#248 - Kyle Phelan - NoBul Partners

[MUSIC] >> Hello, everybody. Before we jump into today's episode, we have two sponsors. We want to say thank you to for supporting the show. The first one is routine. You guys have heard me talk about routine, honestly, back from the early days of the podcast. And it's still a product I use every single morning. They have a prompt for me here. I'm going to do a little impromptu on this ad read today, because honestly, this is a product that I truly believe in. And so I'm just going to tell you guys exactly what I think in why. First and foremost, this is a stat that they shared. But when you sleep, you lose between a pound and a pound and a half of water. And most of that's just sweating while you sleep. I used to not know if that was actually true, to be honest. I felt like a pound and a pound and a half of water seemed like quite a bit while. I slept. 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Don't forget to use code just Shane White and you'll get 30% off your order. Hope you guys love both these products. I'm trying to not only bring you guys products that I use, but that I believe in on the podcast. I'm not taking ad reads for any brands that I don't really believe in. So anyway, hope you guys love both those products. Your routine.com and NeuroRost.com. I've added those links to the show notes. Hope you guys love it. And I got an awesome guest coming up right after this. Welcome back to another episode of the Shane White Show. Exciting. This one, this one we planned out. I wanted to make sure 250 was a special guest and without further ado, welcome to the show Kyle. How are you buddy? They're good. Exciting to be here. Long time coming. I know. I've been bugging you about this forever and I don't see your face enough on on this computer screen every day with work. So I figured we should do it in our hour together in a podcast. It'd be funny. This could probably be an episode where you just ask questions to yourself and then you answer them as if you were me. It would be funny to do it side by side. I bet it'd be pretty close. Yeah, very close. For everyone who doesn't know who you are, can you give everyone a little bit of an intro to Kyle Falen? Sure. So it's probably more related to today's conversation. The second co-founder of Noel Partners. So Shane and I work very, very, very closely together. For the last four years, let's call it since we started Noel for your four. I always forget how long it's actually been. Yeah, four years. Four. Yeah, so four years side by side co-founder of Noel Partners. And then before that, Shane and I worked together our X bar for a number of years on their e-commerce team. And then prior to our X bar, I was on PepsiCo's e-commerce team. So kind of who is Kyle Falen? Let's call it e-com. I'm not sure. Wizard. Yeah, yeah. I've never really ever wanted to ask about you. I'm like, Kyle's, he's like the Ninja e-com that I was already obsessed with e-com when I met you, but you kind of made it ten times more aggressive. Let's dive into the background of e-com for you though. It's going to be funny today. I think for everyone listening, I spend so much time talking to Kyle. He's, you know, if you look at the top of your phone and you have favorites on that message, he's right there next to my wife. So he's, you know, he's in my inner circle. So I feel like I know a lot about you, but today I'm excited to dive in because what even got you wanting to go to e-com? Like in e-com when you went to college, was that something you wanted to dive into? Sure. I'll answer the question to provide more context of how much Shane and I talked to each other. Shane was, we were talking about our morning routines because we're both very physical. We both typically work out morning and Shane was describing his do not disturb settings. And he's got different settings for different times of the day. And he said the most used do not disturb setting the only people who can contact you or your wife and me, which is like very, very funny and very relevant. It's a good filter for a lot. Yeah. I mean, I'm excited. Because usually if you're texting or calling me, usually if you're texting or calling me, it's pretty urgent. You know, I mean, unless it's like something random, otherwise if it's smart and working out and you're texting or calling me, it's something blew up that I haven't seen yet. Yeah. And I promise you the question, this is the funny thing that we talked about when we trying to, when we try to plan anything social with our wives and with the kids. It's how long can Shane and I last in person in a social setting without talking about work. And it's usually like two seconds. Especially if there's anything exciting going on, it's going to be like, I'm probably worse than I was like, yeah, immediately. Yeah. So to answer your question, my experience with an e-com was kind of right place, right time. The Pepsi-Curthag was even right place, right time. When I've actually thought about it a lot, his unit started Noble Partners and, you know, we listened to a number of different podcasts, the founders and kind of like the go get them guys on Instagram where it's like, wake up, do hard work, you know, that kind of stuff. So the Pepsi-Code job actually started as a Pepsi-Go internship. So as a part of my focus of my marketing degree at the Paul was quote unquote sales leadership. This is actually a probably great plug for them. Yeah. I've never heard this part. Yeah, it was a unique focus within the business school. And as long as you had a business degree, you could be a part of the sales leadership program. And the program itself was exactly what it sounded. It was focused on sales. One of the things that I wanted to do was to get a job. the major sponsors of the program was PepsiCo doing what they had offices in Chicago. So there's an internship opportunity and kind of just I saw that internship opportunity as like holy cow. If I could get this I can write my ticket as a junior I'll have a full-time job before even start my senior year. So I approached that interview of just like do whatever I could to stand out and thinking back to when you're a junior gosh I was 20 or 21 years old you know I was doing what typical college kids do but like I recognized the opportunity in front of me and took it. So what I did for the interview was actually go to a 7-11 which was near my apartment and count the individual facings of two liters within the call it two liters set for 7-11 and I basically made up an analysis that was like okay Pepsi if you could take half of the facings of coke away at this specific 7-11 you know and then I sat there for an hour and saw how many people grabbed a two liter and then I you know extrapolated out to potential sales per day so I basically made up this analysis that a category manager. Yeah she did do this so you just did this on your own. I did this on my own and I did it as a sense of like yeah like I did it as like I need to stand out in the interview because I wanted this internship because I knew if I crushed it the internship I would have a job you know waiting for me before even starting my senior year because the way the program ended you essentially did the internship for I think six months and then they decided if you were going to come on full-time and you knew that I think in August of your senior year. So I went through that process showed up to the interview got that internship and I interned as a category analyst let's call it for a few months at PepsiCo and then did well at the internship had the opportunity to then come on full-time and I'll never forget this when you when you say yes I'm ready to to sign on full-time you have to sign a contract and you sign that contract without knowing what your role is or where you're going to be placed. Yeah really? Yes it's just like you're gonna come work at Pepsi but it could be anywhere. Yes exactly. So after you sign the contract HR then comes back to you and says okay if you were to prioritize role or location which would you put first? So I chose role over location because again I just I realized the opportunity was like I want the best job possible and then after those two marks you then choose from your location what are your top three and being from Chicago growing up in Chicago my family's here my very close friend group is in Chicago my number one choice for location was not New York City my number one preference was not New York and then my second