be to move up in your career, you move from place Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (35:03.523)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (35:17.356)
That's how you go up. You go from place to place, which is why we're seeing more hopping or bouncing as they say. And that might be part of it. I think too, there are some companies that are so stagnant, they're not even growing. Because think about it, in my organization over the last 17 years, I mean, we grew upwards of 300 employees before iSolve bought us out. And the only good part about that was, is there was a lot of opportunity for growth. People could move up in positions.

Tony Benjamin (35:23.453)
You're right.

Steve-o (35:46.222)
But you have a lot of like even my own clients. I have a lot of clients who have been the same amount of employees for the past 10 years. They haven't really changed at all. They've had turnover and so they have to do stuff like that. But outside of that, yeah, there's nowhere else that they can really go in that company. It's already hit kind of its peak, if you will.

Tony Benjamin (36:05.107)
Well, and even if the company's right, but even if the company is growing, oftentimes when you go to hire a new position, they don't look internally and say, who are we going to grow into the position? They say, we need to fill this position. Let's post it. Right. And, and then how do you grow up through that? I anyways, just the point being there is that it seems to me that's part of the, that's a feature, not a bug. And it's one that we in a modern American business just seem to go, yeah, that's, that's the price of doing business. get poached.

Steve-o (36:15.768)
Which is sad. Yeah.

Ben Eden (36:35.09)
So, I have two powerful things for this. Number one, how it relates to the how we see ourselves thing. Sometimes people are like, well, I see you this way, you're an HR generalist and that's how I'm gonna see you. But so.

Steve-o (36:48.686)
Yeah, you're never going to go any other position, right?

Ben Eden (36:51.892)
Yeah, so I'm talking both sides is how people see us and how we see ourselves, right? If we're able to see ourselves differently, we are able to accept the idea of us being something other than an HR generalist. Okay? Now how this applies is because I talk to a lot of people who are stuck in their position because their life has become, well, I'm the director of HR. I don't know my life otherwise. I can't leave because I don't know who I am outside of the HR director title. So there's a lot of inner work to do.

Steve-o (37:09.326)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (37:19.176)
All right.

Ben Eden (37:20.266)
But these are examples of how it's seen and how we go through it. As we change our title, or more importantly, how we change how we see ourselves, we're able to elevate and grow out of positions and grow into other positions. Then because we've changed how we see ourselves, we come back and it's like, guess what? I was a director at the old company. I'd love a VP position today. And they're like, yeah, that makes sense. Or it could, okay? But then here's the other thing that I want to highlight. How we promote people.

We know this story, especially in HR, but often we look for the highest individual contributor, right? The top performer on the team. Well, we've got to promote somebody. We need a manager. This person understands it best. How? Because they have the best results. Awesome. You're promoted.

Steve-o (38:02.86)
or longevity or what have you, Yep, yeah. Which is not the best way to do it.

Ben Eden (38:05.0)
or loyalty, yeah, those kinds of But what happens? Yeah, we know this, but it's what everybody does. Because you don't have time, you don't have the right training. And in fact, what we've learned is over 58 % of managers were never trained. Not just not trained, well, never trained.

Tony Benjamin (38:06.696)
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (38:22.319)
Mm-hmm on how to be a manager, right? Yeah

Steve-o (38:25.464)
Yeah, period. No, it's so true. Yeah.

Ben Eden (38:26.783)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (38:28.925)
No, that's very much case. I find that almost every business I work with, I have to do manager one-on-one training with them. I have to, when I get in, we do vision, mission, values, we do policies and practices and procedures and all that sort of stuff. And then I roll that out to the managers and then usually I wait a little bit and then I see they're not implementing anything. And why is that? Because none of them know all that relies, all that HR basic stuff in the foundation.

Ben Eden (38:36.906)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (38:57.777)
relies on management implementing it. And when it doesn't get implemented, the owner always asks, what's going on? Why isn't it implemented? The answer is because your managers don't know how to manage. They don't know what it means. Basic 101 to be a manager. You're exactly right.

Ben Eden (39:16.276)
And here's the crux. I'm glad we're getting to the core here because what often happens here is HR takes the heat. Well, HR didn't train them. And the managers are like, well, I didn't know any better. And then HR steps in to save the day, Chief Pooper Scooper or HR loopy of everything. Well, I guess I'll take care of it. Yeah. So that lends to why people hate HR because they had a terrible manager themselves who wouldn't

Tony Benjamin (39:32.913)
Right, right.

