EP.11 - Khristian Gutierrez

Welcome to the Parking Happiness Podcast, the show that empowers parking people to discover the keys to unlocking parking happiness. I'm your host, Toby Marx, and I'm excited that you're listening today, and that together we can pave a way towards parking happiness. This podcast is an independent educational initiative, and any content provided is for general informational and educational purpose only. Welcome back. For today's episode, I'm joined by KG Greeteris, founder and CEO of Passport Labs. We had a great conversation. It was hard to cut it short, so this one is a little bit longer, but I know that you'll enjoy every minute. The Parking Happiness Podcast is sponsored by Municipal Parking Services. Municipal Parking Services for MPS, as it's commonly known, is a parking technology company based in Austin, Texas. MPS has patented technologies that improve parking, street safety, and public transportation efficiency through the use of automated enforcement and the US Postal Service. Check out Municipal Parking Services at mpspark.com to learn more. Thanks to MPS for their support. Now let's dive back into today's topic. I do appreciate you being here, KG. This is really actually an honor for me. I know there's like wild craziness going on in your world, too. So I appreciate you making the time. It's great. Absolutely. I'm excited to be here and thanks for the act. It's much appreciated. I've enjoyed listening to the content you put out there. I'm actually curious how some of your thoughts have evolved since connecting with so many different professionals and different areas. I think it's really neat what you're doing. Thanks. I appreciate that. No, my thoughts have definitely changed a little bit. You know, I think I'm still building that but having these conversations, especially about this crazy idea of parking happiness, right, the contradiction of that and what everybody thinks. It's funny to see how many of the people I spoke with so far feel very similar. It needs to be seamless, transparent, but how we get there I think is different. And that's really depending who you're talking to. And I think it's going to be a fun conversation with you because while I mean, while passport doesn't like say like, hey, we want to bring parking happiness. Certainly, but that new theme that you're talking a lot about, the good citations, right? That really resonates with me a lot. So and I think that's great. I'll have to hear that. That's great. Yeah. So so let's let's get started the real way. And I mean, this is already it's all good. But yeah, so when you heard parking happiness for the first time, what was your thought? So what does it equal for KG? So when I heard the phrase parking happiness, I loved it right out of the gate. I thought it was it was really neat because I think as you position it for most people feels like an oxymoron, right? So these are not two words that go together. But it clicked for me and it clicked for thousands of other parking professionals. And I think that's that's the neat thing about this industry is that there are so many people dedicated to improving the parking experience. And as you've shared in your many conversations and our conversations in the past, people will take a different angle toward solving what they think parking happiness is. But if we're all in the same page, I'm with the definition of happiness is it's the idea we got into a really strong employee. But that's a lot of words and I didn't answer your question specifically for me. It's where it's sort of the convergence of a level of satisfaction by both cities and its citizens. Our parking systems are efficient, they're easy to use, they're well managed. And I talk about that sort of where they intersect, where they interact, right? Because you know, and I try to get to this idea of first principles thinking and one way that I get there is by thinking of sort of extreme circumstances, right? So what is the thing that would make a person, let's that's not the industry, let's say my life most happy about parking, it's probably free, right? Can I say that F word? Right, it's probably free. You know, easy to find, right? It's open, there's availability. So those are, you know, generally the things she didn't get a parking ticket. Like those are the things that like the opposite of friction points, right? But that doesn't necessarily intersect perfectly with what a city might think the best version of parking is. And you ask, you know, that question you're talking about, you know, some more specific metrics, right? 85% occupancy is sort of an optimal number and people aren't circling the block. And I've got good connection and ambassadorship with people in the community. And these are things that my wife doesn't think about, like she hasn't heard about those things. That's spending time thinking about this thing, but where they intersect, right? Where they intersect reflects that integration of all the things that make parking what parking is, payment options, enforcement, curve management. And again, reducing those frictions. But I think it comes at that intersection, that vantage point of the parking customer and the operator, you know, in my case, most of my thinking is about cities and municipal offerings and municipal sort of situations, but I just call them operators here. So that's that's what we think about happiness parking at this. Yeah, now I get that. That's a really good point. Do you think that what we sometimes maybe forget is that you're mentioning your wife and you're mentioning the connection between cities and parkers and municipalities. And do you think we forget that actually everybody who everybody who has a touch point into the parking world or into the event of parking actually has a different viewpoint? And so if you're if you're maintaining very much status quo from our point of view, you're probably limiting ourselves to creating this really good parking environment, we probably can really manage parking real. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's that's well said. And I think that we introduce our own bias based on our own experience, right? You know, I've been in this industry now, almost 15 years and I think I know what I'm talking about. I have to check myself often because my personal bias will will come into the picture, right? And so I think that idea of a single data point versus multiple data points and what is statistically significant and what what allows you to form an educated and well informed perspective or opinion. That spectrum of data helps you help survive that sort of very and interesting perspectives on the same problem. Yeah, I got that. So you mentioned you have been in the parking industry about 15 years and I actually only know some of that. So what's what's your parking story like how did you get in it? Obviously, I don't want to take this away. Actually, you should tell the story, but I know what you do now where you have been for the last 10 years and maybe in between. But how why are you parking? So I started my career in investment banking. I have a master's in finance from University of Florida, Go Gators. And I started my career doing investment banking. And it was very much my dream at a young age to run a business, to operate a business. You know, I've got it maybe for this podcast or another time I have stories from when I was young and different sort of opportunities I had to start diving had first into the world of business. But you know, for all intents and purposes, I sort of reached this dream of of being able to partner with management teams and executive teams. Largely my work and investment banking was focused on providing strategic alternatives to companies as it relates to managing their capital structure, managing M&A events, those sorts of things. And the industry that I was covering with my co-founder at Passport, we worked together at the bank, was industrials. And industrials are all of the sorts of companies that people don't think about on a regular basis. I like to call them like Harpy to America, right? The sorts of companies that are the infrastructure and sort of large scale systems that make things work. So that was my early exposure. to running businesses and understanding scale, efficiency, optimization, and those sorts of things. And while covering industrial companies and keeping busy at our day jobs and there are a ton of articles out there about sort of the culture of investment banking, but let's call it day jobs and night jobs. We started talking a lot about parking. And Michael found her Bob, his cousin was part of the parking industry and was able to give us some insights around some of the hardware side of the industry. I think obsessed and revenue control system parks has that sort of hugely important part of this industry is called. And so we just started talking a lot about parking and some of the problems that we faced with, personally, with parking. And Michael found her as legend, he'd work until like 10 p.m. And we used to work that later anyway, but sometimes, be sure he worked until 10 because that 10, the gates went up and the garage that he parked in and he could get out of the parking deck for free. And he would tell us about this and he was like, man, this is messed up. And why does it work this way? What are some of the other problems that parking operators are facing? And at the time, and this was around 2010, at the time, part of the biggest issue that we had recognized was this fact that parking operators were put in a tough position to best monetize facilities for parking owners. Meaning an owner would say, I have this property. This property would work well as a parking lot. Let me hire a parking operator. They hand the proverbial keys over to that operator and they say, hey, figure this out for me, charge for parking, do whatever you need. And I'll collect, I'll collect the rent on it, right? And operators were in this tough position of, well, how much do I invest in this short-term engagement? Am I buying machines? Am I investing several hundred thousand dollars in gated equipment for this parking lot? And so they were put in this position of, wow, this is exciting. And how do I do this in the best way possible? And in around 2010, was the time when every single news article on the planet started with, there's an app for that, right? You remember that time, you know, on the news every night, you know, every other week, there's an app for that. And people were going wild for it. Well, several years before that in Western Europe and the UK, companies had developed mobile payments for parking. And we thought that was pretty neat. So I'm not going to sit here and pretend we had any say in inventing mobile payments for parking because we did it. But at the time, there were a couple of players in the United States that had started selling into this market and educating this market on what mobile payments for parking were all about. And we looked at that and we said, you know what, we like this. This is interesting. This solves a problem. This solves sort of this idea of payments in some of the infrastructure required to operate a facility. So we think the far more interesting problem to solve is the management of these facilities. And how can we build tooling for parking operators to manage their facilities