Slowing Down to Speed Up with Joshua Kitching

Hello, welcome, dear listeners, thanks for being here welcome to the speaking flow podcast where we dive into unique strategies to help you and your team achieve maximum potential and flow even during high stakes situations. Today I have an amazing leader, father founder, Josh Kitchen. He is the owner of Bay Area piping and equipment.

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Melinda Lee: They are a piping and prefab company in the Bay Area. They have an amazing team family owned family run of experts. Hi, Josh, welcome thanks for being here.

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Joshua Kitching: Good morning. How are you doing.

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Melinda Lee: I am so glad we could jump into the conversation today about how communication pitching, building strategic relationships has supported you at Bay area piping and equipment. But before we dive into that, I would love for you to share with the audience what you do, what makes you passionate about what you do.

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Joshua Kitching: Absolutely so. We are a local 38 signatory contractor here in San Francisco. We are family owned and operated company. As you mentioned, we do piping and plumbing prefabrication here in our shop?

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Joshua Kitching: That's

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Joshua Kitching: that we sell to other customers so customers that either don't have a fabrication shop or don't have a steady flow of work for fabrication.

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Joshua Kitching: and can't keep a crew maintained, or even larger companies that either cannot

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Joshua Kitching: maintain the pace that they need.

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Joshua Kitching: or that need to work with a small business to accomplish their goals and the goals for the projects.

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Melinda Lee: I mean, that's rare, especially in the Bay area. Are you the one of the few only ones that.

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Joshua Kitching: We are. We know we're the only ones in San Francisco that we know about that step, build fabrication, and sell it to other people.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, that's wonderful. And do you have some exciting projects coming up.

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Joshua Kitching: We do so we're just wrapping up. We believe the last phase at the Biosolids project.

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Joshua Kitching: We've done work for all. 5 mechanical contractors that have been on site have

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Joshua Kitching: taken some kind of prefabrication from us, and we just received last week our 1st fabrication request from one of the mechanical contractors at the Ucsf. Parnassus project, which is exciting. It's

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Joshua Kitching: for pipe sleeves, which is one of the

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Joshua Kitching: easier parts of what we do for for fabrication. But it's how we started at the Biosolids. We were built pipe sleeves for contractors for 6 months straight to get

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Joshua Kitching: the.

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Joshua Kitching: So they understood what we could do and get comfortable with working with us with an easy product, and then it rolled into 2 years of fabrication. So we're very excited about starting all over again at the next project.

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Melinda Lee: Doing it all over again, and I'm excited for you, and I know you deeply. I know you well. We've been working together for a while, and so I'm I am just wishing you and your team much success. I know that you are just rock stars and experts at what you do. And so anybody that is needing the piping and prefab just reach out to josh. But you know this company you built.

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Melinda Lee: It's successful. It hasn't always been like that. So I'm curious with regard to communication, what that was like for you.

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Melinda Lee: as you as you continue to develop in your journey like, let's start from the you know, back, back, way back, before you and I work together.

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Joshua Kitching: Okay, absolutely. So I would say 2 ways. One, a family owned business is hard internally.

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Joshua Kitching: and then you have customers and out of network, right? That you're you're dealing with people that are relying on you to be the subject matter expert. So my background, we, I grew up in the Bay Area. I was in 4 H. 9 years, right? And 4 H. You learn from 9 years old. You're giving presentations. You're you're doing everything in front of people and speaking in front of people. And it's leadership conferences. You do all these things. And as

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Joshua Kitching: members of 4 H. You, if you want to, you can become officers, and you actually get up to. If you're the president, you're running the entire meeting when the monthly meeting happens. So that's all the things I did growing up and was comfortable. Standing in front of people, joined the military for a little while, became a squad leader ran, you know, some awesome people all around the world, and

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Joshua Kitching: didn't have any problems speaking in front of them or or working in front of them, and then got out and got into the trade with the helmets. The hard hats program that they have to help veterans get into the trades

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Joshua Kitching: went through the apprenticeship became a job site foreman standing and talking safety meetings, briefings. What we're doing for the day. Still, it was easy. I loved it.

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Joshua Kitching: No problem got higher up started running some larger projects. And the same thing. I'd be standing in front of 2530 people from my crew saying, hey, this is what we're gonna do. This is how we're gonna execute. This is this is what we do. And it was great. We had great people, great crews, and then comes

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Joshua Kitching: bay area, pipe and equipment.

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Melinda Lee: Which.

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Joshua Kitching: Does brings different stresses.

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Melinda Lee: To, the.

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Joshua Kitching: My boss told me when I became a foreman. Don't worry.

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Joshua Kitching: Everything that you think is gonna be your stress isn't.

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Melinda Lee: And you'd get hit with.

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Joshua Kitching: The oh, this guy doesn't get along with this guy or this guy, doesn't you know, whatever it's not what you think it is, and it's the same. When you get into business for yourself, you have

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Joshua Kitching: new obstacles.

