What's the price? What's the budget? This is still a challenging part of projects for many web studios and prospects. But it doesn't have to be! We're the experts and the professionals. It's our job to walk prospects through the process of establishing cost and options of how they'll compensate us for the work we'll do. Work that will make them more profitable. So if you've ever felt like you were in a budgeting standoff, keep reading for insights on a better way to support your prospects and ease the strain on your client relationships.
Get even more insight into how to get that budget convo going with your client’s in this week's newsletter.
Carl: Hey, everyone. Real quick, I want to let you know that today's podcast is brought to us by the good folks at Parallax. Now, Parallax is operation software for your digital services shop and they help sales work with the team. So, I got to tell you, if you want somebody who gets nerdy about forecasting and resource planning, you want to talk to Parallax. They're going to help you get your shit together.
Carl: Also, we are brought to you today from our good friends at Platform.sh. When it comes to front ends, back ends, websites, apps, whatever, they're going to help you get your product off the ground and help you scale it. They're that kind of a host. So with that, let's get on with the show.
Gene: What is up?
Carl: That was almost a fade out. You almost faded out, but instead you...
Gene: You weren't prepared.
Carl: I like it though. Gene, I feel like something's come between us today. I'm not sure what it is.
Rob: This guy.
Carl: It's Rob Harr. What's happening, Rob? Look at you!
Rob: What's going on, gents?
Carl: I like that shirt.
Rob: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah, I've got a couple of them. There you go. You got [inaudible 00:01:37] Gene.
Gene: Rob, you're giving everybody those shirts?
Rob: Actually, yeah.
Carl: I would think it's a marketing thing now. I thought it was a friend thing before, but you know what, whatever.
Rob: It's both, it's a branding thing.
Carl: It's going to be an aggressive show today folks.
Gene: I think Carl's full of it. [crosstalk 00:01:55]
Carl: Sit back, get some popcorn. Feeling spicy.
Gene: Let's go, man. What's up first?
Carl: I don't know. Rob, what are you bringing in here? How's your day going? How's the week going for you?
Rob: Oh, it's going pretty good. The weather is warm here in Ohio, finally. And we are all anxiously awaiting the coming of the cicadas. So yeah, the cold weather delayed them, but...
Gene: What a useless bug? It only comes out every 20 years or whatever. What purpose does that serve?
Rob: Every 17 years [crosstalk 00:02:30] 17 years ago, I remember when they came out, there was like black clouds.
Rob: But they don't eat anything. No.
Carl: But, they are an amazing source of nutrition for so many animals. There was a whole NPR thing on this, about... I didn't listen to it, okay. But, pretty sure it was birds. Maybe rats. We don't need to feed the rats, but the rats feed the snakes.
Rob: People from Florida.
Carl: Some of us, yeah. Definitely. Could I get a Cicada steak sandwich please?
Rob: Gross.
Gene: Coming up. That'll be four years from now.
Rob: Yeah. Somebody mentioned the other day that maybe they could take the cicadas and make protein out of them like a protein powder. And I'd be like, can you imagine the conversation of like, we didn't make enough. Mix not to be ready in like 13 years crickets.
Carl: Not good at all. I don't like it.
Rob: Going to use crickets instead.
Carl: Speaking of business plans.
Gene: Liked that segue?
Carl: You see that, that wasn't forced at all. Gene, you know what I want to talk about? And so do you Rob? Because we already talked about it. So there you go, folks behind the curtain, we actually prepared sort of. Okay. So last week and we'll find out if anybody watches the show because I don't know who posted this, but there was a graphic, a cartoon of two cowboys about to have a shootout and one was supposed to be a client saying what's it cost? And the other was supposed to be an agency owner saying, what's your budget? And I just went like, are we still doing this? It feels so lazy to me to be at a situation where we want to be experts and we want to be professionals and we want to help people understand what it takes to create something great, a value that's going to benefit them.
Carl: And yet we expect them to know what that would cost. So what I wanted to do today, and this is part of what's going to be in the next newsletter, which is late. I'm sorry to those people who actually asked. I'm like, that's amazing, but I want to talk about this. There are ways to help a client get to a budget or, and I hate to manipulate, but there are ways if a client has a budget or a not to exceed budget that we can get them to share it. So that's what I want to talk about today.
Gene: Is that why he's here?
Carl: He is here for a few reasons. First of all, he has one of the most innovative ways I've ever heard of or seen in terms of collaborating with a client to get to a budget.
Gene: He does.
