Revolutionizing Enrollment: How Halda is Transforming Student Engagement with Dallin Palmer

This episode is sponsored by Student Growth Partners, your trusted partner in helping universities grow their enrollments. If you enjoy this podcast, please like, subscribe, and share it with friends who might find it valuable. Your support helps us reach more listeners and continue bringing you expert insights from the world of higher education. Welcome to our most recent episode of the enrollment clinic. My guest here today is Don and Palmer. He is the co-founder of Halda. Welcome, Don. Thanks. Glad to be here. Pleasure. So, one of the interesting things about Halda is that it takes the RFI to the next level. We go to the website. There's a request information and sometimes there's like five on the same page and sometimes there's none until you get to page number five or the application level. So what does Halda do differently? Yeah, the key thing that we had was all of your best prospects are already on your website. It's the number one tool used by prospective students. And every single dollar of your enrollment marketing budget ultimately leads back to the website. I don't care if you're spending money on travel and sending counselors out for school visits or you're buying a huge list of names and you're emailing them, it all leads back to your website. And yet we say to them, "Really boring calls action, learn more. Apply now, contact us." Like this stuff doesn't give me a great reason to engage today right now. And yet we also know this is a huge decision. And there's a ton of decision points. So rather than collecting all the information that the institution needs to then talk at the student, our forms are geared around more of a listening perspective. And we target our forms more accurately to know what moment is the student in and then offer them value specific to the moment. Well, from the form perspective, we help you map out and say, on your financial aid and tuition scholarships page, the student doesn't go to that page to apply now. They go to that page to say, "How am I going to pay for school?" The current content tells you how people pay for school but not how you are going to pay for school. With Halda, you build an interactive quiz. They say, "Tell me more about you and I'll instantly tell you how you might pay for school." Or at least the resources that you should consider given your specific situation. So we upgrade the RFI form from this scenario being very institution-centric to have your RFI forms be very student-centric to say, "What moment are you in? How can I help you in this specific moment?" And then of course, there's a lot that we do to mix those and to personalize student journeys, et cetera. But at its core, it's just something to say, "We need to convert more and the way you convert more is by having more relevant calls to action and more relevant offers of value that go way above and beyond. Learn more." Right? Got it. And, Düsseld, does this sit kind of on top of your website or, you know, or every page has to have a Halda form in it? Great question. So it can be both. So there's a lot of ways to deploy the content, and this depends on the resources that an institution has. The only thing that an institution has to do to use Halda is install the script. Gotcha. From there, we can then deploy content across the website. But then we have, sometimes that we work with, we always recommend that you at least replace your core RFI form with one of our assets, because there's some really interesting things we can do to instantly answer student questions using your website, AI, et cetera. But apart from installing the script replacing your main RFI form, other than that, we can use slide outs, pop-ups, overlays so that you don't have to have like deep involvement from your IT team. But if you have the ability to change content on the pages, we always recommend, hey, let's make that called action button, pop Halda experience, or let's embed one here. So lots of ways you can do it, but you don't have to go through a whole website redesign to deploy the system. Gotcha. So let's take a couple of steps back. How did this all start out? Lance and I worked together at Zinch for those that have been in the enrollment marketing game for a long time, might be familiar with that brand. And so we knew each other back in those days. I was based in China, leading teams doing on the ground events, and high school visits out in China and doing some online recruitment stuff. That was a trip. It was so fun. Lance was on the domestic side. So we got together because we both wanted to start a business. We wanted to sort of own our own destiny that way. So we started by doing digital marketing. We knew we wanted to build a product eventually, but it was like, okay, this is an easy start. I've got lots of opinions about how people do that wrong that we won't necessarily go into as we want to. Yeah, that's what it. So we were trying to build the brand. We're trying to attract clients. We got an okay base, but we were struggling to figure out how do we grow? What's the right product? So we did this. The first association we partnered closely with was Negaap. Still partnering with them. We sponsor their conference every year. We did this survey essentially asking, hey, what do you all need from your digital spend? What is it you're looking for? And they all said, I want more leads. Any more leads to come from this. Of course, graduate programs can't buy names the way that the undergrad side of the house can. So we offered a review of landing pages. Oh, you need better conversions. Let's review your landing pages. And it's just the story I just told you is we found that every single one either didn't have a call to action or if they did, it looked exactly like this. Apply now, learn more and contact us. So we started writing these reports to about 100 different graduate programs saying, listen, what you're offering is clear. Learn more, get more information. It's just not compelling. But it cares. I can get all the info I want from one