Life’s Tough, But It Evens Out

In the realm of motivational quotes, one has continually stuck with me: “It’s hard, but it’s fair.” An older football coach used it to fire up his players, but it speaks volumes about life today.

The coach’s son, Toler Jr., eloquently defines the meaning of the phrase:

“It’s about sacrifice. It means that if you work hard, at the end of the day, fairness aligns with your efforts. It’s about investing time and readiness for the opportunities.”

We all think our parents are hard on us growing up.  I recall stories I tell to my own sons of my Dad waking me up on a Saturday morning at 7am, after I was out to late the night before, and ‘making’ me help him with something, like chopping wood or cleaning the garage out.  He didn’t really need my help, he was trying to teach me a lesson about choices.  If I chose to stay out late at night, it was going to suck getting up early to go to school.  He shared with me stories of his father doing the same thing – one night my Dad had gotten home late, so late, he didn’t even go to bed, just started a pot of coffee and waited for my grandfather to get up, figuring that was easier than getting a couple of hours of sleep and then hearing it from my grandfather the rest of the day.

In my role as an HR professional, I witness this every day in the workforce. There are those who consistently dedicate themselves without expecting special treatment. Others will put in the minimum, then expect a cookie. It’s a tough life lesson for those folks. Often, they depart, perceiving unfair treatment, and move between jobs, slowly learning the importance of effort and time investment. In my three decades in HR, genuine hard workers rarely face injustice. Occasionally, undeserving individuals might receive promotions, but the hard workers usually secure the better end of the deal.

As a parent, I hope I can teach my sons this lesson: Life is inherently challenging, but commitment and hard work pave the path to fairness.

The Role of HR as Coaches

There’s an article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker discussing the importance of “Coaching.” Gawande, a writer and surgeon, talked about coaches as not just teachers but as observers, judges, and guides. From the article:

The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). Personal Best. The New Yorker.

In my HR role, I’ve always believed that HR can act as coaches across our organizations. But there’s often pushback, like “You can’t coach me in Marketing, Operations, or Accounting.” Exactly—I’m not here to teach you those things; I hired you for that. Building a coaching culture starts with hiring people open to being coached.

More from the article:

Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components. In sports, coaches focus on mechanics, conditioning, and strategy, and have ways to break each of those down, in turn. The U.C.L.A. basketball coach John Wooden, at the first squad meeting each season, even had his players practice putting their socks on. He demonstrated just how to do it: he carefully rolled each sock over his toes, up his foot, around the heel, and pulled it up snug, then went back to his toes and smoothed out the material along the sock’s length, making sure there were no wrinkles or creases. He had two purposes in doing this. First, wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games. Second, he wanted his players to learn how crucial seemingly trivial details could be. “Details create success” was the creed of a coach who won ten N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championships.

Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). Personal Best. The New Yorker.

In working with adult professionals, coaching isn’t about teaching new stuff but helping them analyze and improve what they already do well. Instead of fixating on weaknesses, HR can help make employees’ strengths even stronger.

Coaching has become popular lately, with various types like leadership or life coaching. But coaching for professionals is less common. I believe in HR professionals acting as more hands-on coaches, working daily to improve skills that directly impact the business, not focusing on personal challenges.

One big challenge for HR transitioning into coaching roles is that many employees lack self-awareness, just like us! A great coach helps someone see things in themselves they didn’t notice before.

If HR can build this self-awareness in organizations, it could lead to some amazing changes.

What does it mean to be a male leader in today’s business world?

This is a complex subject to write about because it’s a hot-button issue for so many. Men still make up 2/3 of Congress. There have only been male US Presidents. Roughly 90% of the Fortune 500 have male CEOs. All that being said, over the past few decades women have made some tremendous strides professionally, and those strides are accelerating.

For every 74 males who receive a college degree today, 100 women receive their degree, and the gap is growing. Men account for 70% of the decline in college enrollment. 50% of women now outearn their male partners. That number was 4% in 1960. Women now hold 50.04% of all jobs in the US (Women in Canada hold 61%). Pay equity is still an issue. In 1980 women were paid 40% less than men. Today that number is 15.5% in some fields, like Software Engineering, pay equity has flipped to favor women over men.

