Part 1: From Idea to Impact: Finding Purpose in Every Innovation | Téa Phillips

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

Arthritis affects over 50 million Americans, yet most treatments haven’t changed in decades. When Téa Phillips watched her grandmother struggle, she turned her engineering degree into the MetaFlex Glove—an affordable, innovative way to restore strength and mobility. In this inspiring episode, we talk about launching a business in college, overcoming burnout, and finding confidence through creativity. It’s a story of purpose, persistence, and the power of believing in your why.

Three Key  Marketing Topics Discussed:

1. Awaken Your Purpose Through Challenge: Téa’s journey began with her grandmother’s arthritis, illustrating how purpose-driven innovation fosters empathy and builds movements.
2. Balancing Logic and Creativity in Entrepreneurship: As a mechanical engineer, Téa emphasizes that creativity enhances problem-solving. She combines science with practices like journaling to stay inspired.
3. Building Brand Foundations That Last: We discuss the vital role of mission, vision, and core values in establishing a strong brand. These elements keep a business on course and empower it to thrive.

Follow Téa:
Téa Phillips | LinkedIn
Téa Phillips | Instagram
MetaFlex | Instagram
MetaFlex | Facebook
MetaFlex | TikTok
MetaFlex | Website

Dare to be Wickedly Branded

Transcript

Beverly: 0:11

Did you know that arthritis impacts over 50 million adults in the United States and most at-home treatments haven't changed in decades. Today's guests saw that gap and decided to do something about it while she was still in college. Crazy. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity. Here at Wickedly Branded, we have helped hundreds of overwhelmed overachieving consultants, creatives, and coaches awaken their brand magic and boldly bring their marketing to life so that they feel more confident and attract their absolute most favorite profitable clients. In today's episode, I am thrilled to welcome Tea Phillips, mechanical engineer, innovator, and founder of ATS Innovations, the company behind the Meta Flex Glove, an affordable, effective medical device helping people manage arthritis at home. Tea, welcome to the show.

Tea: 1:04

Thank you for having me, Beverly.

Beverly: 1:07

I am very interested in this. I actually have like carpal tunnel from my mouse.'cause all I do is click on my mouse all day and I have this tingling here. Do you have a brace that you wear? Yes. My mother is actually pursuing, she's had hip surgery as well and she's pursuing surgery here for this exact thing. And at one point to my listeners, I'm pointing to my thumb into my wrist, just so you know.'cause I know you can't see through the podcast app. So I'm pointing from my thumb to my wrist and this area here that can get really like pins and needles and really uncomfortable. And I know that's just one form of issues people can have as opposed to like general arthritis that they can have. And if you've ever seen somebody with arthritis, their hands are like clawed up. They don't have the mobility. It's really hard. And recently I gave my mom, like she said, it was like an"old person's gift," but I gave her like a jar opener and some other things to help her so that it was easier for her to do some of the things without it hurting her. And I was in the shower yesterday and I was squeezing my bottle of gel to go in my hair. And even that was hard. And I was like, oh, I'm getting old So I'm curious, you started in college, what led to the beginning? I'm 50, I can complain about my aches and pains, but in college I wasn't complaining about that kind of stuff. So what led you to start your entrepreneurial journey and to start it so early and in this particular industry?