was Chicago and I think my third one was maybe Dallas in their Plano office. Literally not New York was like absolutely I said not New York until I got sent to New York but the the role my first full-time role out of undergrad was an analyst on the e-commerce team so I was the and you've heard this during the lean times because it's a pivotal sales point for you and I just saw that both of our careers started with an e-com but I was the second or I guess the first full-time hire on the e-com team but PepsiCo so at PepsiCo there were a number of people working on e-com but it had been kind of partial partial roles right like there was a very influential person in my career who was working on supply chain but half of his time was committed somewhere else and then the other half was committed to e-com so I was the first full-time hire to come in and work with my manager and say hey within the North American business across the you know we called it full bag at the time but with PepsiCo that's you know beverage quaker and Frito how do we scale e-commerce so from day one it was kind of my manager and I figuring out what needed to get done to scale PepsiCo's e-com business which is funny looking back I was 22 and I was reporting to another incredibly influential person in my career who was a like I believe it was a senior director at that time I had absolutely no business in reporting directly to a senior director at a company the size of PepsiCo but just phenomenal experience dove into Amazon dove into that point like fresh direct in the northeast was a thing p-pod r-i-p was still a thing that was before box.com got started so it was kind of like at this very pivotal prime frame when it was becoming more acceptable to purchase groceries online whether be from Amazon or from a thing like Instacart or you know clicking collect where you order it from the retailer site and pull up in front of the store and get it brought to your car in 2014 that was like just starting to become acceptable especially for the under generation. Yeah that was long answer to your question but the e-com thing kind of just got thrown into my lap and then yeah yeah it wasn't like you sought out to be an e-com analyst is actually the opposite. No no I mean I just didn't want to go to New York. Well it's funny because 2014 I mean you know my story like e-com wasn't really at least like in the world that I was leaving I don't remember e-com even being it wasn't like a career path yet. No. It definitely wasn't like a bunch of roles at the career fair per due that I was at where it was like hiring for e-com like it wasn't a thing. I know my first role wasn't e-com related because it was really a thing yet so for you were you I guess the funny thing to think back on was it were you excited when you heard it was going to be e-com was related or you kind of like fuck as e-com. I was excited for e-com because I very quickly realized it in the role that like this wasn't going to be a kind of role where it's like here's the playbook go execute it was more like hey we're gonna figure this thing out which in an organization like PepsiCo where the whole organization is ran on playbooks rightfully so given the size of it but it was kind of fun to work with brands like Gatorade Starbucks Mountain Dew but then also work on things that had never been done before. So it was an interesting mix but yeah the experience itself and this is I probably told us to a couple people everyone can know now I'll never forget I was I did not want to go to New York like I was very upset about moving. It's one of the few things I do know a lot about your your first role you like legitimately were I don't know what the right word it is you were you were you were almost like yeah just try to get depressed about it you really I don't want to have New York. Yeah that was a percent I remember I knew no one I very quickly in kind of like apartment searching in New York realized I couldn't afford to live in Manhattan without living with someone else and I really didn't want to live with someone random because I just came from a college experience where my my two roommates were my best friends in grade school so I remember I remember shopping for furniture for where I ended up living which was Stanford Connecticut and I started crying in the furniture store trying to buy a couch with my parents because I just like my parents had gone to 10 different furniture stores and like hey you need to pick a couch like this is ridiculous I was like no I don't want to pick a couch like for me if you don't mind me asking like even thinking back to that so the roles in Manhattan correct no so the role at the time is in Somers New York there's that office doesn't even exist anymore I don't think because of this before the new purchase headquarters got built so there's in Somers New York there's about a 40-ish minute drive from Stanford Connecticut Somers is out of the city yeah if you were to have me a map of New York I couldn't point to it but I just know it wasn't in the city yeah yeah yeah yes I moved to Stanford Connecticut Drone why did you move to the office every day Connecticut like there's some ask-and-all these questions is my first role it's interesting thinking back to it was kind of in for lack of better words like Boo Boo Indiana and I lived at home for the first year and worked but most people they just moved to that city or they moved they moved it downtown in the apples and drove shit on it like drove over an hour to get to work or you just sucked it up and you're like I'll be five minutes from the office to an old living Columbus Indiana for you might make your big Connecticut if it was still a driveway and was a price yeah I was part of it was price which living in Stanford Connecticut at the time it's not cheap yeah right I lose it Manhattan couldn't afford rent on my own I could have afforded rent but I would have been broke which I still was in Stanford but I would have had to get on a bus every day from in and I didn't like this idea of like sitting on a bus for an hour and a half to get to work sitting on a bus for an hour and have to get back do you have like reverse commuted kind of thing correct yeah wow okay so I don't know how exactly I landed on Stanford I'm sure it was just like a normal Google search of like where should a 22 year old live if you're not living in Manhattan and and Stanford I'd equate it to like a Naperville oh sure yeah okay so it's that close though it's like it's like a suburb issue of New York City yeah yeah like I could get on the metro and get to New York City like get to Union Station probably four years minute so yeah it's like living in a suburb yeah okay but not knowing anyone in Manhattan at the time yeah there wasn't much there wasn't much tourist stuff going on in New York City for me at that time oh and it's like if you weren't I didn't realize you weren't working in the city because if you were working in the city probably a little different you would have had met friends and happy hours then you would just got into the like scene yeah well it's funny because in the time that I was there before I left for our X-bar that team had grown from myself from my manager to when I left I think it was 235 people like PepsiCo from 2014 to 2018 went from like two person e-commerce teams like let's pour money into this this is going to be huge so PepsiCo made a massive investment in e-commerce and they actually gave me company in their own office in mid-term in Manhattan again similar thing to most organizations it's if we want to attract the best talent we need to have an office in Manhattan so that that was open before I left but at that time I was still living in Stanford I didn't want a commute in the city so I was just like I'm just gonna keep my office where yeah yeah yeah you didn't even go to the nice office once in the zirka yeah a few times every now and then but not got off the got it okay okay and if you I don't know if you remember or mind me asking how much was your salary right out of school. Sure. So my salary right out of school, which at the time I remember being like, this is awesome. Like it was a great first job out of school. I think I made 56,000 a year. Yeah. I mean, that man had, which is crazy to think. Like when you got to school and you work at a 56, like you like basically can't afford to have an apartment. Yeah. So I remember, I think each of my paychecks after tax was like $3,100, something like that. But my rent