Building Better Communication in the Workplace with Pam Hurley

Welcome to the Construction Disruption Podcast, where we

uncover the future of design, building, and remodeling.

I'm Ethan Young.

I'm a content writer here at Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer special metal

roof metal roofing and voting materials.

And today my co host is Todd Miller.

How you doing, Todd?

You know, I think I'm doing okay.

I'm still kind of trying to get over a conversation I

had with a guy the other day.

I was talking to a guy and And we were just kind of talking

about a variety of things.

And at one point he looked at me and he said, you know, Todd, you may not

be the dumbest guy in the world, but you sure better hope he doesn't die.

Next in line.

Okay.

That's good.

Um, before we do get started today, I do want to let the audience know

we're doing our, uh, challenge words.

So be on the lookout for any unique or kind of interesting words.

You hear us say that.

Yeah, maybe those are our challenge words.

So just pay attention, see what you hear.

But, uh, today our guest is Pam Hurley.

She's founder of Hurley, right?

Which is according to their website, a business dedicated to enhancing

the community communication skills of professionals through

tailored courses and workshops.

So welcome to the podcast, Pam.

How are you doing?

Oh, thank you very much.

I'm glad to be here.

Awesome.

Um, I wanted to start first with Pam, what drove you to start Hurley, right?

Okay.

And I was a professor at a, um, at a college in the North Carolina system.

And it was frustrating to me because I would have students that would come in

from physics and engineering and all these other disciplines and, and, and into the

technical writing class and they were convinced that they couldn't write well.

And, but they could write well, you know, so it's this, it's this whole

thing about the way academia teaches writing is just, it's just stupid.

You know, they need to simmer down a little bit and

teach it in a different way.

But, um, so I did, I developed this course for them, which they really,

they really took to and then I decided, hey, I'm going to reach out to.

Industries.

And I just started cold calling.

This is back in the day we couldn't actually reach people.

And I just started cold calling and got hired.

And from there, it just, it just, it just exploded.

So that's, that's the long and short of it.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I actually started when I went to school in engineering and I

remember doing my tech writing class.

And it's funny, like you said, I think they don't always do the best

job of approaching it, but it's still a really vital thing, even

for, you know, writing lab reports, writing papers, whatever it is.

It's just.

It's an important skill that you can't ignore, even if

you're in a technical field.

So,

well, I've had more than one engineer say to me, cause we do

a lot of work with engineers and I've had more than one, one of them say to

me, all I wanted to do was to engineer.

I had no idea that I'd have to write.

And when you think about.

The amount of time that's in an academic career, the amount of time that's

devoted to writing, it's, it's my mute.

And so why would you think that there would be a lot of writing?

Because university doesn't prepare you for that because

they don't spend any time on it.

1 semester, maybe, so it's, it's not a surprise.

I don't know why people are so surprised.

You know, that that so many, so many professionals are ill prepared to write.

But they just don't have to in, in, in university.

So it's.

Logically, you would understand that they wouldn't be, they

wouldn't think that writing was such a large part of their job.

I guess if you never developed the skill, you know,

then you don't have it to fall back on when you do need it.

So, um, I thought it was interesting, you know, you mentioned that you

started in academia, how has.

That experience been different teaching professionals instead of

teaching students has it been like different motivations, different

level of kind of commitment to the

yes, professionals are so much more devoted.

If you will, are interested or best invested is a better word.

There's so much more vested because a lot of them understand that.

If I don't learn to write well, I'm not going to be promoted.

Right?

So promotion research has shown that people who can communicate

well, or more likely to, they make more money than people who can't.

Um, I love my students don't get me wrong, but what they say about the

politics of academia is 100 percent true, but working with the clients

we work with over the past 30 years.

Has just been it's just been amazing and, you know, a lot of our clients hire us

again and again and again, but it's a, yeah, it's a different if it's a different

mindset, a student versus a professional, I think professionals understand.

Hey.

I really need this.

And when you're in academia, when you're a student, you're like, I don't know.

I, you know, you have no idea, but you don't have any experience.

One point I was going to make here is I think it's kind of funny

how this is almost a reversal of, you know, you hear a lot of times in school,

like when, you know, when, when am I going to use this math or whatever?

I feel like in this sort of technical field, it's the other thing.

