Rob Corrao: Is The Grass Really Greener on the Other Side?

We went through 832 bottles of wine.

You don't know where the edge is until you've gone over it and made the mistake and had to recover from it. And so I went around that corner at 7,000 RPMs and all of a sudden one wheel started hydroplaning and I started spinning and I went off the track. He goes, “Okay, now you know where the edge is.”

People always say the grass is greener on the other side, or on this. I said, where's the grass greener? The grass is greener where you water it.

I think if you are looking for a mentor, you're so focused on what you think that mentor should look like and should be that you fail to find the one that you actually need.

Try and create something that creates opportunity for others.

Well, I think the one that's the most impactful on my life is the one that I deal with every day. And that's my car accident from when I was 16. 16 years old, hit by a drunk driver. I was in a car, not walking. I spent time in a wheelchair, spent time on crutches, was not going to play lacrosse ever again, was told I'd never walk again.

And my lacrosse coach at the time said, “Well, do you want to listen to the doctors?” And I said, “No.” I said, “But they told me I'd never walk again.” And so he said, “Well, why don't you meet me here every day after practice and come to the practice in your wheelchair, and then come up and we will work together.” And he did that five, six days a week for two or three, for two and a half years. It took me time to evolve from wheelchair. It was probably a year in the wheelchair, a year and a half, and then crutches and then the cane, and surgeries. I mean, all sorts of surgeries and everything. And so it was a long road.

I still deal with issues today. I try and mask a lot of them through just conditioning and strength and all of that. And also ignoring it. You learn how to ignore pain, which is a good life lesson too, in that sometimes a painful moment can be for a good thing.

Let's talk about the threads that you pull. I've had so many people, whenever anybody asks me about my accident, they always pull the Mr. Destiny card out and say, “Well, don't you wish that hadn't happened?” So that thread hadn't been pulled or tugged or whatever. I don't, because it created a path, which had me think differently about school and where I was going to go to school and college and what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I think if you had asked me before that moment, I probably would have said, “Oh, I'll just work for—” even though it wasn't a passion, I probably would have done that. I don't know, because I don't have a crystal ball. But I know it's definitely one of the things that shapes who I am.

It wasn't the act of the accident. It was the recovery. It was the perseverance and the energy that went into it. It was the pain and working through that. It was overcoming a lot of things that helped shape who I am.

I had to. Physical therapy is physical therapy. It's ice baths, and it's getting up and walking when you don't want to. It was crazy. When I came into the hospital, they were pretty sure it was never going to happen again, so they didn't spend any time trying to save any of the bones.

So it was like, just slap a metal plate on them and wrap some tape around them and just keep them alive. I was pretty wrecked. But then it became, to undo some of that. So there are good life lessons in that: you're never stuck. Even in the most dire situation, you're never stuck. I try and teach that to the boys. It doesn't really get across, but it will eventually.

I have two boys, 13 and 11, and they're both doing probably exactly what I did when I was 13, except for the video games, because they weren't invented yet. I tease Alex. I said something about when I got my first cell phone, it was because I was working in Chicago, and they were like, “You had to wait that long?” I was like, yeah, I had to wait until they were invented.

Oh my. So Notre Dame, the Notre Dame fight song has been played in our house since I was born. It was the first record I had on my record player. Those are things, a big round—

My very first record was the Notre Dame fight song. So my father applied to Notre Dame when I was six months old, for me, and I actually have the letter that says, “Congratulations on being the first applicant of the class of 1992. A great sense of humor.” You would never see it out of a university today. “But we think you have some maturing to do before you're ready to attend. We think that you should reapply in 1988 or '87.”

Well, I had started going down the road of, oh, maybe I want to go here, and maybe I want to go there. And it really came down to wanting to, I really did want to go to Notre Dame in the end. I thought it was a great place to be, and I'm really glad I did. Lifelong friends. I can count them on one or two hands, and that's all you need.

Oh, that's classified. There's a reason. Look, YouTube didn't exist then. There were no camera phones.

So all I will say is that I probably did take after. I'll tell you a funny story, because it's appropriate for my time there as well. I was taking Italian classes over the summer because I was going to take a semester in Italy, which I did. Great experience. Everybody should do that.

Outside the country. Well, my favorite country is Italy, but that's okay, as an aside.

So the class was on the seventh floor of the Hesburgh Library. And Father Hesburgh, when he was alive, his office was on the 13th floor. I think it's 13, maybe 12. I don't know. Top floor. I should know which is the top floor, but I don't. So I got into the elevator with him, and he said, “Hello, son, what are you doing?” And I said, “I'm going to Italian class.” And he started speaking fluent Italian to me. And I said, “My first class.” And he reverted back to English and he said, “Well, what's your name?” And I told him, and he said, “I hope you're not as much trouble as your father was.” And I just kind of paused on that. I said, “I don't think I am, but I'll make sure I keep an eye out for that.”

Fast forward, end of the summer, he's on his way down. I get on the elevator and he just started breaking out into Italian right away. He's like, “You've been taking Italian all summer. You should know it.” And he remembered my name. On the seventh floor, he remembered everything. He was an amazing man. Never forgot anybody.

My father had broken into the home of one of, I guess, the board members or administrators at Notre Dame while he was a student. Came out through the basement door, opened the door, and Father Hesburgh was standing there, and he just took the boys, arms around their shoulders, and said, “We'll be taking you outside now, and you can go back to the dorms.” And he knew exactly what was going on. They were just breaking in to mingle at the party, because they were social. And he's like, “Yeah, this isn't a party for you.”

Oh, my father is the one who told me this story, and Father Hesburgh corroborated.

Well, it just made me feel better about some of the stuff I was doing.

Look, like I said, I would not want to go to school today with iPhones taking every last night and social media. Oh, my goodness. The one I'll admit to is we had a pet squirrel at our dorm that we decided to sneak food to, to see how fat we could get it.

This is probably, I'm going to get calls from the ASPCA and PETA and all that, but we got this squirrel extra fat. So fat that he couldn't jump up to the windowsill anymore, so we had to build him a ramp. And then there were stories that summer after they tore down the dorm. And no, just because we were in it was not why they tore it down. They were planning on tearing it down. Holy Cross Hall. But people used to go sit on the hill where the dorm was, because it was a beautiful view of the dome, and they would paint. And there were stories about people sitting there painting and a squirrel that would come and steal all their food. And that was Fred.

Well, Fred probably is not still alive, but he was then, at least that next summer.