Carl: And that to me is really kind of probably the way we should all do it, except it is a time and materials dependent way. So in the spirit of, there are many different ways to do this many different contexts. And then also, Rob has a new kind of universal theory of studio operations. And I wanted to get into that a little bit too, because I think once you have that set up, once you understand more about your operations, then you can be a little more on purpose about how you bring clients in.
Gene: I'm anxious.
Carl: Because you're not, you're not nervous all the time. It's not like you're feast or famine because you've got things running a little smoother. So, and because God, Gene, he's my friend.
Gene: Is that why he keeps hanging out?
Carl: Well, that, and I owe him some money,
Rob: A lot of money.
Carl: Well, define a lot, rich, mother friend.
Rob: All right. Do it, go Gene.
Carl: You run this show.
Gene: Do I? I'm not sure yet.
Rob: That's a good point. So I'm going to be very burpy because my tea is carbonated.
Gene: Carbonated tea. So Rob, take us through how, just in case no one's caught up or been to a bureau event or read a blog post or anything. How do you normally go about getting to a budget with a client? That's this interactive client budgeting.
Rob: It's taken a lot of shapes over the last 12 years, but one of the things that we've done historically and continue to do is come up with what we call a collaborative estimate. And that's a Google Sheet. That's the form it is in now where we can actually share it and actually helped fill it out and give our clients or prospective clients, editing access on that spreadsheet. And they can actually help us fill it out and make sure that we've got the right line items or the right allocation or sometimes even the right priority on where the value is.
Gene: It feels like a trap.
Rob: It's not, I think that it gets back to what Carl was saying. If we really want to be good partners to our clients and provide value, then that value is exchanged in a couple of different ways. They give the studio, they're working with dollars and the studio provides services back that the client hopes and the studio hopes are worth way more than the money they paid.
Rob: So it's this whole thing about where risk transfers and where the value is and all of that, that we have to make peace with, I think when we talk about budgets, because the old, the model, which the cowboy thing is like somebody is going to lose. And that's why that picture is so stinking bad. Somebody's going to lose and somebody's going to be dead. And if you miss, then you screwed up the whole thing. And then you're probably going to get shot. And you get to do that a couple times. And then there's, you don't ever trust the person on the other side, drawing guns again, And there's so many deeper things of why that's broken when really it's, how do we partner together to do something great that serves both the studio and the client. I like when clients, when I like when their value they receive is huge and their upside is there. I'm good at that. Why? Because they're going to come back and you then have the opportunity to share with other prospects, the reason it costs this is because this is the value that you will see.
Rob: And to just Rob real quick, it's like, when I see the way that you've done that with the spreadsheet, and I've heard you talk about it a few times, the thing I love the most is when you share that, and the way you've got it broken out, I know that there's a sample one we can link to, or if there's something we can share a graphic or something, but when you do it, there'll be things like legal approval or there'll be something around where you put a certain number of hours. And you've said a lot of times the client will bump that up because they know things we don't know about their internal processes, and so if we're operating in a vacuum without them, we're never going to estimate properly. And then we're going to get mad at them when we could just be honest and professional and sit at the table together and say, this is the way it goes, help us get to the right number.
Gene: Yeah. And it's, and that's exactly right. And so much of the whole, back and forth, it's the same thing with every other human relationship. It's about trust. And we need to find ways to establish trust. And by showing your cards up front, I think it's a trust building exercise before you've even worked together. We're trying to model what our relationship is going to be like working together that, hey, we're in this together, we're going to collaborate together. We're going to have shared risk in this in a lot of ways. Not that we're going to throw some things over the wall and come back and just have all the answers because that's crazy pants.
Rob: Also, a lot of people when they think time and materials, and that's the way Sparkbox runs. When you think time and materials, you think that there's not a budget and that is so not true. You still have to help a client understand at some level. Now we've worked with open-ended hours before and it's never, the project never does well. We need some constraints. We need to understand kind of where we're going. Now, maybe an ongoing relationship and that's a little bit different, but I also wanted to share a Klaus Heesch who used to run a shop called Juicy Temples back in the day. He had a way, he never did an estimate. What he would do is he would show clients other projects he had done. And he would say, this one was around $12,000. This one was around $50,000. This one was around a 4100.000.