Like, when am I going to use this writing?

So.

It's funny to see that, you know, people, professionals do realize, cause they've

run into situations where they do need it.

They do see the value in it.

Yeah.

I

mean, a lot of them, 90 percent of their jobs are writing.

If you're in any, any kind of profession where you have any kind

of power, you're going to be writing.

Yeah.

Especially with communications, just, you know, with your

coworkers, if you're in charge of a department, whatever it is, memos.

Emails, all that kind of stuff.

It's, it's a crucial part of being a leader or like you

said, just being a professional.

So,

right.

And the work from home movement has even, uh, made it make communication

skills even that much more important because you don't have a luxury of going

and saying, Hey, Todd, what's going on?

You know, is that pot simmering over?

I mean, you don't have that luxury of doing that.

So you have to, you have to do it in writing.

I'm, I'm kind of curious.

So, you know, we talk about that with the amount of writing

that we all have to do anymore.

And, you know, I think it's, it's really increased.

Um, Do you think that teaching someone good writing skills also

makes them a better speaker?

It can.

It can.

A lot of, yeah, a lot of what you're dealing with when, when, when speaking.

Are you talking about before, before an audience or just speaking one to one?

Any of that, really.

Just a better communicator in general, even verbally.

Yeah, absolutely.

If we're talking one on one.

I mean, one of the things you're dealing with when people are in front of, in

front of an audience, you're dealing with.

Nervousness and, you know, those kinds of things, which you typically don't

encounter in a 1, 1 to 1 communication.

But yeah, writing is just incredibly important.

And the flip side of that is reading.

It should be reading every day.

I mean, this is all research space.

This isn't anything I'm making up, but you wouldn't know if I were

making it, but I'm not a promise.

Um, one thing you mentioned I wanted to touch on too, is you talked

about, you know, you served a lot of different clients over the, over the

years and I'm sure it's a wide variety.

I know it's probably a lot of technical people in the technical field, but

have you noticed any sort of like common experiences or common lessons

that they learn when they start doing this kind of thing that really

like seem to crop up over and over?

You mean when they start writing for industry or yeah,

yeah, when they start, I guess like working with Hurley Wright?

Yeah, so 1 of the things that we see a lot with

professionals is they are confused.

Oftentimes when they go into an organization about expectations.

Because management typically doesn't do a very good job of setting expectations

for this is how we want you to write.

These are the expectations and then you have the review process,

which is not a process at all.

But just oftentimes just people making, making random comments that

may not have anything to do with.

With the document at all, so it, it becomes, it's a very difficult thing.

We, I'll give you an example.

So we are, we are now doing what we call communication audits

where we go into companies.

We look at their documents, we look at their processes,

we'll look at their tools.

And we're, we just finished with a huge multinational.

Healthcare company.

And the writers, I'm just, it's mind blowing to me that they get anything done

because the writers have no standards.

There's no.

No deadlines, they say they spend half their time looking for information

reports to reports that they can mimic, or whatever the case may be.

And you think about, and we showed them the ROI on that.

I mean, they're wasting they're wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

On writing and reviewing just because people are sitting around looking

for, they're trying to find stuff.

Yeah, so it's just, but companies don't think about that.

You know, they look at well, we're inefficient.

You know, we're not making the widget fast enough.

Okay.

Well, why?

Maybe it's the, maybe it's whatever the case may be, but, but writing

has a real ROI as does reviewing.

And if you're not doing it, right, you're losing a ton.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're losing a ton of money.

This company, we figured out just by cutting their review process by 25%,

they could save a quarter of a million dollars a year just on that alone.

That's huge.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's

one department.

That's not even a company.

That's one department.

And I think right there, I mean, that just tells us that, uh, I

mean, I don't know for sure, but I could see one of the big causes for this being,

especially in a bigger organization, like writing not being made a priority or sort

of a thing that just kind of develops along the way as the company goes.

And I mean, obviously you're probably going to know better than I am, but

I could see that being pretty prone to bureaucracy and different people

coming in at different positions.

And it's just sort of this evolving.

Labyrinth of labyrinth of existing stuff.

And yeah,

you're 100 percent correct on that.

That's one of the reasons we, I love working with startups because startups,

it's an opportunity for them to start getting some things in place so that

by the time they are, you know, are big and are, are continuing to grow, they

already have all this stuff in place.