As I said, this is a complex issue because so much work still needs to be done to elevate women. A successful female business owner raised me. When my mother started her business is was rare for women to own businesses. Today over ten million women are business owners.

All of this also doesn’t change the fact that the role of men in work is also drastically changing during this time. Both of these concepts can be true at the same time. The Washington Post recently had an article discussing the issue of these changes to men: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness by Christine Emba. Here are some takeaways from the article:

It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.

Even so, not all of the changes that have led us to this moment are unequivocally positive. And if left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes, in the form of resentment and radicalization.

The truth is that most women still want to have intimate relationships with good men. And even those who don’t still want their sons, brothers, fathers and friends to live good lives.

The old script for masculinity might be on its way out. It’s time we replaced it with something better...

…for all their problems, the strict gender roles of the past did give boys a script for how to be a man…People need codes for how to be human. And when those aren’t easily found, they’ll take whatever is offered, no matter what else is attached.

What is a good definition of new masculinity?

The phrase “toxic masculinity” gets thrown around too much in today’s world. Yes, there are traits of men that are historically toxic. But it’s also a mind-f*ck we are throwing on heterosexual young men who still hold the majority of roles in our society as men. Don’t act like a “man,” but women are only attracted to you if you act like a “man.”

More from the Washington Post article:

This is especially compelling in a moment when many young men feel their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don’t feel part of. For young men in particular, the assumption of a world built to serve their sex doesn’t align with their lived experience, where girls out-achieve them from pre-K to post-graduate studies and “men are trash” is an acceptable joke...

I’m convinced that men are in a crisis. And I strongly suspect that ending it will require a positive vision of what masculinity entails that is particular — that is, neither neutral nor interchangeable with femininity. Still, I find myself reluctant to fully articulate one. There’s a reason a lot of the writing on the crisis in masculinity ends at the diagnosis stage…

“Where I think this conversation has come off the tracks is where being a man is essentially trying to ignore all masculinity and act more like a woman. And even some women who say that — they don’t want to have sex with those guys. They may believe they’re right, and think it’s a good narrative, but they don’t want to partner with them.”

I, a heterosexual woman, cringed in recognition.

“And so men should think, ‘I want to take advantage of my maleness. I want to be aggressive, I want to set goals, go hard at it. I want to be physically really strong. I want to take care of myself.’”

Galloway leaned into the screen. “My view is that, for masculinity, a decent place to start is garnering the skills and strength that you can advocate for and protect others with. If you’re really strong and smart, you will garner enough power, influence, and kindness to begin protecting others. That is it. Full stop. Real men protect other people.”

I like Galloway’s definition of “real men”! Real men protect others because it positively shapes behavior. It’s easy for men to follow.

Many people don’t see this as a crisis. Being a dad of three young men, I try to see the trends before it’s too late. A friend of mine is keen on saying “Idle men are bad business for America.” We are heading down that slippery slope.

Society has gotten comfortable in not supporting men. The view is women need support, but men have had such a historical headstart they don’t need support. All of our young people, regardless of gender, need our support. We should not diminish any of them and their potential in our societal structures. The world needs men who are masculine and care for others as much as the world needs strong, feminine women. These are not competing forces. They should be complimenting forces.

I tried not to make this a gender issue, but it’s complex. In our world today it’s not just male and female anymore. My intent for writing this was to share an insightful article by a really good writer, Christine Emba. I encourage you to read the piece as it goes much deeper than the few pieces I shared here. In the end, we are quickly going down a path that ignores men. While men still hold so much power, we can see a horizon where that won’t be the case. My hope is that women will do a much better job in the next century in holding that power than men did previously.

I identify as Age-fluid!

I would love to take credit for coming up with “Age-fluid,” but I’m stealing it from Chip Conley, who I saw speak at Transform a few weeks back. Chip was talking about age diversity and how only 14% of the F500 actually measure age diversity and how this is becoming a major issue in corporate America.