more effectively? And so while our first product was mobile payments, I tend to say our first product was our back office that allowed that operator to manage their mobile payments. And so, you know, a micro founder and I started the motion of smiling and dialing and trying to get in front of prospects and people that were spending their livelihood managing parking facilities. We took the vantage point of, hey, here's how we can help you. And by the way, we were bankers. We didn't really know this stuff. And so for us, the best way to do that was we actually took out a lease from the North Air Line at the Department of Transportation, got our own parking facility, created this sort of fake parking operator called the Lions Parking. And we stood out there in Orange Vests and we managed parking at Panther Games. We were out there at five o'clock in the morning talking to people rushing off to work to just try to get a sense for what were their friction points for the customer. And so, we gave us as the operator and it gave us some vantage point for how we might best understand the things these operators were going through. But Toby, I shared all that. You asked me my journey in parking. I shared a little bit of our founding story as a business. But I'll say for, you know, 12 years or so, we, you know, I was here at Passport as Chief Rebony Officer. I did step away in 2021 and I had the opportunity to take the helm as CEO of a public safety software company. And that was really neat. I got to partner with prosecutors, with police. And it gave me this other lens on parking. And so three years later, when I made my way back into this business, I had this lens of compliance, compliance, enforcement, data driven decisions. And these huge sets of responsibilities that we're asking parking directors and transportation directors to manage in a job description that looks almost nothing like what that job description looked like a decade ago. So, the punch line is, you know, my story is I spent a lot of time in parking software, parking technology. But I think that my experience is best summarized in partnering with public servants, with, with leaders that are trying to drive really improved experiences in their communities. Yeah. Now that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned that. So you were with Passport. I liked the story about that parking lot. I did not know that. So that was new to me. And that actually, I hugely respect that because it's kind of like this real time learning and feeding your ideations like approach, right? Okay. So we need to know what we're doing, how we're doing this, what people are thinking about it. So we can develop something that will be better. Like you said, mobile pay wasn't new. That doesn't mean you can't create a new MVP where you built on and make it better. And that's where real power of innovation comes in, right? So I think that story is great for that. Thank you. You then stepped away from Passport and then you came back, right? And not to dive too deep into like all the corporate stuff. But like, why did you come back? What made you come back to Passport? Yeah. So, so thank you. And by the way, I appreciate the question and I'm certain that there are others in the market that are either gotten that answer already or are still wondering what's happening over there. My return. And by the way, I keep mentioning my co-founder. He's returned as well. And by the way, in our first decade together running this company, he served as CEO and I served as CRO. And I had these hats of up sales and marketing and business development, government relations and those sorts of things. We've both come back. He's back as executive chairman, which means he operates in the business also and he helps in all sorts of different ways. So, but I'll speak for myself. And part of coming back was really twofold. There's been a ton of exciting things happening in this industry, all sorts of industry consolidation that has occurred mostly on the park side and even on the street, the payment side of the world. We saw a few weeks ago, you know, and all sort of like all the brands and names out of it, we saw a large, a part of the provider get acquired by a player out in Western Europe. I mean, there's just a lot happening in this space and in this market. I think about, well, actually before I go there, I'll say my personal experience was one that I had shifted out of the business into a board observer. And picture that as being a little bit in the peanut gallery. You're kind of your out side looking in now. I started this business, right? I co-founded this business and it's my baby. You know, if you want to take sort of capitalistic lens of the world and think that a business is an individual by definition of that state's law. It's my baby. And you know, after a decade to then stand out here and say, well, wait a second. Hey, did you see this thing over here? You're trying to do some coaching and you're helping a little bit. It's tough outside looking in and I'll say that I felt a lot better being in the business than outside of the business looking in to help navigate this highly complex, highly dynamic market that is parking. Right? And so being in the business, you have a chance to have your hands on the levers. And so when I came back, I have the honor of getting to sit in the chief executive seat. And here I, along with my team. We have our hands on the levers of business and get to you partner with folks like you and the directors and managers that are leading departments across the country to think about how we our business might best support them in their efforts. And I felt like being here being in seat