And they don't have to go back and try to fix something that

could have been standardized at the, at the very beginning.

But yeah, you're, you're 100, 100 percent right.

And then anyway, I can, I can talk for hours about this, but yes, that's,

you're 100 percent right about that.

Gotcha.

And I'm sorry to keep saying 100 percent cause that's terrible.

But anyway, it's a cliche and I apologize.

And it's not our challenge word either.

I

was going to say the same thing, that's not the challenge

word.

Okay.

Um, you mentioned a little bit earlier, but you're talking about,

um, the processes that you use to kind of teach teacher students.

And I pulled out a passage from your site is our success in creating long

term improvement is based on science and research based curriculum and

a focus on readability studies.

Now, there's a couple of things there to break down, but could you talk about the

science and research based stuff first?

Sure, everything we teach is based on readability

studies and what we know.

So, this is, this is a, an evolving field and there's actually people who study

how readers read and that kind of thing.

So, everything we teach is based on that, as you're probably very aware, how

readers read has changed dramatically over the past 5 years, 6, you know, right?

But what happens is when so, so in most organizations, and for most.

Professionals, they glom on to grammar rules, right?

They are so concerned about grammar.

Grammar has no bearing on whether your document is readable or

effective, no bearing whatsoever.

You can have a document that's 100 percent correct and it's just

incomprehensible, unreadable.

And so everything we teach is based on the science of reading.

What do, what does research tell us about this?

And we keep up to date on that because How readers read is changed.

How you structure a sentence, how you structure a paragraph, right?

Those things matter, because readers are incredibly intolerant.

They don't read.

I mean, I think we all, I call this the Google Syndrome, which is not

the, I just made this up, but it's this idea that I go on Google, I see

a headline or a first sentence that makes sense to me, click, I'm done.

Yeah.

Right?

So, so a lot of it is this kind of quick fix, Kind of idea and for a lot of people

that that are that glom onto these grammar rules is because there's comfort in that.

Right?

I know that I can't do this.

I can't do that.

I can't can't do the other.

But 1 of the things we really focus on is how do you because writing

is problem solving on paper.

I mean.

Philosophers, people have said that for, you know, for centuries, and so

what we teach people is how do you, how do you take your problem solving

skills, which you already had, you're already a brilliant problem solver.

We know this, right?

Because if you weren't, you wouldn't have this job that you have.

And how do you take that and apply that to writing and try

to solve the writing problem?

Instead of instead of focusing on the grammar issues, writing

is a problem that has to be solved and for the professionals.

We work with that really clicks and it makes it easier for them because

they can relax about about the rules and really start thinking about.

Okay.

This is how I solve a problem.

This is how I'm going to solve the writing pump.

They're exactly the same.

Well, I think a lot of that is just being able to express

what you already know, you know, kind of giving them that tool to be able

to share that information or that discovery or that data or whatever.

So, and I think, yeah, confession, I'm a writer myself and something I think about

a lot is readability and like my audience.

And I think in any kind of writing that's really vital, but especially

in something like this, where it's a technical or professional piece or

whatever, you have to really think about how clearly can I communicate it?

How.

In depth, am I getting with jargon and terms and stuff?

How can I make this understandable for my audience?

And for a lot of different professional kinds of writing, that's going to change

pretty drastically depending on who's reading it and who you're writing it for.

So,

well, exactly.

And you can have multiple readers as well.

That's something that we run into quite a bit with the professionals we work

with is that they have multiple readers.

And so we help them understand if you have multiple readers,

how do you write to those three?

Tears of readers.

Yeah, I know.

One of the most common ways it's broken down is based on kind of a grade

level or like a level of academic, whatever competence for, you know,

how, how readable a document is.

That's 1 of the measures I use for some of my writing,

like the flesh Kincaid or the gunning fog index.

Yeah, we don't use those, but that's, that's 1 way to do it.

For sure.

If you're looking at grade level, there's a lot of things I don't like about that

tool, but, but it can be a good tool.

If you're trying to write to a certain.

A certain grade level, the problem with that, when we talk about

people in engineering or science or whatever, is they, they can't,

you know, there are certain words they're married to married to.

And if they use those terms, and then their, their, their

score is going to be sky high.