Steve-o (39:33.408)
Firefighter, psychologist, all the things. You can give pretty much any title you want, yeah.

Ben Eden (39:45.076)
be brave enough to have the hard conversation. So they just said, go talk to HR. And HR is an impartial party that just says, yeah, your performance isn't there. Your manager doesn't want to fire you, but they don't want to tell you that. So I have to, and therefore you hate me. That's the world we live in.

Tony Benjamin (40:00.804)
It very much is.

Steve-o (40:01.068)
That's kind of a sad commentary, but but honestly, I mean, that was a very long winded answer to what is the current state of HR. But but that is very much the state of HR. That's probably one of the most succinct answers we've ever received that really clear. And I know there are some companies out there that have overcome this and are obviously doing much better. But I think if you look at the overall state, I mean, you just hit the nail.

Tony Benjamin (40:28.317)
or hit the nail with your head either way. That's one of my favorite phrases.

Steve-o (40:30.254)
Wow. Wow. Yeah.

It reminds me of that commercial, remember that commercial where he has a nail in his head and he says, I have a headache. And they're just trying to have this conversation with him. Well, maybe you need medicine or maybe you need this and everybody can't see the nail in the forehead. I mean, come on, it's right there. That's why your head hurts.

Ben Eden (40:38.506)
Yeah, definitely do.

Tony Benjamin (40:48.007)
Yeah, that's right.

Have you guys seen Happy Gilmore 2?

Steve-o (40:55.64)
I have not.

Ben Eden (40:56.544)
Well, not either.

Tony Benjamin (40:57.233)
have. okay. So if you've seen the original, he accidentally shoots that guy in the head with the nail gun. And the whole movie, the guy has that long nail sticking out of his head, right? And at the end of the movie, he's like, I love you happy, I'm gonna have this removed. Well, and happy Gilmore to they totally bring up the guy. But they went that the actor who played that part has passed away. And they went and got the actor's son who looks freakishly a lot like him. And then he's like, Yeah, my dad passed away. But he loves you happy and

Steve-o (41:22.476)
Nice.

Steve-o (41:26.542)
What?

Tony Benjamin (41:27.241)
Here we go. So sorry, just random off top. But now that I brought the conversation to a screeching halt, Ben, I want to talk about for a minute. think what you just there's a lot of profound things that you just said in there. And that outside perception, you know, I always point people back to fast companies magazine, right, where the cover was why we hate HR.

And then they did, they did a follow up 10 years later, why we still hate HR. Right. Right. but,

Steve-o (41:55.086)
whole article. Yeah, yeah. But you're right. I the news media is kind of said, here's what HR is there for. We all think that way. I mean, look at Toby. Toby's a prime example. You have this major television network with a show that that's how they're promoting HR, at least displaying HR for the whole world to see and laugh at. Of course, that's going to be our mentality at that point. You know, we let it in.

Tony Benjamin (42:24.681)
Okay, so Ben, here's the next question with all that in mind. Talk to us about your work with SHRM, because I know you're doing some stuff with SHRM right now, and there's some different programs and stuff like that, that you're a part of. Why don't you talk to us about those a little bit and kind of how all this fits into the other stuff you're doing.

Ben Eden (42:42.72)
Perfect, thank you. And I want to share a little added part of my story too, because this might relate to some people listening. They might think, yeah, I get this. I need to change how I see myself, but I'm stuck. And how would that work? So here I was, January of 2020. Already made the decision that I want to leave, but then I was starting to second guess myself. I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in HR, senior certified professional in the sherm world. Am I just throwing all this away to go be a speaker and a coach?

which aren't necessarily related. So I had that really, really, really, but then I thought, even if this fails, I will come back more respected in the HR world. And that was a little thing I told myself and felt strongly about. And guess what? Five years later, I have thousands of followers on LinkedIn. It's not about the numbers, but it's just, wow, so much different. People I see at conferences, they're like, hey, I've seen you online. I'm like, nice to meet you.

So it's just very different that way because I changed how I see myself and yes, I make twice what I did as an executive. Life is so much better. I'm more confident. I can go on a stage and help other people and not be worried about myself because even if somebody says, I hate HR, aren't you HR? That doesn't affect me personally anymore. I'd say I get where they're coming from. It's fine, but I know who I am and I know the value that I can bring. So that was huge. What else is cool is February, or sorry.

