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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Career Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's podcast, cover Letter Examples, part one of one.
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B
As always, our content has been crafted by humans, and we're now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are, how do I write a cover letter? How do I find a name to address my cover letter to? And what do I include in a cover letter?
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A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening.
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C
European managers have always had access to manager tools training, but in person events meant flying to the U.S. not this November. The Effective Manager Conference is in London on the 24th and the Effective Communicator Conference on the 25th. Register your individual seat today, or if you're thinking bigger, ask us about scheduling organizational delivery for your European team while we're in the region. The tools haven't changed. The distance has. Visit manager-tools.com
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A
folks. Cover letters don't come up all the time, right? We find only about maybe 20% of applications now require a cover letter. But when cover letters do come up, for some reason, they just. They feel more difficult than they need to be. People tell us that writing a new one from scratch each and every time feels like way too much work to even bother with the COVID letter. And in many instances, the COVID letter is maybe not required necessarily, but is is definitely a good thing to do. So we want to do it well.
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B
Yeah. So in this cast, we're going to be walking through what our cover letter guidance is, how it looks like in practice, and showing you exactly how to put one together in under 15 minutes. It's that easy.
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A
All right, so our outline for today's cast. First, we're going to go over the fact that a cover letter has three parts, and then we're going to go over some examples. Actually, this cast is going to be a little bit different than our normal. Today we're doing cover letter examples podcast. So what we're doing is we're going to go over the content itself, and then we're just going to provide you some examples of how we would recommend you use the process essentially that we're outlining in the first part of cast.
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B
Yeah. Okay, so cover letters have three parts. Okay. The first paragraph needs to state your interest and which job you're interested in. I promise you, every person who's looking at your cover letter and your resume is recruiting for probably 50 jobs. Okay. The second describes how your background will help the company, not how great you are, but how it will help the company. And the final paragraph states when you'll be following up. Simple as that. Creating that is not hard and making it even easier. You can use this exact same structure and every single time, even if one recruiter is, is recruiting for two jobs and they see the same resume, only with the changes relative to how you might help the company in different roles differently, that's fine. The fact that it has the same structure in three paragraphs, totally fine. Not a problem at all.
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A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, so now, folks, as I mentioned, in this cast, we're going to provide you some examples so that you can see how you could tailor your cover letter for a series of roles. So the way we're going to do this, the way we're going to cover this content is that we're going to have some examples interspersed with content or guidance after we've gone through or while we're going through the example itself. First though, I want to do mention, though, today is our podcast on cover letter examples and there is a podcast on how to create a cover letter. That podcast is part of our interviewing series, we sometimes call it. And if you are a licensee, you've got access to the interviewing series. So if you want more detailed content on the creation of the COVID letter. Yeah, yeah, like right in the weeds, then you can get it in that podcast as well.
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B
And if you're not a licensee, you should become one and support our mission to make every manager effective and every professional productive. It's inexpensive and I think we're the only people in the world talking about this and giving very specific guidance, at least people who know about it, unlike, say, the people who record YouTube videos about how to answer. Tell me about yourself. And those people have never been a recruiter, they've never interviewed before, and they don't know what they're talking about. We know, we've listened to them.
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A
Yes, exactly, exactly. We're talking about the license. I would make a little plug here for those of you that aren't licensees. But you're listening to this podcast and you think to yourself, I might like to try it on. All of our licenses are available with a 30 day free trial, a month long free trial. So you could go and you could listen to the COVID letter examples podcast and you could determine whether or not the license is for you. But with today's content, I want to start by setting our scene and referring you or reminding you, I should say, of a podcast that we covered a few weeks ago.
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B
Just a few weeks ago. Yeah, we. You and I. Yeah, folks, it's called
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A
the Career Tools rule of job applications, 75%. And the reason I want to refer you to that podcast is in that podcast, we used a resume for an individual. His name was Bob Smith.
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B
Very creative, highly creative. We put our creative team to work on that for weeks.
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A
Exactly. That's what we do. And we're going to use that resume again for this podcast. So Bob's resume is posted on that podcast page as well as on the podcast page for today's cast as well. You don't need to go back and listen to it if you don't want, but you're more than welcome to go back. And again, you can access that.
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B
Yeah. The point of mentioning this and the point of building this, if you want to call it a backstory, is so you can go and see the resume that we used to tie Bob to the jobs we're going to write cover letters for. Okay, so it's an actual resume. We've changed some things to anonymize it. And we knew about this person's career search and what Sarah is going to tell you about the rest of his career search is actually based in reality, but anonymized to protect him. He's part of our community. But the idea is we're not just throwing together random words. We actually have a person whom we knew, still know and his resume and the COVID letters and his job search. So it's based in reality.
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A
Exactly. But in our fictional world, we'll call it Bob's Wife wants to Move from the uk, the United Kingdom, to Knoxville, Tennessee.