Rob: Look at these projects and tell me which one feels the most like what you want to accomplish. And then we can kind of back into the cost from there. And I thought, that's another way to help somebody, a prospect who wants to build something who doesn't really understand. If they can see some of the functionality, see some of the original art, see some of the, whatever it might be, then they can be like, okay, I'm not ready or, okay, I'm going to figure this out. But they at least, without something tactile or tangible where you're just staring at each other with your hands on your guns. That's just not the way you have to break down that barrier and share because a lot of those prospects have been told, don't give them a budget.They're going to spend it. And we will.
Rob: But it's an intersection of value that has to be part of that conversation. One of the things that, how much does it cost. That's a question you get all the time. And you know, it's always like, okay, first off, let's talk price, not cost. That's an important distinction. We want to make sure we're using the right language here. So what is the price of this? And the question then is, well, what do you want to build? I can build you a 2000 square foot house for $150,000 or a million dollars depending on the finishes and how much input and what all the different things that include are in that. So there's a lot of like stretchiness in what is going to be done. And do you want it on the beach or do you want it by the airport?
Gene: Yeah. Right. No kidding.
Carl: All of that. Well, and so this, when you start to think about that and I do want to hit on value pricing for a minute. Because I think that is a very important way to go. And Rob, I even made an assumption that you were just talking about Cheerios. There are probably certain things you do that you understand really well, that you do really quickly and you add more value to that. And you package that. I mean, I'm sure there's stuff like that. Y'all are super smart. I think when I look at value based pricing, I think back to the origin of it, as I understand it, which was in the legal profession. It was more of a, I will take a percentage of winnings. Now that is absolute value based because you're telling your customer we're in this together. And if I make more money for you, I get more money.
Carl: If I make less money for you, I get less money. And that's the duality of value-based pricing, I think is if you don't hold up your end of the bargain, if you don't bring the value, you shouldn't get the amount of money or whatever it was. So I think in e-com specifically, this can be a very lucrative or safe, lucrative for the shop, safe for the client, way to go about it. If you say, okay, we'll take this percentage increase of revenue that we are saying we can get for you. Now maybe there's, maybe there's some way that you front-loaded or something like that. But I think that's another way to look at it. When you look at value based specifically in e-com, because other metrics might be hard, the client might not be able to share them, even if they wanted to, there may be legal restrictions or maybe HIPAA compliant. There may be all kinds of things they can't do. But I think that's another way to look at it is okay, and that's the skin in the game way about going about it, right?
Rob: Yeah. And it's, I think that stuff works. Some of that stuff works really well. And I think that there's a lot of discrepancy, even a mindset with the clients that we talk to with how close, what we're building is to the revenue. And that's a very important thing to understand when we're pitching work to begin with, is there metrics, is there things that can be tied right back to dollars and lift? And if there's not, how do we quantify value? And I know that you're right, we do most things time and materials. As far as our pricing goes, but I think that there's a lot of good things that the value pricing folks have brought to the conversation about how to have the conversation on where the value is. And I think that those things can be applied no matter how you do pricing.
Rob: Is what do you expect? What does success look like? What do you expect the lift to be? What do you need this to be worth it? All of those things help set the stage to understand what expectations are, because that's really what a lot of the value conversation is, is let's make sure that I understand those expectations so that I can price the upside. Now, when we, no matter how you do that pricing is going to be like, we're there where the tolerance is for budgets and what we can propose even.
Gene: Right. I mean, that seems like, that seems like a conversation you should have, no matter how you do things behind the scenes or whether you involve the client in the estimating process.
Carl: What you just said is brilliant. Why am I blowing smoke on you today? What is this? I was going to say up here, but then we have to check this box when we upload to YouTube, so I don't do that, but this idea of how close does the work sit to the revenue. Value pricing a marketing site? There are so many different factors that are going to play in. Did the market shift, did the... Maybe the client provided the content, which truly triggered whatever... So it's like, but then it reminds me of what Fresh Tilled Soil used to say, because there's so many definitions of value based. They said, our value is the people and the experience that they bring. So that's why we cost more. So if somebody comes to you because they've seen your work, you shouldn't, at that point, if you know that you're building a marketing site, it's finite, you understand the criteria, you understand all of the boundaries and what you have to build, then that's a different thing than if you are creating an app or you're creating something that we know is going to change a ton of times.
Carl: And Rob, I don't know if you were the first one to say it, but this idea of we're at the point of maximum ignorance when we start a project. and so that's where discovery comes in. As one of a great way to figure out what the cost might be, what the price might be. Sorry. So I want to get my language right. Cause I got robbed right there and it feels like he could punch me if he wanted to. But that's another one for me is discoveries I think are super important. A lot of people use them as kind of a litmus test if they want to work with the client or if the client wants to work with them. But I think it's way more valuable than that to be able to put some of these, again, kind of these criteria around it and be able to move forward that way to establish a budget.