In 2021, I went to the National Shurm Conference and I was touring the expo, looking at all the booths, and I ran into this company whose tagline was, more casual than therapy, but more qualified than a friend. And that really hit me at the time because I had done therapy. I understood coaching. I was a coach. I thought, about everything in the middle? You don't want to be diagnosed. You don't want rah rah, let's just perform better.

What about everything in the middle? The emotional pain that everybody experiences. So I really resonated with what this company was doing. It's called LifeGuides. And I've been a contractor working with them for about five years now. And as part of our partnership, Shurm is a client of LifeGuides. So they offer LifeGuides as a benefit to their employees for no cost to them.

Ben Eden (45:04.734)
It's high utilization, are unlimited list of guides that people can reach out to and talk to about anything from work performance to I just experienced grief, I wanna lose weight, I need better sleep. It's like, anyway, navigating through all life, it's awesome. So how does it get to SHRM? Very cool, SHRM has their digital leadership training called People Manager Qualification.

Tony Benjamin (45:29.865)
That's good. thought you were going to say peeper and I was like, wow, where are we going with that? So, okay, go ahead.

Steve-o (45:32.59)
I'm bouncing if that's the case.

Ben Eden (45:33.536)
I've added that one. I was a mouth by default. That's good. Yep. See, this is where we get raw, right? We know we didn't edit. But they have their people manager qualification. All right. It's very well designed. Yeah. They call it edutainment. So it is good. It covers the basics of management, communication, performance management. All of us in HR are like, I wish my managers knew this.

Tony Benjamin (45:42.823)
Right,

Steve-o (45:42.859)
You

Steve-o (45:49.282)
Yep, the PMQ.

Ben Eden (46:03.104)
Right? It good. And been successful for about seven years. But as they got to know lifeguides and the power of having a guide through your life, they said they through their research and our research, saw a gap. We said point in time training alone actually causes a downstream leadership crisis. What do I mean by that? Over 58 % of managers are never trained. So then when

Tony Benjamin (46:03.485)
Right, right.

Steve-o (46:03.896)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (46:31.38)
companies are like, wow, I guess we better train our managers. Let's find a video. Let's put them. Yeah, make sure it's compliant and make sure it's fast and entertaining. Yeah, and we'll just measure completion rate. And then we're good because now we're protected.

Tony Benjamin (46:36.297)
Right. Yes. Yes.

Steve-o (46:37.774)
So true. Yep. Not biased and all the things.

Yep, as long as they pass the quiz at the end, which is usually a yes, no, and it's only one question.

Ben Eden (46:54.118)
Exactly. Or, hey, let's find a one or two day training seminar we can send them to. That'd be great. And not to downplay any of those because there's a lot of value, but both by how the brain works and just the nature of point in time training is you forget most of it and you leave an inspirational motivational event. You leave that event changed and you go back to an unchanged environment. Now you don't have the excuse of ignorance.

Tony Benjamin (47:00.435)
Yeah.

Ben Eden (47:23.71)
You have the burden of applying everything that you've learned alone.

Tony Benjamin (47:29.671)
Right. Without anybody else.

Ben Eden (47:31.423)
Yes.

Steve-o (47:31.498)
And this is why the Hoorah, you know, speakers at conferences, while you're there in the moment at the conference and you have all the feelings and all the emotions Hoorah, yes, we're going to change. And then you get back and nothing changes. And in fact, sometimes I feel like I feel like sometimes you're actually in a worse state because you suddenly realize that I don't have the support here.

Ben Eden (47:47.783)
Exactly.

Steve-o (47:58.37)
that I had at the conference with all of my friends who heard this with me, because now I'm back in my own work environment and I have absolutely no support here whatsoever, because none of us have gone through any of that. We didn't go through it together. I was there by myself, I was with my friends or other colleagues in my profession, but now I bring it back to the office, now what? No, that's a great point, yeah.

Ben Eden (48:11.081)
Exactly.

Ben Eden (48:18.982)
Exactly. So there's a couple of things that happened. First, the manager who used to have the excuse of ignorance now should know better in quotation marks. Now they're even less likely to ask for help because the company's like, we invested thousands of dollars for you to go to this training. You still don't know. Leadership crisis. Okay. Then, so on both, it's like the company finally came up with some funds to say, I guess we'll invest in training. You kidding me? Okay. And

Steve-o (48:27.469)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (48:38.792)
Right.