Yeah, so one of my doormates, really good friends, had been wanting to start this and invited me to be one of the founding members of it. So it was myself and Jim and Paul and Steve and a few others that said, hey, let's do this. And there was an alumnus that wanted to create a— we kind of did it outside the confines of the university program. It's officially a club at the university. We started it outside that official designation because we wanted a bit more leeway. I mean, none of us really follow rules anyway. If you ask my wife, I've never followed a rule.

Yes. Occasionally. So we found there was a fellow that was really passionate about getting international internships and work experience, especially for those that couldn't afford to do it on their own. So we created an endowment that still lives today, and kids still go on these internships today, where they can enjoy time overseas, fully paid for by this endowment. It is an opportunity for people to do it regardless of your background or your financial situation. You can actually go and experience what it's like to work for Credit Suisse in Geneva.

And I ended up in Australia.

[inaudible] had instilled at a young age. By the time I graduated high school, I think we had been to 86 countries. They were big on the way to an education is by experiencing the world. And I couldn't agree more. It was certainly very fortunate that we were able to do that. We were able to see South America, Asia, Europe.

Ironically, when I got married to Natalie, I had not seen any more than a few states. So we never really traveled the US ever. I was in New York, and we went as far as Massachusetts. Occasionally we'd step into New Jersey and Philadelphia and go down to Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, to see a Sixers [inaudible]. But we'd fly over the states to see my grandparents in Florida, and then fly over a bunch of states to friends in California. And that was it. That was the world as it existed in America for me. But I had been to all these other countries.

Which was interesting, because it was one of the coldest places on earth. But it was a fantastic experience, and I loved my time there. I love my time away from there as well. So when I was in Italy and coming back and bringing some of that back, I loved the time in Australia and bringing some of that back, and really being able to then create something for someone else. So it was less about the experience I got.

And I think that was the start of my whole career. I've always focused on what my hard work has been to somehow impart on others wisdom, strength, financial capability, whatever it is, an opportunity of some kind. So I pour myself into teaching people how to sell better, how to train better. It's always looking for how do I help them be better at what they're doing. And I think that's always been a guiding force for me.

My mom's dad was very much that way, and he was a big influence in my life. He spent a lot of time with me as a kid. And it was always about helping someone else, even when he didn't have very much at all. His whole focus in life was helping others. If you look at my Enneagram, where I go to when I'm happiest is when I'm helping others. And that's something that, even though I'm super driven and I can come across a little bit sharp sometimes, and a bit demanding and opinionated for sure—

But if someone asks me to help, I say yes, probably too much. I've learned to start scaling back, but it's the thing that brings me the most amount of joy.

I think as I started to progress in my career and as I started to have the opportunity to not work 18-hour days, seven days a week, or whatever it was, and I could volunteer and help others. It was a little bit later in my career where I had a little bit of time here and there to help. And then I would volunteer at whatever the situation was, and I'm like, this is actually really rewarding.

Well, I volunteered with the greyhound group back in the early 2000s. I'd had dogs growing up, but never had a greyhound. I just volunteered with helping out. I thought, okay, well, this makes me feel good. It just sounded fun. And then I started getting involved with volunteering at Feed the Homeless and all of that. And I thought, okay, well, this is rewarding. It's helping others in need.

And then when I got into flying, I wanted to volunteer at Angel Flight, which was headquartered at the same airport I got my pilot's license at. So I got my pilot's license, I walked into the office, and I said, “I'm ready to volunteer.” And they said, “Great. How many hours do you have?” I said, “42. I think it was 44, something like that.” They said, “Cool your heels. Come back when you have 200.” So no new pilots. This was in Santa Monica, California. So I had 201 hours. I walked back in and I said, “Okay, I'm ready now.”

Angel Flight is non-emergency ambulatory transport of patients from where they live to where they need to be for care. The easiest example to understand is you're getting cancer treatment, or you're getting renal care, or you're getting some sort of therapeutic treatment that happens at a medical facility that is outside of where you live. So in California, if you live in Fresno and you need to get to LA Children's Hospital, that is a seven-hour drive. And after chemo or radiation or whatever, and going over the Grapevine and all that, whereas it's a 40-minute flight. So Angel Flight will pick up the passengers, bring them to transport, and then you have Earth Angels to bring them from where they land to the hospital, and then they—

Yeah, it's the whole thing. And then they'll bring them back to the plane, and we bring them back to wherever they live. Angel Flight West, which is the part that I'm involved with, is the 13 western states, including Hawaii. And I think we've done a hundred thousand flights since its inception.

And every day, every week, we get notices of flights that are coming up, where people need treatment, and they'll try and map out their whole treatment and plans. You can actually get the same passengers a couple of times, which is really cool, because then you can keep in touch with them and get to spend some time with them. So you're volunteering your time, the fuel cost, every airplane, maintenance, everything.

No, usually you bring them, drop them off. They get their treatment. Another pilot will bring them. There are circumstances where it's a quick treatment and you can sign up for both legs if you want, but often timing doesn't allow for it, because they come in the night before and then have their treatment and go back the next day or two days later.

Brought together and organized.

Which is not— I mean, everybody, when you say that, everybody goes, “I will go [inaudible].” Yeah, no, it's not. In fact, the majority of the planes are Cessnas, and not to— I'm not putting down Cessna. But it's this sort of thing where you're volunteering, and it is awesome, and it's a privilege to be able to have an air— to meet a lot. And even if it's a $60,000 Cessna 172 that you picked up that's 30 years old, it's still a privilege to have a plane and the freedom of having that plane and being able to do whatever you want. As a pilot, as an aircraft owner, it can feel selfish sometimes. When you're talking to people and they go, “Oh, well, it takes me nine hours to drive to Tahoe,” and I'm like, okay, it's an hour and 45 minutes in my head. So being able to use that plane for somebody else's benefit is awesome.

Not quite that many hours.

Yeah. So actually, no. A lot of people think you need a lot more, but to be an airline transport pilot, to fly for Southwest, you need 1,500 hours.

It is a lot less than people think. In the early years I was working more than I was flying. I've been flying since 2005. I've got almost a thousand hours. I'm doing more hours now than I was five years ago, and doing more five years ago than I did five years before that. It started out I was doing probably 20 or 30 hours every year, and now I'm probably doing 120, 130 hours a year.

