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106. The Path to Quitting Your Full-time Job with Danielle Williams

Updated: Mar 7

There’s been a monumental shift in the workplace in recent years; people are quitting their jobs to start their own business. In fact, according to Google search queries in 2021 “the world searched for how to start a business more than how to get a job”. However, leaving your corporate job can be scary. Today, on the podcast Jessica speaks with Happester who just launched her own entrepreneurial journey. They talk about how coaching guided her decision-making process and helped lead her to her current role as a new CEO. From where she began to where she is now, Danielle is just one proof of how doing a total 180° is possible by simply making up your mind. Here, Danielle shares her thoughts on scheduling and how she suffered roadblocks with time, money, and mind drama.


Full Transcript Below

In this episode you will learn:

  1. The world wants to make you into just ‘one thing’

  2. Rewiring your mind starts with a decision

  3. Scheduling is a visual way of seeing where your day is going

  4. Don’t beat up past self for the things that future self knows

  5. Dwelling in the drama is easier than addressing it

Good inTents email signups: https://www.goodintentsco.com/welcome



Full Transcript:

it doesn't matter it's not a matter of can i or can't i we have enough of that like we have enough drama we don't need every decision to be about trauma welcome to sincerely future you a podcast for female entrepreneurs looking to scale their business by mastering their time money and drama i'm your host jessica mckinley founder of what's happening coaching a life coaching program that helps ambitious women like you make decisions today with the future you in mind