Ben Eden (48:48.128)
but it doesn't work. doesn't create actual behavior change. I literally spoke to somebody today who had purchased a digital training, a point in time training only. And I just playfully asked, I was like, hey, so what goal are you trying to meet with this? And how do you think it'll help? And they're like, well, we just hoped if we gave them a training, they would not escalate so many issues to us.

Tony Benjamin (49:09.417)
You

Steve-o (49:10.955)
Wonderful.

Ben Eden (49:12.384)
Okay, go buy another training find a video YouTube it right

Tony Benjamin (49:13.897)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (49:16.75)
I could sell those all day long, right?

Tony Benjamin (49:18.665)
And when this one wears off, get another one. Yeah.

Ben Eden (49:21.126)
Exactly. And then here's the world we live in. Most pay attention to this. The next digital training you look at, you'll look at the reviews and you'll notice that the only rate, how did you like it? Would you recommend it? And did you finish it?

Nobody asks, did it change your job? Did you get better at ROI? How's your engagement? How's your training work? Yeah. Right.

Steve-o (49:42.21)
Did you follow up? You know, what was the follow up like? What was the impact? Yeah, it's so true.

Tony Benjamin (49:47.721)
Yeah. Now that's Go ahead.

Ben Eden (49:48.722)
And so, so bringing this to HR, right? Cause we're talking to HR and say, shoot, well I bought a digital training only now what? Because our role, if we do it right, is to align people, process and performance. Align people, process and performance. How we can do that when we see the management problems. We know they weren't trained. I did my research. found a good video because it's not scalable for me to teach everybody. So, Hey, let's get an LMS, right? But.

Tony Benjamin (50:15.475)
Right, yep.

Ben Eden (50:16.872)
What I'm trying to do is reframe the issue for people. You can't just say, let's check a box and magically they're a better manager. Doesn't work that way. So what we've done, and this is the product that I work with, is, and I'm very passionate about, I think it's super cool that I've not only changed how I see myself to get into this position, but it's my passion and I get to help bring it to the world. This digital training that Shurm has, we've paired it with,

Tony Benjamin (50:26.311)
No, no it doesn't.

Ben Eden (50:45.47)
live cohorts and professional mentoring. So let me explain that what that means. Yes, we still have a digital training. Why? Because they can watch it on their own time. It's very well designed and it creates a shared vocabulary. It's a culture changer. Hey, we've all learned the same thing at our own time. Great. And then we have these live cohort sessions where you don't have to learn alone. On average, the cohorts have 15 managers. So now you're meeting with 14 other people saying, what are you experiencing?

Tony Benjamin (50:50.886)
cool.

Ben Eden (51:15.39)
We just watched the same episode. How are you applying it in your job? Okay, that's valuable. But here's the key of why you still need a scalable mentorship program. Maybe you did the training six weeks ago. Maybe you had your cohort session three weeks ago. What about tomorrow's problem? You don't remember what was in the training. It wasn't addressed in the cohort because you didn't have time to bring it up. But tomorrow you have a big issue and you can either.

Do your best and hope it works out. Hope that escalations don't keep going, right? Hope things don't bounce out of control. Or you can call your mentor who you have unlimited access to, unlimited sessions and unlimited mentors. That's literally part of this product, which we call PMQ Plus. PMQ Plus professional mentoring by Lifeguides. And here's what's super cool.

Steve-o (51:50.787)
Yep.

Ben Eden (52:12.564)
Not only do we measure, but we can measure and do measure actual behavior change. So we can show what happened to your stress, what happened to your performance, what happened to your retention, turnover, engagement, and so forth. Literally, last week, two weeks ago now, one of the managers from one of our cohorts, their company had their annual kickoff meeting.

Tony Benjamin (52:21.149)
That's good.

Ben Eden (52:38.9)
And the CHRO who had purchased this and loved the program, the PMQ Plus, had their two managers stand up in front of the whole company and share their experience with PMQ, which they shared this result. I was promoted because I went through the PMQ Plus. When else can you say that? I just watched this video and I was promoted. No, it doesn't work that way. But because they had that support, I was a mentor for a while. I've scaled out of it because I have other responsibilities, but I personally helped some managers.