Tea: 2:27

So my grandma had really bad arthritis and she was my reason for doing all of this I had a few co-founders. I was studying engineering. We were trying to find a way to solve healthcare problems using, engineering, problem solving, multi-discipline.'cause we know diverse teams perform better and we found arthritis. A lot of people have it, you said 50 million adults, specifically osteoarthritis in the hands. That's one in two women and one in four men will develop it. In America, it's a very big problem and a lot of people, we found that they can't afford to go to the doctor because it's expensive and you have to take time off work. And then you have the copay and then you get the bill afterwards. And when you can go to the doctor, they tell you compression and grip strengthening. But then people aren't doing their strengthening exercises'cause it's burdensome and it's time consuming. And you have to remember to do whatever, 15 reps a day in each hand with the squeeze ball. And where did I put my squeeze ball? So we made a wearable grip strengthener that has a really gentle compression and the bands are adjustable on each finger. So you can customize your level of tension and strengthen each finger how it needs to be. So when we were doing, the planning for it and interviewing potential customers, I talked to my grandma. And she had really bad arthritis. She was starting to lose her mobility and not do the things that she liked doing. Like she was not doing her hobbies. And then you talk about the can opener, she was asking people to open things for her and having a really difficult time. And grip strength, I'm sorry to tell you, I've done the research, it starts to decline and everyone starting at 30. So it's very small, incremental. You don't really notice it until like you start having trouble doing your daily living activities. So we all need to be working on our grip strength, but people aren't doing it. So I just wanted to make it easier. And I did that with Medflex, my grandma I interviewed her. I found that her grip strength was a problem, the pain in her hands, so it was too painful even for her to do her strengthening exercises. So when you add compression to that, that helps reduce pain. And so you can do those exercises. And then further she was experiencing, like you talked about earlier, the claw. She would wake up in the morning and her hands would be in a fist. And it'd be stiff and she'd have trouble opening it. So she would sleep with a tennis ball in her hand and a sock over top so she wouldn't drop it. And that was her innovative way of helping herself with this problem. So Medflex also just keeps your fingers extended at night and keeps the circulation going so your hands aren't stiff. So I've made it for arthritis. It helps these two things. And then we brought it to market and people with carpal tunnel are using it and Parkinson's and stroke rehab. And we're starting to have researchers interested in, preventing injury for people who do jobs that are really strenuous on the hands, like musicians and athletes. So it's really grown and it's been really amazing. But why did I do it? When I made it and I realized how big of an impact it would have on my grandmother's quality of life, I had to do it. It felt like I couldn't let it go. I was responsible for bringing it to the world because we all have ideas and if you don't do something with it, someone else will. And if someone else were to take my idea, they may make it too expensive for people to be able to afford it, or they choose cheap materials. So I knew that I would do it, I felt like I had to do it.

Beverly: 6:01

I think it's great, but I complain about. Being an army wife and a mom and a business owner. I can't imagine being fairly young in college doing engineering, which is a hard discipline, a lot to do, and then building a business, how did you balance all of that?

Tea: 6:19

It was really difficult. I got burnt out in the first year, so I invented it. At the end of my junior going into my senior year. And then, Tennessee Tech is where I went to school, Tennessee Tech University. And they had a Shark Tank style pitch competition called Eagle Works. And I was finishing up my engineering degree working really hard working on getting internships and getting jobs. And I'm doing everything and competing in this competition. And I did the competition. We won first place. We knocked it outta the park. We also won the biggest social impact award, which really drove home this is important. And the day after the competition, I couldn't get out of bed. And for two weeks because my adrenaline was so high and because I was working so hard, I was intensely burnt out and it opened my eyes and I'm very lucky to have experienced it early in the process. I didn't have time to rest, but, your body makes it for you. And I learned really early that I can't operate at that high level without taking periods of rest. So I experienced burnout early. That was beneficial for me. I graduated in December, over the summer I worked for a company. At the end of the summer, they offered me a job. I had ATS the company that I built to sell meta fluex. I had patents, trademarks, a business, all of this. But I didn't feel like I had what I needed to really start the business yet. I don't know if I was just scared. Probably just scared. I didn't really have that much money saved because I was in college. I had won these competitions. So I had just under$20,000, but that's not gonna get me very far. So I took a full-time job right after I graduated and I worked as an engineer for three years before I felt like I was ready. And I felt like I was ready. I felt confident I had saved more money and my grandmother was getting worse. And I felt guilty that I hadn't brought it to the world. I'm like, this could have helped her so much. And I wasn't brave enough to do it. So now I have to do it. And I quit my job and my parents thought I was crazy. It was a very long and difficult journey to get the glove to market. And even after I got it to market, I ran outta money. I had to move in with my parents. I moved in with my cousin. I finally was able to secure some funding. I raised investment and now we're taking off. It was helping people since I brought it to market, but getting investment is really difficult. Money is just the barrier to entry for all innovation. But. It's a numbers game. You keep going and eventually you hit these breakthroughs and we're in a really solid state of growth right now, and I'm getting to innovate and doing the things I love and building a team. So that's a little bit about the journey overview, high level.

Beverly: 9:11

So many entrepreneurs experience these highs and lows and the burnout and all of those things. Even the, I'm not ready yet syndrome. The fears and doubts. My listeners know this, I call them the flying monkeys from Wicked. They come flying at you and they're imposter syndrome and perfectionism and I'm young, or I am too old. All the doubts and fears that we have about ourselves get really exposed when you start a business. You can do a lot of work on yourself, even through therapy, but as soon as you get married, have kids or have a business, everything's on the table. Like every single worry doubt you ever had about yourself comes really to light and you have to battle them on a pretty regular basis. How did you convince yourself and then convince others this was the best thing for you to do despite fear, and I'm not ready. I love that you had the passion for your grandmother, but you still had to get over yourself. So how did you get over yourself?

