Listening@work 2025: Fireside Chat - Why Listening Still Matters and Where We’re Going

Yeah, absolutely. I am. I can't tell you the whole day. I'm blown away by, but the, the first, this first part I'm really excited about. So, a little bit of background. I think it's important before we go into this conversation. In , uh, one of the first opportunities we had at C Consulting, uh, came, uh, by way of produce, pay backstory, is produce, pay, an agricultural finance company that's doing all kinds of interesting work supporting farmers in the world and, and how do we do better with our food and the money? I learned a ton in this job. However, what had happened was the founder and co-founder had gotten it to a certain point, about employees been very successful, but they got to that place where some change had happened. The board had shook things up, uh, and brought in a new CEO Pat McCullough. Pat came in, and Pat is a seasoned CEO and executive, uh, who came in and before me knew that that culture, uh, was important to running a business and decided to make a massive investment in . That included executive coaching as well as working with us to help lead a series. I think we did seven off executive offsites in . But when they came, when they reached out and said, would you be involved in a culture transformation? I said, yeah, but where's the data? And there wasn't a lot of data. There was, they did some great work, but it wasn't a, a strong data set. So we brought in Culture Amp, and that was important at the time. And I said, look, we got, we have to do this in a database approach. Part of the journey was running a, uh, a survey at the very beginning was, was, uh, the first kind of formal big survey like this. We let that dictate the work over the course of the year. Then we ran it again at the end of the year. And what a powerful experiment to put it all into practice. So, um, in that journey, I got to know Pat got to work with Pat and their executive team. Um, and I, what's special about this is we don't often get to hear from CEOs. We hear a lot from HR leaders, which is amazing. So when I reached out to Pat and said, would you do this? And he said, yeah, it was such a treat. So that who Pat McCullough is, that's, this is a CEO that believes in this. And I'm so excited to have Pat with us. Welcome, uh, everybody from Europe. Good afternoon, everybody in the us. I'm excited to be here too. Craig, it's great to catch up and kind of share our journey, um, because I think we all learned a lot from that. That was amazing. Um, look, we have limited time, but I just want to, I wanna get to it, but here are a couple things. Look, we're on computers. You can pull up Blats, uh, Pat's LinkedIn profile. You can read about Pat. I wanted to to start with him more of a question that helped introduce Pat. Uh, you know, pat, there's any two things. If there's anything you want to just add that people should know about you. But the question I wanted to ask you before we get into it, and I know because you're this kind of leader and you're willing to answer it, I wanted to ask you if you'd share with everybody what do you see as your biggest strengths as a leader, as an executive, and also where are the areas that you continue to work on and that you are like, Hey, look, I can do better. And, and I, I knew that getting to know you, but I think just sharing that with this audience would be helpful. And then we'll, we'll jump into the questions. Yeah, sure. So really briefly, I'm a mechanical engineer by degree, so I started as more of a quant. My father was a salesperson though, so I learned persuasive, you know, influencing skills as a kid in the house. So, you know, just with that background, you can probably already assess, I can solve complex problems and I'm very good at persuasive and influencing. Um, where, where I need to always reflect and slow down is with change. I'm always pushing for more efficiency. I'm always pushing for results. And sometimes I have to pause, breathe, and think, you know, this person that I'm challenging may not have the same context I have or may not be on the same journey. So I have to bring them in. I've gotta get their buy-in. I can't push and become intolerant with the first or second move. So as I approach, you know, pushing for results or pushing for change and improvement, I always have to check myself because if I let McCullough gorilla out, as it's been affectionately coined early in my career, you know, there's more eggs being broken than, um, productive advancements. So that's kind of the one I've always got my eye on. Uh, and I'm always reflecting on, I love, I love it. And it was obvious to me. I saw it. I mean, you have that leader ability to, to push and go hard, but also you were always wanting to check yourself and realize that as much as that can drive performance, that can also get in the way. And I just always appreciated that as a leader. So thanks for sharing that. Look, we got four questions that I think are gonna be really solid for this group. And so let's just get into it. And I think at, at the high level, what I, what I think the first question I want to ask you is, when you took, when you took on this role, you immediately went to your board and, and, and pushed for large dollars to do this. And I think like so many people in this room are thinking about that or how do they advocate for that? But to have you doing that. So I think we just start at the top is like, why, what, what did you bring in? What did you know and what, what was it like, you know, advocating for that and, and just the background importance for you to say, we need to