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B
By the way, when Wendy and I recorded this, I think years ago, we collaborated on writing it. I thought that was oddly specific, like UK to Knoxville.
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A
I know, but it would matter country to town. I know. Yeah, exactly. It matters for the story, though, right?
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
Because, I mean, there's a resume that you'll very clearly see if you look at it. All the jobs are in the uk and what we had to do then to do today's podcast is search online to find three roles for Bob to actually apply for. So the additional bits of, if you will, today's content is not just Bob's resume and then the show notes for today's cast, of course, obviously, but also full text of each of the jobs that we're writing cover letters for in the next little bit here as a separate document on the website so that you can. You can follow that trajectory along.
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B
It's all ticked and tied. I've. No one else is doing this. No one else in the world is giving this level of detail to something as simple. And not in the majority of cases where you have to write a cover letter. But once you learn how to write a cover letter using this guidance, you will never have to refer to this guidance again and you'll know exactly what to do and it won't be a point of stress. And anything you can do to reduce or eliminate a point of stress in your job search, you should do exactly.
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A
All right, so going into the examples, Mark, kick us off.
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B
Yeah. So the first job we found from for Bob is a project manager role at Cisco. And when we say Cisco, we mean Cisco, the networking and router and hardware equipment company, not Cisco, the foods company, which I, I say Cisco to people and they're like, oh yeah, the food company. I said, no, no, the other one. If you're, if you're in Houston, they definitely assume Cisco meaning Sysco. And if you're in Silicon Valley, they definitely assume you mean Cisco. Cisco. Okay. So this role provides project management expertise to multiple projects and ensures that the projects are managed properly. And in the job description, the requirements are a Bachelor of science degree, experience managing multiple small or medium sized software projects, solid project management skills, and a methodical approach to coordinating and communicating plans and status. That is a rewriting of of the actual job description, folks. Okay, it was an actual job description. Finally, they want someone who can lever leverage resources that are not direct reports a huge part of being a project manager. So Sarah, why don't you read the COVID letter we created for Bob?
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A
Absolutely. And this is the part where we folks marry together. Bob's resume with that post that just went through. So here's what it says. Dear Mr. Rogers, I am interested in the role of project Manager in your Advanced Security Initiatives group in Knoxville. I've admired Cisco since early in my career. When I met one of your implementation teams at anl, I was impressed by their knowledge and professionalism. My background fits your needs. Specifically, I have a bachelor's degree in Information Technology and have been leveraging that education for eight years. As an IT project manager, I have a 100% delivery track record, delivering up to five simultaneous projects on time and budget, working in a matrix environment. Achieving these results required the ability to influence and coordinate activities and the methodical approach you mentioned. On a recent project, I was able to achieve a $3 million cost reduction by developing a project dashboard, preventing source conflicts and ensuring project resources were used effectively. I have presented project results at executive levels and been successful in obtaining support for my proposals. I look forward to hearing from you. Because I know you're busy. I will follow up by phone on the 23rd of August. Respectfully, Bob Smith.
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B
This is pretty good. It's pretty good, I gotta say. So we told him which role we were interested in in the first paragraph. We told him specifically how we fit the job description in paragraph two. Hopefully you could tell the paragraphs that Sarah was.
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A
I should have paused more.
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B
Yeah, that.
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C
Or we.
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B
Next time we'll do paragraph one. Paragraph two.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Good call.
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B
Yeah. You can see the whole text of the job description. You'll notice that there is no contact name. And so the question you might have, how did we find out who to address it to? That there's no contact name in the job description. Sorry, that there is. In. In the letter.
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In the letter there is Mr. Rogers.
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Yeah. So how did we find out and how did we find out who we're going to follow up with Google.
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A
Okay.
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I'm sure, I'm sure AI would help too, these days. We googled a few things and on our fourth try went for the name of the division that the role is in. The second result gave us a PDF version of the job advertisement and the recruiter's name, email address and cell phone number. So in other words, they had something on their internal website with that information and you just have to go find it and they put it on the job board, but they don't want everybody in the job board, millions more people than would see on their website. They don't want him being besieged with all kinds of stuff. It even had cell phone number, which I found fascinating. And again, as I mentioned, if that doesn't work, if Google doesn't work, you can ask AI see if it helped out, help you track down the hiring manager. And I've actually done that in the last month or so for somebody who was looking in the community and I found AI very helpful. Like, hey, there are three names. And I told him, pick one and say, hey, I found your name among three. And if there's somebody else I'm supposed to talk to, please let me know. You don't have to be perfect. You have to be moving forward and you have to follow the process and you have to express interest in the job and tell them why you'd be good at the job.