Rob: Well, it, but the other thing it does is it establishes trust. It gives us a to collaborate together, to come up with a solution and one of the things that I think when we talk about discoveries or whatever, we want to call them discovery, strategy, the words keep shifting because.
Carl: Definition.
Rob: Yeah. But whatever that initial piece, that results in the playbook going forward, goals and the first phase of implementation plan. That first step or whatever that is there's a huge piece of it, that making sure that you explained that, hey, we're doing this to de-risk the project because the most dangerous thing on any project, the biggest risk is always solving the wrong problem or building the wrong thing. So we want to do a little upfront work to make sure we don't fall into that trap because there's no better way to blow through a budget than do the wrong thing for a while.
Carl: Repeatedly. But go ahead, Gene.
Gene: I was going to say, those are also... I don't know the scale of where you are versus things I've done in the past or whatever. But I also, I like discoveries because it's a great way to weed out tire kickers. And I feel like when you say, hey, we need to do this discovery. It's going to be a month long. We usually do them for this much. It also sets the tone for the overall scale and the cost of the project.
Rob: And we usually say up front, when we do discovery, it's going to be around 10 to 15% of that first phase. So that's just what it typically is. Can I promise that's what it's going to be for you? Absolutely not. But that's the kind of scale that we're talking about here. And that seems to be where the tolerance is for that stuff too.
Carl: Or, and two other ways, because you are going to sometimes come up with, come against a prospect, who's like, I need a number. I need a number. I have other shops that have given me a number. Why can't you give me a number? And I think one of the interesting things there, why are you laughing at me?
Rob: Because I love that question.
Carl: It's a great one. Go ahead. How do you answer that question?
Gene: How do you answer that question?
Rob: I usually respond back like, well, with the information you've given, I can't give you a number. I'm not sure anybody should be giving you a number with information you have.
Carl: Yeah, that's right. And you know what? I think that's exactly the way to do it. And I've said it and the way that I've said it was more like, anybody who's giving you that number is going to change it. And you need to realize they don't know what the hell they're building for you. They just want a shot to stay in the game. We're not in that space. We're in the space of building great things for people that make them money. And we can't do that if we don't have an understanding of what you're looking to do. And that's where a good, better, best can even come in to help them figure out where they play, like good, okay, we're going to use some third party stuff where it's not going to be all original. You're not going to be able to own everything here.
Carl: Some of it's there better, best. Right. And giving them those opportunities. But the other thing, and I don't like this, although I did it a lot early on, because I didn't really know what anything cost, is just the choke test. And that idea, and, and Rob, you would never do this. I know you would never do this because the risk is kind of out there. But when somebody says, look, I just need to know what it costs.
Carl: And we say, projects of this type, generally, you're going to be in the 400 to $500,000 range. And you know, what, if a prospect can't tell you their budget, but they can tell you what's not their budget. They know the not to exceed number or what they are not going to go into their boss or what they can not get out of their operating budget to do this. And at that point, they'll be able to say, we really can't go over $20,000. And then you say, okay, well for 20,000, this is probably what you should look at, but that's a game and that's manipulative. And although early on, when I was still trying to figure out how I was doing it, that was a way I went a lot.
Gene: Well, what's wrong with that? Why are you saying it's not a good way to do it?
Carl: I don't know. I mean, it's like, you're not understanding what they're trying to accomplish. You are at that point building to a budget, not building to success. And I think that, to me, it feels like you're really just trying, and we were just trying to get the money at that point.
Rob: And what you're talking about is like the cow concept of price anchoring. It's like you're throwing a number out there and if you throw a number out there too low, that is the quick draw. I'm going to throw a number out there. I'm going to shoot first. And I'm going to shoot in such a way that it's going to change the whole game. But I think that there's ways to make that not a game too. And we've been playing with this, even on our own site, is on our contact page. It talks about, what a standard engagement typically costs.
Rob: What it means is, if we get emails from prospects that don't include anything about budget, we can just say, hey, we assume you saw this. And we're proceeding like this is your budget. And the ones that don't, will often come in and say, well, I don't have the minimum number of what you say your budget is, but I'd really like to talk anyway. I can only spend this. So it really sets that upfront and it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It's like no. I'm going to put this out there into the world as an expectation. And if you're coming in through this funnel, unless you say, otherwise, this is what the expectation should be.