make this big investment if we're gonna do what we're setting out to do. Yeah. And I was a reluctant CEO in this case. So a little bit more of the background. Prior to meeting Craig, I was a part-time advisor with the company and eventually became a board member. And then our founder, CEO really wanted out of the job. So he was pulling himself out of the job. Uh, the board tried to push me in, I tried to resist, and then I realized this was a golden opportunity that was gonna be fumbled if I didn't step up. So I, so I jumped in and, and what I knew at the time was we had three millennial leaders, two founders and uh, another millennial. And I don't mean to be ageist at all, but I was just trying to explain that these guys were very determined, very smart. They had that series a, series B founder mindset, we're gonna bust down every wall versus saying, Hey guys, let's work together. Let's kill these silos. 'cause we had three major silos in the business and let's come together as a leadership team. Let's make this a team sport, not an individual hero sport. So I did ask for one line item to be added to the budget, and it was about $, that we could invest in executive coaching, uh, employee engagement, and really pulling a, a fractured team together so that we could have the diversity of thought and the sum of the parts being greater than the individual parts themselves Making the case to them. I, where I'm going with this is the fact that you, it's in many ways I think there's a similarity. You're going to the board and asking this money, clearly they're thinking about the dollars. And many people on this call are also thinking about, how do I go to my executives and ask for this money? Any tips on making that case upfront? Yeah, it's a hard one. I totally get it. Remember, I started as a quant. I was in corporate finance early in my career, I was cost cutting at Ford Motor Company. So this would've been the thing I would be looking for. Oh, this is a nice to have. We can you, you can't say outright, outright that that doesn't work or that has no value. You, you have to say, oh, well let's delay it a year. Let's, let's grow into that. Or let's do something super small that's less meaningful. So for me personally, it boils down to my leadership model. My leadership model's very simple and I present it to everyone upfront. I must have presented this the first four times that I met with, uh, my new employees when I took over at produce pay as CEO in early . And it goes like this. Every CEO and every leader or investor in a business is locked into, I wanna be something, here's the noble cause, here's the north star, here's the vision, here's the end game. You know, and sometimes that's change the world feed the world sustainably, in our case at produce pay. Other times it might be we need to grow the share price and become big enough so that we can have an impact. But really, you can summarize everybody's end goal. And every business I've ever seen has to do with improvement. And being in a destination that's a bit aspirational, that's further. Okay. Now, as a CEO or a leader of people or a leader of the HR function, you don't just pull a lever and say, Hey, I've achieved this outcome. Right? Um, so then you have to start thinking about, okay, what are the inputs? How do I achieve the outcome? And again, simple leadership model. I call it the circle of life in corporations, when you think about leadership, you really need your customers to grow your business fast. So if you are beating your competition or the broader space people that you don't compete with and you're growing your top line in your bottom line, if you wanna put it in financial terms just for a second, 'cause this works with CEOs and boards. Um, you start with the anchor, which is their vision, their north star, you come back to, well, how we achieve that is we're better than everybody else and our customers pay more and they grow us faster. And then you say, well, even as a CEO, I can't pull lever and make my customers do that. It really comes down to I have to capture my customer's heart and mind. And if I capture my customer's heart and mind, they are going to see that we're better. There's differentiation. It's worth spending more with produce, pay, or giving produce, pay business in the first place. And again, as a leader, you can't just pull lever and snap the customer's hearts and minds into, you know, this existence. So to me, the real input is employees. And if you capture the employee's heart and mind, and if they believe we're the best in the business, we're the greatest thing since sliced bread, we can run through a brick wall and get to the other side, then your customers have a chance to believe it. So as a CEO, okay, and, and this is an evolved thought. I know every CE o's not ready to, you know, just accept what I'm saying here. But I'm saying you could convince, compel, persuade by starting with the anchor, which is what the CEO's trying to do, equate it to financial terms, which is not normal coming out of the people leader's mouths, right? HR specifically. And then if you get to, hey, I know I'm trying to create this differentiation that I'm the best thing with the customers. Well, how do you do that? Your employees have to believe first, if my sales organization doesn't think we are the greatest thing since sliced bread, my customer can't, and that I can't get paid more. I can't grow the business to the size where I can have impact and achieve the vision, the no noble cause or the financial outcome. So as a CEO, I tell my employees, I'm focused on you. I'm not gonna focus on the customer. I'm not gonna