was $1,800 in Stanford. It's like one more than one full check. I remember went towards rent. Yeah. And the biggest challenge with that was like, I at that point was living completely on my own, right? Like my parents weren't paying for anything or helping me in any way. Obviously, when they would come, they'd be very helpful. But day to day, I wasn't getting an allowance sent to me from my parents. I go on my own. Sure. Stanford, Connecticut is in Westchester County, New York City or like Westchester, that area. It's old money, right? So a lot of the people that I met that were my age were original to the area doing their first roles out of school, but either living with their parents still or commuting within the area. So socially going out and being around kids who were throwing around mom and dad's credit card the entire weekend made it very difficult for me to socialize too because it's like I was broke. I couldn't afford anything. So that whole has there for a year and a half to years. And I made it very well known to my manager at the time. Like, hey, if there's ever an opportunity for me to move back to Chicago, like sign me up on there. So I didn't stay there for very long, but I've been you and I've talked about this before, but I have still little memories from the year and a half that I was there socially. Like, I don't keep in touch with anyone really that I met. They're friend wise work wise. I still do, but I've just like my my brain is completely blocked it out because I was just not having a fun time there. Yeah, almost weird. It's like it. It sounds like a traumatic time for you. It's traumatic in general. I always felt like when you leave, when you leave college and then go work, it's weird in so many ways. Like you go from having summers in this weird transition from like going to class, having the holidays, doing an internship back to school, to just a lot, I'm just going to be doing this forever. I remember that being mentally such a weird transition. And then on top of it, if you're moving and you're in a whole new city, it's a lot. It's a lot to handle and to figure out. Did you, I'm assuming you probably came back to Chicago quite a bit. Yeah, I came back probably once every month and a half, I would say you broke up a little bit too. So let me know if I don't answer the question. But yeah, I would come back about every once, every six weeks. Let's call it. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's funny looking back like for his quote unquote traumatic of an experience, which it sounds ridiculous because it was a phenomenal full-time job. I learned a lot. And it was kind of a setting off point for everything else I've been able to do in my career. I don't know if I would trade it for anything, right? Because like I'm here because of what happened then. And I learned a ton, right? Like days were long. I was in the office by seven. I'd leave at six. I'd go work out. I'd get home at nine. And then I'd be back on the computer. So like right out of school, I learned how to work pretty darn hard. And also my manager at the time, who I've already mentioned incredibly influential to me, like I had no business reporting directly to a senior director. So just as I felt like going to school in the city of Chicago for see to grow up quickly in the sense that like you didn't have a college town there weren't college bars. You weren't just constantly surrounded by other college kids. You were living in Chicago. You were around young professionals. So you kind of had to grow up in college quickly. I felt like reporting directly to my manager at the time on a small team. I had to grow up very quickly from like your first job perspective. Like there wasn't there wasn't six months to do you know trainings and all this other stuff. It was like, hey, you're in the weeds figured out. And yeah, I wouldn't take it back for as tough as it was. That's cool. Yeah, that's good advice. I think for anyone listening in general. I would agree. Even we were doing totally different things, but it's fine, right? That first roll out of college, even if it's not, you look back and like the work wasn't. Even like me, personally, the work I was doing was not fun. And it honestly didn't necessarily translate into what I want to do in the future or what we're doing now. Just getting through the suck and like learning how hard it you should be working and learning. How you deal with people and meetings and building a career and communicating all that stuff. I would argue I would agree. It's invaluable. So you're in Stanford Connecticut. You're working in New York. How did you get back to Chicago? So I got back to Chicago as the Ecom team was expanding. I moved to Chicago. The team was probably at least 30 people maybe I'd say. So there was more flexibility in terms of where I could work from, but also, you know, we went from the two people working on Ecom in New York and then Dallas had a team that was working on Ecom and then Chicago and Ecom team. So as the Chicago Ecom team was getting built out, my manager, again, knew that I wanted to get back was like, hey, you know, if you want to move, you can certainly move. It was so funny to be looking back as like as most people in our industry would know like a relocation for most of those organizations is covered. And because it was like I wasn't changing jobs, I had to cover my own move, but it was so I don't even remember putting up a fight for being like, hey, can you take it a couple grand help with the movers? I just moved out here a year and a half ago. Like I'm going to stay with the company for a while still. I didn't even push. I was just like, yes, I'll move to Chicago. I'll get moved to tomorrow. The moment I was told that I could move, I think it was just, I think we actually planned it around when my lease ended, but like it was, I planned to move back Chicago probably in two months. It's just not shorter. You're just like is it? Did you keep the role or did you stay in Ecom even though you were back in Chicago? Yeah, I kept the role. And my role changed. I got promoted, a handful of times all within that same team, right? So I was an associate analyst and a manialist, then a senior analyst, then an associate manager like all those big CPG titles typically go. Yeah, right. So I got experience across a number of retailers and then kind of increasing responsibility from like, hey, you're an analyst to, hey, you're actually a manager you're calling on, you know, accounts now. So, okay, very cool. I mean, yeah, I do think there's something to be said too for getting into a role in a big company, even if it's not what you want to do long term. You learn so much and it sounds like you were able to work your ass off via high performer and then shit kind of works, right? You get maybe the perk of, hey, I want to move here or I want to go back home or whatever it is and it it panned out for you because I would argue if you if you move there and then you didn't work hard and you didn't do the hours you were talking about doing and try to go above and beyond, did they might not have been that open to you, you know, go make sure I go. I mean, I realized that from day one, which, you know, had a still have phenomenal turns and was raised to understand that hard work pays off. So like that, that's always kind of been my style, right? Like I wasn't expecting to get the first job and absolutely love it. I was regardless of where I was going to go work. I was planning for it to suck in some regard. Not that there was a lot of great things about the job, but I absolutely didn't love it. I certainly didn't love it probably because of my surroundings and where I was living. But yeah, like I didn't expect to fall in love with my first job, but I knew if I worked hard in my first job, I could eventually get to a point where I did absolutely love what I do, which, well, and the old here we are. Here we are. Now, do you, this is a question I hadn't really asked for many people, but I've thought about it on when you went to join Pepsi, did you as Kyle Fail and leaving to Paul? Did you know what you wanted to do long term? Or were you kind of like me, I know for me, I was like going to the career fair, I'm like, I don't just need to get a job. The next step after here is I got to start making money, which is funny. Think back on, I didn't have this like audacious, this is what I want to go do someday at all. I mean, my dream job at the time was I wanted, I wanted to