Tea: 10:02

I have to get over myself every single day. Like yesterday, I had this problem pop up and I'm like, oh my God. Like it just came outta left field. And today I feel fine about it like this. I had some time to process. I feel very confident and I think it's the practice that makes me confident. I also think you're never ready. The journey makes you ready. All you do as an entrepreneur and just in life, if you're growing, if you're focused on growth, is learning more about yourself and solving problems as they pop up. You never know how to solve a problem until you solve it wrong or until you're faced with it. You can think about it and you can prepare. And I had those plans for years, but I have chosen to trust myself. Again and again, it doesn't come naturally. My first instinct is oh, it's all about to come crashing down, i'm about to fail. But then I choose to trust myself and I remind myself of all of the times that I have succeeded when I was up against the odds and how I am still alive. Like I've built all of this despite it all. I choose myself. I try to do things to take care of myself and things that I love. Like I went to a spa for a day and that was so nice. I was recently traveling for business and whenever I go somewhere I take a few extra days to be a tourist in a new city. I've been doing more creative things like painting and journaling and like being in the artist's mind and letting myself like be in a flow state. Which really helps me rejuvenate after being the logic state of running the business and problem solving. I spend time with my friends. I go out in nature. I'm just really trying to invest in myself as much as I can because the journey is difficult. And it can feel very overwhelming. You can get through it, but you have to choose actively to trust yourself.

Beverly: 12:01

Over and over again. And remind yourself, like you said, I've gotten this far. So it can get me farther. I talk a lot about how confidence isn't necessarily innate, but it's something that you build and it comes through trusting yourself and making those choices every single day to trust that you can handle this problem. There's not much now at 50 that I could experience. But even for yourself, I mean you probably went through COVID, there's a lot of things that we've all been through now that have fortified you and made you feel a little bit more confident in your decision making abilities and problem solving abilities. I really love'cause I'm a creative soul. The idea that you use creative activities to balance the logic and the innovation side and that, I don't always think of mechanical engineers as creative. I think about engineers, I think of very logical, very practical, very systems focused. The fact that you're creative helps you be a better innovator and like doing those kinds of things can really be good for your brain. They can be good for your ideas, they can be good for so many things. So I think that's awesome that you're doing both like that kind of stuff.

Tea: 13:06

Thank you. They absolutely are. And I wanna say that we're all creative. I've just been reading this book and I'm in chapter two, so I'm not far along, but it's called The Artist's Way. And Doechii, one of my favorite artists, said that she read it and it like helped her. So I've been reading it and it's like a tool book. It helps you be more artistic and one of the first things that they say in the opening is that everybody's an artist. Everybody's creative. As a child you're creative, you're just exploring and you're in this flow state, and then you start to learn, oh, this means this. If I do this, then this. And then you get into the logic state. So everyone innately has this creative side to them. And I think it's helped me feel better and able to solve these problems. I recommend that everybody read it and I'll spoil the first two things for you that I've learned and I'm just at the beginning of the book. The first thing is morning pages in which you write three pages of anything in the morning. And the idea of writing three pages to be in the flow state, is to not criticize you. So that's practice every day of being in the flow state. And the second one is the artist's date in which you alone do something for two hours every week. That's like your date with yourself in the artist. I bought a blank notebook and crayons and I'm just like coloring and nobody's ever gonna look at it'cause it's all bad, but I'm in the flow state and so I'm practicing being in flow state. Which is, it's been really helpful for me and it frees up my mind because I'm not constantly in that logic state. I get to escape it.