hi hamsters and one in particular because again i know i've been having a lot of guests on the show lately and that wasn't what i wanted this podcast to be originally because i really wanted to talk about the results that come from the specific process that we work on in coaching together but fortunately for you guys because of doing that for so many years we have produced some killer killer results for my clients so it's been really fun to just take a trip down memory lane with them and talk to them and and for us to experience kind of where they came from started from the bottom now i hear and all of the journeys so today i do have an extra special guest on the show and that is danielle williams she is the ceo and founder of good intense oh i love a good pun first of all and that is just so fun to say out loud finally for the world to hear it danielle we're gonna share her i'm gonna let her share her story of why it's so special that we're announcing her and labeling her in that way and what our journey has been but without further ado thanks so much for having for coming on the show danielle yay thank you so much for having me i'm so excited to be here yes so tell us so first of all danielle is a ceo now but when she came to me she actually was not an entrepreneur at all and uh she was one of the few clients that i have taken on from that infancy stage and worked with from the point of conception of idea to like getting to being on and working on the business themselves and it's because i just knew she was very clear about what she wanted to do she just had a lot of roadblocks that were the things that we coach on to taking that leap and actually getting there and the two the three main ones really were time money and mind drama i was like this girl is my people so tell us kind of where who are you danielle first of all and what had led you to coaching oh man who am i well so officially like by trade i am a mechanical engineer from northeastern university i got my minor in materials science and then from there i've kind of grown into more of a product developer and embrace more of my creative side but really i've realized to my core i'm an inventor and that is something that i figured out pretty maybe like within the past like year year and a half two years and it was something where i have all these ideas and all these things about like i view the world through ways that it can be improved not in like necessarily like a bad light but i'll see something like oh you know you can actually do that better by doing this or x y and z so that's kind of how i've been living my life for a while and i finally stumbled onto my idea that really lit me up and i was like man like i gotta do this i gotta like i gotta be an entrepreneur and i gotta make this i gotta birth this idea into the world and um yeah this the timing worked out really well and we we kind of talked for previously for like a different idea that i had that i just it never really quite grabbed me and once this one hit i was like okay this is the time let's start investing in this and myself and yeah and now i'm like so so beyond pleased to say that yeah i i'm like identifying as the ceo and founder of good intents yeah it's so i just got the chills a little bit because when danielle came to me i mean she had a good salary she had a good job did you want to tell them a little bit about what you were doing and where you were working when you came to coaching yeah yeah so i i just um i was working at popsockets um a senior product development engineer i really was enjoying what i was doing um i got to create a lot of really cool products i got to travel to asia and the philippines to get supply chain vendors up in action it really it let me work in engineering but then also move over to the more creative and product development side that i never really kind of tapped into which i think is funny because yeah my dad is an engineer and my mom is an artist and so it was i was kind of having to trust that i was like all right i have i have these talents and then i taught myself a lot of like you know the adobe suite and just kind of started to like trust that my gut was correct too that i was like all right and matt you know in engineering you're like this a plus b equals c because of this and you have to just be like no i'm picking this option because like that's what feels right and it's kind of based off of like the trending and you do but it's way more of like a gut instinct yeah and so i had to learn to trust that and um yeah it was great i i really thrived as being a product developer and i think it taught me a lot of really good tools none of the tools that i got from you so it was a good combination of investments yeah yeah it was a great opportunity for sure yeah it's so interesting i mean you're the love child of your parents in so many ways right your brain is like the love child of your parents like right your your engineering side and your artist side and the off-camera conversation that danielle and i were having right before we pressed record on this was just about how i feel like danielle is such a good representation of who hapsters are at their core which is like this dual personality that i think is not well represented in the world like everyone wants to fit you into this box like who are you are you more of math or are you an artist and like you they want to make you one thing and i think hapsters are uniquely able to serve a larger community because they identify both as someone who is math and someone who is art and i could not relate more i think that it's a lot of the work that we do in happening sessions and in our coaching right is like okay let's let's get the math let's get the process learn the process and you were such a great student from the get-go you came you came to scheduling you had always had questions you came with like a notebook full of questions always every session right and it's like i i do i love that student work ethic and that like math brain and then you know it was the harder work to like sit and find the thoughts that you just felt were true the same way that an equation is true you see it and you're like oh this must be true and and being able to instead decide what you wanted to think which said like is a part more of your gut and a more of trusting yourself and and deepening who you are but i think that when it comes to your business it's the perfect like who else could birth this idea of good intent so tell us about it what is good intense do not i will i'll give you a little sprinkling of what it is because i'm still working on keeping the legal part of it under wraps yeah um but patent-pending but not quite pending yet will be an outdoor recreation company that makes um extraordinary products using uh sustainable and beautiful materials i'm really excited um i'll be able to share more once i get my patent pending but it's gonna be fantastic and you know it's funny like one of the mantras that one of the things that like working with you really taught me was the thoughts that we have in our head really are something that we can create and really influence our results and so one of the mantras that i have is that you know like i have the right hardware like i have the right like schooling and parent genetics and what i was missing was the software and the software is what you can create just by telling yourself like every day like you know pick a thought and then insert it into your life and like you have so many hapster manifestos that are have been so valuable to me too and that's been kind of interesting too to see like how easy it is to rewire your is that easy but like just by like you like can identify a thought and then like you know an anxious feeling or a fear just kind of just like nip it in the butt and then just like insert a new one just like put a new software update in there that says actually no i can do this i have all the resist of course resources for this and i will be successful and just kind of keep telling yourself that eventually yeah right you know it seems kind of like you're like am i making this up and you're like yep i am making this up but it works right then when i first put something in the r line you know we talked about with the model like when i first put something in the result line that i wanted to create and then just thought my way there and then the result actually happened i was like wait so i can just put anything in the result line i can just decide that i want to create any result and then plug in the thoughts that need to get me there and you said like it's not easy but and the word that i think it is is it's available it's always available to us to be able to decide a new thought to be a new version of ourself to expand our self-concept to completely do a 180 is always available to us there's not a part of yourself that is you know confined to who you've been and how you've been showing up and what you've created in your past and i think that that's hard for an engineering brain because it's it's just thinking about it in a whole different way you're like you granted engineering is something that does live in the future in possibility so i think of all the sciences it is the one that is the most future focused i i would say yeah and like less about looking at the evidence of the results to prove whether it's possible right like you just want to live in that future i don't know if you want to speak to that at all yeah it's interesting because it's engineering still will do like a risk analysis though and kind of like take data and be like well in the past this did this so like we can speculate and hypothesize that this does this and like a lot of what i had to kind of break for that was when i am like when i'm thinking about my future self i have to believe so strongly in that future self with no evidence to back it up really like you're just you're just deciding and that is something that doesn't exist in engineering you can't just like decide a new scientific theory well you can but like you know yeah right i think the really the most cutting edge people can and i think that the most cutting edge engineers and inventors are the ones that also think of themselves as artists right because you if you're too attached to what has already come being the ground or like the platform on which you're like diving off from into creation you're very limited in your scope it's like what can you create you're you're limited to what's happened in the past but when you want to be revolutionary when you want to create something but intense right i'm saying good intense right good intense also like t-e-n-p-s like a tent camping and if mark and i always make the joke right it's like oh my god that was so intense you know what else is intense camping that'll for sure be in the marketing yeah yeah exactly at camp wait for all the good marketing um but yeah and combining just the person that you are really which is someone who is passionate about the environment and passionate about music and concerts right and and going to those events and having the experience be changed for people and not having it have to be one experience or the other so it's just been done this way the forever who cares who cares and that's the thing about it too it's you'll never create something revolutionary if you think about how it's been done in the past like one of the mantras that i use is that i'm gonna revolutionize the campi industry with first principles reasoning and that basically talks about how you just like break it down to its core you just you erase everything in your brain about how it's been done and who's been successful with it and you you can kind of like give a nod to that but you really just want to get down to like the core of what you're trying to do and try and delete all that noise from your brain so you can think of something really revolutionary that hasn't been done before because somebody hasn't thought about it that way because somebody hasn't thought about it like that way i mean that is it right there it's like your thoughts create your results and if the result that you want is this revolutionary product you need to have a thought that has never occurred to anyone ever how fun is that i love the idea that you could always be like there's this thought that's never occurred to anyone ever yet and i'm gonna think it like somebody or it occurred so big magic talks about this it could have occurred to somebody but they they didn't do the steps and take the actions to make it happen into the world yeah yeah my brother is that person and he doesn't listen to the podcast regularly