I could be a lot more effective and you know what right now as a business. You know we are fully controlling our destiny we're profitable. You know it's not a thing that almost any startup can say. Properability is this thing that always happens in the future. Hey it's coming to quarters from now. I mean there are some public companies that are still considered startups that are not profitable and don't have an eye toward profitability for some time. We're a really unique position where we can make investment decisions around people around processes around tooling and manage our growth in a way that properly balances customer expectations as well as vision and net new features and the things that I like to say push the ball forward push the industry forward. And so I'm thrilled to be back and see and you know I think about this concept of push and pull if you'll push towards something or pull towards something and I was definitely pulled pulled back into this business for the reasons of outline and so many more what I'm sure we'll talk about on this conversation. Yeah now that sounds great and for me I mean I I pull disclosure like in my day job we are a passport customer right I know passport as a company now for probably six seven years. And it's a great product no question and there's many other great products too other fairness we need to say that. How do you think that how to say this I think the one thing that always drew me to like not passport generally as a company to but like the people right was that passport seems to have a little bit of a unique culture like team culture how you do things how you interact with things. And like how important do you think that is well that's this will be the rest of our podcast I know your episodes are normally half an hour if you're ready to sit for the next few hours on game. I appreciate the question the answer is culture is everything period culture is is is there's everything the same as the only thing culture is the only period that's how I would I would start my answer to this question. You know I talked about people process tools let's let's focus in on people as the component of culture talk about hiring hiring is is the most critical thing that you can do for a business you know in leadership they are the prevailing sentiment is this idea of float a higher quick to fire a little bit intense of the same it but I'll lean into this point of slow to higher it's so critical that when you are building a team and by the way you ask me this question about my business I hope to answer in a way that also helps parking directors and others leading leading departments when you're building a team know that each human each person that has the opportunity to sit in a seat. Further defines the culture of that business and so if you have cultivated if you have cultivated a fine wine and my co founder smiling is certain of it as he's listening to this because I think this might have come from head you're cultivating a fine wine in a barrel. And you walk into that five walk over that barrel crack open for any of my friends here that I've been to vineyards and you see how they do some of the testing let's say you pop it open and you pour just a little bit of sewage in that fine wine to be is it still wine would you drink it. You wouldn't touch it you wouldn't touch that one right and so it's it's it's so critical that you don't pour sewage into the into the barrel of wine so now let me get out of the analogy and talk about how critical it is to find people that reflect the principles of values the commitment to culture that you do personally as the person at the helm. And so when you're interviewing from from my business I think about things like like great and resiliency hunger energy excitement passion right you know passion sometimes you you negatively actually think the actual definition of passion might might have a sort of a negative connotation I love it I think it's okay to be passionate about your work desire to learn. Desire to to keep growing every single day and operate in a place of being uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable probably half of the week you know I think people will get on Instagram talk about things like imposter I don't really subscribe to those those thoughts or that way of thinking I think about it as pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. And so I will gladly accept humbly accept this compliment about my company's culture but it comes down to to the humans the people that are in the proverbial building are ones that that fit that profile that that come to work ready to just crush and use words like crush on and and are ready to push themselves in a way of how can I be better today that I was yesterday how can I learn more. This question come in in this RFP from this city what is this me I'm not going to guess I'm going to go talk to people I'm going to go learn right maybe not that RFP is there in a close like a close a co-order silence but let me go talk to 10 other party directors hey how do we how do you think about this. And so I think culture is key period and I would say that the vantage point that we have taken as a business for the better part of our history is one that positions our cell and I think we've earned it at this point as technology experts and we never pretend to be the subject matter expert in parking up. In parking operations now I think we've done a wonderful job hiring people that are subject matter experts in parking operations with deep and vast experience in this market. But I think as a team everyone recognizes that each city is different each environment is complex in its own way and we need to