Carl: I think that's great. I mean, and it's not unlike if you drive by a new community and it says houses starting at $420,000. And we put that on our site at one point. Projects starting at $10,000, which was the number back then. I think that to your point of it being anchoring, I think, I mean, I think that's it. You just have to give someone a place to start in their mind.
Rob: Back to that whole thing that we talk about a lot with expectations. When you're in those calls, there is two sets of expectations. There's expectations on your side, based on what you're hearing, there's expectations of the client side or prospect side of what they're hearing. And if we don't give voice to some of those expectations to talk about real things, then we're both going to leave that call with different understandings. And that is the worst possible way we can start a relationship, is walking away thinking we've all heard things and understood, but radically different realities.
Carl: Or we, we used to say all the time that it's, we're not in a game of poker here. Somebody is not going to win and take all the money and somebody is going to lose. This is more like a game of Frisbee. It's on my, it's on me to throw it in a way that you can catch it. And then you have to throw it back to me in a way that I can catch it. This is not a zero sum game. This is not operating out of a mentality of scarcity where somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. We all need to win so that we can all lift up so that we can all do better for the next person that comes in the door.
Gene: Wow. That makes me warm and fuzzy.
Rob: That's what I wanted. I feel better now.
Gene: All right. Rob, tell us about your unified theory of studio operations.
Rob: My unified theory of studio operations.
Carl: I heard about this on NPR as well. So, or was it Harvard business review? It was one of the three letter n's and an r things.
Rob: Yeah. So one of the things that I've been doing a lot of thinking over for the last 10 plus years is how do we build repeatable process? And how do we think about repeatable processes that start small and get bigger? And the basically write down our expectations for how we're going to behave as a company so that we can do it the same way over and over and over and over again. Because there's no sense in making changes if we don't know what the baseline is. So that led to a whole bunch of different thinking about operations and how we do delivery and how we deliver products and how we talk about things. Then I got kind of interested obviously in a lot of the financial modeling and forecasting stuff and how that applies to the same stuff.
Rob: And then I found myself being really interested in biz dev and how all that stuff can be repeatable process and all. Then, so that led me to a place where I was sitting there kind of thinking about delivery, finance and biz dev as the three pillars that our studios restaurant.
Rob: Those are the three areas we have to get right. As well as humans kind of as the overarching concern. But what led me down this path of this unified theory is talking about the interactions between those three pillars and how the interactions between them and how they relate to each other really is the magic to make those, our studios operate in a way that's cohesive and we can actually make money and be profitable and do it for a while. One of the things that we say a lot of spark boxes is I want to, our business goal is sustainability and sleeping at night. I want to be things be repeatable and I want to do so in a way where I'm not worried about what's happening tomorrow. And so the unified theory talks a lot about being able to put those three roles in place in how they should interact with each other in a way where they can surface data that the other roles need to know for everybody to build in their job better.
Carl: Yeah. You shared that at owner summit and it became a talking point for people. I think mainly that operations can be stable. Because most of us just think of it as, and we also think of it as a segment of a shop instead of the underlying foundation. And so a lot of that came out and then to just go ahead and share, a lot of people already know this, but Operation Summit is basically kind of the coming out party, I would even say, for this unified theory in that we're going to have sessions on each of the topics, but everybody's working together, so you can see the bridges as well. How it's all one thing and how is each its own thing. And that's coming up in September. I think Gene you've got it there. Is it 24th and 25th?
Gene: I think that's right.
Carl: Or 23rd and 24th.
Rob: Yeah 23rd, 24th.
Carl: So I'm excited to see that and Rob you're helping to actually produce that. So thank you for that. Talk about kind of what you're feeling around this whole idea of Operation Summit.
Rob: I'm really excited about it. I think, you know this Carl, I've been asking for a operations event for a number of years and it's pretty darn cool that we're going to get a chance to put it together and be able to share it with everybody. I think the timing is right for it. And I'm really excited about some of the conversations I'm having with some of the speakers and how their talks are developing and how's this all going to come together. I've been to a bunch of operations camps and other, participated in operations in the bureau. And like one of the things that I've always wanted to do was be able to bring good ops content to the different bureau events that I've attended and I've been able to do so owner summit, some of the owner's stuff, as well as DPM summit, but to have its own event and have it be the thing for everybody for a couple of days is just, really makes me smile. It's going to get its moment in the sun.