focus on the vision every day. I'm gonna wake up in the morning and try to get you guys to believe what I believe 'cause I'm here. And if you believe that another customer's gonna come along and everything else falls into place, but you have to listen and you have to know what's bothering your employees, and you have to address it. And you have to live it. And if it's just words, we all know you'd be better off staying quiet than if you just produced the words and then walk away. Sorry for the long answer, Craig. No, I love it. I love the framework. And it's just a reminder. I think leaders, they wanna jump in front and solve everything with the customers. And not only do they, it's hard to do if you're trying to build a business, but number two, how many employees are you p*****g off by getting in front of that? Like, so I think it's rewinding and service leader leadership, like, you know, I'm building a business for people to go do this. I have to support them so they can go do the work. And you just summarize it. So, well, let's move, let's move to the next point, right? Like, you had done data before, I don't think you'd done it the way we did it. And I came in and insisted like, look, we can do this better. We can, you know, and, and we can have more slicing and dicing with the insights that we have. And we started with data, and I'll never forget, like the second executive, uh, Offite we did, when I got to finally present the results. And this is all about from data to action, right? Because that's another big piece I imagine a lot of people on this are listening to. Like, okay, we do, we do something, we do stuff, but how do we action? And so I think connecting the dots between how this information is presented and getting to action, and there's a unique story that I tell often that's not some complicated story. It's about seeing something and being able to call something out to you. Clearly with data, as somebody that knows there's lots of things going on, and you've, the click happened, you're like, now I know what to do. So I think I'm gonna back because I want you to tell the story, but data, you know, how are we getting from this information to action? And I'd love to tell, tell the story about the locations and and, and the improvement we made. Yeah. So we did. So, so first of all, I think it starts with the core principle that if you can measure it, you can improve it. And it comes back to the scientific method and you know, six Sigma lean, six Sigma, like whatever practice you've been trained on or grown up in. It comes back to the principle of if I can't get objective empirical information, I can't get to the truth and the facts. And then if I get to the facts and I don't like 'em and I think they need to be changed, then I have to invest in impacting them. So there wasn't a, um, a challenge with any of those philosophies at produce pay, uh, with me or our leadership team. But we did have to put a lot of thinking into, and I remember the planning part of what do we care about? Do we wanna pull geographic office by office? Office cuts? The answer was yes. Do we wanna pull nation by nation cuts? The answer was yes. Do we wanna pull product cuts, functional cuts? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And of course, culture, culture Amp is a great product that's, you know, ready to go for all those multi-dimensional views. Um, and we went pretty deep and, and we even did the unthinkable. We added a couple fun questions, like if you were CEO, what would you do? And that was the most important question to me. Like I wanted the anonymity across these several hundred employees that we went out to, to say, Hey, here, if we were CEO, here's the first thing we would do. Um, so we got a lot of rich feedback and most of it, I think it was like , out questions was highly structured. And then there was a couple that were freelance and we spent a lot of time on, on all of it. And the one specific, uh, and of course there's a whole bunch of things that as a leader with, you know, your engagement and your pulse on the organization in the areas in the humans, there's a whole bunch of things that come out of this that you expect. For example, I knew certain areas would have high engagement and certain areas might not, but then the real rich, you know, asset is the holy cow. I had no idea the Tijuana team was this unhappy, or oh my gosh, you know, my direct reports are giving me feedback that I never expected. I actually thought it would be the opposite of this. And that's where, you know, you realize, oh, I would've paid a lot more for this. Don't tell Craig. Um, you know, like, this is super valuable. And you know, I'm a, I'm a guy who likes to solve problems. I'm the classic male that if you're looking for empathy and you want to tell me about what's bothering you, I'm not going to be awesome. But if you want somebody to help you lean in and solve the problem, now you're gonna see hopefully some s awesomeness. So as we were getting this information, and I realized there were some holes in the boat that I didn't recognize or or know. And part of 'em, part of the reason was they were halfway around the world and it was, you know, cultural and national, um, you know, differences. But also, you know, we've got a US leadership team and then we've got big offices all over Latin America, and there's obviously some type of ceiling in communication and expression. So we found out that TJ team was unhappy. We committed to it. We got, um, the HR leader, Natasha and myself went to TJ almost immediately, I think within a month. We went back several months later. I think we did it three