So Australia was before PPI, but what Australia did is it highlighted the kind of leader that I wanted to work for and learn from. So I wanted to learn from John Lyons everything I could. I was down there for a short period of time. I wanted to absorb every ounce of John Lyons that I could absorb, from character to business sense, everything that he did. I wanted to emulate. And he was a true mentor.

I was very fortunate to have a mentor in my life. I had three. Outside of, I'll say, there's familial mentors, like my father, my grandfather, stuff like that. But I would say three that are super impactful mentors. So it was John Lyons, I'd say Tim falls into that category, Tim Frey, and Eugene Fanning out of Chicago. He was a partial owner of the White Sox. He owned Fanning Cadillac, but he gave up his time twice a week to come down to Notre Dame and teach the business communications class. And he just impressed the hell out of me.

Well, it started out just the fact that he was driving a couple hours twice a week, each way, just to teach a bunch of kids for free. This is him giving back. He said to the class the first day, “Everybody sit in the same seat for two classes.” And he said, “And then if I don't remember your name, you get an A.”

It was the most popular class at Notre Dame at the time. It was an elective, and I got into it. It was like a reservation in a Michelin star restaurant. You need to be online, ready to click go, as the clock struck. There was no online signup then. I know, so very different. But I ended up getting into his class. I was very fortunate to get into it. And just the way he carried himself, the things he talked about with communication, not just being verbal. It's physical, it's emotional, it's everything. And that translated itself into helping with sales, helping with running a business, helping with coping with people. It sort of tied together. I was a marketing and psychology major at Notre Dame and brought the two of them together. It's the psychology of what was driving them at their core.

So take that, go to Australia. John's focus was always around how am I creating value for the client? It was never about how do I get revenue from the client. He just didn't focus on that. It was always what kind of value can I create? How can I make somebody else more successful? It was a market research company, and his whole focus was around making their business more successful. And as their business became more successful, he became more successful. And I carried that into Productivity Point. I think that was the ethos at Productivity Point as well.

And the thing that had me stay there, because I was interviewing across a couple of organizations, and I almost went to work for one in Bloomfield, Michigan, which I'm sure is a bust now, because it was an advertising company for an automaker. So I'm sure they're gone. That would have been a very different career, very different path.

Yes. But I remember Tim saying to me, we were sitting together in 1991 or '92 in an interview in his office in Hinsdale. And he said, so, let me get it right, because it stuck with me. It was kind of like, are you wasting my time, or should we be talking? Because we really want you, but don't waste my time. If you're serious about this, we want you. And that was the instant that I was like, this is where I want to be. That was the close. So he closed me with that. And I was like, I'm going to learn as much as I can from this guy.

I stayed, I think, seven, eight years. Things started changing after they sold to Knowledge Universe, but it gave me an opportunity to move on and do other things. It was a great opportunity.

So I actually started a sales consulting company when I left Productivity Point. I thought, okay, I'll do this. I had a brief stop at ASP1 as an interim leader in their sales group, kind of putting it together. And that's where I met Cate North. It was back in, I want to say, 2000, 2001, somewhere in there. Then I started a sales consulting company, and one of my clients was Softlink, because John knew me and he had been following me through my career, and we chatted all the time. And he said, “Well, you know, we have this subsidiary in the U.S. It's not really doing well. We'd like you to, want to hire you to take a look at it.” So I did. And I didn't mince words. I said, “Look, it's not really going the way you would want it to go. You should probably not pursue this.” And they said, “Well, we've got a different idea. Why don't you run it?”

After a couple iterations of the conversation, we decided that was acceptable and would work. I said, “But I'm not going to live in Denver.” I was done with cold weather. I'd lived in Chicago for 10 years.

Yeah, we've had that. Well, I lived in— so, living in Chicago for 10 years, one of my best friends is from L.A. We met when I was a kid. I was actually at his dad's funeral last week. But we would visit each other, and I would always spend— November, when it started getting cold in Chicago, I'd go out to California and visit my friend Brian, and we would enjoy the beautiful weather. And I always said, “This is beautiful, but I can never live here.” And after a couple of snowstorms in Chicago, I said, “I don't know why I keep saying that, because it's a dumb thing to say. Of course I could live there. Why do people live here is the question.”

I was newly single at the time. When I left Chicago, I'd been single for six months or so. I didn't have to be in Chicago for work. I didn't have to be in Chicago for any reason, really. So I said, okay, well, I'll move to California. And then as this opportunity came up with Softlink, they said, “Well, our office is in Denver.” I said, “Well, that's great. I'm not going to be in Denver. If you want, I'll be in Denver for the engagement.” And I did. I spent six months in Denver. I said, “If you want me to run it, it's going to be out of California.” And so we moved to California.

It's a good workout. And that was the year I think my snowblower got stolen out of my garage in Chicago, even though my garage backed up to a police station, they still broke in my garage. I don't think it was the police that stole it, but there was some— I was like, okay, I need to move. And yeah, hit the reset button.

Yeah, that's true. I still have a property with a friend of mine. My friend Joe and I have an apartment building in Chicago still. So this still ties to Illinois.

There have been others, of course, that I've learned from, but those are the three kind of.

I hope so.

Yeah. So I would say don't look for a mentor. Recognize when you have one. Because if you spend too much time looking for something, you've got your blinders on, you're focused on trying to, then you're almost trying to create a mentor out of the person that you're dealing with. I think for all of my mentors in life, none of them, I didn't seek out any of them. I didn't try and figure out, are they my mentor? What I witnessed was someone who wanted to create opportunity, wealth, situations, relationships, et cetera, for others. And I thought, well, that's pretty cool.

If you look at John, he was more concerned about how everybody at market share was having an opportunity to have a career and have growth and learn and all that than he was about building onto his deck. There are two types of leaders: leaders that lead for themselves and leaders that lead others, and they lead others for the other's benefit, not for their own. I think that's something that I've always tried to emulate, is try to be a leader for others.

Yeah, that's that. And yes, it is, because it took me, and there were a couple of moments where people would say different things to me, and I wasn't clear at the time why they said those things. But I remember thinking back on those moments and then recognizing it at the right time for what it was, for its purpose. Sometimes you have to be challenged.

I try and impart this on my son. I was a hothead like Alex at 13, I'm sure. And somebody said, “Actually, if you can control that and not let your emotions run wild, you'll always be better off. You'll always be the one in control. You'll always be able to have people come to you and seek things out, as opposed to you having to ask forgiveness all the time. And it will be meaningful for them and for you.” As I practiced that and as I started to evolve with that, others would say, “Don't treat them like a client, treat them like a friend. It's a lot harder for a friend to say no than it is for a client to say no to a vendor.”