Well, is it really unreadable?

I mean, you really have to have a to read this or is it just these

few words that they have to.

That they have to use.

So it's, you know, I just say, take, take, take it with a grain, uh,

with the grain, if it works for you, that that's great, but for a lot of

professionals, it just doesn't work.

Absolutely.

I think that's a good point too.

Cause like you said, there's some terms you just can't break down further.

They're going to lose their meaning.

You know, it's not going to, it may be very specific.

It may be very technical, whatever, but that's what it is.

You can't,

right.

And it, or, or it's what the reader expects.

And if you don't use it, you, like, you don't know what you're talking about.

Right.

So there's.

You know, two sides to that coin for sure.

I think that's a great point.

Um, I guess this kind of tailors with the question I was going to ask

later, but we brought up, you brought up Google searches and that kind of

mentality of just going for that first.

And I don't know, you've probably experienced it already, I'm

sure, but it's been in the news.

Google has switched to this sort of AI summary for its new search results.

Those come up first.

And I guess that leads me to ask, what was your gut reaction to this whole sort

of wave of generative AI and how does.

How does Hurley writes kind of deal with that?

Use it.

You know, what's the approach?

AI is, AI is the shiny new object.

Mm-Hmm.

. Pam Hurley: Right.

And so there's a lot of, I remember when, oh copywriters,

they're gonna lose their jobs.

Writers are gonna lose their job, blah, blah.

You know, okay, no, that's not gonna happen.

'cause you still have to have human beings who can think.

Right.

And problem solving those kinds of things.

We offer a class on writing in AI.

How do you use AI for prompting and things like that?

AI, at this point, cannot replace human thinking or human thought.

It can't replace the writing you do.

Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that, Oh, if I use

AI, then I can stop writing.

I don't have to write anymore.

Because, I mean, let's face it.

A lot of the folks we work with don't, they don't like writing.

They don't go, Yeah, this is the best thing I've ever done.

So, you can use it.

But you have to be strategic in how you use it.

Right, so I'm not saying is terrible.

It's not.

It's not terrible at all, but you have to know how to use it.

Do I believe that it's going to replace writing?

I do not.

And here's another reason why I don't is because if you have a subject

matter expert in an organization, um, And that subject matter expert

is writing, using AI or whatever.

Somebody still has to review that writing.

Somebody has to make sure that it's technically accurate and readable

and all those kinds of fun things.

So I think in a lot of cases, what you're really doing is you're

adding to the burden, instead of just getting the SME to write it.

You're getting AI to write, and the SME's gotta review it, and the reviewers

gotta review it, and then you've got to go back and make, and I think a lot of

cases start, start, start from scratch.

And I've experimented with myself.

I wrote a post on LinkedIn, and you know, they had the, oh,

you know, let AI rewrite this.

And so I did, and it was crap.

It wasn't my voice.

It wasn't something that I would, you know, it's just like, really, some of it

is so sophomoric, which is not, The word of the day, by the way, some of it is so

soft more that it's just like, really?

So I'm not, I'm not concerned.

Do I think it's a good tool?

Absolutely.

Grammarly is great.

You know, Grammarly for correcting your spelling or great tool.

But I'm not concerned about it in terms of replacing writing at this point.

I think it's got a long way to go.

I agree.

I, I do use Grammarly myself to check a lot of my documents.

It's just really helpful, but I'm in the same boat as you.

I think it's interesting.

AI kind of makes different mistakes than people do.

Like it.

It messes up on some things that like people would never mess up on,

but you know, it could be, it can be a little bit more like technically

perfect where it won't make as many grammatical mistakes as some people, but

there was something recently, somebody said that it was telling

people to feed rocks to their plants.

What did anybody see that?

It was like things that it was saying, and then I saw this, this

one thing where this, this person was in this debate about the year.

And it was like, it's 2023.

No, it's not.

It's 2020.

You know, it's just like, really?

So,

yeah, the one I saw was something about a person was trying to

make a pizza at home and they couldn't get the cheese to stick to their pizza.

So it advised them to use glue to stick the pizza.

Yeah, it's a great idea.

Why not use glue?

Why not?

So, yeah, it's definitely got a ways to go, but.

I, I think you're, I think you're smart to, and I think it's great

that you have a specific class for it to, you know, kind of address that.