times. We hosted a holiday party down there and we went into it without a plan but to listen more deeply. So we got everybody in the room, call it skip level, call it whatever you want. And we said, we're here to listen. We know there's problems here that need to be solved. We wanna help, we wanna get the allocation of resources right? We wanna make sure that we take action. But then of course, this isn't like, Hey, CEO Superman, he flies in and fixes everything. It's tell me what's wrong. Okay, I'll allocate the resources. I need you to lead the improvement. And part of that is the empowering nature of, you know, how engagement can be so powerful is if the lowest level can say, Hey boss, I see a big problem and I wanna deal with it. Okay, here's the resources, the money or the program or the whatever. Go do it and then we'll celebrate you on the other end. So that's what we took on and I think we had great results. Yeah. I'll never forget sharing the results with you. And this is, this really stuck with me. And I say this often because I think a lot of times people will hire us and we can come in and help look, find things that they couldn't see before. But this wasn't the case. I think as a leader you had a lot going on, more than just what we were doing, taking over the organization. And I showed it to you and you said, I knew it. I think I, but the, the data clicked and you said, I'm going there. You know, and, and that was, it wasn't complicated. It wasn't like you didn't know the answer. And I think that's an important thing for leadership teams is like you often know the answer when you have, when you know where to look. It's just where do you focus when you have a thousand things to do? And by the way, pat went down there twice, I remember it first time you were texting us, like, this is awesome. I knew I needed to come down here. Um, we ran it again and we saw a point lift in the engagement on that team alone. And I believe a big part was you went and you heard them, you brought them some technology they needed and you spent time with them. So this complicated engagement problems sometimes is as simple as human stuff of just knowing where to be and how to show up and, and you did that. So, um, Before, and by the way, if I can just reinforce the point, the TJ team was mostly customer service. So if you get back to that leadership model of, I'm trying to impact the customer, but I'm trying to do it through my employee. When my customer service team is unhappy, boy, that better be a top priority. So it's very easy for me to say, okay, we're gonna push a few things out. We're gonna allocate time and we're gonna dive into this. Um, because it, it completed that kind of circle of life idea that the only way to get my customers doing what we hope for is through these employees, especially the customer service reps. Yeah. Alright. I'm looking at time. I, I love all this stuff. We can talk about each one of these a lot longer. I wanna move to the next one, which is around like leadership alignment and, and helping the, the executive leadership team own it. 'cause again, I'm thinking about this audience and a big question always comes up is how do I sell it up? How do I sell it up to my executive team? And I think, I think you have a lot to offer with that. Both, um, you know, how did this, how did you leverage this? How did this change your, your you, your work and your leadership team's work? And then in, in turn also we're trying to convey helping this audience think about how do you, how do you engage your leadership team and get them really bought into this and do it well, I think most, at least most executives I've worked with are all in and philosophically aligned with where, you know, I'm at, which I just presented. We had a couple though that were very concerned about this as they should be because they weren't exhibiting, you know, world class leadership skills. So, um, you know, it's situational leadership. You have to find the part of your leadership team that wants this, needs this, craves this because they wanna improve and they know it's gonna be better for everyone, especially themselves. And then you gotta find the people who aren't advocates that are the resistance. And those people are real. Um, and I remember two people specifically, they'll, they'll stay nameless, but I assumed they were going to have either, um, some challenging engagement scores or worse, a different leadership model than we were trying to employ, which was more about teamwork, collaboration, breaking down the silos. So, um, you know, most of my executives, when you said, Hey, we wanna invest in this, they're like, awesome. We need this. This is amazing. And then the couple that didn't want to do it, you gotta be firm with them. You gotta explain that, hey, this isn't negotiable. We're going deep on this. And if you can't exhibit, um, this level of, let's say proactive, progressive engagement and leadership and servant leadership was really the thing that I think they were missing. Um, there's no place for you on this team. So it became very binary. I had to have a couple difficult convos where it was, hey, this is, this is non-negotiable. This is the one thing I asked for when I came in. It's the core tool in my toolkit because I believe in this. And if you don't, or if you're against this, or if you're not willing to fully commit to this, then this isn't the right place for you. And you can have those level convos when you're talking to your CXO, you know, pick a function because you know, they're, they're paid to be experts at this and, and do this with me and for me to some extent within their