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Joshua Kitching: Not. How am I gonna get the work? If you're when we're good. We've proven that we're good and work comes in. It's you know. How do you keep the lights on? How do you do you know different

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Joshua Kitching: different difficulties that don't even cross your mind when you don't know.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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Joshua Kitching: And that stress, I think, just starts building up and inside of people. And it did inside of me.

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Joshua Kitching: To where I almost started questioning myself, am I really

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Joshua Kitching: the the guy to do this?

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Melinda Lee: And so.

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Joshua Kitching: It did become

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Joshua Kitching: harder to talk about at times. And that's when I reached out to Melinda to start working, to.

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Joshua Kitching: to do, to get better. We always gotta learn

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Joshua Kitching: And that's what we're doing. We've we've been working together for. We started on an individual some some classes or some some working through

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Joshua Kitching: that really slowed things down for me, and just remind you that you do know

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Joshua Kitching: what needs to happen. And it gives you, you know, you get a different approach and different ideas. And it's

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Joshua Kitching: I think it's just part of continuing to grow and learn as a leader that helps.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we are all we've all been there when things are going wrong.

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Melinda Lee: Things are not what they seem like, you said, and we can go easily, go down the path of, can I do this and question ourselves on all the doubt?

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Melinda Lee: And and then that impacts our communication.

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Melinda Lee: Because when we start to question ourselves, did it impact the way you're communicating.

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Joshua Kitching: Yes, it absolutely did it. It's it didn't hit me hard until I did a. I was invited to to speak in a zoom right when we weren't meeting in person. We we went to speak in a zoom, and it was the first.st I've never in it, partially

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Joshua Kitching: with what you learned to working with Linda is is the preparation. I wasn't prepared properly, not for the subject that we were talking about.

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Joshua Kitching: but I had never presented in zoom. I had never been made a presenter. So they're like they, you know, the the 1st person went through their stuff. And they're like, all right, we're gonna have Josh talk about this. And and it was great. And they clicked it over to me and all 20 something people that were in there had cameras off right. It was just they were background noise, which I'm you know, guilty of as well when you're in something that you just need to get done.

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Joshua Kitching: But then everything else was silent. There were no microphones on. I was sitting in a in my room, and the only thing that I could hear was my heartbeat going in my ears. It was just

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Joshua Kitching: fumbling through, or at least felt like I was fumbling through what had to happen, and I was like, what is going on. This is not me.

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Joshua Kitching: So it is just that level of stress. I think.

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Joshua Kitching: that can push you there. And it just you don't have control of that. You just it just hits you. And all of a sudden you're like, Oh, okay, how do I not let that hit me again?

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Joshua Kitching: And those are all things that you can work through

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Joshua Kitching: that are that are huge and easy. Once you do them, once you get them pointed out or learn different techniques to prepare for that stuff. It's it's amazing.

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Melinda Lee: So what are what are the 3 favorite techniques that you've learned since working.

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Joshua Kitching: We learn to take a breath.

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Joshua Kitching: Yeah, will you take a breath with me? Or if you take a breath in the mirror with yourself and just get back to center. Know. Hey, I'm here. I can do this.

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Joshua Kitching: Know that you are. You work on that. You know that you are good enough.

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Joshua Kitching: right? You are good enough.

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Joshua Kitching: And then the the key. How the one I love is I don't know what I'm gonna say, but it's gonna be great.

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Joshua Kitching: And that's like us, an amazing

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Joshua Kitching: little thing to kick you in and get you inspired right before you go up and take that microphone.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, did you do that today?

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Joshua Kitching: I did. I did it all my drive in today.

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Joshua Kitching: Yeah, and laughing when I said it because of the classes we. So we we started like. So we started with the individual. And then there's also classes with other people that are

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Joshua Kitching: in all types of backgrounds for companies. And there's from different

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Joshua Kitching: what I want to say. I'm calling. It trades from the construction, but different jobs, right? It's not just, hey, this isn't. We have room full of Ceos. This isn't a peer group. This is people that just feel that they can improve on their speaking, and the friendships that come out of that and everything with these groups and the support and being, I know I'll get out of here. And I'll text our group tonight and be like, I did the podcast right because it was a goal we set last year. So it's it's just the whole

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Joshua Kitching: group background people that are there cheering for you, and it makes a difference.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah. Oh, thank you.

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Joshua Kitching: There's yeah.

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Melinda Lee: Beginning with the pause. Right? Get recentering. What I heard you say is that was really important for you to recenter. Just get grounded into ourselves, because sometimes our minds are all over the place, and so that one breath to recenter. And then, once you could do that, then you're like, remind ourselves, I am good enough. I am here for a reason I do matter. And then, as you're speaking.

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Melinda Lee: remind yourself also, whatever I say is going to be great

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Melinda Lee: like believing that you're good enough, and whatever you say is, gonna be great and just right, just the way it is right now.

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Melinda Lee: and the more you do that, the more you're going to elevate yourself versus take yourself down just like what we said earlier about the Self doubt going down that that rabbit hole and so, continuing to see the good continue to see opportunities continuing to set intention that opportunities are coming.