Yeah.

It's out there.

Yeah.

This is what it can do.

And we'd rather, you know, kind of empower you to use it instead of

either use it as sort of a replacement or a crutch for what you could

develop with your own writing skills.

Right.

Because yeah, it's, it's a good tool.

I mean, and you can use it, but you have to know what you're

doing, you know, and some of these regular regulated industries.

I don't know if it's ever going to happen because apparently if they're a closed

loop and all the, you know, power it takes and all that other kind of fun stuff.

And I'm not, I don't teach the class.

I'm not an expert on it.

And one of our, uh, one of our other consultants does, you know, still, I

think we're, we're probably a ways away.

That's a good point, actually.

I mean, especially in some technical industries, maybe, you know, working for

the government or whatever, some of that information that you'd have to put in,

you can't, it would be a huge security risk to put that into something that you

don't have all the Ability to control.

So, I mean,

you think about data breaches now, right?

Which, which occur almost daily.

I mean, how many times do you get?

Oh, well, sorry, your social security number got out again.

Sorry, you know, that kind of thing.

And you think about that and you think about proprietary information,

uh, like, you know, we do a lot of with pharma companies, a

lot of proprietary information.

Uh, aerospace, those kinds of organizations, I don't know how willing

they're going to be to just stick it out there and hope for the best.

So you mentioned the AI course.

What are some of the other courses that Hurley Writes

offers that for professionals?

Some of the most popular courses, we have a

writing for engineers course.

We do technical writing.

Um, we have a course on writing deviations.

Um, which a lot of, uh, so that's pharma companies manufacturing when

something goes wrong, they have to be able to, um, to write about it.

So that if they get audited, or if, you know, the real goal is so that management

can, um, you know, can repair it.

And and so we do how to build better PowerPoints.

We have presentations courses.

Pretty much anything, anything you can think of.

But a lot of our clients now are going, you know, we're funneling

into, into the communication audit.

So that we can figure out what they need and it's at a lower low price point.

And so we go in and we do this analysis and then we provide them

with this roadmap and they can do whatever they want to with the roadmap.

They can hire us.

They can do it in house.

They can go with another vendor.

They can do whatever they want.

But we do this deep dive in this analysis on how much money they're wasting where

they are now, where they want to be, how to get there and the whole thing.

And that's been, um.

Very, very popular, very eye opening.

It's been eye opening for us to, to be quite honest with you.

And some of the, some of the money and time that some of these large companies

are wasting, and they're not even aware of it because typically they come and

say, oh, we want a writing course.

We'll say, well, let's do this audit.

1st, let's see if that's really what you need.

That may be what you need.

You may be 100 percent right.

But sometimes it's not, and people often overlook the reviewers, and

what the reviewers are doing and not doing, and sometimes the reviewers

are just as much a part of the writing problem as the writers themselves.

But nobody talks about the reviewers.

So can you just, so like, if I guess I'll say, could you run us

through what, like a typical, so like, let's say a company does a communications

audit and works through a course with you as their like follow up, is it just

usually a one time like kind of here's the course for the people that need it or.

No, it's a whole program.

We put into a whole program, the communication audit,

they go through the program.

We do, you know, we do the webinars.

We have videos.

We have all this.

You know, uh, refresher webinars, all these tools that we put in

place, we help them revise their templates and a lot of companies.

We've got templates and then you look at it.

Does anybody use them?

We don't know.

Okay.

Well, if you don't know, people are using them.

How do you know how useful that I was talking to a client recently?

And I said, do you have templates?

And he said, yeah, and I said, are they useful?

Because I don't know, but we, we just redid them.

And I said, Oh, why, why, why'd you redo them?

And he goes.

I don't know.

I don't know.

So they redid them based on some kind of a hunch without having any

data about maybe the original did.

What was perfectly fine.

Right, but they don't, but they don't know.

So what we do is we give them data, right?

So that they can, they can figure out how to move forward and

whether it's a writing class.

And what do you need in the writing class?

Maybe your folks need coaching.

Right maybe you need refresher webinar.

So we check in with them as a 6 month program and then we do a post audit to

figure out where they started and where they and and and where they wound up.

So it's a whole it's a whole program.

They don't have to do that.

People can just, you know, some companies just want to write in class.