Google search more than I will ever read. So we got this thinking about that. I've rewrote that so many times. We looked at each other and said, oh my gosh, this is it. Everyone has the same problem. And if you can solve one problem for a lot of schools, you have a scalable business, right? You can really make an impact here. So we just started down this path of like, how do we convert better? And the core value that we truly believe in. There's a lot of ways to do conversion, right? There's dark patterns, there's manipulation, there's gimmicky stuff. What we really believe is that when the student wins, everyone in the ecosystem will win. And how do you help the student win? We give them personalized answers. You anticipate the moment they're in and you get them immediate personalized information. So yeah, that's how it starts. Our first pilot customer was in 2020. We did this small transfer project with Ursula and College, Susan Delano at the time was there. And we worked on their transfer pages. And we quintupled their conversions from those pages. And all of a sudden they had leads for their transfer funnel like they've never had before. Starting rolling students were like, oh my gosh, this drives your value. And it's like clear ROI. So. Yeah. I'm assuming from there. I feel like you would get a lot of competition from chatbots, right? What do you think the value would be, the differentiation would be between say your product and another chatbot or a chatbot product? Yeah, no, totally fair question. At its core, a chatbot is sort of like going to a doctor that where the doctor doesn't ask you questions or prescribe anything. It's like, if you ask the right questions to me, then I'll give you value. The good point. Right. Let's go in and put it out. I'm sick. I don't really know what the next steps are, but I'm going to try and fraud this thing to get me answers that silly. So one of the biggest differences is we're proactive about the value we want to offer you. So we take a few things into account. When we install with a school, you install the script globally so we can understand the behavior across the digital environment. Those behavioral patterns let us know what moment are you in? What are you looking for? The other thing we'll take over is your site search with our AI search so that once again, search is a super high intent moment. If you're looking for something, that's why Google makes trillions of dollars, right? Because they know what moment you're in. You're telling them. And so what we do is instead of saying, ask me stuff, we're proactive in what we recommend. Your analyst's program's pages? Hey, take this personality quiz. Do what program might be right for you? You're on financial aid? Tell us more about your grades and your GPA and other things about you. So I might estimate a scholarship in Mount Forty. You're on a transfer page. Hey, let me map this out for you. Let me give you personalized next steps. You're visiting from an international destination. You're visiting from China, from Turkey, from wherever. Hey, I can understand where you're coming from from your IP address and let me give you a different recommendation. Ah, true. Okay. You're really proactive in, given what I know about you today, this is the content I recommend for you. Given that you're able to track your, the IP address, does it also provide, can you familiar with what is it, R2B2B or RB? I know what you're talking about. Yeah. I know you're talking about. So like the idea is somebody goes on your website and then just based on their IP, you can kind of create the internet, find out their LinkedIn page and all that information, kind of provide that as uh as a lead. Yeah. So, that type of tool is really helpful for B2B companies, right? Because you have professionals who have LinkedIn. So it can be helpful in the graduate space where you've got people that actually are working in the undergrad space. Yeah. It's not as helpful. One thing that we decided to do though in our personalization algorithms, we only will really use information they volunteered to us to personalize their experience. And it's because when you get personalization based on information that was bought or scraped about you, it's a little creepy. Yeah. It's like thrust forwardly. Yeah. Why do you know that about me, right? I never told you that. Right. But if you wait for them to volunteer the information to you, it moves from being creepy to being expected, right? It was like, no, I told you about that. Three conversations ago. Why don't you remember that? Why do I have to tell you this again? Like the whole expectation changes. And so for us, it's been very intentional to say, we are going to offer enough value that they'll volunteer the information to us. They'll tell us the information because now I've established trust and now they expect me to personalize based on it. And from a progress standpoint, right? Obviously, this is an SAS. So what are the next steps from a vertical standpoint for you guys? Right? Like, I'm sure there's a product map that you have in place and where do you want to see the sea? A holdout from now through years from now. What do you think that would be? Yeah. I think one of the biggest barriers to adopting software for an organization is that learning curve is, oh, great. Now, I've got something else I need to learn. I'm already drowning. I've already overworked. My staff is overstretched. And I got to learn something else. It's really hard. And so we've already proven. We work with about 160 universities today. And we've already proven that the product works. And it's better for students. We ask every student after every interaction. Was this helpful with the thumbs up or at thumbs down? 95% of the time we get thumbs up. And when we get thumbs down, it's like, for very fixable reasons. Or they were told they don't qualify for a scholarship and they're mad about it. It was like, well, can't do much about that. So my point in saying that is like, we've established that we can help students. The next step for us is to say, can we transform