Introducing the Virtual Assistants (VAs) of the Hey! Do I Need a VA? Podcast

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Hi, welcome to the podcast that explores what virtual assistants want business owners to

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know when they start asking themselves the question, Hey, do I need a VA?

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I'm Rachel Davila.

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And after 18 years as a virtual assistant going it alone, I experienced the steep learning

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curve from the other side of the VA client relationship when I hired my own assistant.

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Joining me on this podcast is a group of friends and colleagues who all have their own take

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on what busy entrepreneurs need to know to find, hire, and work with a virtual assistant

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and mindfully answer the question, Hey, do I need a VA?

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Let's get this episode started.

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Hi, everyone.

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Welcome to our very first episode of Hey, Do I Need a VA?

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The podcast.

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Joining me today are my friends and colleagues, Leanne Ermele, Bree Bevy, and Sydney Hubbard.

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And I'm your host, Rachel Davila.

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And my business is Extra Hands Virtual Assistance.

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We're going to go around and share with you a little bit about us and why we feel we're

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the experts for this topic to help clients who may be on the journey to finding a VA

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ask the important questions of what they need to know to find, hire, and work with a VA.

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So I'll wrap up.

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But Leanne, you're in the top right of the screen.

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So I'm going to let you go first.

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Tell us who you are, what you do, how long you've been in business.

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Where you're located.

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All of the big juicy pieces.

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Okay.

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I'm Leanne Ermele.

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My business is Handling Business, and I'm located in San Diego.

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People can find me at handlingbusiness.com.

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I started my VA business a little over 25 years ago, back when VA wasn't actually a

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thing.

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I had to explain what a VA or a virtual assistant was to everybody.

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I left corporate America when I gave birth to twins with special needs and was no longer

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having the ability to work a regular nine to five job.

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Still needing to make an income, I turned to admin work and doing it virtually.

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Back then, clients would do things like fax me their handwritten notes, and I would create

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PowerPoint presentations and put it on a disk and mail it back to them.

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Remember, 25 years ago.

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Okay, guys?

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Not just last year.

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Over time, technology improved, which was awesome.

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I added newsletters, websites, and now all things technical to my services.

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I enjoy technology, and I'll enjoy learning what I can do with technology.

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My clients benefit from my geekiness, and I get to do something that I enjoy for a living.

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Yeah.

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That's me.

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So, if anyone has a technical question for me, I just refer them to Leanne.

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I appreciate it.

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Technology is not my friend.

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So thank you, Leanne, for geeking out on technology.

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We need techie VAs like you.

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All right, Bree, tell us about you.

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Thanks, Rachel.

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My name is Bree.

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I'm actually in Canada, so I'm located in Edmonton, Alberta.

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I kind of stumbled into being a VA.

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I had a childcare business in my home for 20 years and got to the point where that didn't

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work for my family, but I still wanted something that was flexible, that I could work around

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my family's needs and be there for my kids.

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I had a friend of mine who was struggling and having some things going on in her business

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that she was looking for support for, and so I offered to help her out.

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She was like, I wish I could organize things like you and coordinate things like you and

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find out and research like you.

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Within a week, she was like, how can I hire you?

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I was like, this is cool.

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You would pay me for this?

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Within six months, I transitioned out of my childcare business and started working for

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her.

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I started going to conferences, taking all these courses and found out that this was

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something I really, really loved.

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I started getting more clients and kind of growing things from there.

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I was sitting in a campground with my family working from a waterfall because we happen

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to have service.

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I'm like, this, everybody should be able to have the opportunity to do this, stay at home

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moms or people who feel stuck and don't want to do what they want to do.

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And so I decided to try and build an agency.

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So I now have a team of eight of us and it's amazing.

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We all work together.

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We all have different strengths and we all coordinate and collaborate together so that

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clients kind of have a one-stop shop is what we're trying to do.

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So you don't have to go find different people for all the different things and try and get

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them all to talk together.

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We do that in the background and we help walk clients through not knowing exactly where

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they want to start or what that looks like and just kind of bouncing ideas and being

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that team member with them to kind of walk them through where they could get support

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and what that could look like and see, ride the waves with them.

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Because as we all know, an entrepreneur journey is not what you ever think it is.