organization. So, um, yeah, the, the buy-in and making it, their idea matters. I remember CultureAmp, you had proposed and half of my executive team had used before and loved it. Yeah. So for me, there was no question at that point, okay, we're using Culture Amp because I want them to feel like they're advocating the tool and part of this. So of course that's important in leadership as everyone knows, make people feel like it was their idea, their solution, even though this was gonna happen with or without 'em. Yeah. And I'll, I'll reflect on this one a little bit too, because I think a big part of the work that we do is helping, you know, the leadership team say lead by example. Don't just go out to the, the companies, you do this, and I'll share this again, I know you're okay with this 'cause you're pretty transparent. The scores were, I think, better than we thought when we went into it, quite frankly. But when you dig deep enough, you can find stuff. And one of the things we found with you was that you got some harsh feedback around open and honest, two way communication uniquely on your team. So you worked with me and we said, okay, we built, I thought it was a pretty cool exercise. We can go into that later. Uh, you left the room, we got, in a way, we got everybody to share their information. We got it put together in a, in a pretty, uh, in a way that was sort of anonymous. You came back, we shared it with you, you got vulnerable, you took the hard questions, we went through the whole process. And then you looked at your team and you said, okay, I just did that. I wasn't comfortable. You go do that. And I just, I really wanna call that story out. And it's, you know, that that alignment leading by example, I think when I know you doing that, made this a better program that if you just told your leaders to go do it, it wouldn't have been the same. Yeah, we want, I I, I remember the planning, I was a big advocate of I want the full feedback for every leader of people in the organization. But the plan we came up with was, let's take a pulse first and that will be more of a second phase. And then when we took the first, you know, culture Amp survey, we got all that information, I think, I think it was Craig's brilliant idea, 'cause I don't think I came up with this, I can't remember. Um, they're like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make you the Guinea pig. You're gonna go away, we're all gonna talk about you, and then we're gonna come in and, you know, we're gonna talk about where Pat's, uh, weaknesses are and how he needs to improve. And it isn't comfortable, right? Nobody wants to hear how Pat sucks, especially Pat. So I don't know why I'm talking about myself in third person, but, um, you know, I went through it, it was productive. I explained some of my triggers and how I'm aware of 'em, I gotta work on 'em, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it was really important, I said, now guys, you gotta do this. You gotta go get your teams to tell you about yourself. Otherwise this is all, you know, a bunch of bs. So yeah, that, that type of, that's the harder stuff, the harder bit of work in here. And you gotta be really committed to why this is gonna make us better and we're gonna win as a team. But I think the people that are team oriented lean into this and the people that want to be the siloed superheroes lean out. But sometimes you need to know which executives can't make that, uh, that leap because they probably shouldn't exist as an executive. And for the record, I too, my fingers were crossed. I was like, I hope this goes well. This is a neat idea. And it, it went really well. You had a phone call, you had to leave for an hour. We had an hour of space. I'm like, okay, I know what we can do. Let's get some feedback so we returns. Um, so I know, and I appreciated that also as a facilitator and somebody running this program with you, that you gave me the trust to do it and it was really powerful. So, okay, the last, uh, time is tight. Last segment. This is all around like the ROI and the impact and advice to HR leaders. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna gas you up a little bit before we get into it. Look, we ran it, we did this, you went deep. We leveraged it across probably four or five of the seven offsites where we are using this data as part of, you know, the, the, the work that we did, a couple things that we saw. Number one, the company grew a hundred people. So that was a % growth over the year participation, which was starting, we thought at the beginning with % went to %, we saw a % lift or seven point lift. And I see myself here in two years time. That's a turnover question that is a directly attributed to people leaving. Um, what else did we see? We saw also like an eight point lift in overall engagement. We saw that Tijuana office look and we talked about there were challenges in there, but I th I'm gonna focus on this now because we did the experiment. You ran it, we picked areas, then we know we couldn't do everything. You focused on those and we saw impact in those areas around performance, engagement, turnover. So I think that's just opening up to you, this final piece around helping the leaders on this call, thinking about the ROI, the value of this investment dollars are tight, but there are the right dollars to spend sometimes. And just talking more about that, the outcome, uh, what the outcome. Yeah. And um, obviously if you have to take an investment in this area on faith, you're probably not gonna get very far unless you have a progressive CEO who believes this is the sole input to the whole system like I