remove one our personal bias which you talked about here earlier to be but also this idea that I'm going to go talk to you about this. I do that we work with 800 cities I know I know what you're going to say I'm going to cut you off because I know what you're going to say because I work with 800 cities not okay I would never accept that from anyone on my team and they know that because when you approach that conversation you may be have some ideas hey I can share a couple of ideas of some other environments I think are similar but let me hear from you to be from you Jane from you John. And then let me apply my technology expertise and thought partner with you on your situation and see how we can help you out or one of our integration partners can help you out. Yeah and I think that's key to our culture key. Yeah and you mentioned integrations but no and I think that's something I mean that's we all need that in the industry in the future right we need more of that and I feel that's where often. We're losing a little bit right because like there's a lot of players and they want to still feel they need to be the one source of everything and they don't want to play and. I think that's something maybe not unique to to passport as a company but actually beautiful that you're generally seeking that out and want to be open to that which really enables operators like me or others. To play a little bit different right and I think that's coming maybe from the attitude of not saying like all we have eight hundred these are 800 clients and this is what we do and you need to exactly do one two three but you're always asking. I well how to say differently I think personally I think the anecdote from you would be I don't think that ever ever. The sum of the crazy ideas that like we had here in in my day job ever encountered a no it was always like huh interesting. How we make that happen right and I think that speaks a lot about that culture and I think what you said when you mentioned the team is important like my business coach or like local coach that I work with a lot his name is Nico. He always talks about he has done a lot of support investment in startup companies and he always says there's a reason that most out of his fail and it's not always money it's not it's really the team that the founder surrounds himself with that they can carry out and other willing to let go and I think that's something that I think. You like that foundation like in the past it seems with passport and even though when you stepped away and you came back by you picked right up there you were and I think that's I think that's great and that that's very beneficial for the industry as a whole so thanks. And if it's okay I'll add a couple of comments. to that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so one, I think Nico is spot on. Okay, so I'm standing coach out there. I, you know, what we're the opportunity that I get, you know, to sit in some sort of venture capital or private equity circles. I think the prevailing wisdom is you bet on the jockey, not the horse. Yeah. And, you know, I think there's a lot of really incredible products out there that ultimately don't make it in the long, in the long term because the, the, the jockey wasn't, you know, maybe wasn't the right one or wasn't the right one for the time, you know, sort of the things. But I think, you know, again, the person on those levers is critical. So first things first, I'll agree with Nico. But what I'll, what I'll add here is as a technology company, that is that fires the best engineering talent. And I'm going to make that statement very boldly. I think my engineers are leagues, leagues beyond most engineers that I've ever met to respect any time with world class engineers. And if you have the chance to sit with a world class engineer, and I'm going to say this lovingly, because I know my team's probably listening, that engineer probably responds to, yeah, I can figure that out. It's pretty much any question that you race. And, and I think sometimes the problem that gets that business into is that they end up trying to build everything for every month. Okay. And that's a dangerous place to be. Right. And I will admit that as a business, we have fallen to the traps in times. We have spent, you know, time and money in the past, building things that we probably shouldn't have built. We probably should have partnered for it. So maybe that brings closure to any, any partners we've had in the past. But what I'll say is this idea of, of integrating with besting class technologies, I think is probably the most important thing that we can do for our customers because of that fact. I can't build everything for everyone. And there's limited capital. There's limited time, right. To be you need to go build this next widget. Maybe I can take that project on to build it. It might be three years before I can deliver it to you, but you're trying to solve a problem now. So who's solving that problem now? And how do we integrate in a way that's queer and respectful to the needs that you've sort of laid out? And I think that that actually has been a fundamental shift in this parking industry. When we came into this market, my first IPM line was in 2012 in Phoenix. And there were three of us that went at the time to go exhibit some of our products and many of our ideas. The prevailing wisdom at that time was there were some huge players mostly in parks, equipment, and they were going to charge for integrations and they were going to dissolve if you were going to be successful or not. If they were going to give you a chance, they were going to make that call. And fortunately, we weathered that. I know competitors