he is an inventor in spirit he has so many good ideas but he just he is not committed to like you said and maybe he just hasn't been lit up enough by any one idea and there will be that time where he comes up he's constantly calling me up hey i have this idea what do you think about its validity and like the like getting it to market what would he wants my business expertise and i'm always just kind of like at this point i only want to entertain it really want to entertain it because it might be a really good idea but like that sucks even if it's a really good idea unless you're like lit up by it and you're committed to it because what gets in the way in the process between the time of idea inception and what you're going through right now what gets in the way mind drama yes your mind drama it is endless right it's daily sometimes and it's it's something that takes commitment to override right like you said too you have the hardware the hardware can be perfect and if you do not have that software i love that are you just like that like it could be like a whole lecture and guest lecture in happening sessions so i want to switch gears really quickly and talk about when you came to coaching and like you had this idea we knew the hardware was there like from the get-go we were like this is a brilliant idea you have all the tools you're the perfect person to bring it to market was your thoughts that was keeping you from jumping right in the two things not the thoughts but really what were the things that were gaining it was oh man the mind drawn about it all but it was that i don't have enough time to do this and i don't have the money to do it right now either you know and it was just those thoughts i just kept telling it was the story i was telling myself and you helped me on wire that and be like you know it's funny because i remember the moment when i was talking to you and we were talking about time management and just like finding time and scheduling to like do all the things and i had this flash but thought that i was like you're enough to you're gonna have to quit your job you're gonna have to you're gonna have to go part-time you like you you see a solution like it's it's that you need more time to work on this it's there and it's just like there was just so much noise in front of it being like i'm just so i can't i have a full-time job and i'm stressed out and did it and then there was just this little intuitive thought that well how do you how do you fix that