do. And I know that's rare, that's not normal. Um, and, and by the way, you know, it's the white hair in the beard, it's the old age. It's the experiences challenging things and finding out where returns were, that helped me get there. But I think it's pretty easy to see. And I know there's been a lot of work done about the investment employee engagement and improvement and how that, you know, trickles down through, uh, the bottom line. And, you know, I, I think customer net promoter score and customer loyalty came outta Harvard, you know, and work that was done , years ago. And it's pretty obvious to me that the most successful companies in terms of growth size, impact, um, have great customer loyalty. And that is highly linked to employee loyalty. I know those, that's been studied for decades too. So to me it's like, okay, um, how do you do it in a responsible way? How do you do it in a phased way? How do you prove quick wins? Um, and showcase that in our environment at our company? 'cause that's always the rub. Nobody will disagree with the theory that investment here is productive and should yield a return. They'll, they'll come at you with, oh, but it's not the right time. We have other priority. Well, first of all, if you really believe this is the input to success, this is the only thing that should be prioritized. Right? And that was the point I was trying to make to my leadership team when I said, I want one line item added to the budget, and it's a full investment in here, and I don't want anything else. I was trying to make the point to them that this is all I actually care about. And because I knew an investment in this would yield the customer loyalty return would yield the higher growth rates in, in, uh, revenue and profit and ultimately the higher EV and the achievement of impact to the noble cause. So, you know, by the way, that's really difficult to convince somebody of as a people leader, you know, if you are the less quantitative type of person in the organization. So my advice would be partner with a progressive finance person, partner with the CEO, slowly over the, Hey, we're trying to achieve this ultimate goal. What are the inputs to that system? How can we improve this? And do you accept that employee engagement improvement is gonna lead to customer loyalty, is gonna lead to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if they don't, then you gotta get into the proof points and you gotta pull the research. And then to me, I would say spend $, on something and prove it had an impact. I promise you, I know one thing, most CEOs are extroverts. They're not introverts. Most. If you have an introvert, I'm sorry, it's gonna be harder. Uh, most CEOs love to get in front of their people and talk about it, especially if it's within a structured cadence where they can go in and listen and then turn on the, the help and the engagement. But, you know, bringing some financials to this and showing through measured objective returns, you know, and I mean, like engagement's one thing and improving engagement's another, but how does that impact the customer? How's it impact the financial statement? Like, if you can make that leap and you need partnership to do it, you are gonna have a goldmine on your hands. If you have a progressive leader that wants to do this anyways because they have the experience, they know it works and they don't need to have it proven to them, you know, then I think it's more a matter of getting the consensus across the broader group. Pat, let seconds real quickly, and maybe it's a little bit, uh, selfish, but I, I I want to ask it. You made the investment in culture C you made the investment in us to come support that. Like, how, what would you say about the investment, the additional investment on top of the technology to support your organization with that? And what would you say to other people about making the investment to get the support? Yeah, you know, it's, it's always one of those things that it's like, oh, we have to hire somebody from the outside. A lot of leaders don't like the word consultants. A lot of leaders don't like, you know, big investments in the more discretionary, softer side of the business. So you have to turn this into the hard quant, tangible, objective input to the business. That, that would be my attack. I would attack on that front at all times. Um, I knew that we could do, between Natasha, my HR leader and I, we had the skills and the experience to do this ourselves and not need Craig or not need CultureAmp, but we had no time. We didn't, we couldn't allocate the time that was needed to lead it. So it was, Hey, let's have somebody working with us that's fully dedicated to this holding us account. I knew I needed an executive coach on me so that there was a bridge between my executives and me so that when McCullough Gorilla popped out, you know, we could get through that. So, you know, it was easier for me, it's harder for others, but I think you gotta, you gotta go with the, Hey, we, we need the best tool in the, in the, in the house. It's Culture Amp. We need the best consulting people that have been through this change management, and we need the help. And if anybody says we can do it all themselves, you know, they're, they're not reasonable. Pat, I appreciate you so much. I think the world needs more executives and CEOs to stand up and talk about this and be vulnerable. So just thanks for your work and thanks for, for sharing this with everybody. I know you've got some stuff to go do. Thanks for having me and enjoyed the work, Craig. You too. We'll, we'll be in touch. Thank you. Bye. All good luck. I know it's.