That's fine too.

But if they want to see long term improvement.

Then the communication audit is, is what I highly suggest.

Yeah.

And my next question is going to be about follow up because I'm sure like, like you

said, for this to really stick, people need to see, like, make the change and

then continue to keep that change up and continue to actively work on their

writing and, you know, try to improve it.

So.

Well, right.

And management has to be involved in that as well.

You can't just put people on a writing course and then go,

okay, well, they're fixed.

And then the reviewers don't support it and management doesn't support it.

And you can't.

Everybody has to everybody's got a dog in the fight.

Right and so, you know, one of the things I talk about when I teach a class is.

Every document has your name on it, whether it has your name on it or not.

It's got to be a collaborative process.

You have to give your writers time and space to write and to

think, because writing is thinking on paper, as I said earlier.

And when you're constantly, it's a constant time crush, we've got to get this

done, we've got to get this out the door.

You're not, you're, you're crazy if you're expecting good, good product.

You're not going to get good product from that.

So there has to be time and space.

And so those are some of the things we talked to management

about is how do you do that?

It doesn't have to be like, Oh, you know, Sue sitting in her chair,

just gazing out the window all day.

That's not what we're talking about, but there are ways to incorporate

these things so that you do produce a better product or so that your

writers do produce a better product.

Um, what kind of feedback have you gotten on these writing courses

and these programs from companies?

Well, we've been in business for 35 years.

I think that says what it needs to say,

and it is a good, it is a long time and I started when I was 10,

as you can tell by my looking at my face, but, um, you know, and the majority

of our clients are repeat clients.

So, and when we get good, and you can look at our, you know, our, our, uh,

our website has a lot of testimonials on there, but I'm very proud of the work.

We do.

I'm very, um, it would devastate me to be quite honest with you.

If I had a client come back and said, that was the worst.

Thing we've ever done, I would be, I would be devastated.

I take a lot of pride.

I ran it myself for the 1st, 20 years.

Now we have a team, but I would just be I would just be devastated.

That would just that would that would be beyond anything.

I could I could bear because I take a lot of pride in what I do.

We're very customer customer focused.

And I believe very strongly in what we do.

And I believe in, you know, the curriculum that we offer is very unique and.

Anyway, we're very, um, very engaged with our clients.

I

guess one last question I have for you before

we get close to the end here.

Um, is there like a really common sort of like, I guess I should say, like,

what's one tip you would give any technical writer or whatever just like

a real easy, like, you can look at this.

This is a great thing to, like, just immediately, you know, whatever,

regardless of your skill level, like, just kind of implement this

and this will help your writing.

Slash and burn.

Okay.

Do you want to know what it is?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, I have an idea, but for anybody who doesn't.

Go through.

I mean, this is advice has been given by.

Authors throughout the years.

I mean, uh, you know, whatever sentence you're in love with

is a sentence you should cut.

I can't remember who said that.

I think it was Twain, was it Mark Twain who said that?

I can't remember now, but anyway, just, you gotta be brutal, man.

You gotta go in and you just got, you have to be brutal.

And most people aren't, they just love every single word that they've included.

And even if it's not logical and even if everything doesn't fit

together, so you gotta be brutal.

You gotta go in there and just, we call it slash and burn, get rid of it.

I like it.

Poetic.

Yeah, well, you know, if it adds, like, people will

say, you know, in the future.

Okay, well, I can probably tell by the verb tense it's going to be in the future.

Anywho, but that's, that's, that's my recommendation.

Slash and burn.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Ethan has edited some of my stuff, and I can tell you firsthand, he's

really good at slashing and burning.

And for all good reasons, the one I've always heard

is, I think it's Stephen King calls it, he says, kill your darlings.

Yes.

That's the one I was thinking of.

Kill your darlings.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's a, he wrote a great book called, um, I think it's called on writing.

Yes.

I was gifted that when I graduated college and

I read it a couple of times.

It's been helpful.

So

yeah, it's a good one to look out for.

Which is interesting coming from an author.

Cause they do tend to be more flowery, I guess.

Yeah.

A little mellifluous with her language, but Yeah, and it's

interesting because he's such a prolific writer, but I mean, I guess a lot of his

books are pretty, he's written a lot.

So I guess that says something, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I think we're about ready to wrap up the

business end of the podcast here.