Tony Benjamin (52:59.793)
Right. Yeah.

Ben Eden (53:08.906)
prepare for their promotion. Because we were able to meet them on an individual level, no other training can do this. Here's why. Now I might be sounding presumptuous, but hear me out here. If it's a digital training, it's pre-recorded. That means you had to generalize it to a certain thing, which means you can't address everybody individually. But a professional mentor who you chose, because you can look at the platform and like a match.com, you can read about them and find out your similarities and choose.

Steve-o (53:25.976)
Yep.

Ben Eden (53:38.164)
They have your industry similar experience, somebody who can relate with you on an empathetic level. Now you can have a one-on-one conversation, say here's my exact scenario. The mentor has also been trained in the PMQ, so they have that shared knowledge. And now we're using shared knowledge to apply to a real scenario in real time to give you real behavior change. Super cool stuff.

Tony Benjamin (54:03.069)
No, and that's perfect. And PMQ+. And it's good.

Steve-o (54:04.115)
PMQ Plus, right? So let me ask you this, they go through the PMQ program, because I know you go through it you can actually become certified, right? And does the Plus just continue after the certification and you just continue that? Or does it come with it where you're going through the program to become certified, but you also have access to these mentors at the same time? Does that make sense, what I'm asking?

Ben Eden (54:05.866)
Yep.

Ben Eden (54:28.608)
Great question, yes. So the PMQ is watched asynchronously as we do the cohort sessions and the mentor sessions. And they actually, yeah, we have this structure in the first 90 days. So we have them finish the digital training. We have them complete their four cohort sessions and they complete at least six mentor sessions because that's how you actually drive behavior change. But on top of this, they get access to their professional mentor.

Steve-o (54:36.75)
Way more effective.

Ben Eden (54:58.432)
12 months. Think about it this way. Most of the time, individual support like this is exclusive to senior management, where they pay $20,000 to $50,000 for an executive coach for the year to elevate and help them with what they're doing.

Tony Benjamin (55:00.988)
That's good.

Steve-o (55:16.342)
Usually more than that. I've seen price tags way more than that. yeah.

Ben Eden (55:18.282)
Right?

Tony Benjamin (55:18.332)
Right.

Ben Eden (55:21.258)
yeah. And again, what results come? I don't know. We won't speak to that. But with here, again, somebody who shares your knowledge meets you where you are. You have 12 months of access to them. Here's something that doesn't happen elsewhere. You finished the training. Some people, they might have an instructor led type thing. Hey, let's talk about the training and that's fine. They might do that for a few months, six months later than what you have to retrain. You think, well, we don't even know we've moved on. Yeah.

Steve-o (55:24.86)
Ha ha.

Steve-o (55:39.288)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (55:47.148)
and you've got new managers, new people in the roles. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (55:51.227)
Yeah, and that's all a short term piece for most people. We've all been there where the company, you know, releases some sort of new philosophy or new training that they're going to do and everybody's all hyped for two to three months and then it fades away. And I've been at two or three companies like that. Yeah, no, that's that's really cool stuff, Ben. I really like that. That's a that's a different perspective. I love it.

Ben Eden (56:05.95)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (56:18.983)
It's really got my brain working on how some of that goes. Now all this, you do a shim, right? This is through, this is a shim product that you do in conjunction with them, right? Perfect. Okay. So now here's the next question that I've got for you. So that's right. So Steve and I have pontificated on an episode that will actually drop this coming Tuesday. So, it'll be on, it'll be on on Tuesday. We've.

Ben Eden (56:28.222)
It is.

Ben Eden (56:33.66)
Yeah.

Steve-o (56:34.082)
Hard question.

Steve-o (56:43.124)
pontificate. I don't remember pontificating, but okay.

Tony Benjamin (56:50.313)
Well, you you kind of bounced around in that in that episode. So that that's right. Thank you.

Steve-o (56:53.166)
That was a strategic word.

Ben Eden (56:54.654)
half. You might be drinking too much here.

Tony Benjamin (56:59.037)
That's right. I feel a little lightheaded. Anyways, how is all this stuff recently with shurm affected you? Has it had farther reaching? Has it has it affected this this program you're doing? Like what's been the impact of it? Generally speaking for you, somebody who partners with shurm, or maybe it's had no impact. I don't know you you tell me.

Steve-o (57:01.678)
All right.