At Productivity Point I had clients. I remember one of my clients was Eaton. The contact I had at Eaton, her husband was a plumber, and it was one of the worst snowstorms in Chicago. Why in Chicago they put the pipes in the outer walls is beyond me, but they do. And you have to run the tap, let it trickle. We hadn't let it trickle yet, and the pipes froze. I had a major blowout in my pipes, frozen pipes in the middle of winter, worst snowstorm ever. And she and her husband came down to my house on a Sunday. This is a client for a training organization, a computer training company. She brought her husband down to fix my pipes and didn't charge me.

So developing relationships is more important. The end result was great, because we got sales and all of that, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was to develop a relationship and a bond where the client just felt like it was a natural part of why and what they did.

Well, you see it nowadays. It's usually because it's pop culture or social media or something like that. And you go, well, I'd want a mentor like, and I'll pick on Steve Jobs because he's dead, I'd want a mentor like Steve Jobs. Would you? I don't know. I don't know that that's a factual statement if anybody had ever met the guy, or that anybody would have said he was a mentor. He was a visionary for sure. He was a brilliant, brilliant marketer. Take all the pros and cons of whatever you want to say about him. He did change the world for better or for worse. For worse, because my kids are both on iPads right now.

Okay, still. Whatever. The point being that the technology drug is real, and addiction is real. We spent a lot of time trying to teach the kids how to appreciate being off technology, and that's really hard to do.

But again, going back to the mentor conversation, I think if you are looking for a mentor, you're so focused on what you think that mentor should look like and should be that you fail to find the one that you actually need. So sometimes it's not the most powerful person, and it's not the person that was in the industry that you think you should be in. In fact, where I ended up, I didn't end up in market research like John. I didn't end up in computer training like Tim. I didn't end up selling cars or owning baseball teams, although that'd be interesting, like Gene Fanning. But I was able to see what they could teach me for where I ended up.

You know, that actually, so I probably did find my edge every day with him. I didn't think of it that way. I actually learned that statement when I was in my late twenties. A dear family friend was into vintage car racing, and I love cars, and so I got into vintage car racing. I started racing a 1959 Alfa that I restored. But in order to race that, I had to go to racing school. My racing instructor was Duck Waddle. Duck wasn't his real name, but his last name was Waddle, and he went by Duck Waddle.

It was before the days of radios in your helmets and all that, so he had to do everything standing on the side of the track, listening to your engine. He knew exactly where you were. And it was raining, and we're in open-wheel cars, and I went around turn six, or turn six or seven, into the carousel at Elkhart Lake, and I came around and I pulled over. And he said, “I need you to take that turn at 7,000 RPMs.” Now, he knew I wasn't at 7,000 RPMs because of his ear. He had no record of it, but he was right. I wasn't. I was at 6,000. And I said, “It can't be done. I'll go off the track.” He said, “You don't know where the edge is.” He said, “You haven't found the edge yet.”

And that actually taught me a lot about life too. You don't know where the edge is until you've gone over it and made the mistake and had to recover from it. And so I went around that corner at 7,000 RPMs, and all of a sudden one wheel started hydroplaning, and I started spinning, and I went off the track. He goes, “Okay, now you know where the edge is.” And I said, “But you knew I was going to go off.” And he said, “Yes, but you didn't.” He goes, “I had to show you where the edge was. Otherwise, you were going to play it safe at 6,000. And actually, you can take it at 6,500, or whatever it was.” He said, “You could have gone faster. You didn't have to. I sent you down too fast, but I sent you down too fast on purpose.”

So what you need to do is you need to push it to the edge and then pull back just a hair. He said, “When you come around, out of the carousel, you should be inches from the wall, flat out. Do not lift. Just trust the vehicle.” And he was right. You'd come out and you'd start going right towards the wall, and you would just end up inches from the wall. And you could carry it, and it would carry your perfect speed to finish the race. Whoever did that was first. But when you see a giant concrete wall, your natural inclination is to lift.

My grandfather used to tell a story. He was a pastor, and I don't remember his countless sermons, but it's one of his favorite stories he always told every year. There was a flood coming, and a guy with a truck came by. The water was rising. It was two, three inches off the ground. He's knocking on doors, and he said, “You've got to come with me. There's a flood coming.” And the guy in the house said, “No, no, no. I believe that the Lord will save me.” And so the next day, he's on the first floor, second floor of the house, and a boat comes by. And he said, “Jump in the boat. We've got to save you.” And he said, “No, no, no. The Lord will save me.” And then the next day, a helicopter comes, and he's on the roof. And he said, “No, no, the Lord's going to save me.” And he dies. And so he's in heaven. He goes, “God, I thought you were going to save me.” He goes, “I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter. I don't know what you were waiting for.” So I think sometimes you just have to open your eyes.

Oh, boy.

Well, it was working in libraries, information science, data science. We really kind of expanded it. But yeah, we got into this world of staffing, what basically makes the library work, which is metadata and information and gathering information, organizing it, and disseminating it. So that was the world I was living in. But that's actually beyond when I met Natalie. I actually met Natalie when I was at Softlink.

So I was at Softlink, and I was running, before I met up with Deb, which is how I met Deb at LAC, then Library Associates. I was running a company, Softlink, which is out of the John Lyons relationship from Australia. So I was running that company, and that was a library software company. That's where I met. So all special libraries and libraries, whether it's a special library or not, it doesn't matter. You go in, and when I was a kid, we went in and they had the Dewey decimal system and the cards, and the big furniture with thousands of cards in it, and you would go find your catalog. Card catalog. I guarantee you, kids, it's like a rotary phone for kids today. They would go, what on earth is this?

I was working for Softlink, and this story does make me sound less intelligent than I hope I am. It was down in Texas. We were at a conference, and at the time I was trying to expand what we were doing. We were doing some really cool stuff with the software that was different from the rest of the industry. The rest of the industry was still kind of on-prem installation, and we were playing around with cloud, early days. Some of that came from the experience I had at ASP1. Some came from the experience that I had with technology at PPI. I was like, I think we can do something cool here where we don't have to install something on site, where if we need to do a patch, we don't have to get access to their system. We can just do it. And everybody thought that was a decent enough idea.