from 2012, I didn't make it because of that. That being sort of kind of politics, things that happened outside of the things that our clients hear. It's a much more open environment today. I'd like to think that we helped make that a thing. We helped push that forward. You know, you think about sort of Apple for Google, right? And the whole debate of closed systems and open systems. You know, meta, meta often thinks about this idea of open systems, right? You know, as they build their sort of Oculus versus omission problem and how they're open sourcing these things. I like to think about ourselves in that way. Right? No, I'm not going to hit, you know, future 10 or Townsville with another integration feed. They don't need, they're trying to solve a problem and you have an enforcement app and they have a permit. Figure it out. You to go figure that out because I know what I like and I like these parts from both of your companies. I don't need you to sell me what you have about that thing. I already made a decision. Don't insult my intelligence, right? I don't know that, you know, clients are as clear as that, but I like to think that's what they're thinking, right? Let's respect them. Let's respect their time. And so I think the current and future state of this market depends on companies being willing, capable, ready and able to interface and integrate with other companies. These are the last thing I'll say on this bit is that cities seem to be a lot more open in 2024 to work with brand new companies. Then they were in 2010 and 2015 to work with brand new companies. Maybe I'm a little jealous of that, but that's okay. You know, I think the people that are starting companies today and they're wicked smart. I mean, I've sat with young CEOs and young teams that maybe have 10 clients or they have 15 clients, but that list of 10 clients is not the list of cities you've never heard of. The list of 10 clients they're giving you are big tier one and tier two cities. And it's a surprising thing, but it's also really neat. It's really cool because it's showing and sharing the willingness of directors and municipalities to give companies a chance and do it in a way that has mitigated some risk. And I think about our role in that, a company at scale that companies there that people call a 500 pound gorilla. And I hope that that's lovingly and sometimes that might not be. That's okay. We're at scale. We do work with a lot of cities. I think that our position in that narrative, I just sort of sort of opened up and shared there is let us help some of those startups. Hey, you know what? That's a really neat thing. And yeah, I could probably go sit with 10 of my world class engineers and they can probably bang something out in a couple of sprick cycles that resembles a V1 of this company we're talking to. But we should stay focused on what we're really good at. Our point solutions. Yeah. Really good at. And let's help that company get to market. Let's get them some exposure and let's see what we can do together because together we might yield even better solutions than either of our company's thought. So I couldn't agree more with what you're sharing there Toby. And I think it's not just a neat thing that's happening. I, in fact, think it's the feature of this whole industry. His company's abilities to look together. Yeah. No, I agree with you. And because I want to be respectful of the time, a couple more questions. So one, where do you see that future going beyond that openness of like stable companies, helping younger younger companies coming in? But as a technology, where do you see or maybe not as a technology, but as a technology company in the parking space, what do you see as a trend over the next five to 10 years for the parking industry? What are we going to see? What? How's it? Because we have had a lot of innovation over the last couple years, right? Much more. It's like exploding in a way. What do you think is the next thing? I'm going to answer this in two points. Toby, the first is sort of the prevailing conversation. I think about what's coming and the things that I've talked a lot about publicly in our business and leaders across our team talk about a lot publicly. And then I'm going to shift to AI for a second because that's the sort of a whole separate topic that I think does play a disproportionate role in our market in technology in general. But let's put a pin in that. And before I answer, I think it's important to understand that my vantage point, our vantage point as a business is one where we think parking compliance and parking enforcement is table stakes to how a city operates, to how on stream program or how a curb operates. Same as off-street, same as even gated facilities. We think that it is paramount that directors have their hands on the levers of all of their rates and rules and restrictions right now being codified most likely with curbside data specifications where I'm by open mobility foundation. Also, I have to see it at the table where they have their hands on the levers of managing those rules. And again, this might be sort of the public safety lens of it. But I think that without rules there's chaos and without rules kind of how we started this podcast, my wife would be very upset because there'd be a car parked in the middle of the street and nobody's enforcing. You know, her going would get around town. So our vantage point very much leads into compliance in enforcement. Actually, we talk a lot about this idea of parking rights and parking compliance. And how those things converge over time and how the things that people engage in buying a permit, starting a parking session with an app or at a meter