higher quality question and i want to clarify what daniel says too because there was a difference from the first thought she had about i don't have enough time which was not really rooted in anything it wasn't it wasn't she wasn't looking at the facts yet because she didn't have a schedule she was just like operating and doing the tasks on her agenda like on her to-do list all the time and her to-do list never went away so she just always felt like there wasn't enough time that was a that was a feeling created by that thought but then when she actually decided to make the decision to leave and to quit her job to pursue this full-time it's because she had gone through the process for six months of learning how to schedule how to practice believing that you have plenty of time and there's enough time it's not that there isn't enough it's just if you work at this rate when will you produce good intents like when will good intent launch and how into your schedule and when you asked it in that very practical engineering brain way you saw the math of it and you were like the math is it's just going to take way longer than i want it to take exactly so it wasn't that there wasn't enough time there's plenty of time it's just you weren't prioritizing it in order to get it to market in the timeline that you wanted you would have to prioritize it and that's the thing that i love about scheduling is it's a really visual clear way to see what you're prioritizing because a lot of the times you can just like go through your day and you're like if you actually like wrote it out what you're doing you're like this is where all my time is going like is that my priority in life and you're like no i don't want it to be and with scheduling you can be like this is my priority this is where i schedule the bulk of my time because yeah life's distracting you can we have our these little computers in our hand that distract us at any time and it's really easy to fall into that trap so it's that's one of the things that i've loved about scheduling is just to be able to decide what my priorities are and then just schedule them in yeah i'd be and that was that took you a little while too because i remember the beginning of schedule it was the beginning of scheduling danielle very anti she was like she wanted to get it and she wanted it to work within the first week that she was doing it like hey there's a learning curve and like it might take maybe three months for you to like be doing it and be in all the actions and like have all the things but then you're gonna come up with new hurdles that happen around the three-month point that are actually very painful which is what you said the awareness once you're into the habit then you are brought into extreme awareness of the way you're spending the time your time the way you're buffering your time the way you're thinking about your time and then you have like this reality check where you're like oh [ __ ] and you want to go into judgment of yourself for oh my god i can't believe i've been doing this for so long and this isn't right and blah blah blah and then the second three months after that when you go through it and you just edit it out slowly in a in a methodical way it's like you're eventually going to get there but i always say there's a reason why six months is the coaching that i have because at three months you were like in a breakdown and this is you right like how did you feel about scheduling at three months oh man it's funny you say that because like i'm still perfecting my scheduling right now and i'm like so this is like a year later me too and like one of the things that you said that really resonated with me because i'm a bit of a perfectionist and you're like danielle you have to put the minus work out into the world you have to do that so that you can get feedback and then it it'll improve so i've gone through like i don't know five six seven different types of scheduling i've done like physical copies i've done google calendars i've like what's working for me now is i made my own template on like a google sheet that i use but i'm like still tweaking it and perfecting it and getting into the flow about when i schedule and how long now but it's something that you like it's just constantly improving what the difference between good and great is often just an extra round of revisions so i'm just like i'm like in it now i'm like okay well scheduling is something that i do i'm not perfect at it yet but like i know how i feel at the end of the days that i schedule and like it goes you know even if it doesn't go well then i rearrange and whatnot but i know how i feel and i want that so i'm committed to failing a bunch to be yes you're just like teacher's pet over here speaking my language well i'm committed to failing i love it um yeah i i think that it's a lot of things that people ask me about scheduling they come in and they think i'm gonna give them like a template right of like okay so give me the planner that you use and tell me the template and there are very specific rules to scheduling but most of it is about the way that you're thinking about time and the way that you're applying that thought in your day and then the way that you're evaluating that day right so it's like more of a process of like get it all down right obviously you know i believe in deadlines i believe in every 15 minutes i believe in meticulous time but the way the reason i believe in that is to expose what's happening it's to bring it all to the surface immediately to make it painful and uncomfortable and to show you where you're failing so that you can constantly be like okay well that's not working what is one little way that i can make this work and you went through lots of iterations i still use a paper planner for a lot of it a lot of people will be like oh my gosh i don't know how you use that you know i still i have coach accountable for reminders of my calls in in terms of uh you know digital reminders and stuff i think that that's important but it's just what works for me i like the paper i've tried other things i've tried google calendars didn't work for me i don't require any particular hapster to use a platform or a specific type of planner scheduler scheduling is about not giving your brain any loopholes for you to tell yourself there's there's a priority and then not show up to that if you don't show up to that i want you knowing exactly why it was and not planning everything and you're not planning results instead you're planning action i can't know what you're trying to create and therefore i can't know whether you're falling short or not you should know whether you're falling short or not people want to not do that because they don't want room to fail they're not committed to failing like you said so it helps you find like this awareness of yourself too because it's a little bit of a learning curve with what works for you like when are my most creative hours when what happens like what happens to me in the morning when i schedule my first thing in the day is like working out it's like oh that that hasn't worked for me so i've learned that now i schedule my day differently and i give myself lots of time and space in the morning and then i my workouts are like it just you you get to tap into what you're dragging your feet on and where you're like thriving with it too and then you can you can optimize your day for what works best for you which is fantastic and this is why i haven't released scheduling as a passive income stream course people have been asking for it and i just think it it works best long term if you go through scheduling with coaching because what would happen is you would come and you would be having a major thought error of like i set my schedule and i still like i had to like it didn't take me this long to do and i went into that and i'd be like it's not a problem that's not a problem there's no problems here like if you wanted it to like be perfect and i was like no scheduling is a process of experimentation it is a process of committing to results and then seeing where you got those results and where you failed and then how to improve the process to get better results but also continue to fail yeah i i remember really um a lot of the conversations we had were really stuck in my head well there were there was one charge too right like heads yeah and there was one