Beverly: 15:56

It's so interesting. I've been having a lot of these conversations lately with other founders. And even just creative souls that I've talked about. Art for me is like a little bit challenging as a child. I loved to create. I won awards for some of my art, my posters were in like stores because of it. I do this for a living now though, so none of my art is for me, the art is for the client and it gets criticized all the time. So it's not that it's like a negative criticism, but there's always feedback. It's like I create a logo and the logo gets feedback and then I tweak it and the logo gets feedback and I tweak it or I write something and it gets tweaked. And it's never art for me. It's art for everyone else. To create solely for myself is interesting. I had signed up for a charcoal drawing class a couple years ago, and when I was in the class I wanted just to draw for myself. I wasn't looking to be the best, I wasn't looking for any of that stuff. I didn't wanna be like the best artist of the class. There was no competition or perfectionism that I was trying to do. I just wanted to create. And unfortunately, like week two, she was like, oh, we're gonna have a critique on week eight. And I was like, I'm out. Oh yeah, that's different. And I had said I can handle criticism, don't get me wrong, I handle it all day long. And I think that art is very subjective and what I think is beautiful. Other people cannot think I totally get it. And there are certain rules of arts, and I get that too. There's design rules. I live in that world. I don't wanna be critiqued. And she said it's part of the exercise. And I was like, then I'm not gonna continue. But what was really beautiful is there was an exercise day that we did where we had I think it was like 16 people in the class. And every person drew for three to five minutes. We drew something, and then we passed it to the person next to us. And every two to three minutes we added to that particular piece of artwork. And everybody's style was so different. So I drew flowers. Somebody else drew like Pac-Man, and like a video game style. Somebody drew like the seen eye with the pyramid. Every single one was very different and you had to add in that style, but you only had three to five minutes to add your element to it. So there wasn't a lot of time to overthink or to ques your ideas. It was like flow. And then every three to five minutes we're moving it. And at the end we had these beautiful pieces of artwork that we had collectively created. So not only was it mine, it was ours. So it freed me to think in a whole different level, Tea. And it was probably the most powerful thing I've ever done creatively. And I came home so excited and oh my gosh, I have all these ideas. It's been a couple years, but I would love more of that because it was so cool.

Tea: 18:28

That sounds like a really fun experience. Especially getting to be in other people's styles.

Beverly: 18:33

I love the idea of like free flow, whatever comes for three minute or for three pages and see what comes of it.'cause you might solve some problem you have personally or business wise.

Tea: 18:44

I solved several problems. Almost every time I write something down, I come to a decision and I'm like, all right.'Cause I got everything out and I feel like I'm processing things too quickly sometimes. I'm about to get tested for a ADHD and we're gonna figure out if that's what's going on there. Or what it is. But when I write something by hand, I have to slow down my thinking and my handwriting's horrible.'cause I'm still writing too fast. But I'm slowing my thought process and really letting myself move through it. And that helps too.

Beverly: 19:14

Oh, that's so good.'cause I am the same way. Like I sometimes think faster than I need to. Sometimes I'll make a checklist or I'll try to break it up so it's smaller pieces, but that free flow might solve the issue as well,'cause you're slowing. And I have horrible handwriting too. And I love even the idea of getting out of your head. One thing that we do with our clients is we spend 90 minutes. To two hours doing a dump of everything they've done, where they've been, where they are, where they wanna go, the challenges they have as it relates to their business and marketing, and just getting that all out of your head. And then we produce a blueprint that has all that information, but in a really pretty packaged and story with your best four to six next steps based on your vision. Sometimes when you have it so clear, it now allows you to think about other problems or other things that could be the best innovation you've had for your business. So I love this so much. It's so good. I just think I more of us should do more of it. I do journal a lot. I do write a lot, but I don't just give myself like three pages.

Tea: 20:14

I've learned a lot about myself and I don't even do it every morning.'cause I'm running late. That's one of my things might be an A DHD thing. I'm going to get tested tomorrow morning. It's so interesting the way that a DH ADHD has been studied and the way that we're socialized as children, that so many women are diagnosed so, so late, like they don't understand that they have a DHD because they're performing at a high level and they're not like outwardly overactive. It just presents differently

Beverly: 20:41

the only reason why I got tested was they tested my son and in the testing I was like, oh. Wait, that's that a minute. me. I do that too. I struggle with that too. And I struggle with that too. Like you said, it presents differently. But high performing women, a lot of us have that. And it wasn't until, I hit perimenopause when the hormones really kicked in, that I felt extremely overwhelmed by everything and my brain and how it was working.

Tea: 21:04

I just think about the future of medicine and genetic testing and like you were talking about how hormones affected you. We are really close to when genetic testing can be affordable enough that we can all have it early in life. And then start to supplement with foods for these deficiencies and be able to handle some of these things in a more holistic way.

Beverly: 21:27

I have a client of mine who is a holistic naturopathic doctor for animals, but she studied medicine, holistic medicine as, for humans first and then deviated from that. And I was going through a lot of stuff. I was momming at 40. My youngest is 10, so at 40 I had a baby. And you add in the changes in hormones, you add in the changes of not sleeping, you add in all those things. It was like a perfect storm, Tea. But she kept telling me to eat a lot of butter because it helps the brain and your memory. She was telling me a lot of things that I did because I was really like struggling. But you're right, I think we're at this point now where we have so many more tools in science and a lot of testing.