all really comes down to a much more complex set of systems, a much more complex digital infrastructure that makes any of that possible. And so I'm going to answer your question at the vantage point of standing there. And so I think that a lot of what we'll see in this industry is drive toward things like tickets by mail having the ability to communicate and interaction without having an officer on the street standing printing a ticket. And some of those components are in place already through mobile lights is fully recognition or even management of dynamic curb lanes and voting zones and and sending infractions by mail. Those things are moving quickly and we see a lot of the policy changing in states and in regions all across the country. We see cities in Canada have been doing this for many years or in tired countries that have done this for many years. Australia, Brisbane being beautiful case studies of these efforts. I think the United States moving quickly in that way and I think by way of that, you know, I'll just say it here as as a leading provider in mobile payments that's you know processing over half a million mobile pay transactions daily. I'll tell you that we probably have not done it right. If in 10 years people are still getting out of their car and plugging into location ID and pressing start, parking, right. I don't think that's actually the the thing. I think it probably looks more like license plate enabled or vehicle enabled. Start and stop based on time allocation and that could work toward transportation network companies. I think that works. The Transient Partners Residential Downtown. I think that's where this industry is going and you know sort of requires companies to come together and really creative ways. So that's my answer. That's our talking point. Right. So I'm going to say that and then I'm going to tell you part to you. I think AI breaks all of that. I think AI changes everything. I think that we have been delivering back office tools and reports and visualizations for clients for more than a decade now. But I think only now are we now seeing both computing power and technological ability to say, Hey, you know what? I know I gave you a heat map with data, insert data, whatever data you want. Parked payments, parking stations, whatever that would be. But you know what? Let's generate some AI insights and let's determine things that might actually be beneficial from a policy perspective. We have some outstanding partners in the space that's been a little bit more time on policy than we do and we have really exciting integrations and partnerships with them. But I think AI does things in 30 seconds that Toby would take you in these several weeks and tens of thousands of dollars of brainstorms and team investment and those sorts of things. And I think you know for for the large part, I think society is coming to terms. Maybe that's too negative is starting to embrace that these sets of tools that are really just mathematics, just the equations can give us horsepower in ways that we didn't think was imaginable. And the questions that we were asking in 2010 and 2015 of oh I wonder if you can drive dynamic processing elements based on the prime demand. Like we've ran studies with Berkeley and University Berkeley and several large tier one cities to run quarter and half year long projects or around these sorts of questions. AI, I mean you've got these things much more quickly and much more readily available at your fingertips. And so that's all I'll say. Folks make the connection between that and passport, but I'll say broadly our whole industry is going to change but I think that's probably true for most of the areas in our life. Yeah I can see that and I think everybody's getting more open to that. I think I think we all somehow use it every day right. It's like from signing up for a new pet insurance and instead of actually having to fill out a form it's now just like a jet bot. And it's beautiful. That's just beautiful. My mother is 73 years old, 73 years young and beautiful and perfect as always. But she lives in the Dominican Republic and she doesn't get a chance to practice her English all the time and so she she'll practice with me and we'll practice with her text. And a couple of weeks ago her English got better than I think minus and I got very curious and I'm like what is happening over here? Did you go back to school and what is happening? And she's like oh have you heard of this app called ChatGPT? And I'm like let's know this is amazing. Luffy's at home translating messages like it's just a countless practice. You can just talk to me in Spanish but it's a beautiful thing and it's running across all areas of our life in society. So I think that's great. I would have guessed it was ChatGPT for the for the learning. I would have guessed it was Duolingo. That's what my kids do. She was getting to the answer. She was very doing it. Yeah that's awesome. Well let's we're like at almost 45 minutes so this is great. Thanks so much for your time. I hope you're doing something fun this weekend and enjoying I don't know what the weather is over there at the east coast but I hope you can do something fun. Thank you so much so we it's it's a pleasure connecting with you and chatting all things parking and life and technology. I'll take that any day of the week so appreciate the opportunity to sit with you and yeah hope to get outside and spend some time with the family and I hope the same for you. Yeah I will. Okay well you have a good weekend. Thank you to me. Chat soon. Okay bye. All right bye bye. Thank you for joining today's episode of the Parking Happiness Podcast. I hope to catch you next time.