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And it always has the roller coaster ride that you didn't see coming.

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And so it's nice to know that you don't have to ride those things on your own.

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And that's what we strive to do is to team up with our clients and be through all that

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with them.

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Nice. And don't forget that you have this new social media component.

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Yeah.

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So we do social media strategy planning as well.

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So for people who are starting out, they're really stuck on just even the ideas and what

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to what in the universe they want to post on their social media, but they don't have

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necessarily the capital to be able to pay somebody else to do it.

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We have strategy calls where we'll sit down with you.

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We'll come up with what the content strategy will look like, create a strategy plan that

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you can then go and implement and we can meet monthly and just come up with the ideas for

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you have somewhere to start coordinate, get the ideas.

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And then you can take that and implement it on your own to reduce costs, but be accessible

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and still have support.

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It was very helpful.

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I went through her pillars and then I come up with the ideas, but my assistant, Sydney,

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who is next gets to put it together for me.

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Yeah.

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How about you?

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I'm Sydney, Sydney Hubbard.

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I started the work like a year and a half ago.

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I'm I'm in my sophomore year at UC Berkeley and I started doing the work the summer of

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my senior year.

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It started really just as a way to make some money.

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And I talked to my mom and my mom works with Rachel and I was like, oh, I can, I can help

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Rachel because I had been doing social media, Canva stuff.

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And it's, it's very, it's very fun for me.

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It's very simple for me.

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And and yeah, and then I developed my own little business called Rose Design and Tarot.

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And yeah, that's, that's what I do.

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I'm the newbie.

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I'm the doer VA.

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I anything that a client throws at me, I will do it, learn to do it or hand it off to probably

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Leanne.

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Yeah.

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And I use they've unpronounced.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Yes.

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Sydney has been very helpful for me.

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And part of that help was in recognizing that there is a difference between being the VA,

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the virtual assistant for clients and being the client with a VA.

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And Sydney taught me a whole lot on my journey when I hired them because it was something

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that I had.

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I was always the one leading clients through and seeing how different VAs can be and how

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they handle business differently.

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That was really what sent me on my journey to help clients navigate through the finding,

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the hiring and the working with a VA landscape.

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I've been a VA since 2005.

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I found it on accident.

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I was looking to be a professional organizer and my friend was like, you need a business

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name.

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And I went to the internet, which was fairly new back then and found a website of a virtual

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assistant.

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And I was like, what is this magic?

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This is exactly what I want to do.

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And what was great was I ended up talking with her, the owner of that business, because

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she was here in San Diego where I live.

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And she talked to me for an hour and there was no competition.

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There was no, oh, you can't be a VA because I'm a VA here.

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It was this wonderful magic community of women entrepreneurs helping women entrepreneurs

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do their thing.

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And I loved that feel about it because then I could take my skills and gift it to other

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business owners and see that ripple that comes from when you're doing your zone of genius

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and you're helping your clients do their zone of genius and their clients get the benefit

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of all of that.

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I just love that kind of ripple effect.

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And so I am so grateful for Leanne and Bre and Sydney for being on the journey with me

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for their collaboration and support in helping my business grow, but also in when I don't

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know what I don't know, they can step in and help me, which is what I love because it helps

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each of us individually and it helps our clients.

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And so having them on this journey with me for you, our listeners, or if you're watching

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this on YouTube, you get the benefit of all of our collective knowledge and experience.

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And I really hope that you ride this journey with us to learn how to find, hire, and work

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with a VA.

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We have great content for you.

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The topics we've created for this season of the Hey, Do I Need a VA podcast?

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I think you're really going to get some useful knowledge on your journey too.

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If you have any questions, you can email us.

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I will put all of our contact information in the show notes.

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Well, actually, Sydney will put all of our contact information in the show notes, but

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we are all here to help you on your journey.

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So thank you for joining us for episode one.

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Stay tuned.

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hey, Do I Need a VA?

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The podcast.

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If you found this episode helpful, please leave a like, comment, or review, and feel

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free to join our Facebook group, Find, Hire, and Work with a VA for more tips and tools.

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If you have any questions, please email them to heyvapodcast.gmail.com.

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We'll see you next time.