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A
Yeah, well, and I would go a step further, Mark. And folks, it's lazy to not do any of this and just address your cover letter to Dear sir or madam, to whom it may concern. I mean, it's not that hard. The, the, the, the process I put in air quotes because I don't think it's a process to Google something. But whatever the, the, the process that we used to find this information isn't difficult. You can do it for any job. And we're going to prove that true because we're going to do the exact same thing for the next couple of jobs that are Bob here is applying for. And if you can't find it on the web and AI doesn't know, you can always phone the company and ask, hey, I saw this posting in what department is it? Or do you know the name of the hiring manager and see whether or not you can find it that way? Because again, it's lazy not to. And this information is accessible to anybody with the Internet and you do not want to come across in your cover letter before you even are even considered, before they've been reading your resume. You don't want to be seen as a lazy candidate.
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B
Yeah. In fact, if I got a whole bunch of Dear Sirs and then I got a Dear Mr. Rogers, I would think, okay, this guy's done extra work. And I would immediately start thinking all those one was out Mr. Rogers. They're spamming all kinds of jobs. They didn't do any research. They don't really know us. They just saw project manager and they're going for it.
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A
Well, and why wouldn't I want the positive confirmation bias associated with being that standout among the Dear sir and Madams to be the person that actually came up with the name? Because, I mean, it's like, ooh, I like this. And that Joy carries through the remainder of the review. Absolutely want that.
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C
High performers don't just work hard. They build trust, deliver consistently, and make their work visible in the right ways. But most high performers are invisible to the people who make promotion decisions. The Effective Manager conference teaches the behaviors behind standout performance, whether you're already a manager or working to be one individual. Registration open now at manager-tools.com emc
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B
all right, here's our second example. The second job we've selected Bob for is an IT Project Manager. It's a pretty straightforward software and infrastructure project management role. Okay, to start with, and this is where it gets easier the second time. That's what processes are about. You copy and paste the previous cover letter. You'll notice from the descriptions that 50% of the requirements are the same and the rest are pretty similar. That doesn't mean you could leave the cut and paste purely though. You're going to have to rework it. Okay, so Reword your paragraph so it reflects the words that are in the advertisement as closely as possible without being exactly the same. It needs to feel to the reader that it's familiar but not copied. There's a. There's a word that I love that I should make a word of the week in things we think. We think called verisimilitude, which is the art of making something fake look real, creating something that appears real. I think actually AI is giving a bad name to verisimilitude, but the idea is to make it feel like you actually wrote it and the way you make somebody feel like you actually wrote it. And that's where you've got to be careful. If AI is drafting your stuff is you have to actually write it. And can you use AI for some of it? Sure. But hopefully you know the difference between your tone of voice and AI's tone of voice, because everyone else does, and you will take away the pretty words in some cases. I do not recommend you use the word verisimilitude in any of your cover letters because no one knows the definition. All right, so can I read this one?
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C
Sure.
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A
Yeah, go for it.
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Okay. Dear Mr. Gillen, this first paragraph. I am interested in the role of Information Technology Project Manager. I'm particularly interested because you specify that this role uses tools from multiple frameworks to best fit the project scenario, an approach I have used for success previously. Second program. My background fits your needs. Specifically, I have a Bachelor's degree in Information Technology and have been leveraging that education for eight years. As an IT project manager, I have 100% delivery track record, delivering up to five simultaneous projects on time and on budget. I have used pmi, Project Management Institute and SCRUM methods to achieve these results and have trained others to achieve the same results. On a recent project, I was able to achieve a $3 million cost reduction by developing a project dashboard, preventing resource conflicts and ensuring project resources were used effectively. I have presented project results at executive level and run executive level meetings to time and agenda. That's the second program. Third paragraph. I look forward to hearing from you because I know how busy you are. I will follow up with you by phone on the 23rd of August. Respectfully, Bob Smith.
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A
Yeah, there you have it, folks. And I. I think I know I heard it when. When Mark. When Mark read it, when Mark said it, some of the exact same sentences from the previous, but also simultaneously. And now it was a different voice. So, I mean, that might be part of it, but it did sound different. So there's some Carry through. But there's some completely different. It stands on its own. It's. Yeah. Completely different cover letter. Using the same or using the first as a template and making it easier.
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B
Right now if you're wondering about Mr. Rogers versus Mr. Gillen, that role, that example, the second example, the one I read, and the next one, which I'm sure Sarah will read, were both advertised by a recruitment agency. So that's not from the company. Now how do you think we got the name of the person looking after overseeing the fulfilling of the role? And the answer is we just called and ask and they said, oh, that's Bob Gillen.
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A
Yeah. Like it's the 90s. We're still used to telephones over here. You can do that folks. It's not that hard.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which takes us then to example number three. And folks, the final role is an IT Project Manager of Development operations. IT describes itself as a hybrid between a project manager and a manager role. The initial responsibility is to lead the development team to achieve the goal of a major company IT initiative. Subsequently, this person will need to create a strategy and plan to standardize the process across development teams. Now in the advertisement there are two useful pieces of information. One is the zip code where the role will be based.