our software from your typical, that's experience of login, click on things, configure things, build things? Can we transform it from that to truly being like having hired a conversion rate optimization specialist for your university? Meaning I just talk to it. Right? I just say, hey, what are my biggest conversion opportunities? Where's my traffic coming from? Oh, it's coming from here and here. Will you build some assets for me that might help us convert more of that traffic? Sure thing. I'll have it emailed to you in 10 minutes. Right? It's moving from typical SaaS to truly being like having an employee that's their whole job is to ensure that you are maximizing your traffic to your website and converting at the highest rates. Recommending a B test. So like, we've already built things that will like auto-recommend URLs to target. Not based not only on their own account, but based on how we see certain content types convert best across the board. We've built out a system where we can take a screenshot of one of our AI forms and send it and it will analyze it and auto-recommend 15 different AP tests that could be run. Now, what we need to do is move it from just the recommendation to actually deploying it. So, but those are the next subs for us as they say, let's make this into the type of experience where you essentially have the ultimate conversion rate optimization employee at your fingertips all the time. It's just ensuring that you've maximized the opportunity. You know, you're on to something really important because my issue being on the admission side, on the operation side, for example, that I've had with a lot of SEO agencies, you know, basically some of these agencies that provide data, right, information leads things like that, is that it's great you're providing me information, but I brought you in because you guys are the experts what I need is knowledge, right? Like, it's one thing to give me data. You know, my team is not trained in looking at this data and saying, oh, this is what we need now. We want you, you're the expert, you can tell us, what is the trend here? What are we missing? What are we not seeing? And I've always kind of proposed this to SEO agencies like listen, it's great. You're coming to me and saying, look, your traffic went from 20,000 visits, you know, a month to 120,000 visits per month. Then your leads went from 1000 to like, 20,000, what are I'm making numbers on that data. But what I need is I need somebody who knows Salesforce in your team and can tell me, where do these 20,000 leads? How do they fit into the funnel? And which one is actually sitting now in class, you know, filling out whatever, the, basically sitting, you know, sitting in class that I can really say, okay, this person came from you, now they're sitting in class, right? It's like, well, we did our job. We, we, we increased your traffic. We'll fantastic. You know, we increase your leads. We'll fantastic. Tell me, like, give me the attribution to this, right? That is, you know, so I couldn't agree with you more. It resonates so deeply that and it goes back to some what I alluded to earlier in terms of like things being done poorly. I think that starting probably about 10 or so years ago, there was just like a ton of digital marketing groups that came into higher ed because they smelled big budgets and there was just such, such low levels in terms of systems for really tracking and attributing value. So like, time and again, people would go through meetings just like you described. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we probably did our job. Probably was good. But there was like no rigor around ensuring that. So we've built two things along those lines that we think is pretty interesting. Any time, every time a new visitor comes to a website, we will create a profile for them before we even know much about it, right? And what we saved to that profile are any UTM codes. Yep. Right? Was there a UTM? What's the campaign? What's the source? What's the term? Whatever, right? And I'm going to save that. And then so we'll out of the box automatically track for you first touch and last touch attribution back to your campaigns. Because we'll take leads and we automatically put it into the CRM. Plus we're slate. We'll also pull staged data back out of the CRM. So in the dashboard, no work necessary. You can see not only like based on all the assets, which forms led to enrollments, but also one step higher, which campaigns led to enrollments. And that is just so massively important to be able to hold people accountable, but also to be good stewards of your budget. So you know what's working and what's not. And it was a struggle for us. It became a high priority feature for us to build because we would do these data reviews before we built that two-way integration. We'd do these data reviews. Just like, please pull the data, please pull the data. And every time someone pulled the data, it backed us up. But it was like so hard to get just because people, they're strapped for time. I don't have the time to pull out an additional report. So we've automated that whole flow so that you can not only know, okay, what assets are best with halba, but also which campaigns are working in which ones aren't. We had Indiana State University, we were running one of the forms that we were running was, hey, let's convert more traffic with this like, do I qualify for an application B waiver when they're on the page about application requirements and steps, right? I just might imagine, heading out $50 bills. Which conversions, right? Mass, like God, tons of people to fill out that for them. Guess how many people enrolled? Zero. Zero. Of course. No one enrolled. And so, but because we were seeking truth around like what actually drives enrollment results, we were able to go back to them before they even came to us and said, we should turn off this form. Right. We're wasting our time. It doesn't get where we want them to go. And then, you know, on, and then on the flip side of it, I had this group, I won't, maybe I won't mention, I won't