It was the ugly days of kind of cloud computing. It was a lot of expense, a lot of servers, a lot of just bubble gum and tape and popsicle sticks. And no security. Ish. I mean, we tried to do the best we could. But I think people also thought, this is like a national treasure or those descriptions of books. It's not high-security stuff. So while everybody was concerned about it, it also wasn't real risk. And I'm a big fan of understanding what's the actual real risk. Some people do security for security's sake. Some people do something because they think they have to do it. You never ask why. Sometimes asking why is not a bad thing.

So I was doing that. I was looking for a trainer and project manager. I was looking for a trainer to help our clients be successful with the software. And so as I'm watching people come around the booth area, I'm always glancing at name badges, looking for where are they from, what company are they with, et cetera, et cetera. And what caught my eye was, Natalie is beautiful, but what caught my eye is the fact that I saw Los Angeles. An L.A. librarian, young and energetic, which the industry is not known for, super young and energetic.

I was not. Again, this story does not make me sound as intelligent as I hope to be. I did not. So I said, we should— we're looking for this role to hire. And she said no. And I just got busy back with work and didn't really keep in touch. Even though I said we should keep in touch, I didn't.

A year later, in Phoenix, even though it had nothing to do with why we're here, we were in Phoenix at the same conference, and she was trying to avoid me, but I was actually trying to find her. She turned me down because, she told me she turned me down because it was the money. I think she lied, but that's okay. I'll forgive her. So I had a project manager, because the training position worked. Now I needed a project manager to do multiple projects at the same time. We were a year down the road, and things were continuing to go pretty well. But I was all-in focused on what we were doing and trying to build up from nothing. And so she's trying to avoid me. I was actually going to look for her in the hall the next day, but I was out with some of our team and we're at a wine bar in Phoenix. I can't even remember which wine bar it was, probably not here anymore. And she walks in, and I greet her. I'm sure she was like, oh crap, there's that guy that I was avoiding.

Yep. So she turned me down immediately. She's like, nope, not interested, not interested. Then we actually started talking about personal stuff, and I was like, actually, she's kind of cool. I should get her number, and I'll give her a call when we get back to L.A., and maybe we'll grab a glass of wine and hang out. But we kept on bumping into each other all over the place. And I was like, oh, she's kind of cute. And I was like, she's not going to work for me. Maybe I was asking the wrong question. See if she'll go out. And so we did. We went on our— well, I didn't.

That I didn't call her when we got back.

Yeah. 14 days, seven hours, 26 minutes.

I got back from this Medical Library Association conference, and I was getting ready for a Special Library Association conference on June 5th, 6th, 7th. So it was get back, unpack, repack, just nonstop getting in and out and ready. And it was a couple of days before I was leaving, I get this email from Natalie saying, “All right, isn't it great to be back in L.A.? I'm available.”

No, she wasn't pulling a Tim on me, but she was probably checking in to make sure she wasn't crazy. Because I was genuinely interested, and I was just also really focused on work, and kind of myopically so. I just didn't, I mean, time passage wasn't something that I was aware of. To me, two weeks hadn't passed. To me, it was two minutes. I think it's that whole Mars and Venus thing. For me, it didn't mean I wasn't interested. It just meant I was really busy. And I wasn't aware of, you know, you've got to call within a certain amount of time.

Anyway, we went on our first date. I said, “Look, I've got to get a red-eye to the East Coast. But why don't we meet for coffee Saturday morning? I've got to jump on a flight that night, but does that work?” And she said, “Sure.” I said, “Great. I'll pick you up at seven.” And she said, “How about eight?” And that should have been the first clue that I'm an early riser for the rest [inaudible]. But we went on a first date. I knew I was going to marry her that first date, but by the end of the walk on the beach, that was it. But I didn't tell her that, because that makes you sound crazy.

It's a lot of fun. And it's nice and cool.

17. I got married in 2007.

So, yeah, the real wedding or the fake wedding?

It makes me sound— yeah, it makes us sound bad too. So we had—

No, so we got married at Banfi. Dear friends of our family own a winery, Banfi. It's one of the bigger wineries in the world. They have a vineyard in Montalcino, Italy. And they learned that Natalie and I were engaged, and they said, “Oh, you have to get married at the castle.” So I said to Natalie, “Do you want to get married in California, or do you want to get married in a castle in Tuscany?” And so she said, “Well, let's go check it out.” She said, “Yes, we want to get married in Tuscany.” But we went and checked it out, and we learned a lot actually checking it. When we went in May to check things out, to make sure logistically we could get it done, we actually learned quite a bit. Like the fact that in order to legally get married in Italy, you had to go through a whole litany of challenges. And so we actually legally got married in California, but didn't tell anybody. There were three people who knew. When we actually got to our wedding, she actually traveled to our wedding on her married-name passport. People at American were like, “You're going to your wedding?”

It's a West Virginia wedding. I'm not making fun of West Virginia. Just a little bit.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, well, that's my family. Well, no, my roommate from college was from Kentucky.

Anyway, so we got married at this beautiful vineyard in Montalcino. And the gist was, we had four events. We had a kind of a Thursday night, a Friday night pizza party in town, and then we did— it was for everybody that came over, 65 people came over. That was the wedding. And then Sunday was a brunch. So pre-noon, which is kind of an important time of day for the next number, which was the number of bottles of wine consumed over the course of those four events.

Now, there was a wine tasting that we offered. I don't know why this was needed, but we offered a wine tasting for those that wanted to do it, any of the 65. I actually don't know how many people took us up on it, but it could have been a free wine tasting at the vineyard. And we went through 832 bottles of wine. So if you do the math, across the number of people, it's like four bottles per person per day. Now, do I think that there was some waste? I'm sure there was. I'm sure there were half bottles left here and there. But even if you take out 25, there's still three bottles per person per day.

It was a lot of fun. And there were some people there that said, no, I can't believe that number. And there were other people who go, oh, I thought it was more.

Yeah. And there were kids there that obviously didn't drink. And there were some people who used the walls of Montalcino to help keep them on the road.

Sounds like he needs help. They actually have programs for that.

17 years. Yes.

So coming on 18 this fall.

Nothing's perfect, and we have our miscommunications every now and again, but I think it's around effort too. It's around mindset and intentionality. I was actually listening to a podcast, and there was a woman talking about relationship, and I was like, oh, well, that's actually what we've been doing for years, and that's why it works. We both come at the relationship thinking, instead of it being 50-50, it's 100, 100 makes 100. But you don't always have 100 to give. Sometimes you only have 20 to give. We've never talked about it. The agreement we had is just how it's worked, because we both came from families that are still together. My folks have had their challenges over the years. Her folks have had their challenges over the years. But I think they learned how to show up for one another, even in the worst times and hardest times. Both my parents and her parents have had different, very different, but challenging times.