Tea: 22:06

Also the internet of things and the sharing of information. We are in an age where information is not so siloed. We can learn what other countries have been doing for decades and how they manage this one thing, and then how this country manages this one thing, and it's just so amazing and I love that we live in a time where we can learn from each other.

Beverly: 22:28

I think that's one of the reasons why I was open to even being diagnosed with A DHD was because of TikTok and people talking about it. I was like, okay, maybe this is a real thing, maybe it is really happening to women. It wasn't until then hearing other people's kind of stories that I was validated in my experience to go, okay, maybe I need to go do that thing. But these are all things that can affect us from a business perspective. I tell my son who has a DHD, it's a superpower.

Tea: 22:53

I can predict the future. I can't, but like I know what is very probable to happen. It's a fun little superpower and then you just have to back into, because a million steps ahead, now I have to slow down and do this next really boring step. That's where I struggle, with the operation side of it, I'm really good at it. I understand it. I can build really strong systems, but I find it so boring that I just can't wait until I can hire an operator. But we're all doing things When you're a business owner that. You're not the strongest at, and that you're not the best at. And you start to backfill the positions that you don't love and you're not good at as you grow. And building my team has just been so amazing. If I do it well and I do it for long enough I'll be able to bring someone in who loves building systems. And that'll be like the next hire we bring on, we're not ready for'em yet. But soon we'll have that person whose brain loves doing those kind of tasks.

Beverly: 23:54

I am a systems person. I love a good system. And that's one of the benefits I give to my clients is I have a really good marketing system. It's simple. There's repurposing, there's constraints so that you don't feel so overwhelmed. It's one of my superpowers for sure. And I think you can't scale without systems. No, the only way you can grow is if you have systems. So if you are a solopreneur and you wanna grow, you need a system to be able, I call it first system was to clone me. So if I didn't. Document every single thing I do. There's no way I could hire somebody to do any of what I did because I wouldn't know what I did. So you have to start somewhere Loom, everything. There's a tech called loom.com. Go to Loom. You can loom it, it records your laptop. You can talk into the computer and tell it what you're doing. You can say oh, okay. First I go to my email, I check my email, I do this, I put these kinds of things here. Then I go into this, my project management tool, and I do this. And you can just start going through every single step as you do them. Do it when you're doing it and you can record and stop and then it gives you a transcript. The transcript you can plop into chat, GPT and say, create a step by step SOP for this particular thing. Now you have a video. Now you have a written. That is the best place you can start to create systems for yourself. It's exactly what you do.

Tea: 25:08

Write down a list of what you do and then you can start to categorize it and absolutely the systems you will fall to your systems. You don't rise to your ideas, you fall to your systems. Absolutely.

Beverly: 25:19

So look back at when you first started and you were like in your college situation and now how has your brand evolved? What were you then versus now and what was the process of creating the brand for you?

Tea: 25:32

So my first logo was lopsided and Calibri fonts, and I printed that on gloves and then I got money and I was able to hire people who made a good brand. But from the beginning I knew like our core pillars, that's the first thing you gotta do, is just what is this business? What does it do? Is it stand for mission, vision, values? Affordable healthcare is number one and always was. And then it's just like, how do you make people feel safe? How do you make people feel cared for? And so then we started thinking we need to make educational content. And obviously we wanna do more than just sell gloves. We wanna provide more value to the community. So the brand has the logos change, the colors change, but we've always had this mission of creating affordable healthcare and effective healthcare. I grew up in Shelbyville, Tennessee, which is a tiny little town. And I remember people around me and myself like, when you have to go to the doctor, it's worrisome. And it's mainly because of how expensive it is. And when you buy something, you're price conscious. And it's, oh, do I really need this? This is expensive. When you're in pain, you just need to buy something. you feel like you just wanna buy something immediately. And it doesn't always work the way that it needs to work because these corporations are focused on money and they're not focused on making people feel better long term, holistically. So I wanted something that works and that people can afford. And that's the two things. And how do we make that happen? Affordable, effective healthcare, and. I love that I just get to innovate and make new things and I listen to my customers and I make new versions. And we've got some exciting things in the works and that we'll be launching soon based on some feedback that we've gotten from our customers. Just improving the product and keeping it affordable and making things as good as we can. And that makes you feel good when you go to work every day and you're not like making a buck to make a buck. You're providing a service that is really helping people and you're making money because it's a business, but you're not like squeezing every dime you can out of the consumer. Our product is very affordable. I sell a pair of gloves for 54 95 and I sell single gloves because people were asking for'em for 29 95. I feel really good about what I do and it's because at the beginning we set our core values in something that I feel good about doing every day.