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B
I like that.
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A
Yeah. The second is that the role will be working across developments centers of excellence, which is pretty specific wording and probably to be full, fully full disclosure, probably just a department name. So the way we found more information about said role is we googled that what development's center of excellence means and found a longer job description. We also found another job at the same company on a website. It's called Showbiz Jobs, which dot com. So now we know that this role, this project manager, IT project manager who could work in any kind of organization anywhere, is actually a TV related job in a very fairly narrow geographic area. And there's also another interesting piece of information in the other job description. The company has recently started using offshored resources and there's nothing in our job description. But we'd bet that everyone in that company that's new to offshoring would love their new hire to have some experience they may be able to share.
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B
Interesting little detective work.
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A
A lot of detective work. And again folks, AI can help you be the detective. Literally. You could put your, your, the, the, the job post into AI and start asking your Claude questions. Tell me about this. What's interesting. What does this say about the geography or the type of work this person like you can absolutely use your AI to Do that research now. When, when we did it, full disclosure, it was just a lot of googling and a lot of time and a lot of very manual effort which is no longer in the way of you being this good, I will say with a cover letter. All right. So Mark, do you want to read this one?
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B
Sure, I'll read it. Dear Mr. Gillen. Okay, done with that. First paragraph. I am interested in the role of IT Project Manager of Development Operations you have advertised. I'm particularly interested in the standardizing processes aspect of the role as this is something I have experienced success in. Second paragraph. My background fits your needs. Specifically, I have a bachelor's degree in Information Technology and have been leveraging that education for eight years as an IT Project Manager. By the way folks, I would never use the word leveraging. I would be say using leveraging. Just add syllables and it sounds like a fancy word. The old word, short words are best and the old words in short are best of all. I have 100% delivery track record delivering up to five simultaneous projects on time and budget using in house, contracted onshore and offshore resources. I developed the delivery strategy for Europe wide project implementations including implementing process standardization. In my last role I have consistently achieved cost and effort reductions by upskilling staff using a variety of project management and software development methods and open source work where possible. Third paragraph. I look forward to hearing from you because I know how busy you are. I will follow up with you by phone on the 23rd of August. Respectfully, Bob Smith.
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A
Love it.
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B
It's not rocket science.
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A
It's not rocket science and I think it goes without saying, but I want to make sure that I say it just to make sure. If you're going to say at the bottom of all your cover letters, I will follow up by phone on the 23rd of August. Dude, make yourself a calendar reminder to follow up by phone on 23rd August.
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B
I tell you, anytime we have a chance to reinforce the idea of following up, of telling people you're going to follow up and then actually following up. I just gave a talk on sales to a client, NORDI Group that I'm on the board of and they knew I had a sales background and they have a bunch of construction project managers and construction professionals that don't have any sales training. And I said hey, the, the first time I gave, I gave a talk a couple months ago about building relationships, about just creating relationships in the industry and staying in touch with them. And I said and you have to follow up. You have to follow up and now we're talking about actual sales calls. And I said, look, you'll win business if you'll just keep following up. Everybody else will just go away. They won't follow up, or they'll say they'll. They're interested in their business, but then when they get some other customer, they won't go out. They won't keep coming after this general contractor or this major developer or something like that. It's amazing how you don't have to be that smart. You have to be disciplined enough. In fact, I talk about sales discipline all the time. You just have to be disciplined enough to follow up in sales until you get your 15th no from a customer. You haven't gotten a full no 15. And people get yeses because they just followed up six or seven or eight times. So the converse of what you said is if you, of course, if you don't put, you're going to follow up in there. You don't have to. But if you do put, you're going to follow up in there, and then you don't follow up, you're just in the same pile as everybody else and maybe actually a little worse.
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A
Yeah, I would say that, too. All right, so I'm going to wrap it up, folks. Creating cover letters is not hard. All of the example cover letters we've gone over today can be found again in our show notes. All you have to do is use the exact same structure every time and just replace like six sentences to tailor the COVID letter to the role you're applying for.
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B
That's how easy it is.
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A
That's how easy it is. Exactly. And folks, don't forget, a little detective work will nearly always get you the name of the person to address your letter to. And going that extra effort makes you stand out as a candidate. So at this stage of the process, I mean, if you really, really want to show yourself as being ahead of the others, stand out from the crowd. And right now, I think in our current job market, there's a crowd, folks. There's nothing wrong with going a little extra further and standing out from the others.
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B
Yeah, it's just a process, folks. It's a process. It's a process. It's a process.
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A
Exactly. Wonderful. Thank you, Mark.
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B
Thank you, Sarah.
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A
And thank you all for joining us. We hope this one helped you. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only.
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B
Five stars only, please.
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A
It.