Steve-o (57:21.976)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Eden (57:23.676)
It is a great question and I've been aware of a lot of the stuff going on. To my knowledge, it hasn't affected it. Okay, here's why. Yes, part of it is the, let's say the clout of having the sherm brand as part of the program. So it's like, wow, this must be good, right? That might affect some people if they're super anti-sherm. But in general, what we're really talking about is real behavior change for managers.

Tony Benjamin (57:32.166)
Okay.

Ben Eden (57:51.25)
and accurate support for these managers. And so when we're talking about the value that they're getting, they're not going to say, I can't have that value because it has a certain stamp on it. So in reality, yes, I'm aware of what's going on, but to my knowledge, it hasn't really affected what we're doing.

Tony Benjamin (58:06.855)
Okay, go ahead Steve.

Steve-o (58:07.15)
And I think that's a great point because, you know, one of the things that, know, Tony, I pontificated about is the fact that, that we as professionals have the choice to allow that to impact us or not, because absolutely sherm should, you know, pay the price or whatever it is that they're going through. They need to own up to that. But at the end of the day, we're all our own professions.

Tony Benjamin (58:14.249)
You

Steve-o (58:32.096)
our own chapters. I was at a chapter meeting today because we're going through our bylaws for our particular local chapter here for central Utah County. We were going through that and in essence, we're not legally affiliated with SHRM in the sense that we are our own separate entity. We function and we do everything our own. We use SHRM as the marketing and the placeholder, if you will.

But at the end of the day, we as professionals treat each other professionally and run our own chapters the way we're going to run them. And I think that's why that's important to understand. And so I'm not surprised that this hasn't impacted the PMQ because I've heard some incredible things about the PMQ. That's why when we were talking to you originally and you said that you were involved with this, I got really excited because I've only heard great things about this program and all the managers that I've spoken with that have gone through it.

Ben Eden (59:21.791)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (59:25.058)
And I don't even think the plus version was available for some of the ones that I spoke to back then. It is such a value add. And you're right. If it's going to truly change behavior, that's something worth talking about because it's actually showing value in the workplace. So it doesn't surprise me that it hasn't really impacted it because it shouldn't impact it if we're doing it the right way.

Ben Eden (59:37.503)
Right.

Ben Eden (59:47.872)
Exactly. So I'm going to bring you back to HR for a sec. If somebody's like, Hey, this sounds great. How can I be more? Well, see, watch my language. I almost said, how can I be more valuable? That's identity, right? It's really well helped change how people see us. So we understand the business issues. We understand that the top executives think business strategy. Here's how we're going to succeed this year. Who implements this strategy? It's the frontline managers. Most of the time they fail because they weren't properly trained.

Tony Benjamin (59:56.713)
Right, right.

Steve-o (59:57.794)
Right?

Ben Eden (01:00:15.22)
So HR, instead of being like, well, I guess I'll clean up the mess, they can say, hey, I have this product that will solve these problems. Well, how can you be so confident? Because they have 12 months of access to these mentors for true behavior change. On top of this, what I didn't explain is a digital training, again, by nature is, it is what it is. You can't adapt, you can't customize, you can't say, how does it apply to my culture? It is what it is.

But with the cohort sessions, I have a conversation. personally have a conversation with all these POCs, point of contact. What's important to you? Yes. Yes. I asked, what do you want to get out of this training? What results do you want to see in 90 days and beyond? I help adapt to these cohorts trainings. I train the mentors. And you might think, okay, how does this guy scale it? I have a team. I just say through my team, we do this.

Steve-o (01:00:49.39)
about my company, my issues. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Eden (01:01:11.52)
And I'm just saying we are very personalized in what we do because we're not just about check the box by for me and let's move on. We are about getting true behavior change because I've lived to the pain. I've seen the pain. I empathize with the pain that we all experience. And I know there's a solution that can really bring behavior change that not only gives you a better, you know, people look at you differently. That's, that's cool. But most importantly, we're all here to be successful and make an impact. And this is a scalable way to do it.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:42.198)
Exactly. Wow. That's good. No, I like that. Yeah. I really like that. And

Steve-o (01:01:44.066)
Yeah, it's fantastic. I use Tony's word, did you notice?