Now, if you would talk to my wife, she would tell you I’ve identified as “age-fluid” most of my life. I’m 53, but my humor is mostly that of a 12-year-old boy! Also, I refuse to believe that I still can’t do most of the stuff I could 20 years ago. While my body feels like it’s 80 some days, I still think I hang on the court with folks half my age.

For hundreds of years, we’ve known of this phenomenon where you have a mental age and a physical age. I’ve already said my “mental” age is way lower than my physical age, but it’s important to truly understand the impact this has on the diversity of our organizations. Because we also see the opposite. I’ve met many young people who were wise beyond their years and seemed to have an “old soul.”

Most organizations and hiring managers are biased toward those of a higher age. I don’t think that is shocking to anyone. Old people are still the ones we can be biased against, and no one thinks it’s wrong. We make jokes in meetings about someone’s advanced age all the time, and no one thinks anything of it. But in reality, this is no difference from someone making an old person’s joke than if they were making a similar joke against someone’s gender or ethnicity.

I actually love the concept of being Age-fluid.

If someone in our society can be gender-fluid and decide from day to day which gender they believe they are, then I can decide what age I believe I am. I mean there are advantages to every age. Being young is cool, but it also sucks because you don’t know what you don’t know. Being old can suck physically, but usually you’re also more confident in where you’re at in life. You know who you are and you’ve come to grips with it. Being a child is magical, but you don’t understand that.

Today I feel like I’m 36.

Why 36?

Hmmm…well, at 36, you can still feel great physically, but you also have enough time on this rock to have a bit of learning. I won’t call it wisdom, but you’ve made enough mistakes to mostly know how not to make them again. Doesn’t mean you won’t, but you know the path you’re going down and how it will most likely end.

At 36, you aren’t looking at the end yet. You also aren’t looking back at the “good old days.” You feel like you still have more life ahead of you, than behind you, and you’re still young enough to truly feel like you haven’t written the script for your life yet. You still have promise, and you’ve made a bunch of progress on where you want to go.

Yeah, today, I’m 36. I’m also about 12 for a few seconds at at time, depending on what memes my other 12-year-old friends are sending me!

What age do you want to identify as today and why? Hit me in the comments.

Welcome to the age of average

It seems like I keep having these Matrix-like experiences where I see the same thing repeatedly. The world has turned into a meme of an average housewife wearing their Lululemon crossbody fanny pack, Veja sneakers, or Ons (you pick), carrying your Stanley thermo cup, and driving your white SUV that looks like every other SUV.

We can make fun of this image because of how accurate it is. But really, we’ve all turned into this. My buddy KD makes fun of me for my propensity to buy shoes and clothes targeted to me on Instagram before he has the chance to buy them. IG knows if they target me, I’ll buy, and share with KD, who will cherry-pick the best buys after I try them!

If you look at sites like Pinterest, every kitchen looks the same. White cabinets, barn wood floors, and stainless steel appliances. The bedrooms all look the same. The bathrooms all look the same. Our houses, our vehicles, and our clothes all look the same. We have this desire to look like everyone else in every aspect of our lives. I’m no different.

This also extends to our professional lives.

I’ve been saying this for years, but employment branding professionals and agencies are basically just reproducing more of the same. There is very little differentiation from one employment brand to the next. Oh wait, you mean you are also an employer of choice?! How can that be!? You have great benefits, care about your employees, and are building an inclusive culture that values differences! As long as those differences match our differences, making us all the same.

I used to think the only unique employment brands were unicorn companies (Google, Tesla, etc.), but even those brands are all the same now.

We basically offer the same benefits, same work environment, same compensation, and same jobs. The only thing that actually might be unique is some micro-cultures hidden within the broader corporate culture, which is basically the same as almost every other culture. We offer average jobs, in average companies, for ordinary people. Yes, your people are ordinary because that’s exactly what you recruit. You definitely don’t recruit out-of-the-ordinary people. They would never make it through your hiring process!