work in advertising and work for companies like Apple, because like if you didn't remember back when, yeah, that was definitely like Apple advertising was ridiculously awesome, Kramer and Kraslick, which I might be mispronouncing, that they were the agency of record at the time, so like I remember sending, I think maybe they did advertising campaigns for Corona when they started to find your beach campaign. Okay. Also did advertising for Portia. So like that was, I got one to go work for CK, but no, I had no idea. Like you and I probably had a similar experience in college, like I didn't, I chose the Paul because I knew it was going to be easy to intern and go to class at the same time. Like I wanted to be in business in some shape at the mall. Yeah. But for Mark Chicago, I love cents. Let's stay in Chicago. I can get a lot of experience. But like I went to college to get a job, which is why the things to go internship was so amazing. I didn't see I didn't know that. That's smart. I mean, we grew up very different places, not that far apart, but different. Like my mind was, I was really into pre-sports and I wanted to go to business school, but I had no fucking clue what business school even meant. And then it's different. I would assume that you get good grades at the Paul. Yeah. Like not formal, but like I was a B plus average. Yeah. Like I had a 2.9 when I graduated. Yeah. I just, I, so if it for me might have an ADD, but I just could not do well on tests. So it was funny, like thinking back, it's cool that you had this big dream of doing advertising. I remember my job options were more along the lines of, I can't get an internship at Goldman Sachs and do fine. I couldn't do investment banking. My fucking GPA was not high enough, you can close. So I was always, you know me well enough. I was always trying to like be president of club XYZ. And I kind of did that route where I was just like socially very inept to do a lot of people and try to get internships that way. Which, whatever buildings were. building your resume outside of everything but your GP. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just could not do the class thing. It was so boring. Yeah, I was very rational in my college experience. It was like I did terrible accounting, which makes love. It's so funny. So funny. So funny. But it was great because with the program that I was in, it was a lot of whatever I'm forgetting the term. But a lot of the professors I had my junior and senior year for my major classes, like my degree for this classes, were actually night classes taught by professionals. So I think my two of my professors worked for PepsiCo and I knew them from the office. My senior year, I had already signed a contract to work with PepsiCo after graduation. And not to say that like I completely blew off class, but like your year was a breeze. Well, especially if people who had that gig, I even produced the same thing. Like if you had it, if you already had a signed contract, the senior year was kind of like, if you passed everything, you're going to be fine. I don't even know if they look at your grades. Yeah, and it's so funny to think like people are going to hear those. And when you say like, oh, it was a breeze, the imagination goes, you all didn't go to class, partying every day. Like I think my senior year, I probably skipped. Instead of skipping, you know, one class every two weeks, I would skip two classes every two weeks. Like that was my definition of slack, you know, up in college. So it's not like I went off the rails. It's just, oh, that's funny. Senior year, yeah, it was a blast. So you're lucky. I had, I was like I said, I didn't do well in classes. So funny enough, I was, I was like scraping the lap. The senior year for me sucked as far as school goes. Because I actually had to do decently well. And I had to make sure I, I think I did 18 credit hours, both semesters to just get out with the perfect, like I, I scraped through to graduate on time. Like just by the skin of my teeth. Like it was not good. Yeah, so funny. I've never really talked about it on you. Like school is just not, I don't know what I was, it was the opposite. I would say like front row. You're gonna laugh at this. I would sit front row after I figured out I couldn't pay attention to the back. I would take insane notes. I'd be in the library studying all the time. And I'd fail the test. That was my week. The only thing that was surprising about that entire thing was the fact that you failed the test. I mean, it was very fun. I still don't know. I genuinely seriously wonder if it was just fucking ADD and it was not interested in the topic. I don't know. I think you and I have talked about this at dinner or something before specifically for business degrees. Not so much for finance because like maybe my perspective is I sucked into accounting and I couldn't figure it out. So finance to me seems like. Obviously, I've gotten a lot better at it through work. But like a marketing degree, a general business degree, all through school, I was always that kid who didn't have the study and would do reasonably well on tests. My parents always joke like my sister, my sister would study her ass off to get an A plus. I would study just enough to get an 89.5% on the test. It's funny. Yeah. You get the most efficient A that I can get with the least amount of studying time. Yeah. I just send, I'm sure a lot to you. So much so much so much. But for business degrees, I think it's going to be really interesting in the next 10 years to like how does a business class run for what you and I do now. And even what we did post grad, I learned more in the three or four months or however long I however long I was in my internship, I learned more there than I did four years of taking class for that. I would say, what do they do? Like what does business school look like coming from where I came, my prediction is that your business degrees are going to be work studies. So like freshman year, you have a work study, sophomore year of a work study, Thursday of, or junior year of a work study, you just change. And each work study is sponsored by X, Y and Z companies. Their benefit is cheap labor. And then the benefit on the backside is like, okay, you have an endless recruiting pool where instead of pulling someone from a random university, you've got a train, you're pulling from someone who's done good work for four years that we've paid very little for. And now you have someone who's informed of what the organization's processes are, who the team members are, who the stakeholders are, how things work. Like that seems so much more rational and reasonable in terms of specifically probably for business. Then sitting in a class and like a marketing degree, it's like, okay, learn what every acronym we use means and how you calculate it. That's just you're just committing that to memory, right? It's so much more useful in my opinion, just go work. I would 100% agree. I do my brain spending because I'm wondering, business will make a lot of sense to do that. The other thing is the price won't make any sense. But since it's actually now, I would argue, me and Kelly talked about this. Why would I not, I don't want to force, you know, we don't want to force our kids obviously into doing what we're doing. It's not probably going to work, but not into it. But I'd also say the, and I've talked about this on this podcast a long time ago. One of my biggest gripes about, like I love no one to produce, but one of my biggest gripes was we sat in this class, we learned all these theories. The difference between yours and mine, though, it sounds like mine was taught by, and no offense to them, but TAs for the first two years, and honestly, a lot of them with not great English, which made it 10 times harder to like learn calculus and then didn't do a great job. It was just hard. You just didn't do it. The actual material was hard enough, and then if you could understand English, like how the hell am I supposed to learn that, or tenure professors, and you could just tell that they were yeah, like two shits of your paying attention, yeah, whatever. But you think it would make so much more sense to either put people on the job, but this is like the bigger thing. That was like the working style of teaching. It all just funneled you, and that's why I asked you that question. It just funneled you into, hey, when you leave these doors, though, you got to go work for somebody. We like, that's really