Carl: It's operation celebration. Oh, I'm changing the name. Operation celebration. But people are already lining up. I mean, that's what I love is people are asking questions. People are transferring tickets from other events because their budget didn't allow them to go to both. And it's like, this is the thing. And I've had a lot of people say, I've never seen an event that's just about the operations of running a studio. And so I think this, I think you're right, it's the right time for it. Everybody for the most part is in a pretty good place coming out of the pandemic and has gone through a lot of change and now just wants to fine-tune and make sure that they're standing on stability so that they can make great decisions. Write that down, Gene. That was really good. Okay. Thanks. I don't know what happened, but it looked like you kind of just merged into up. It was like a Freaky Friday and nobody wants another one of those. So yeah.
Rob: That's awesome. Yeah. Everybody's thinking about operations, man. No one has ever talked about that stuff, but it is the stuff that makes things flow.
Carl: Yeah and I think that it's, so many different studio owners come. We've... This has been a common theme in the bureau. So at least since I've been a part of it is this idea of accidental ownership. And how that we're practitioners that get to running a business. And there's parts of it that come really easy for a lot of us. And there's parts of it that we struggle. But the thing about operations is it's anything but accidental. It's intention. It's intention setting. It's repeating. It's making sure that all of the humans involved know what to expect and when you to expect them.
Gene: And when you do that, evidently you can be successful. I don't know.
Rob: I don't know.
Gene: It seems like a way to go. I would think about it. If I was running a shop, I'd go, Operation Summit, maybe I can finally make money, but that's not... That's the tagline. Maybe you can finally make money.
Rob: Well that'd be good.
Carl: Rob Harr guarantees, you will finally make... No he won't. But if you would come to the event, that'd be great. Because then maybe I can get the money there, I'll Rob and then I could go ahead and send it to him. Gene, I know that we have really gone on this one and I appreciate both of you being here. Gene, what do you got left this week? What's what's your hot take of the week Gene?
Gene: My hot take of the week. Well, Rob's got me thinking about a lot of stuff. I'm going to go check out my systems and make sure they're not falling apart. Which they probably are.
Rob: Is that a way of you saying you have to take a bio break? Is that what you're saying? You'll check out my systems?
Carl: Not cool, man. Not cool. Yeah. What about you Rob? What's on your mind? What do you got left for the week?
Gene: Hot take. Hot take.
Rob: Hot take. What do I got left for this week? Well, it's Wednesday. I've got golf on this weekend and going to play golf league tomorrow.
Carl: Operation Summit, learn Rob's secrets.
Carl: No, no, no. If you want to play golf or actually Frisbee or maybe just sleep longer...
Gene: Or Frisbee golf.
Carl: I like it. So Rob, basically what you've got on your mind is how you've already achieved success.
Rob: Yeah that and... I think to be fair, the other that we've got going on is, Sparkbox is at an inflection point again size-wise we've kind of grown a little bit over the last year and even this year, and we're relooking at a lot of our systems and trying to be intentional with them and it feels like we're at a place. So that's, there's a whole bunch of different initiatives in that where I'm pushing, it feels like an inch at a time on the different things so that they get done.
Carl: Cause you're, you're in the mid fifties now.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We're like 57. Now we've got a couple new people, a couple apprentices starting again. So we're going to be closer to 60 here real soon.
Gene: That's great. Well, and that's another thing just for another little plug there on Operation Summit, we've also got Larry coming in from CIHR and he's going to talk about scaling operations, because it's not going to be a one-time set it and forget it kind of thing. It's going to have to change all the time.
Rob: It is. I'm really excited to see what Larry shares just it's that whole idea of what happens when those pillars become teams instead of just single persons or single hats somebody's wearing.
Carl: Well, and I want to, I just want to share with, the thing I've come to realize, and this was through the beyond diversity event and also with Operation Summit, is that one of the things I have to learn and that I am learning is that I don't have to lead every event. I just have to create the space for it, with someone else. So Rob, I just want to say thank you for hanging in there on the operations event, now that it's finally coming. I know you probably thought about spinning up your own a few times, but then you'd never get that money from me. So I just want to say thank you for kind of stepping up and taking the lead. And then we've also got a lot of innovative ways that we're working at this event that we can share later, but just really appreciate both of you and thanks for letting me be a little spicy.
Rob: I always appreciate spicy Carl.
Carl: There you go. It's a good one
Gene: On that note. Goodbye gentlemen.
Carl: Bye Gene.
Rob: Bye Gene.