but we were talking about i came to you about procrastinating at one point too because i had i had like broken the screen on my phone it was like this whole thing yeah and something you said to me that's always really stuck too is that like okay you know this now like don't beat up past self for things yourself knows and like so today this week uh starting my first week as ceo i opened my computer and my computer screen is cracked and instead of like spiraling and like procrastinating and all these different things i was just like okay add it to the tbs list this is what i need to do check my lineup budget all right i'll move some money around here to pay for the new computer screen i was just like and it was just like it and then i just moved on and it was it was no it was a tiny bit of drama where you like i felt the emotion yeah just like what like really come on and then yeah but then it just you know you let it flow and then you use the tools that you have to move forward oh that's so i'm so glad that you gave an example like that because first of all you just touch on like time money my drama like right there in one one situation but it's all like it's the core of the of every day as an entrepreneur it's like if you have a crack in your computer screen three things need to be considered when am i gonna get this fixed am i going to take action now or am i going to keep thinking about it or am i going to leave it or when am i actually physically going to take it to the shop to get it fixed too so those are two time components and questions so the decision-making part which part of haps are scheduling is being an advanced decision maker right being able to do what danielle just said some of you are probably listening to this and being like are you kidding me she just went through that whole process in five minutes or ten minutes and i'm like yeah and probably nine of the minutes were the mind drama part and then one of the minutes was checking the wine up and scheduling it it's like actually the execution and the decision making it's not the hard part the hard part is being with your brain when it's in it's a tantrum and not making not doubling down on it by beating yourself up and being like ah this is who i am i'm just gonna procrastinate and like leaning into your your self-concept that you don't even want to perpetuate but you're perpetuating it right and so so there's the time component then there's the money component so she just really quickly sprinkled in i just checked my ynab and budgeted it that's what it is so funny that you mentioned that as well because i have a macbook air and like the storage it's just getting it doesn't have high storage on here i've known i've needed for it but i have not really been prioritizing that in my budget a new computer but all of a sudden i'm like all right i don't want it to get to the point where i'm in happening sessions and my computer just runs out of space or something like that so i i same thing so ynab i've talked about it on the show many times but it's it's a tool resource i don't work for them it stands for you need about it like don't know why they haven't jumped on


eventually they will i will eventually have to come back and like edit put in like little clauses like this is not enough