So when I would come home from work and I'd have 20% in the bank, and I go, I've got nothing, she's had to come with 180%. And there are times where she's at 10% and I've got to go the other way. And sometimes we're both at 10%, and you just have to counter up the energy and willpower to kind of move forward.

But it's also, I think some of it was, I've always loved to cook. When we first got married, my dad is probably the bigger cook in our family. He learned from his mom and grandmother and so forth, who I learned from also. And I learned from my father. But he never cooked with my mom. He always cooked for her. He gives. I got some of that too. I love to give. I hate to receive, love to give. And I think a lot of people are that way. You love to give a gift, but you feel awkward receiving. So you just have to remember what it's like for the person who's giving it to you, and how they feel. And my parents never cooked together, ever. I mean, my mom might make the string beans when my dad was doing 90% of the rest of the meal. That's just how they operated. And I didn't want that. So from the day we got married, we were cooking in the kitchen together and learning techniques together. And our first kitchen was the size of this table. Literally, the floor space was actually probably less than the size of this table. And we had ballet moves to not knock each other over in the kitchen, between the refrigerator and the stove and the sink and all that. It's like a boiling pot of water going over her head as she ducked to get to the refrigerator.

It was. I mean, the kitchen and dining room, we're in a dining room that's probably 12 by 12 right now. And I think our kitchen and dining room combined was 12 by 12, maybe. And it was snug. Things were up against the wall. So we learned how to do that. We really enjoyed it. And it gave us time to just spend time together, not doing work or not worrying about what was going on at the office or anything like that.

I think that sigh answers the question. Kids, I think, teach you the importance of being very intentional about your actions and your words and your movements, because they see stuff you don't see. They recognize things that you've been blind to for years. Like Alex calling me out on being gone for five years for work. I was gone. I did 330,000 miles a year on average. Hard. And that was just in the country, forget international travel. It was just in the country going back and forth. I was doing two round trips to the East Coast every week on average, 52 weeks a year. So there were days where it was just like a [inaudible]. I was in a different city every day. When people get their hotel key and they have the little pouch that has the room on it, I always had to keep that, because otherwise I'd forget which hotel and what room I was in. I'd be in a different hotel room every night. And that's challenging, especially when you have kids. And I unfortunately had a wife that supported me eminently through that whole time. I mean, that was a lot. That was a lot. We got married in 2007. I would say I traveled like that up to COVID.

Yeah. So it was a little bit like a rocket reentering the atmosphere. The heat shield had a few holes in it. It was a bit disruptive, me coming back in the house, because I have a loud voice, and I'm on, and I talk non-stop. I'm a big believer that when you have somebody, you talk to the person. You don't just send them a note by email. You actually pick up the phone and talk to them. And our house was not big. And so when COVID hit, the kids were in the house trying to get work done, like schoolwork done, and I'm in the house trying to work, and we're talking over each other. It was awkward at best. And then I wasn't traveling, so I was coming back, and they had their own groove. They had their routine. And all of a sudden I'm coming back into their routine, and I'm trying to instill some of my points of view. And Natalie was like, we've got this. Oh my God. But we— a small office on the property, so I could be outside the house. And that actually helped us a little bit. And we had this idea.

Oh no, I know it was mine. I called my contractor as soon as we got through the initial shutdown. So the initial shutdown was, was it March, mid-March? So mid-March to the end of the school year, May. We got through that with living in the house. And then right around, I want to say it was right around May, LAUSD at the time announced what we're going to do next year, and I was like, oh boy. So I called my contractor. I was like, I need something by August when they start school. And so he came in and got it done.

You know, for all the, I won't go down the political path of it, but I think it was good because it did teach people that. And I think what we've adapted to now is that travel is, you can do a lot of it. This is the bad part, too. But the bad part is I think there's a lot of relationships that aren't being created, because you don't develop a relationship on Zoom, period. And honestly, nobody's ever going to convince me that that's different. It's just a fact. You can't do it. You can't have that same level of interaction.

But you've been paying attention, right? People sitting there doing that on their phone, and they're looking at the camera and typing at the same time off to somebody else, thinking about something totally different.

But what it taught us, though, is that we don't have to be on the road 24/7. We still need to be on the road. There's still things that you need that personal interaction for. So I think the pendulum swung to zero. Zero was never going to be the answer. I remember calling my financial advisor. I said, buy hotel and airline stocks right now. It was the bottom of it. I said, don't go crazy, but buy a decent amount. And he said, the hotels are crashing. I was like, yeah, but Hilton and Marriott are going to do fine. They're going to come back. People are going to travel again. And if we're all dead and I'm wrong, who cares? Then it doesn't matter. But I was like, I don't think I'm wrong. I think we're going to come back. And we did, of course. And now the hotels are booked and more expensive than ever, and planes are fuller than ever.

And unfortunately, they still have, I mean, I fly over airline cemeteries all the time, where still a good portion of the fleet is sitting in the desert, just never to be seen again, because they're inefficient aircraft, and it would cost them a lot to get them up and running. They're running the Honda Accord of the sky, the 737 and the A321, and that's 90% of what's in the air.

They've got two or three of them. But if you go up by Mojave, it's 10, 15 miles in each direction, and it's just planes as far as you can see.

Everything. The A380s, 747s, 737s, 757s. There's all sorts. I won't go into it, because there's all sorts of podcasts on that, and Nat Geo specials and everything. But essentially, they go out, they start them up, they run them, they cycle them, they make sure they're still working. They use them for parts. They use them sometimes, if they're thinking they're going to go back into service, they're running them just to keep them running. If they're not going back into service, they start getting stripped for parts. They make sure they're weatherproof, sandproof, all that. It's crazy to see. Very well organized. But in my little plane, I could be in the air for a while over it.

Yeah, sure. Okay.

Yeah. So when you started asking that question, I thought you were going a different direction.