So one of our favorite things to do on construction disruption

is called rapid fire questions.

So this is a round of seven questions.

Some of them are serious.

Some of her kind of silly off the wall, but we think, are

you up for the rapid fire?

Sure.

Okay.

Awesome.

Uh, I'll start us off then.

I had to throw this question in here.

Um, what's your opinion on the Oxford comma?

Yes.

Hello.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good.

Good.

I

mean, they're, they're, they're how, can I elaborate or no?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so you heard about the lawsuit, right, up in, I think

it was in Maine, that these truckers, because there was no, there was no

Oxford comma, I can send you the link, but there was no Oxford comma, and so

they sued to be paid for this task.

Because there was no oxford comma, it wasn't seen as separate, but

yeah, and this is what I don't get is why would, why wouldn't you use it?

It makes the writing clearer.

Yeah.

What's the big damn deal?

Excuse my language.

I'm sorry everybody who's listening to my profanity.

No, it's okay.

It's okay.

You know, sometimes you got to throw in the right word there to

make people pay attention.

Sometimes you got to throw it in there.

Yes, yes, to the oxford comma.

Yeah, and it's interesting because in my.

Over my life, we've gone back and forth, I think, three or four times

in terms of what I was taught and, you know, Oxford comma was just ubiquitous

and other times it was, you know, just, you don't, you don't use that.

Um, so it's been really interesting.

I'm glad to hear that you're on the side.

Uh, Ethan and I are on the, okay, question number two, what one

person would you most want to have with you on a zombie apocalypse?

Who do you want to have on your team?

Oh my goodness.

I don't know some kind of a survivalist person.

I don't know any survivalist people, but that's who I would

want is a survivalist person.

Who is that guy?

Bear, Bear Grylls or something like that?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Man versus wild or whatever.

That's a, that's a, zombies are just a freaky thing.

I don't know how they made that.

I never watched that.

Was it Walking Dead or whatever it was?

Yeah.

How many seasons did that damn thing last?

Oh my

goodness, a long time.

And there have been a couple spin offs from it, too.

I

mean, you're, okay, you got zombies chasing you, the end

is gonna, what's the story there?

I don't get the story, but anyway, I never watched it, so anywho.

Fair enough.

Um, another, uh, grammatical question here.

What's your favorite punctuation mark?

Semicolon.

Hello?

Okay.

I mean, who doesn't love a good semicolon?

I think that's an underrated one, you know?

Agreed!

Oh my gosh, so agreed, because you can take, you can take sentences instead of

chopping up and putting little periods there, and you can combine them, and you

can use transitions, and The semicolon.

I should be the president of the semicolon club.

My neighbor, sadly, had cancer a few years ago.

Now he does have a semicolon.

But anyway.

Oh, God.

It's

a

true story,

though.

True story.

Okay.

Next one is mine.

Um, what's a book or movie that has had an impact on you?

Oh, gosh.

I read so much all the time.

Um, I just, I love to read.

The amount, there's so many books.

Let me think, uh, anything by Barbara King Solver.

I love Barbara King Solver.

She's probably one of my favorite authors.

I read everything, but there's also Ann Patchett.

I love her.

I've just gotten through reading, uh, Jennifer Egan's The, A

Visit from the Goon Squad.

It won a Pulitzer in 2023.

If you've never read it, fabulous book, really, really fabulous.

A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Jennifer Egan and it won a Pulitzer in 2020.

I actually heard it mentioned on Jeopardy!

I'd never heard of it before, but it's very, very good.

So, I just love reading.

I think books are, everybody should be reading at least 15 minutes a day.

And that's, that again is based on

science.

Love it.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Oh, I know what it was.

When I was going to get my doctorate, I guess I was, how old was I?

I was 35 or something.

And I was talking to a friend of mine.

I'm like, yeah, but when I graduate, I'm going to be 40 and

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I just don't, you know, want to get involved.

And she goes, you're going to be 40 anyway.

Regardless of whether you go get your doctorate.

I'm like, damn, she's 100 percent she's right about that.

And then that has just stuck with me.

You're going to grow older anyway.

So why not just do the things you want to do, right?

Yeah.

Don't let it hold you back.

Yeah.

Don't let it hold you back.