but yeah you need a budget it is a tool that i train hapsters on in terms so that they can understand the math of these decisions because oftentimes what holds you back from getting a new computer and it's so funny because uh my producer danny is you know listening into this recording as well and she just told me off screen like two weeks ago i think it was that she had a similar thing her computer crashed and she typically would be in this spiral of like can i afford it should i should i not and she was just like what would jess do and what would my future self do and she was like i just made the decision like do i need does my future self have a computer that works or how do i and and she just made the decision quickly and it sounds so obvious you guys but i promise you this is not how most of us operate in our day we want to just actually it's easier to spend time in the drama in the mind drama of it and in the process or to avoid it all together or to buffer it and be like or to complain about it and go to our friends like can you believe it i just started my first week and my computer's cracked and like that's what we do but it just is what we do and so instead you were like i'm not going to give any of my time to that because i've got bigger things to do and it's all written out for me i know what i have to do right too so you need a budget you just go in and if you don't have something budgeted i know you know danny and i and you like with this computer situation right it's like it doesn't matter it's not a matter of can i or can't i uh you need a budget and the work that we did there as well helps you just see when and what are the different options and the paths to being able to create that when so could i push the timeline forward if and you can see all of the moving parts if i were to buy it right now what would i be delaying instead or what would have to happen would i just reduce my grocery budget by a little bit or my dining out budget or something that in the just for fun category right for a necessity and i it makes it so much it makes it math and not drama we have enough of that like we have enough drama we don't need every decision to be about trauma you know it's funny i read something recently that i really liked that was our brains were meant to keep us alive they weren't meant to keep us happy so like you could easily spiral and be like i don't have enough money like i'm not going to be able to feed myself it's just like this candy or with this you can be like all right just going to kind of tune that out like what do i actually have what can i actually move around and it just becomes it it's just it becomes very it's a powerful feeling to have like such control over your your income your your like your money your time and your mind like that combination together it's it's it's spicy stuff but spike the work unstoppable it really just feels like the the thing that we just said like it just becomes a matter of when when is my world domination it's not like am i going to take over the world yeah and i mean that's what happened with me recently too to be like when when can i make the step to say i am a ceo and founder of this company like that is my full-time job now and i wouldn't have gotten there without these tools it would never have happened i would have i would have been consumed by the mind drama and the risk aversion and like the the lie that having you know this like nice steady income is exactly what i needed to keep happy and you know it's yeah i'm so grateful oh my goodness well i'm grateful to you i really think that you came and you knew what you wanted to get and you came across pretty much every obstacle that comes up for one of my clients like all in one round of six months and you sat with it like you were willing to be with yourself when it you were thinking in a very imperfect way or a very flawed way and i think that's when you know that you're ready for more advanced coaching when not trying to get to this place where all of a sudden you're like fixed from your humanness right it's like you're still gonna have mind drama your brain is like come on when your computer screen's cracked you're just gonna get quicker at getting into awareness and you'll have a process for how to make a decision about it and not let it ruin your whole day yes and the process more because like you said too we are sold this idea that what's allowing us to enjoy our life is the stability that's created by a salary and like that just is not a revolutionary thought can i think to the mic


it's it's like you are a badass at making money that was a huge book for me too and it talks about like a lot of like our mental drama about money is like passed down from like our parents who it's passed down from like their parents so it's like it's really like a lot of the time our mental mindset about money is like really outdated and like it you know for me like this is you know week one of you know this is my full-time job and i feel i'm vibing so high this is exactly what i needed and all the fears you know a lot of people you know told me that this is gonna be really hard this is gonna be hard this is gonna be hard i was like yeah i know it's gonna be hard i know it's gonna be hard and engineering's hard too like you delay gratification and then you get this nugget of joy that you just like it makes it all worth it and i i'm just feeling so alive right now and so like in touch with my purpose yeah i'm just so grateful i'm so proud of you and i can't wait for us to be able to feel and see these gorgeous products and use them and not feel like we're you know feeding the machine of some sort of business that's just like turning things out i know how thoughtful you are about this process and how thoughtful you're being about the materials and about the design and about the the give back components and and all that and i think that just stay tuned don't you worry when the second that this long we're gonna have danielle back on the podcast you're gonna you guys gonna know so stay tuned but if um if people wanna follow or if they wanna connect do you have a way that they can do you have a like uh an email list or do you have a or should they just follow you on instagram or what's the what's the best place for them to stay up to date on this launch of good intents that's a good question i am creating an email list um okay so what we're gonna do is danielle's gonna create the email list and it'll be in the show notes so by the time that you're listening to this you will have a link to be able to uh get on that email list to be aware if you are a concert goer or if you were a camper or if you are like someone who just cares about the world likes to sleep outside i'm one of those people i go camping every year i think that you need to get on this list but thank you so much danielle for sharing your journey and the ups and downs and i know it's so easy on this end of it but it's like you could get to talk about like all the questions where you were in tears over feeling like this was so far away and or you were doing something wrong when you were in the fields or in the fails of it so yeah i and i wouldn't be here without you i'm like like a tiny recorder for for you now and i just like spew it out into the world anytime i hear something i'm like oh actually you should talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself yeah yeah do you need a keychain


to see the the birth child the love child of your beautiful brain in good intense and uh and stay tuned you guys all right have a beautiful day hapsters hey hapsters if you want to learn more about today's topic head over to whatshappening.com forward slash podcast that's what's happening a p w-h-a-t-s-h-a-p-p y n i n g dot com forward slash podcast if you're a business owner and you're resonating with what we talk about here what are you even doing come hang out with me over where the party's at on instagram at what's happening w jess again that's happy h-a-p-p-y-n-i-n-g and book a discovery call to see if coaching is your next best step


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