Which was kind of like, what would I change, if anything? And I shared with you last week or the week before, I think there are a couple of worthless emotions: regret and worry. Regret, unless you can learn from it. So that doesn't make it worthless, but you can't unchange it, you can't undo it. Whatever you did that you're regretting, you can't undo it. You can make a choice not to do it again. And worry, this one again, you can do things that will help mitigate it. But I remember the giant tree in our backyard in California, and people say, aren't you worried that the tree's going to fall in the house? It's like, no. But if I was, I would either live in constant fear or have to cut it down. It was like the tree's been here clearly for hundreds of years, and I have not—

I agree. Yeah, it was an amazing tree. One of the most evil trees on the planet. It would drop 10-pound bowling balls out of the sky from 100 feet up. This is a legit— folks, it was the bunya-bunya pine from Australia, and they were 10 to 15 pound pine cones, and they would drop.

It was massive. And they would drop out of the tree, and it would sound like a bowling ball was being dropped from 100 feet up, with a big thud on the ground, and it would roll.

Oh, it was— I mean—

Yeah. Done. So anyway, never worried about the tree falling on the house because, again, what difference was worrying going to do? It was going to add stomach acid and— so going back in time to a person or a place, I think there are too many, because I'd want to get something from each of a number of people. Like, I've heard stories, but I never got to meet my great-grandfather on my maternal side. But my mom's mom's dad, he actually invented all of the hardware that's still used in the Empire State Building.

And the hinges and locks and the way that things worked then. He sold it to Black & Decker in probably the early 1920s, or maybe the teens. I don't know. But he was the kind of guy that, when he came over, I remember stories about him working on an assembly line or in a factory or something like that. And the guy on the left spoke Polish and the guy on the right spoke Italian. Polish and Italian, so he could speak to the people. He took interest in those around him and said, “I've got something to learn from everybody around me, no matter what.” When he died, I want to say he spoke 11 languages, because he had so much interest in learning about other people that he just made it his life's mission to be invested in the people around him.

I think there's something to learn from that. What do you get the most out of? It's usually where you invest your time, your energy, your resources, your emotions. It's like with a relationship. One of the things that I use a lot, people always say the grass is greener. They say, well, the grass is greener on the other side, or on this. I say, well, where's the grass greener? The grass is greener where you water it. So it's relationships, jobs, kids, anything. Wherever you're putting your energy. If you're watering your neighbor's lawn, of course it looks greener. You let yours dry up.

So if you've got your eye on someone else or something else or a different position, and that's why I've never tried to talk people— if they're thinking about leaving, I don't try and talk them into staying. They've already started watering that lawn. And that's the lawn they're choosing to water. So that's what's greener to them. And if I try and talk them into staying, it's a temporary thing. I might spray a little water at their feet and they see a glimmer of green for a little bit, but it's going to dry up as soon as they start focusing elsewhere again. And so I've never tried to talk anybody into staying anywhere.

It's years of experiencing it. But yeah, I want to say it was Gene that probably said it to me first. We were sitting in the student hall and talking about some of the things that were going over in class. I don't think he used those words, but he was talking about where you put your energy is where you're going to get your reward. You're not going to get reward from someplace where you're not focused. There are people who have, and they say, “Oh, well, so-and-so, they're, quote unquote, lucky,” or whatever it is. I'm not a big believer in luck, but yeah, I think that things happen for a reason. And I think that you can be intentional about where you put your energy, and where you put your energy is where your focus is. And that's what you're going to notice. And that's what you're going to appreciate. And that's what you're going to enjoy.

But it's so easy, once your lawn isn't green anymore, to start looking at the green ones and having an appreciation and envy for it, instead of just getting out some fertilizer and some water and fixing your own situation, because you've already got your lawn. That's helped me with the kids. It's helped me with my marriage. It's helped me with my careers and so forth. It's also helped me keep teams together. I've used that thread of logic with every team that I've ever worked with.

No, because it's easier when it's new and shiny.

Less about looking at something different, it's more about not wanting to put the effort in. They're not noticing the other person, child, job because it's different. They're noticing it because they've let their own circumstance get so bad that it's desirable. It becomes their goal, their focus.

Yeah, yes, indeed. Sometimes you have really great partners, and sometimes you have not-so-great partners across life. There are people who have not-great partners in their marriage. There are people who have not-great partners in their business. And I think finding the right people in your life matters. And in order to find the right people, you have to recognize when they're there, even when they're not like you. Younger, older, different background, whatever it might be. But you've got to kind of recognize when you've found that.

So we had wanted to build something pretty spectacular, with an idea of consolidating. I always knew that the focus was going to be kind of the law firms and legal. That was where we should focus.

Yes, the domain expertise is where we were focusing in. And I remember thinking about the four or five companies that we should bring together in order to make that happen and what we could do. And we sat down with our current private equity partner, who's been phenomenal. And Lee at Renovus and I sat at a Flanagan's or Fleming's here in Phoenix, or in Scottsdale, and wrote down on the back of a napkin like this: what we want to accomplish, what we want to do, how big we want to be, and where we want to be. And it gave me an opportunity to think about, as we started putting this together, what did I want as a legacy? What did I want to see as also an opportunity to lift others up and not necessarily take the helm? And it was a great opportunity too for others to kind of come in and lead and grow where we've been.

So we've accomplished a lot in the last three years since making that move. We've 10x'd. We've done 10 acquisitions as of last week, bringing together the brands that now are Harbor. And it's been pretty cool.

Well, yeah. I mean, a lot more has gone into it than just that. I can't let that one napkin take all the credit, for sure. But a lot of energy has been poured into this, and picking the right leaders and the right partners and the right people and having great relationships. Matt, who is our CEO, has done a phenomenal job. Lisa, our president, has done a phenomenal job bringing on the right level and just running the practice groups, people who understand the clients and kind of that ethos.

But no, I can't go into the size, but we've got almost, I would say, just under 1,000 people now, which is significantly more than we had back in the old LAC days. And it's a culmination. That happens when you start bringing together organizations, but we've grown organically as an entity as opposed to just adding bodies from new acquisitions. And we've given great opportunities for people to have kind of that next opportunity, career, without having to leave where they were. And not everybody is suited for bigger organizations. We've become a big organization, so we have real processes in place and so forth and so on. I think no individual part of Harbor could be alone what we are together, which is pretty cool to see.

And then I've been working with one of the other Renovus portfolio companies, Solomon Edwards, to help them on their journey as well, as a partner. So I've been the executive chairman at Harbor since Matt took the CEO role, which was November of '22. I took the executive chairman role. And then in the last year, I've taken a partner role with Solomon Edwards to help their journey. So it's a lot of fun.

I think retirement is something that is a concept. Except I always picture myself as retiring a little bit like my grandfather or my dad. And that I'll probably retire 15 times. And the last one will be when they tap it closed.