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Melinda Lee: And so I'm curious how all of these techniques, strategies and new mindsets

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Melinda Lee: supported you and Bay area type and equipment.

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Joshua Kitching: So it

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Joshua Kitching: with all the classes, and talking and and slowing down it. I learned that you don't have to fill

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Joshua Kitching: the room with noise. We can go into a meeting

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Joshua Kitching: and wait for whoever we're meeting with.

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Joshua Kitching: to start with questions or to start with what drew them to spend time with us. They've already invested in, hey? I'm gonna set aside 30 min. Why did they set that 30 min and let them do some of the talking first.st

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Melinda Lee: Right? Right? Versus like, okay, here's everything that we could do.

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Joshua Kitching: Correct. Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: Ask questions, right.

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Joshua Kitching: Questions and let them even just talk. Let them start the meeting instead of like, like I have to come in here. I have to say, this is what we can do. This is why you need to use us. We're the best. It doesn't that they've already set that time, and that's something that Lynn and I worked on. We worked on together, was was getting that prepped and saying, Hey, just

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Joshua Kitching: bring it back and let the conversation flow. Speak with that flow back and forth with somebody. It's not always a sales pitch that you have to just put out there.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, wonderful anything else that's good that that led to some good client relationships in our.

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Joshua Kitching: And then and then the follow up. When I got a lot better at following up after those meetings and checking in where before it was like, Oh, they didn't call me, or you know they didn't call us back that. They weren't interested. But the everybody is just as busy as we are right, I think that we're all running around. We're all trying to get things done. And that follow up phone call

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Joshua Kitching: is is a big deal.

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Melinda Lee: What I've noticed lately is setting an intention on my follow up calls. And it's interesting because I set an intention that I'm gonna follow up to continue the relationship. And what? When there's momentum when there's action, the universe, God, whatever you want to believe in, actually starts to bring back things you start to. And it comes back in different places. Actually, what I found.

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Melinda Lee: So open yourself to that opportunity. Do your follow ups and then just notice other opportunities potentially coming in. It may not be the person responding to you, but there's other things that that tend to happen to me. See if that happens for you, Josh, so take a time like a set, focus, time to follow up with people and then sit back, and then opportunities. Other other places come in.

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Melinda Lee: It's pretty phenomenal.

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Joshua Kitching: Yeah.

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Melinda Lee: Yes, I'm glad you're getting better at the follow up like, what was the difference between before following up? And now.

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Joshua Kitching: That was the just the pace I was when we were running, like I said, if I sent something out we didn't get a response. I was like, Oh, they must not have been interested, saying that that self doubt we weren't good enough. They don't.

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Joshua Kitching: And then, okay, that's it. If they need us, they'll reach out to us, and and that's not.

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Joshua Kitching: and that's not, and we know better than that. But.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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Joshua Kitching: With the chaos of you know we we went.

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Melinda Lee: Like.

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Joshua Kitching: Moving spaces, trying to get the next phase, trying to get that next row. Stay in front.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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Joshua Kitching: Didn't right

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Joshua Kitching: time to slow down and be like, hold on. Let's keep that like you said. Let's keep that relationship, even if they don't use us. Let's keep the relationship and let them know that we're here. That's what we're doing a lot better now.

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Melinda Lee: Exactly. Oh, that's great! That's fabulous!

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Melinda Lee: Well, I love what you do, and I love your crew. Tell us. Tell the audience where they could find you, how they could reach out.

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Joshua Kitching: We our website, www.sfba.com. You can schedule meeting. My email and contact are right on the website.

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Joshua Kitching: You can come by the shop. We're down on Underwood in the Bayview. Feel free to stop by.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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Joshua Kitching: We post weekly on Linkedin Instagram. Please follow us. Jump on and comment. We're we're working hard to

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Joshua Kitching: get that up to a good standard, and we have some great people that are helping us so.

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Melinda Lee: That's fabulous. And also, would you like to share with the and we'll put your contact into the show notes? Would you like to share with the audience one final takeaway. What is the golden takeaway that you'd like the audience to remember.

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Joshua Kitching: Let me take a look.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, what would you like?

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Joshua Kitching: It.

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Joshua Kitching: I think it has to do with slowing down figure. Remember to slow down, even dump.

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Joshua Kitching: I don't slow down and work less, but you slow down and do a better quality. I think of what you're doing, and that will be noticed by people you know. Prove

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Joshua Kitching: over and over that you can, and that you are supposed to be where you so.

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Melinda Lee: Oh, yeah, I love that slowing down.

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Melinda Lee: What is my intention for this? And when I'm taking the action, slowing down, having a high quality, and then following up.

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Joshua Kitching: And then follow up absolutely.

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Melinda Lee: Wonderful. Thank you, Josh. I really appreciate you appreciate your insights, and I wish you continued success.

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Melinda Lee: and I trust that whoever's listening to this that they reach out to you and your team for their piping and fabrication needs.

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Melinda Lee: And thank you again. It was very fun.

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Joshua Kitching: That's way easier than I thought. I appreciate it.

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Melinda Lee: Of course. Thank you, Josh. Of course that's what we do.