mention names. So they came to us and they're like, hey, we're going to cancel halba. Like, okay, totally get it. I would love to learn from this. Like, why? Well, my admissions counselor said that the leads were no good. Just like, and like, did you pull the data? Do you know? No, they just got five. Didn't like it. Like, can we please pull the data? Yeah. Right. Let's get data to augment the gut vibe. I asked and asked three weeks later, finally got the report and get back on the call and the VP was a little sheepish. She was like, ah, well, turns out you are actually our highest quality source of inquiries. We had more enrollments from you than any other source. We'll keep going. And so like, I think that's just where the data is so important because you just can get It makes signals and finally now, especially or something like halda, you can tie it all together. You can create that data set, that first party day of lake to say, how do all these dots connect? And so it's just a matter of setting up the right systems. I mean, we're not the only ones that can do it for you. Right, there's different tools you can use to build it. But at this point, there's really no excuse to not have a system that can give you attribution. Yeah, and I think this example that you gave, I feel like it's common with a lot of software because it's a really good way to hide a lack of skill from your admissions staff standpoint. It's easy to say, well, we're not getting the conversion because this software is not that great, right? But now with the data coming in and backing it up, now you have to get your team and say, okay, well, listen, this is working, this is working, this is working and then kind of go, okay, well, this is the part that's not working us. What do we do next, right? So, and you're seeing it now, at least while I'm seeing it, now there's a lot of churn when it comes to admissions staff. Yeah, it's really hard to maintain the good ones and there's a lot of demand for really good admissions staff. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit. So one of the things that Blence has been doing in his posts is the hashtag, kill the RFI. I get it, I get it and I know what you mean by it, you know, kill the static RFI. Now, I'm gonna take it a step further. I read, I guess a LinkedIn blog post or LinkedIn post from somebody coming from the marketing side of education because I mean, you know, marketing admissions are a little bit different, you know? A little bit. And their thing was kill the RFI, but kill it completely. Meaning you don't need any type of form there because if you do it right, the website has all the information that you need. Now, once you make a case for me, why is wrong? Yeah. I'm setting you up with this one because I, you know? I kinda, I know he's wrong, but. Oh man, well, I think he's wrong because at the end of the day, you wanna give people the option of how they wanna be taking care of, right? And in order to do that, you need to have some more info other than observable info about them. And you can start on that sales process with these little asks, right? Little value exchanges that build trust that lead to the ultimate sale. So, I mean, if you don't have, if you don't have a way to engage, so let's go down the path of this world of no form at all, right? That's essentially like saying, just to, sorry, just to clarify, basically the point that he was making is, all you need is an apply here application form. You don't need, there's no reason for them to talk to you. Yeah, yeah. So if you only have an apply now and you don't give an opportunity to engage otherwise, it's like trying to make the sale without ever talking to your customer, right? And I don't think that you necessarily need a phone call. I don't think you necessarily need a human conversation, but you do need to facilitate value exchanges that build trust leading to that ultimate sale. So imagine you're in a high-end department store. I won't say a brand because apparently I'm too old and boring, like whenever I try to, like, really you shop there, I'm like, no, I just don't go shopping at all. So, but imagine you walk into a high-end department store and there's sales reps there, but they're not gonna talk to you. They're like, hey, let's just sort of watch them. I'm in the scene. Do you think you shoppin' for shoes? I think you shoppin' for shoes. Let's throw him an apply now. For the shoes. They pick it up. Oh, man, we miss. It's just silly. Let's wave our experience. Walk up to, hey, what are you shopping for today? - Exactly. - Yeah. - What's your size? Let me recommend some things. That exchange will build trust, right? And so here's the lay of the land. This is why going from like, add impression to apply now, which is a bunch of information in between is so dumb. Listen, we've got decreasing demographics. Fewer students. We've got increased competition. We probably have a thousand more schools that are gonna close over the next five years because of all of these changes. - Absolutely. - If you wanna be on the dying side of the industry or the surviving side, then guess what? The surviving side is going to have an immaculate student experience. And a student experience where I've gotta look for all the info and I've gotta search for things and I never get like a Ritz Carlton white glove experience. You will be on the dying side if you're not doing that because at the end of the day, higher education is a luxury good. You do not pay for many things that are more expensive than this. So if you wanna maintain your price point and say, yeah, I have worth this price, then you better have a customer experience that matches that. - Exactly. - If you have a customer experience that is just tailored to the minds and personalized to the individual at such a high level, then they're just blown away. I like, yeah, of course I would go and do business with this person versus the one who has an insect-lippede excite with an employee now, but. - Absolutely. Absolutely, I agree with you. I mean, it's one of the top three biggest purchases in your