all it did. It taught me that like get it work really hard the first three years to get a really good GPA, get an internship along the way. That'll get you to the doorstep to interview well. So spend all this time learning how to interview, get your resume in order to land the job for somebody. And I always thinking back now, I'm like, that's sure. That's what probably a lot of people should do. But also, why didn't you have another course where it was also hey, give them 1,000 bucks. Go figure out something to sell or buy and sell or get, like create a service, just give them, give them almost like a little bit of resources to just go test. Like if it's mowing you, I don't know, anything. I just think there's something about taking a thousand dollars. Can you turn a 10 dollar or can you turn a thousand dollars into 10,000 this semester? And if you don't, like there's no penalty, or I don't know how you structure it, but just like teaching people how to run a business is 10 times more important, no matter if it's econ, mowing the lawns around campus, just something, then just theory, because your point, like just working is you will have 10 times more. Any. Yeah, two things come to mind there. The first is one thing I loved about Nepal, especially for junior and definitely senior classes. My 300 level and 400 level classes were taught by business professionals who were running in my class, which was phenomenal. I loved it. Yeah, that's cool. The largest class I had, my senior year was maybe 20 people. So it was a very small class. So you're probably engaged in there that you like you would never would cut it in, right? Just like if you got up and left in the middle of the lecture, everyone noticed or you didn't show up, probably, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure. The second thing I would say, like the example that you give, like knowing laws on campus or give a thousand dollars, can you turn it into 10 mutual friend and colleague of ours? His son is down top going to school. He'll put up a hot dog stand. And like there's a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, he's selling hot dog. His son is selling hot dogs at Tampa, which I forgot with the name of the company as I give him a shout out. The like the thing that's so cool. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, like he's got a probably. Yeah, they're doing it. But the things that you learn outside of just like, OK, how do you make a hot dog serve a hot dog? But like bouncing books, managing inventory, dealing with people, marketing, socials, like all of that. You learn so much better just by doing it. I get that point. It's like, yeah, 100% agree. I wish it's going to be interesting to see what it's like in 10 years or when our kids go to school. Well, there's also, and I know you and I are so deep in this. We've done, we've even done like a little noble podcast about it. With all the AI boom and chat GPT, I know I'm not sure. Do you have on your phone? Yeah. Do you have it like as just a bad? No, I don't. But I sure it's on my like, it's on my bottom four. It's one of the four that doesn't move off. And so whenever I would have Googled something, I just go to chat GPT. Even just getting into the habit of that, I've learned more in a week. Like going to my old chat GPT prompts, it's really funny. It's like all over the place. It's, yeah. How do you grow your biceps to what's going on with fucking a hurt? It's so ridiculous. Like, we would span of what I look up. And, but I think about it from like our kids in business. Why would they pay all this money to sit in the classroom when they could just, they're going to have access to so much information so early that if you want to learn how to even learn basics of accounting, you could chat with, you could, you could literally have a go back and forth of chat GPT today. I think even you, if you set down it for 30 minutes and just put back and forth questions and examples and give me this, explain this. Like using your own business or I do that a lot now too. Funny one, a good example like this is something that, you know, I don't know if I would have done back in the day. Looking at a new car, I had chat GPT. Go and pull like all these statistics across like seven different cars. And then asked it like all these reviews ratings. And then I asked it, this is a new one I heard on a podcast. I asked it to take all that information that I just asked you for the next last time that it's a bullet and put it all into a chart. And then it put it all into a chart. And then it was a PDF that could like print out. It was crazy. And this wasn't like, this wasn't like a website. So we're someone did it. It was. is me getting information from my 30 resources and then letting Chad keep it in chain chart. And then I figured out, you can see features, prices, it was so crazy. I'm like, our kids can do this. We're kids can be like, I wanna start a hot dog stand business. What are the basic, what do I need to do? - But I think so. - So like that first question. So like having the mindset to ask the motivation to ask the curiosity to ask, how do I do X, Y and Z? I think what like standard college courses or even high school courses is still good for us. The kids who don't have the motivation or curiosity to ask the questions, which like we all were there, right, this is why kids skip class and college. If you don't have the curiosity and the motivation, whether it's someone giving you a lecture or are you going to Chad's GPT, if you're lazy in my motivate and you're not gonna be shit. - Very true, very true. That's a really good point. I know, I know, I mean, this is what my big bet for all this is that you also, you'll have to figure out different ways to attract our kids to college because I think this whole notion of you pay this crazy price tag to also pick a specific topic that you actually don't know anything about yet. You just think you wanna learn about it. And then you go spend four years learning all about it and then you're supposed to then go get a job in that career forever. Like that in itself is kind of bonkers when you stop and think about it. When in general, like learning, going to school to just like kind of get an open ended, like I wanna learn about this and then oh wait, I'm a year in, never mind, this is not cool. I wanna go learn about this. I don't know, you and me now that we're business owners, I would take much more, like right, a good example. I mean, I was supposed to talk about it, like advertising because it's just a huge area where there's so much potential. I would probably rather bring someone on who is just really curious, maybe there's a little bit about it. They're like dangerous enough for it's not like I'm teaching 101, but they're just really curious and they wanna ask questions and they wanna work her then I would someone who's been doing it forever. It has her own like ingrained process that they think is the only way, but they got a degree in it. And I feel like that's maybe worth thinking about too. - What goes back to motivation curiosity? It's like you would rather hire someone who is naturally motivated and curious to do good work as opposed to someone who has all this knowledge, but maybe they're half-assing it 85% of the time. Yeah, I don't know man, it will be interesting to see where it goes. I'm pretty confident that it will be wildly different than when we were. But also the idea of going to school for you degree, getting a job, using your degree and staying in that career path. You and I are probably rare examples where we went to school for business, we ended up in an industry where that's very relevant and we know built our own business where that's obviously extremely relevant. I think we're rare. How many of you have joke about it before? Specifically look at CPG. How many founders can we name where their experience is wildly unrelevant to CPG? And it's not a problem. Because if you were to ask 100 people who work across Pepsi, Tele, Mars, Constellation, Ferrar, like pick whatever big CPG company want, pull 100 to 200 people and say, knowing what you know now about this industry, would you go and start your own food brand? 85% of them would say, fuck no, right? Yeah, right. You also have to have some ignorance. Excuse me. Yeah, you have to have some ignorance. What's the most like naivety? Naivety, what's that word? Naivety, we have a naivve about what you're jumping into. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Water, dude, this is going to be-- Yeah, go for it. You're going to fall. You're good. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Sorry. Yeah, as we were both saying, how many of those people would take the risk and start their own food brand knowing the challenges? And I would argue it'd be a very low percentage. But at the same time, an environment where it's super difficult to raise money. And even I've looked at enough brands where we like, we look at the people first. Like, is the product good objectively? Yes or no? Do you believe in the people that are running it? To believe in the people that are running it, one of the first things you would look at is, OK, what's their experience? So it's kind of like this event. Like, you want some experience, but not too much to get painted by the wild challenges of how do you? I don't know. Just an interesting thing to think about. No, it is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, it's interesting. I would love to jump back to it. That was a great tangent. But I wanted to say, I'm going to jump back to it. But I wanted to jump back to Rx or we met. When you were at Pepsi, what initially drew you to even wanting to look outside of Pepsi, leave Pepsi and ultimately finding Rx Barth? Well, I don't know what you've ever even talked about. Maybe we did it when I first met you, but I can't. Story. Yes. The main thing was I wanted to get to a smaller organization. And it was simply because, from a setting perspective, I didn't want to be in an office in a cubicle, working nine to five, wearing a business casual outfit, having a corporate logo back. I guys didn't want that life. Yeah, sure. So I knew I wanted a smaller organization. I wanted to go to an organization that was more so focused on health and wellness. I'll never forget there was an advice that I was given to the supply chain colleagues who I had, who I mentioned earlier in this conversation. And in the early days of my role at Pepsi, because I was part of my job was chasing trucks. Like trucks that were on their way to Amazon, hey, it didn't show up where the hell is this truck? How do we solve this problem? You did that. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember working with our supply chain person, and it was a truck of DSD beverages. So I think Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diapetit, things like that. And it was late. And I was freaking out, because it was probably before a big promo or something like that. And I remember my supply chain kind of part being like, hey, you need to relax. We sell sugar water for a living. And it definitely like a light bulb kind of went off. I was like, hey, we do just sell sugar water. Like that kind of sucks. Like I kind of want to be a bit more impactful, or at least more aligned with my personal values. Like I enjoy it as much as an extra person, but I'm not pounding soda. So our actual hour was kind of like, okay, I can get back into the health and wellness space, which is more aligned with, you know, however my life on a daily basis. And then quite honestly too, it was, I always thought of PepsiCo as this. I do always never gonna go from making 56,000. You would get your merit increase. You would get the promo every year and a half after you busted your ass, if you would get, you know, the organizations, you would get a 10% to a 15% raise. Like there wasn't this jumping point in what you made. So I had done five, four or five years at PepsiCo and I felt like, hey, I've got a good enough resume now. I can jump somewhere and make more money quickly, which is absolutely true. It's not a mystery when you change organizations. You tend to get a bump in pay. So that was another reason to be honest. - Yeah, that makes sense. I think I've done this math before. And I know part of it also was where I was working in Indiana and then coming to Chicago was a totally different market. So what there would be. I remember even getting the offer letter from our ex-farm being like, how much are you gonna pay me? - And at hindsight it wasn't that much more than I was making, but at that age, even getting 10, 15, 20% boost down on an offer letter, you're like, wow. It's crazy. - Yeah, it was a big deal, right? You could quickly be like, oh wow, that's a whole section of my monthly expenses that I don't have to worry about. So that makes a ton of sense. And I think for people listening, that is something that I think about a lot when you think about your career path. You're just, when you work for big corporation, Kyle working in Pepsi. Ultimately what you are, you're obviously working for them, and you're helping them into a lot of different things. So you are a line item for the, you're an expense. And so the people who run and ultimately profit the most from Pepsi, they're usually the executives that have stock options, these things that actually pay them back, what, how do they make more money? Well, they have more profit coming from bottom line. He helps stock holders. So you, Kyle, as an analyst, getting huge, that's never going to be their major goal. They want to keep you and retain you. - Yep. - But it's funny, I think about it. You stop and actually think about how that works. You're really an expense for their business. So. - So the other thing too, I'm sure you know. - So anyway, so you, how did you know? - As we said, the other thing that I remember going in for the first interview at our expire. And we actually interview interviewing, didn't you? You're one of the interviewers? - Yeah, I did. - Yeah, I think it was like me, Jesse Stewart, maybe someone from supply chain and right Peter. - I remember Jesse, maybe Steve, he interviewed me, whoever it was. I think my last interview was with Sam. I remember walking out of each of those interviews and being like, these are very motivated people. They're doing something disruptive. There is no, there's no clear process here. Like that was still during a time in our expire when, we were just solving problems in front of us. And you know, take the five biggest problems you have this quarter, solve them, move on to the next part. Where that wasn't the working solid PepsiCo. And I remember walking out of those interviews and being like, oh, this is a motivated, motivating work environment. You know, you got the gym in the basement, you got people showing up early, everyone is trying to stay fit and healthy. You know, the environment was completely different. - For sure. Yeah, and it probably, yeah, and when you joined, you were a part of like, you were one of the first people I think we hired, we got it to the new office too. So you were a part of, we weren't through this hiring boom yet, but we were in this new nice fancy shiny office too, which was a fun time to join. Do you remember, I don't know if you remember this, 'cause you probably just opened it to the weeds. I'll never forget it was so funny. Who, how do I phrase this? When we, first of all, what I meant, I remember this vividly, I remember being, there was, and I've told him this before, there's been a few people that I hired, we ended up hiring in our expire that I said no to. Like we had to come back, we remember that the hiring process worked, or we'd be all back and huddled. I don't, now in hindsight, like Jesus, I was so pessimistic of people and I didn't give people a chance. I feel like I said no to most people. It's so funny, like even even some of the people ended up being amazing who I'm really close with now But I remember you though you were one of the few people I was like 100% yes We got to get Kyle like I remember when I came in the first thing I've said this a million times We we needed a Kyle when we when we were trying to grow e-com I like wrap the financials around what's going on And I'm like we need some connections to talk to Dylan here with seller central vendor central relationships with vendors But do you remember the first couple weeks because I do vividly when you came in do you do remember kind of your first few days in the job I actually remember you're sitting I remember I remember where I sat I remember the new your process I remember my like my whole goal for the first 30 and roll out maybe a lot of that up. I'm gonna meet it You good so that I remember my first kind of 30 60 90 days like I was told very early on like hey Get to know the stakeholders don't just dive in and start changing shit But ultimately like that's what the channel needed at the time. I'm