Tony Benjamin (01:01:50.441)
It's very nice of you to do. It's very nice of you to do. It's catchy. It's catchy. Ben, think we've talked through some really cool stuff here. Is there anything you think we missed that we ought to touch on before we go? I mean, we're going to ask you a couple of questions about your books and stuff, but I wanted to, is there anything that you feel like we missed or maybe through that conversation that maybe we ought to touch on?

Steve-o (01:01:52.686)
You're welcome. You're welcome.

Ben Eden (01:02:17.214)
Yeah, I'll share two things. First of all, my core passion is what we talked about with how we see ourselves, right? Start by changing the way you talk about yourself. That is huge. That'll change your world. Literally my tagline in my speeches is, when you change the way you see yourself, the world you see changes. So that's huge. Then I invite us, especially in HR, to change how we look into the future. What I mean by that is sometimes we think,

Okay, what policy? Okay, what structure? Okay, whatever. But we think instead, what does success look like in this scenario? And if you can think like that, not only will you speak the language of the CEO, but you'll prove that you understand the business and you implement solutions from an HR lens. See the difference? You bring a unique value because of your expertise in HR that matches what the CEO is looking for.

instead of just saying, okay, the HR guy is saying something about the handbook again. Big difference.

Steve-o (01:03:20.13)
Yeah, that's a huge difference. Cool.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:20.935)
Yeah, yeah. If you're quoting the handbook in an executive meeting, there's a problem. It's just just saying that.

Ben Eden (01:03:25.504)
We have to update it.

Steve-o (01:03:25.646)
First of all, you should not have it memorized.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:29.905)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay, no, I think that's good. You were about to say something else, though, I think. Okay, okay. No, that's that that go ahead, Steve.

Ben Eden (01:03:38.026)
No, no, keep going.

Steve-o (01:03:41.176)
Well, now you held up your book, but can you tell us the title, a little bit of information about the book? because I mean, obviously we see it because we're on video, but our listeners are simply listening. So delve into that just a little bit so that they're aware of what it's called, where to get it, things like that, where this becomes valuable for them.

Ben Eden (01:04:03.06)
Yeah, just super easy. Go to Amazon, look up How We See Ourselves, and you'll find the book. It has a dark black title, it has some mirrors on it and a chess piece, because it's talking about do you see yourself in the past, in the future, how do you see yourself, and it's pretty symbolic. So it's called How We See Ourselves by Ben Eden. Look it up on Amazon, get your copy, and really let your life change. Yeah, it might sound cliche, but hey, it's powerful.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:28.617)
No, that's I'm glad it was by Ben Eden. I thought there for a second you were going to surprise us and say another name, but that's that's OK. So it's by Ben Eden. No, thank you. And we'll for everybody, we'll put a link in the show notes for the for the book and where you go get it. And then we'll also add it to our page where we've got a link to all the books that we've mentioned on the podcast and make sure you can go there and get it. Ben, is there anything that you're doing upcoming soon or anything you want to promote or tell us about where people can find you or anything like that?

Steve-o (01:04:28.856)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:04:35.48)
Ha

Steve-o (01:04:41.431)
And.

Ben Eden (01:04:59.016)
Yeah, if you'll add, I'll share one more link that you can add to the notes because I've created a PDF that gives a little bit more detail on this PMQ Plus because it's helpful to read. It's a new idea for a lot of people and when they read it again, they're like, man, this is great. Let's have a conversation because we want real behavior change. So I'll share that link with you. And it's super exciting this year because of the momentum that we're going to have. I'm doing a webinar for Missouri State on Tuesday.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:03.219)
Okay.

Ben Eden (01:05:27.272)
and we're having more stage time talking about this from national, national stages, even in, well, I'm talking to, this is just random, but I guess I'm going to share it. An industry that has found me is the Golf Course Superintendent Association. Do I golf much? No. But exactly. Yeah. But that's the topic.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:46.089)
It is a bit random.

Steve-o (01:05:46.262)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:50.099)
From the trampoline to the golf course, Ben Eden is there for you.

Steve-o (01:05:54.626)
bounce from hole to hole.

Ben Eden (01:05:57.74)
All right, now we're getting ridiculous. But fun, you just asked. So I'm going to be in Orlando in the beginning of February talking about how self-perception makes or breaks your success. Because it applies to leaders of all kinds, right? And then I will share this. We have our biggest annual event with lifeguides in partnership with Sherm. We're doing it in Scottsdale, Arizona at the end of this month.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:59.453)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:06:00.852)
We're here all day, Ben. We're here all day.