By the way, I don’t have a problem with ordinary and average. We went through an entire generation who is desperate to think they’re unique butterflies, but by all of them being unique butterflies, it made them all average and ordinary. In the corporate world, we love the ordinary, and we hate outliers.

Generative AI will compound this issue, not make it better. ChatPGT and the like will push us further down the average and ordinary rabbit hole. Creatives will use AI to do their creative work, which will create the same thing repeatedly but faster. AI will learn what we like and produce more of it but in different colors and flavors. Original thought will become mass-produced thought.

How do we get out of the age of average?

Embrace the weirdos. Listen to the crazy ideas and actually try some of them. Tell your candidates and employees the truth. No, the real truth. Be willing to take some criticism over the stuff you tried that failed. As an employer, you are gaining nothing by being like everyone else. Be someone no one is. Some will hate you. Some will love you. Most won’t pay attention. Your goal as an employer isn’t to attract everyone. It’s only to attract the few folks who you truly want and who want you in return.

Does their crazy match your crazy?

We work so hard to try and hide our crazy. Then we are shocked when someone opts out of working for us and turns over. The best work cultures filter in and out with the same ferocity. If you welcome everyone into your work you’ll also be showing a lot of people the door at some point.

We Didn’t Train These Kids, Now We’re Going to Pay the Price!

Which kids? The GenZ’s? Nope, we didn’t train the Millennials! And now we’ll deal with the aftermath of a decade of undertraining and almost no development of an entire generation.

You see, for the past decade, money was basically free. Zero interest rates, and we all went around spending and hiring like the party was never going to end. Because of all this free money, no one really took the time to ensure anyone knew what they were doing. Lose $100M?! Oh well, here’s some more. Lose it faster next time!

You would think with all that free money, we could have over-trained the kids, but instead, we just paid them more and bought them dairy-free ice cream and cool hoodies. “Their training will be this startup experience, and it’s better than any formal training they’ll ever get.” In some ways, that is very true. In other ways, that’s the biggest lie we sold in the past decade.

While real-world experience is part of a great training program, free money is not. We’ve grown an entire generation of “leaders” who lack financial discipline. Most have no idea how to run a company that actually makes more revenue than it spends. This isn’t how the world runs long-term. You see, there’s this little thing successful companies call Net Income, which basically is the positive money you make from your revenue after you pay all your bills and taxes. I know. I know. All these old-school terms are boring and confusing! Profit. Revenue. Net Income. Taxes. Interest Rates.

Have you wondered why all these companies are bringing people back to the office?

No, it’s not because these bosses are old and hate you. Well, they might be old and hate you, but that’s not the reason!

It’s because the vast majority of you aren’t actually working hard enough. “Hard enough” is another old-school phrase meaning you’re work level and your pay level aren’t matching up. The old folks who sign the checks and all their financial data are telling them they need fewer of you working at home if you keep sucking.

By the way, you are right. The old folks failed you. They didn’t train you to be a productive worker. They didn’t train you to lead high-producing, effective teams. They didn’t train you to be fiscally responsible with corporate resources. Blame them if you want. They should own that.

Now they are leaving the workforce right at the beginning of the second recession you’ll see in your lifetime. The first one was when you were in college or just entering the workforce, and honestly, you acted all dramatic about how that impacted you, but it turned out pretty well for you. You entered the workforce and had a magical ten-year run where your salary and benefits seemed like monopoly money as compared to your parent’s first ten years in the workforce. Congratulations! It was an awesome time to be alive!

Now, you’ll be in charge. The GenXers are too few to take over. We have to rely on the Millennials to run the show, for the most part. It’s going to be a really hard lesson. It’s going to be painful for a lot of people. Recessions suck when you’re in the middle. That’s where the cuts hurt the worse. The folks on the upper side will weather the storm. The folks in the lower half will scrap by like they always do. They are used to life being hard. They were born into the hard, you are just visiting.