sorry. I remember my first 60 days I put together a deck for every single meeting and I just I started to just go to work on educating the organization on What it is that we needed to do and started to get sign off pretty quickly And I remember even on during the interview process I I came with I think a four or five slide deck to the interview That was mainly focused on price back architecture and what the team was doing on site currently Of like hey you guys are selling 12 bars everything a straight pack. We need to get the price for order up We need to start getting some variety packs in here. It was a the first 90 days was like a Kyle Brain dump on the organization and then I very quickly found out like okay Who's gonna be who are the stakeholders who can I move fast with who can I go break shit with and you obviously being one of them a number of Our supply chain folks like there wasn't much get up to speed time It was like let's fucking go to work and start changing some shit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, it's funny is I was it's so fine That you said that that was exactly what I was gonna say is also you start with these decks together now I'll never forget I was like how what do you do? What is what are these decks really impressive? It was Do you still have them because they were like really actually really really good Amazon one one you can probably sell those things They were they were great. I remember being like okay, that's how it works Yeah, I mean give me some insight into what what part of my role was it? Oh, because I had any bigger Yeah, you communicate through like me going to our x bar That was just what I knew and then a lot of the strategies and things I learned from Pepsi Coke got applied to our x bar Yeah, that was just that was a product in the environment that I came from to be honest Because I think at that time like if if you weren't at the time our x bar was what maybe 75 people 100 people So if you weren't in the meeting and You'll vouch for this if you weren't in a meeting there was no one taking notes sending follow-ups of the organization after Trickling it down amongst the leadership team like if you weren't in the meeting Most likely the message wasn't getting sent to you and the follow-up during getting sent to you or the direction wasn't getting sent So I realized super quickly like if I have something on paper That I can just be like hey guys here's what I'm thinking it's so much easier to just be like hey forward send done So it was a very intentional it was very intentional the first few months that organization I always give everyone props to it was built on radical candor making decisions quickly 80 20 move fast break it It's so it's a really good way right? Yeah, if you weren't in a meeting decision got made boom happening moving on We're on to the next thing which I know we both loved it was those those the fun time for anything changes And you have to have some like processes that are big with times people involved and feel Loved up so we worked at our x bar for a long time I think what's funny is you know, I whenever we talk to potential new clients or I mean people It when people ask about us we always say and I openly say this to it's like we're in and yank like everything that I'm I think I'm pretty good at That's not Kyle sweet spot and Kyle's amazing at things that I'm not good at so we we work really really well together You know, we help scale our x-parts some massive heights some really cool places And I think what was funny is before we started noble partners we had had conversations and I know we tell people this We had had conversations about this industry that we're now in being kind of broken but It'd be fun to hear on the podcast just so people can listen to it Well, well if you can remember back the first meeting we ever had officially where we sat down and we're like hey We should we should start this thing you came to my house our old house here in Elmer's and we just sat in the living room And I remember Pete was being annoying our dog and we were trying to sit on two laptops and just like think about what the Updusiness could be you give everyone who's listening just a little bit back Because I don't know if I've ever heard you just openly talk about it because it was a it was a weird time Like COVID our x bar was changing drastically We were kind of on the way out anyway. Yeah, give everyone like from your perspectives a little bit of what that was like because that you and me too But I remember correctly we'd always worked really close but over the last few months working remotely like our teams have kind of been pushed Not opposite directions, but I didn't get to work with you as much on the day-to-day basis I had the previous year and a half years. It was a was a kind of cool time So there were two kicking off points for me personally the first like general one to your point was this we both felt that the agency space for Recomb was just broken and we had gone through a number of different agencies We talked to a bunch of them and like we were so busy at the time that I know for a fact me for certain giving my personality I just lost my patience with a lot of them and I think it was because you and I were so in tune to what needed to get done the strategy of how we were going to get there and Communication style working style just the service that we got from agencies was such Like like there there has to be a better way to do this which I said isn't funny to think you know How big of an opportunity our expire was at for an agency and how I felt like most of them how poorly they handled it It's just the size of the organization. That's how they work, but it's funny Yeah, it's totally shit. That was a big account Well, like I think about putting ourselves in their shoes today if we had a client like our expire in let's call it 19 crazy hockey stick growth growing like crazy you and I would Hound that client for everything we needed every opportunity we felt like could be on the table They would tell us to shut that up I remember being the point of contact for the agencies We would send emails of like hey, can you fix this or hey? What's the strategy here and we wouldn't hear back for like a week? So close my mind which is so like it's so insane like there's 52 weeks of your guys You work five days of that that week like missing two weeks is a lot Yeah, I think about it. Yeah, that was that was kicking off point number one kicking off point number two was for me was PTSD of going back to a big CPG organization Right It's like Kellogg started to tell Lucas in and I immediately was like no no no no no no I don't want 15 people telling me what I can and cannot do and having to get approval from 35 people before I make some slight change like I just was not ready to go back to that fact about working environment So I was doing the two kicking off points for me for you and I specifically with noble I remember we kind of had an idea The Amazon thing was was very obvious like we knew Amazon. Let's go do it And then I think from there you and I realized like hey, we actually have broader e-commerce experience where we can offer help to their other brands on top of Amazon I remember building the first pitch deck which is hilarious to look at We should probably Probably should it's if you've seen our pitch like lately. It's wildly different You and I both have this mentality of like hey, we we know we can execute it We don't know anything about running a business that you and I would do internally now. Yeah, sure But we know how to serve clients like let's go get a couple clients. Let's start servicing them to the best of our ability We have no idea what they're gonna pay us. So let's let's think about it for a bit make up a number and go on from there I can't just hit the ground running there. There's always that moment. I remember this because I I quit our x bar before you We were both I think we were both confident, but there's that there's like that kind of year in Where we were both I had just I think Molly was pregnant with Olivia We had just we bought a house like it was like it was time to be a big boy, right? It's like we've got a mortgage. You've got to kid on the way like hey if you go and fuck up your career There's big consequences But I it didn't take me as long as I thought it would to get comfortable and be like oh this is gonna work I think I probably I noticed very quickly our working style and how well we