Ben Eden (01:06:24.404)
lot of CHROs and top HR leaders are coming to talk about this kind of stuff, AI, leadership, and how do we make that difference and not just talk about it.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:32.979)
Fantastic, well that's good. there I said it, dang it. Okay, that's right. Yeah, it's not bad.

Ben Eden (01:06:38.016)
How's your tally, Steve?

Steve-o (01:06:40.78)
He's only at two right now, it's pretty solid. He'll listen later and then this is where he wishes he had editing skills.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:49.149)
That's right. No, if I edited out Rachel would be very disappointed. Rachel child. But no, I don't know. I'm sure there's some sort of, yeah, yeah, probably. Anyways, thank you, Ben. I appreciate it very much. I think this has been a really good conversation. You know, I've said this before and I really mean it.

Ben Eden (01:06:50.176)
you

Steve-o (01:06:56.888)
Yeah, she makes money off you now from that, doesn't she? Every time you say the word.

Ben Eden (01:07:00.521)
money in the jar, anything?

Steve-o (01:07:03.926)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:17.895)
We asked that question about the state of HR of all of our guests, and I'm learning more and more and more about it because I don't think it's a simple question. It's a broad question. And the more people, and this is what our 34th, 35th episode, somewhere in there. And I think I'm getting a wider and wider breadth understanding of what HR is right now. And you've certainly added to that. I'm...

I'm super grateful. I think you've given me a new insight into this in a way that I don't think I saw before our self perception is fueling this misperception on the outside.

Ben Eden (01:07:56.896)
works now.

Steve-o (01:07:57.006)
Well, and I think it fits really well with what Andrea said, too, about compassion. And specifically, she talked about self compassion, you know, because if you don't have compassion for yourself, especially when mistakes are made, where you're judging yourself based on a title or a result, that is where the failure starts to happen. It's where the burnout starts to creep in all those things. And so I mean, I think that's what we're really learning. And I like

Ben, how you talk about how we're evolving in HR because we are evolving because we and I think it's because we are starting to recognize these things about ourselves, right? And yeah, such good information. There's some great nuggets in this episode. Absolutely. So it's exciting.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:40.613)
Absolutely. Thank you to Ben Eden. There the crowd goes wild. Hold them back, hold them back, keep them there from going up. someone's that's right. Ben's out there crowd surfing, dancing around with everybody. We'll get band back up here on the stage. OK, there we go. OK, everybody. Steve held up the sign. There you go. So Ben.

Ben Eden (01:08:40.682)
Thank you.

Steve-o (01:08:47.406)
you

hey, Ben's crowd surfing. Way to go.

Ben Eden (01:08:52.746)
So I'm taking back on stage.

Steve-o (01:09:06.712)
Glad to have him back.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:08.007)
Yeah, thanks for being with us. Glad to survive the crowd. Okay, we're going to talk this week again about the Thrive Life Project. When a child faces a serious illness, the entire family fills the impact. Thrive Life Project steps in to lighten the load, delivering nutritious meals and engaging STEM kits directly to families' homes, completely free of charge. It's more than support, it's a community of care.

Learn more at thrive life project.org that's thrive life project.org and a shout out to Brock and all he's doing and in the community and different stuff like that. So anyways, thank you again, Ben for being with us. This is this has been a really good and I'm I learned something tonight more about myself again and HR, but but I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Ben Eden (01:10:01.984)
Thanks for having me.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:03.687)
Yeah, we love it. Okay, big deal. You want to say anything before we head out?

Steve-o (01:10:06.914)
No, I just, this is why I wanted Ben here. This is why I was so persistent. I've heard Ben speak. I've heard the book and everything. And so I just, yeah, this is, I think this is just things that we need to hear and I know it's going to be valuable to our audience. So thank you from me, especially as I was almost harassing you to come on the episode, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:10:12.392)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:28.745)
Well.

Steve-o (01:10:30.872)
So thank you for responding back and in spite of the tagging back and forth, we definitely appreciate it.

Ben Eden (01:10:38.055)
I appreciate your follow up.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:40.039)
Well, as long as it wasn't hostile guest environment, then we're all okay. all right. Yeah, that's right. We'll head out the same way that we came in. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app comments or questions for us. Email the podcast at the HR life podcast that gmail.com will talk again soon.

Ben Eden (01:10:43.2)
Without it, yes.