I mean, you're going to, you're going to grow.

You're going to get old anyway.

I mean, tomorrow, you'll be 1 day older.

What's holding you back from doing the things you want to do today?

If it's age, that's, that's ridiculous.

I love that.

That is, that is great.

So, so I'm going to ask you, I'm going to, this is not one of the questions.

Um, I realize you work with clients from all over.

Where, where are you based out of?

We're, we're in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, we, we go all over the country.

Very good.

Okay.

Next, uh, next to last question.

Um, how often do you notice your, or how often do you find yourself noticing typos?

Oh, I always notice typos.

Do you find it harder to watch to find them in your

own writing or maybe you don't have any in your own writing?

I'm perfect.

I don't have any.

Well,

that's good.

God bless

you.

Instead of typos.

What I'm always focused on is like the misuse of a word or words.

I'm always pointing that out to people and they're like, people will misuse

only, you know, we only got here yet.

You know, it's just like, and you know what I've just, I've, you

know, I've, I've begun to realize that I'm the only person who cares.

And so I just need to stop because nobody cared that only is misplaced 99%,

but I love to point that stuff out to people.

Look at that.

Can you believe they did that?

I can't, but nobody cares.

But me.

So anyway, but that's yeah, those are the things that I

really that I really focus on.

I used to point out to people when they would say I could care less.

I

just gave up on it.

I had a student years ago, um, and she, she

instead of took it for granted.

She wrote, took it for granted, and, you know, it's like for all

intents and purposes and people say all intensive purposes.

I mean, it's funny, but it's, it's the things you hear.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent on that.

But yeah, that kind of stuff drives me crazy.

It's funny.

But yeah, you just have to give up.

It's just you're fighting an uphill battle.

That take it for granted, though, could become a saying of its own.

Actually, that's kind of interesting.

I'll never forget that.

That had to have been 30 years ago.

I'll never forget that.

She went, take it for granted.

All right.

Last question here.

Maybe a bit more serious, but what impact do you hope to have on the world?

Oh, that's a really good question.

What the impact that we hope to have on the world is that people will feel that

Writing is not the onerous task that they believe it is and that they understand

that they have the tools within them, the problem solving and the critical

thinking to be more effective writers.

I think that's well stated.

Yeah, that's, that's a vital mission.

So, um, thank you so much for your time, Pam.

Where can our audience find you and connect with Hurley?

Right?

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

This was a lot of fun.

I like it when there's there's 2, um, Two hosts, that was fun.

Um, pam@hurleywrite.

com.

H U R L E Y W R I T E dot com isn't writing a letter.

You can hit me up on LinkedIn.

Uh, the phone number is 877 249 7483.

So if you have any questions at all, hit me up on LinkedIn or

Email me or call me or whatever.

So this has been a lot of fun, guys.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for coming on.

And before we do end, I want to say we did all include our

challenge words in this episode.

So Todd, if you want to go first and say what yours was.

Yes.

I got to look it up.

Mine was ubiquitous.

You got it in at the last minute.

I noticed.

I'm like, oh, is he going to be able to get it in?

And he did.

Well, okay.

So Ethan almost threw me too, because normally I would have done the

first question in the rapid fire.

He threw me.

And so I had it all planned to work.

Which I think I still did.

I just had to tag onto what he was saying.

And that was good.

It was good.

Yeah.

Um, Pam, what was your word?

My word was simmer, which I used twice.

Cause I'm an

overachiever.

And then, um, mine was mal, malithous, a bit harder to say almost than

to use, but I got it in there.

So, man, you worked it in on the fly though, too.

I mean, you didn't really plan that.

He was kind of subtle.

Did, did you notice?

It was kind of like, yeah, he didn't like shout it out.

It was just kind of subtle.

I love it.

Perfectly pronounced and everything

was a good opportunity.

So.

Thanks everybody for tuning in to this episode of construction disruption with

our guest Pam Hurley founder Hurley writes and keep an eye out for future episodes.

We have a lot more great guests coming up.

Um, if you enjoyed this one, leave us a review on Apple podcast or

YouTube, but until next time, stay curious and open to innovation.

Um, this is Isaiah industry signing off for the next episode

of construction disruption.

This podcast is produced by Isaiah Industries, manufacturer of specialty

metal roofing and other building products.