The best organizations and c-suites will double down quickly on training and educating their new leaders. Hard skills and soft skills, but mostly hard skills. We will mourn the layoff losses as unfair, but within a few years, we’ll come to realize that it was just the payoff of not understanding how to run our business. Call it a bad leader tax. Businesses weren’t meant to run on free money. Money has value, and those investing in your business expect a return in profit and net income, eventually, not user growth.

I’m not punching down on Millennials. They are a product of a decade of free money, and now we’ll deal with the aftermath. They just are going to be the ones responsible for cleaning up the mess.

How Can Organizations Succeed In a Multi-Channel Work Environment?

I’m keynoting the HRM Tech Asia conference in 2023, and as part of that, HRM Magazine did an interview with me for their Aug/Sept Magazine. The idea is we all want to offer flexibility. Our employees and candidates are demanding flexibility, but building a solid culture across all of these work environments is very complex!

Here’s some of what I had to say:

You can read the full article by clicking here!

What’s Your Beauty Premium at Your Remote Job?

If you know me, you know I love talking about beauty and attractiveness and the impact it has on work! We like to think that how you look has nothing to do with how you perform. Ugly people are told that from birth! “It doesn’t matter how you look, Timmy. You can still be great!”

Academically, that actually does prove out very well, in study after study. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite, and it might be the biggest thing no one talks about at work. This week the newest beauty study hit the street titled, “Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching.”

Okay, I know you’re saying this says student, not employ, so it doesn’t count! Bare with me…

First, this is a legit study, not some vendor survey thing. This was done by a legit PhD at a legit university.

What does the study say?

  1. Both men and women have a beauty premium in terms of their performance. This means, that more beautiful you are in a university class, the more likely you are to be graded higher. (This is real!)
  2. With in-person classes, the beauty premium is the same for men and women. Basically, pretty boys and girls equally get an advantage in grading.
  3. With remote classes, the beauty premium only works for men!

Why does this matter to remote work?

If we know there is a beauty premium in human behavior when judging the performance of students, how hard is it really for us to believe our supervisors and managers also don’t have a beauty premium when it comes to determining work performance? I would argue that there is very little difference between the two judging activities.

This means as many of our jobs switch to remote, we now have an issue with women having their performance judged harsher than men when working in a remote environment because they will no longer get any beauty premium. Again, this only works with beautiful people. The ugly ones were already getting judged more harshly.

We love to believe that remote work favors females for a number of reasons. Saving time on the commute, easier to arrange care for kids and those they might be responsible for, etc. But now we have this issue!

The work beauty premium is real, and it’s not!

The beauty premium is measurable and has been proven in a number of studies. When judging people, we find it more difficult to judge pretty people harshly but easier to beat down ugly people. It’s not real because it’s totally an unconscious bias that even when we know it’s a problem, we ignore it and keep promoting pretty people over maybe higher performing people who aren’t as pretty.

I just find all of this so fascinating! Two-fold, one in that I’m not what any study would find as traditionally “beautiful” from the male standpoint, and that over a long period of time, centuries, genetically, this actually plays out across all cultures. While one culture might like light skin, tall, slender, and those people will have a beauty premium. Another culture might prefer dark, short, chubby people, and that beauty premium plays itself out.

I just need to find the one culture that likes gingers!

The 1 Thing You Have to Do to Fall In Love With Your Job!

Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?

I mean, real love?

The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and Facebook messages, and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some, it’s been a while, and you didn’t have the texts or Facebook!  But, you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love; it doesn’t last that long, and you never get it back.

I hear people all the time say, “I love my job,” and I never used to pay much attention; in fact, I’ve said it myself.  The reality is that I don’t love my job. I mean, I like it a whole lot, but I love my wife, I love my kids, and I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7 am on a Monday morning. The important things in life!  But my job?  I’m not sure about that one.  As an HR Pro, I’m supposed to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs.  Love.

Want to know the difference between like and love? The next time your significant other tells you, “I love you!” just say in return, “Yeah, I like you as well!” Then get ready for an argument!

Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second. Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stops caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it. I’ll just tell you!

Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met.  It seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love and lose their minds.  Once that calms down, the real work begins.  So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship, you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch over and over.

Jobs aren’t much different.

You get a new job, and it’s usually really good!  People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter. Hell, you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job.  Then you have your one-year anniversary, and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.

This is when falling in love with your job really begins. When you know about all the stuff, the company hid in the closet. The past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc.  Now is when you have to put some work into making it work.

I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied.  They’re searching. Not for a better job or a better company. They’re searching for that feeling that will last.  But it never will, not without them working for it.

The best love has to be worked for. Passion is easy and fleeting. Love is hard to sustain and has to be worked on, but it can last forever.

I’m back from London – What did I learn?

I was over in London during the 4th of July holiday. I hosted the DisruptHR London event and attended RecFest 2022. The weather was very un-London like in that it was amazing!

This was my third time in London and every time I learn a little more:

London –

  • Still the best mass transit system around. Nothing beats the Tube!
  • London is a better New York. Big city. Big city stuff to do. Smells wonderful and seems like a smaller city. Flowers everywhere. There’s so much to see.
  • Food is improving, but mainly that’s all the non-English food coming in.
  • Shopping is funny in London. So many people from different countries and middle east tourists love the gaudy logo brand clothing! The gaudier the better! They wait in line to get into the biggest brand name stores! Like, you never have to ask what they are wearing, you can read it clearly across their chest! The English, tend to not be so loud about their dress.
  • They still laugh at how much soda Americans drink, but that’s only because instead of drinking soda they drink the same amount of beer.
  • The English men dress exponentially way better than American men on average. Also, almost none of them wear shorts. I had folks comment on my “American” shorts, mostly that it was too cold for shorts. It was in the ’70s every day.
  • It’s one of the most diverse cities I’ve been to. You meet people from so many countries it’s unbelievable. And no one is complaining that England is trying to make the country their country. London is London, you came here, welcome to London. We’re going to stay being London, we hope you like it. If you don’t, you’re free to leave. That doesn’t mean they aren’t accepting and welcoming, they are. But they are also English, no matter your skin color or nationality.
  • I had drivers from six different countries – Afghanistan, Italy, South Africa, Iraq, Norway, and Croatia. Each one was excited to talk about America and all couldn’t wait to go back or go for the first time. They seemed truly excited. Also, unfortunately, most wanted to go to Las Vegas or New York. To them that’s America! This wasn’t normal driver chit-chat, these folks really wanted to talk about America and many had stories of them trying to get to America, but England was easier.

DisruptHR London –

  • Just an amazing group of HR professionals and speakers. The London HR crowd was so engaging.
  • We struggled to get 200 folks to sign up. Which is strange, but it’s really about advertising and marketing. Everyone who came raved about the event, but almost 100% said they had never heard of it. It felt like we hammered the marketing for eight straight weeks. Also, this was actually the 16th DisruptHR London, so it begs the question of who was coming to the first 16?!
  • If you’ve never done a 5-minute DisruptHR talk – as a speaker – it might be your greatest challenge! You must try one!

RecFest2022 –

  • 4,000+/- Recruiting professionals at an outdoor festival. Jamie Leonard, the founder of RecFest, hates when I call it the world’s largest Recruiting party, but it is! It’s also a festival and conference and it’s amazing.
  • It was a warm, sunny day, and I and like 50 other people had on our American shorts!
  • Word is, RecFest might be coming to America in 2022, but if you have a chance to go over to London for RecFest 2023, it’s a must-do!
  • People in the UK seem to love to queue (that’s standing in line, for Americans). When I arrived at the festival there were 1,000 people in the queue just waiting to get in! Eventually, they just opened the gates, then people went right back into the queue for coffee, food, and beer. I think the English just walk around looking to stand in a queue! That won’t work in America. Jamie and the crew will have to figure that out. If Americans stand in line for ten minutes, they’ll never come back!
  • There is nothing like this anywhere in the world! The RecFest folks truly have something special on their hands.