work together. Yeah, which and what that means for our clients is you get a balance of a typical sales guy With me also balance with a typical finance guy for you. So like what that means tangibly for clients is We're going to be analytical, but we're not going to be overly analytical because I won't let you be overly analytical But we're going to be thoughtful in our decisions because you're not going to let me just fire off the emails with a million Yes, like there there is legitimate push and pull in every decision that we make for our clients Which I think is super rare because typically for most agencies It's the account manager who's running a playbook that was handed down by the founders of the organization, right? So I noticed that really quickly and also just how you and I you have problem solved I would say better than most co-founders I would imagine I can't think of any issue where you and I have gone back and forth for more than a couple of days And there's there's always a situation where if I tell you hey, I feel super strong about this Or if you tell me hey, I feel super strong about this. We're always willing to to back off the other one I think that part might be even more than the big keys dude. I know we've talked about it When there there are some things that we've actually I would argue we've already I've already gone through where a lot of people would have like wedged off. Like they would have just been like, "Nadis, it's too much." - Sure. - We've done a good job of getting in the end and even on that stuff. It's funny too. I think one thing you hit on the very beginning, I probably didn't give it enough credit, was one thing that's probably different but what we started is it was such an organic leap from what we were doing. It was basically like, "Hey, we're taking what we were doing for companies, for a company we worked at full time." And then we're gonna start our own business offering a similar service. A lot of different things but nuts and bolts similar to more clients. Whereas it seems like a lot of people that jump in entrepreneurship is probably way harder to be like, "You and I were doing e-commerce." And then we were like, "Hey, we're gonna go start, "I don't know, a company selling software. "Let's go make a software." We just know nothing about any part of that where we did know a lot about what we were selling. So I think that it probably is a big, and again, there's a million ways to do it. People do the latter, but that definitely helped. We passed the immediate sniff test, I'd call it. Like, "You and I, Busset are asked. "We both work incredibly hard for our entire careers." But, you know, shout out to Peter and Jared and Jesse and Laura and Sam and Steve and Tom, and, you know, the original founders of our X-Bar, 'cause yes, we took that business from whatever it was and we joined to a completely different number when we left. But the sale of our X-Bar jumps off a resume. - Right. - Yeah. - Right. - I'm right. - Unless you're 23 years old and you don't remember it, which is gonna be interesting to see. - This still will happen. - Yeah, it's really happening. But, we passed the sniff test, right? And even on sales calls, if we say, "We worked our X, people per cut." And I think what we've gotten to now is, now that we've done this for a long, you know, we don't market Noble, which I think many of our clients are surprised to hear like, we have never paid for a rule ad word. You know, we'll go to Expo and certainly talk to potential and clients, but we're redoing our website right now. Please don't go to our website right now because it's not great. - It's just simple. It's simple and I will say that's something about us though. There's no fluff. And it's funny, we definitely swipe that from our X-Bar, but I think that's our kind of our style anyway. It just worked out that that was what we came from. - Right. - Like, it kind of goes together hand in hand because man, especially in E-Comp, there's so many agencies that they just get lost in this. It's just, we spent so much time thinking about what the pitch is. So much time versus like just doing some hard work. You and I just do all the hard work and then we very, very, very, very, probably maybe a detriment to some degree. Don't think about, don't think about the marketing. And we're like, yeah, we just, our little work and our working style, how hard we work and work a mouth travel. That means a lot. - Yeah, references are phenomenal. I mean, work your ass off, be super consistent, be rational, be reasonable, do the right thing. I mean, you and I, every decision we make, we fight out, I'm like, what is the right thing to do here? - I give you a lot of credit, I don't have a business for that. I like to think that I'm super ethical and I know you are. You say that a lot though, and I think it's really good. We come across roads and there's probably, it was funny to do it. I thought we both get some of that from our X-Bar, because I mean, I always think about the recall. The recall is such a great example to the organization. They could have been like, this is not going to be good financially. Let's just shut this, don't even mention it. Shove into drawer. They could have totally known what happened. But they opened up a whole organization week, took it on the chin. There's a lot to be said about that. If you want to be, there's a book I'm about to recall, Antifragile and Peter and I talked about it a little bit on the podcast and it's kind of, how do you, how do you last forever, basically your ideas and your business last forever? I think a big part of that is just not just being resilient, but also being kind of open and aware to like taking short-term hits, but it's going to make you kind of resilient long-term. Just the way people think of you and your business. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you and I run a business. Like we have families, we have mortgages. We're trying to build something special, special with our business just as much as we want to build something special with all of our client's businesses. Just do the right thing. At the end of the day, just do the right thing. Like you and I both believe in some call it karma or whatever you want to call it. Like if you do the right thing, it all comes back. That's a good thing, then, not I think. I'm sure I'll get you on here again, but this was, this was fun, man. I actually learned a lot about you today, especially that you're kind of zero to one story, which is cool. Yeah. I think you can't believe you failed testing college. Do so bad. Like I can't tell you how many, I bet if I went back and looked, I bet you over 50% of my, what was it called? Like the final test of the semester was the final test. I bet I got deep, I bet my average score across every final exam in that Purdue was like a CRD. Oh, glowing endorsement for noble partners. If you want me to sit in a class and study, I'm not your guy. I'm not your guy. I'll be a work-related and learn something. Okay, andically, I'm pretty damn good at that. It's funny. Yeah, I, it's funny. It's funny because if you know me well enough to know those two, if Grace and her dad came to me and said, "Dad, I don't know if I would do well." I'm probably like, yeah, like I'm the kind of dad that I would probably be like, I'd rather just give you the money to go, "Nah, you're not." I don't want to just give you the money to start a business because I also think starting with barely anything and figuring it out is way more important. I'm sorry for the fact. Yeah. You're good. But I don't know if I could force them into doing it just for the sake of saying you're going to college. It's tough. It's tough. I just don't know why I'm interested in not doing well. I think both of us would probably lean towards you're not allowed to quit. So even if you hate it and you think you're gonna suck at it, you're not quitting. Just get through it. Get through it. And then we'll forget the next step from now. You guys, actually. We'll cool the last six takes for having me on this one. Yeah, I know we were gonna do it in person and it was a little tough this weekend. I would be fun to do another one and just do it in person. We'll do that in the future and dive in more. Cool buddy. All right, man. Well, we got primed in while everyone who's a shop and go on primed day tomorrow in Wednesday. And, uh, wild brands are working with you. All right, man. Yeah, I appreciate it. Let's do it. (upbeat music)