So I want to step back enough to do— I really enjoy the philanthropic efforts, and really the philanthropic efforts around humanitarian flight. So we do Angel Flight, Flights for Life, and started doing Above and Beyond this year, where you bring kids with special needs in planes for rides. Because they'll never drive a car, ever, but they get to fly a plane. So not all of them.

Yeah, I mean, they get bragging rights for a day. They go back to school. More than a day. Believe me, it's more than a day. So that's a lot of fun.

And I've been involved with BCEN twice now, the Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing. I've been on their board twice. I'm on their board now, but I was before as well, with a bit of a break. I was on the National Brain Tumor Society board for six years, which was really rewarding. And I've actually seen the intersection of Angel Flight and BCEN and National Brain Tumor Society all come together, where I had one of the flight nurses that was on the board at BCEN with me do an Angel Flight where we had a brain tumor patient that was coming into Mayo. And so anyway, it's a lot of fun when you can start to see it all kind of come around.

And then I like to bring, especially when I have kids— that's the heartbreaker. So I try and bring Alex and Drew to show them you have it really good. I know you think you struggle when you miss the whatever in Minecraft, but that's not a struggle. Struggle is like when—

Yeah. Well, that too. That too. But yeah, it's heart-wrenching, amazing work.

I think extreme poverty was one. Witnessing firsthand extreme poverty in a way where they weren't unhappy. I don't mean extreme poverty made them unhappy. It was just me recognizing there was extreme poverty, fine, they were happy, and sometimes happier than people who have a lot of money. I was actually chatting with Deb the other day. She just got back from Southeast Asia, and I was sharing a comment about how I was in Da Nang, and I remember thinking then, the shoes that I was wearing on my feet, what they cost was the equivalent— they weren't expensive. They were like $100 or something like that, $70. That's what they make in a year, or made in a year when I had been there. I don't know what they're making now, but times change. It was 25 years ago. But I remember thinking, this is a year's salary on my feet.

I remember thinking, I was on a beach in Venezuela, and a person was coming by and selling omelets, a hot omelet on the beach, which was a weird thing to me, which is probably why I remember it. I was like, it's weird. And I want to say it was like a penny, the equivalent of a penny. And I think they saw that was the smallest amount I had to give. I don't think she wanted a penny. I think you want less. But it's those sorts of things that kind of stick with you. It's crazy, all the opportunity. And that's why it kills me, especially now, our kids have never had hardship. I mean, there are families in America with hardship, and I don't want to take away from that, but I will say that comparatively speaking, we have no idea. As a country, we have no idea. We have not had hardship the way that our parents did with Vietnam, and our grandparents did with the Korean War, and our great-grandparents with World War II and World War I and so forth and so on. And so we haven't had that level of challenge. And I think that is creating complacency in what is expected to be the norm. We think we have challenges, but it's not even close to some of the challenges you witness when you're traveling across the world, and some of the freedoms that we have that other countries don't have, and some of the opportunities that we have that other countries don't have, and the fact that we're born here versus in Tanzania or in Uganda or in Laos or in Cambodia.

I have a picture of a young girl, couldn't be more than 13 or 14 years old, with her baby, standing in front of a Vietnam-era tank in Da Nang, Vietnam. It's an old black and white. I used to love to take pictures, and that's one that just sticks with me as an image. That child is going to know hardship, but might be a lot happier than a kid sitting here with an iPad five days a week in school and then five nights a week at home playing whatever, and not having the same level of interaction with family and friends and community, and not knowing what it's like to sit down at a table. Because even though they had very little, they'd sit down at a table and have dinner together every night and spend time as a family and spend time sharing. And if I get 15 minutes with my kids at the dinner table, and that's on me, I've got to try and keep them at the table longer, and we do that iteratively. But that's not where their attention is. Hopefully it gets there. But they miss out on the storytelling, and they miss out on the— they pay more attention probably than I think they do. Every now and again, I'll bring something up, and they're like, “Oh, so-and-so did that.” And I'm surprised they were listening. So I want to leave for my kids a legacy where they want to create the next generation as opposed to just kind of move through it.

No, no, no.

Thank you. Likewise.

Right. And my one sister got evacuated. My brother and other sister were on the line of it. We had dear friends. My brother-in-law's brother lost his home. And so we had seen so much destruction. And one of the friends that I was talking about earlier, where I was at his funeral last week, his brother-in-law lost his home as well. And I'm close with that family too. And unfortunately, he's got late-onset and severe Parkinson's and can't really move. So we were just trying to help people that we love and care about. And the thing is that we've been blessed to have enough. Yes, we have the extra house. So that's an easy one to share. But we love sharing our house too. Hospitality has been something that I've known since I was a kid. My parents were always the same way, so I've never known any different. And Natalie has come to really appreciate that too, and our marriage and our relationship with others. And I think it's shown her the impact you can have on others when that's your focus. Everything else falls in line.

Yeah, definitely. Because he was born in '93. I was around.

I'm going to give you all the credit. It's like, you get older, wine, cheese, everything gets older with age. We get older because of our kids. Your age actually does date our relationship. There you go. 32 years.

Yeah, right. But I knew him before you were born.

Try and create something that creates opportunity for others. So if you can create something, you open a coffee shop, but then you're employing others, that helps them and they do their thing. So you can be very successful. You can have a business. But if the focus is selfish, the reward's going to be limited. But if you can see, and that's something that Tim did really well when he started PPI. If you think about all the marriages and families and opportunities and growth in careers and where people have ended up, it's amazing. You could do a movie on it.

But yeah, I would say, and I tell my boys, if you're creating something, think about what that creation is going to inspire others to do.

Yeah, thank you, guys. Appreciate you coming all the way to beautiful, sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

No, cameras freak me out.

No, that's not true. As your dad knows, when I would have town halls, before, when I was CEO of LAC and then LAC Wilson, I would always do town halls without PowerPoints. And not to take away from the more strict approach and formal approach, which you need as you get bigger. But I tell everybody, turn on, I'm not going to do a PowerPoint. I want everybody's camera on. I want to see your faces. And during COVID, that was really hard for me, because I'd be sitting there staring at a camera, so I wanted to see everybody's faces. To me, it's more about— and that's why I traveled so much, and that's why I love the personal interaction. I don't like sitting on Zoom all day or Teams or whatever.

Well, it wouldn't be— you wouldn't get the emotion out of it. You wouldn't get the impact out of it. You'd be distracted with other things.

All right. Thanks for having me.