Beverly: 28:06

When you have a solid foundation, when you build your brand and a solid foundation of core values and mission and vision and who you are, your brand will speak to that and you won't have to go back 17 times and try to figure it out. That foundation is so important. You wouldn't build a mansion on jenga blocks like that would not work. If you envision this big, bold goal, don't build it on Jenga blocks. Build it on something that actually matters so that your legacy is intact at the end of the day. And that speaks more to your authenticity and your alignment, and it's just so much easier to be yourself and to show up when you build it that way. Kudos to you, even though you were young, understanding how important that was. So many people forget that part. And it's not on purpose. I forgot it Tea, and I know marketing. But my issue was this, I didn't build a business because I wanted to be a business owner. I was accidental entrepreneur. My husband's active duty army. And so when I married him, I had to take my show on the road and I had to figure out how to make money a living with my career doing this thing that I loved doing it remotely in 2011, 2012 when remote wasn't really a thing. And I let my clients create my business versus my mission and my why. And I worked out because of that too. I was doing things I wasn't even supposed to be doing. It can get out of control really quick if you aren't intentional.

Tea: 29:32

It can get outta control really quick because when I was making medflex, I was talking to therapists and hand therapists and OTs and PTs and I had people say this isn't good enough. It needs to also do this and it needs to do this, and they already do this. Why don't you do this? And I'm like, oh man, I feel bad after talking to her, but I'm sticking to my guts because this is doing this for this reason. And there are people who need this for this reason. And so there's always people that are gonna try to change things and you should listen to them and you should think about it. It's important to listen to people and to think about what they've said. But you have to make those decisions. And sometimes it feels like a hard decision to trust yourself and move in your own direction. But I feel trust yourself in your own direction rooted.

Beverly: 30:19

It's easier if you're rooted in your mission and vision to make those decisions. And if you don't have that foundation or that rooting it's really hard. It's easier to get swayed away from what's best for. Yeah.

Tea: 30:31

So I knew that was the right thing to do because when I had my first engineering job, I worked at United Technologies Aerospace Systems and we played made airplane landing gear and it was one of the best jobs I've ever had. And my boss was awesome and he invested in me and just let me learn a bunch of new things. And I worked in several different areas of the company because I was doing such a good job that I would run out of work. And then it's who else needs help? And I'd help them, but I also sometimes wouldn't have a lot to do.'cause I was an intern and I just went on the company website and I'm like, what's going on here? I knew that whole thing front to back. I studied the org chart. I knew who reported to who, and I started to understand how corporations are built and how they work at a large scale. And one of the things that stood out to me. Is one of the easiest things to find was like the mission and the vision and the values. And as someone that's new in the company and people who have been there forever, when you go onto the internal site. Mission and vision and values. And so I understood early this is what shapes the company. So when I started ATS, I knew I start with the mission and I start with the vision and our values. And then when people come in, I can tell them, here's what we're doing. And when I talk to my customers, I know exactly what we're doing. So when you're starting your business, and if you don't have it yet, I think one of the most important things you can do, like you said, is building that solid foundation upon which you make your decisions.

Beverly: 32:01

That's an incredible insight, Tea. And if you're listening right now and this resonated with you, like you need to get back to your why back to your purpose. Back to that, the passion, the reason why you're doing the thing you're doing, I'd love for you to let us know in the reviews Hey, this is important. I need to do this work. Let us know because it's important that you find value in what we're talking about on this podcast. We don't just do this because, it's fun. Don't get me wrong. I love meeting people like that, but we do because we wanna help you. And when you tell us in the reviews and you share it, and you talk about us and tag us, it tells us that it's resonating for you. And maybe there's some little nugget of goodness there, some magic that could help you get clearer and be able to take that next step for your business. That could get you to a whole new level of awareness of clients. All kinds of things in our brand spark experience. All we do is help you with your clarity. That's the foundation. So if you need extra help, we're here for that too. You don't have to do it alone.'cause sometimes when you're in the weeds, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. We're here to help you also get past some of that and ask you the right questions to get the clarity that you need. Hey there, you've just finished part one of the episode. How are you feeling? Excited, inspired, but we're just getting started. Next Thursday we're dropping part two, and you won't wanna miss it. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, so you'll be the first to know when it goes live. Until then, take a breather, let those ideas simmer, and we'll see you next week.