life, right? Car home and education. And car and home is very hands on. They talk to you, they walk you through, they literally answer any question you might have before you make the purchase. And for me, to kind of say, well, the story that you put on the website will do all the heavy lifting. I just felt like when I saw that, I was like, this guy has never really set on the admission side and seen that for every application, there are literally a hundred emails back and forth with the applicant because they have questions. I was thinking about it. I was like, here in one of the previous episodes, international, he was an international student. And the guy was like, listen, even the first year, I had no idea what some of the acronyms that were throwing at me were. So like the first year I was sitting in class, I'll still try to learn the system 'cause it's so very different from what it is back home. So I don't care how great your story is. If you, you know, you have to talk them. It's, yeah, you have to customize the service and the way to do it is by asking the questions. - Well, once you've worked in higher ed for so long, I think we all start to take for granted the knowledge that we've accumulated over the years. - I agree with you. - It's really hard to go and get yourself back into that first timer's mindset where everything is foreign, everything is scary, everything is new. I just, yeah, I think we take so much for granted and you've got to treat each individual student like gold. Like it's all about you. Like the biggest thing that's gonna recruit a student is feeling wanted, right? Especially where so many of our offerings are really the same. Like if we're being honest, we're honest, school A, school B, you're gonna have similar programs, you're gonna have similar messaging, you're gonna have similar promises of value, you don't look that different, right? You just don't. And so what's gonna drive the difference? The experience, did I feel wanted? Did I feel desired by this institution? That'll be one of the biggest things. And the way to do that is to give them personalized attention. And you need to know stuff. So I think probably where that guy was coming from or gal, I don't know if you're talking about exactly, but maybe they were coming from, it's like students don't want phone calls, students don't want to be sold, students want to be like, sure, but I think that you just have to give them the choice of how do you want to be taken care of? Do you want to self-explore? Maybe there's probably a segment that just wants to self-explore. Do you want me to call you? Do you want me to text you? Do you want to do quizzes, assessments, and this type of stuff? Like, I think you give them the option, but what you've got to have a laser I focused on is personalizing to that individual. I think them get the answers they need. - Absolutely, no, I completely agree. I wanna go back a little bit to what you mentioned 'cause I think it's a big problem. I just feel like I see talk of all of it, but I really kind of think people in the industry don't think it's actually going to happen. When you mention that 1,000 universities are gonna close, I agree with you. I mean, obviously there's a demographic cliff that's happening. There was actually IDP, which is traded in the stock exchange in Australia. So they print out, and they're one of the largest international recruiting agencies in the world, right? So, but because they're traded in the stock exchange, they're every three months they have to show report of what they think is going to happen in the next year, year and a half. So they're also expecting an enrollment cliff in 2025 for international students as well. So they've studied their workforce. I mean, I was kind of reading the report 'cause it's a good way to go in there every three months. Yeah, so they're basically, I mean, if you look at, go in there and see what jobs are available, you're gonna find five for our company with thousands of employees, right? Like, if they'd off their, some of their force, they're really kind of right now, relying on the IELTS exam, which they administer, but for the next, you know, year and a half, two years, they expect revenues to go down for international students standpoint as well. And I think, you know, I don't think a lot of people in the industry kind of realize, they just know domestically, there's a cliff and everybody's pushing for international. Wait, there's another one coming on that side as well. So customization, the ability to provide experience is going to be so much more important. - Yes. - Oh, it definitely is. So I think the compounding issue with the demographic like there's just no way to get around the demographics. They just are what they are. You've gotta stare that in the face. But the compounding issue is we ran a survey together with Ruffalo and O'Leavitts this last year. And one of the questions we asked is, essentially, do you believe in the value of higher education? Do you believe that it's gonna be worth the time after an investment? And 60% of the respondents were like, maybe not. - No. - And remember, this wasn't a survey of like everyone, this was a survey of people who were actually looking at going to school. So even amongst the people who were actively looking, submitting inquiries, engaged with exploring higher education, 60% were saying like, I wonder if this is gonna be worth the time after an investment. And so I think that on top of the whole demographic problem, we've got a brand problem as an industry. It's never been more expensive. No matter what your politics are, there's been a lot of conflict and like, just argument and campus events that just like make people scratch their head and say, is this where I wanna be? Right? On both sides of the aisle. And so I think, you, I, so again, this is a little anecdotal, but I have three nieces and nephews. We've got a big family who just graduated this last year. - Yep. - And two of the three are saying, it's not for me. It comes from, you know, solid homes, perfect, like target demographics in terms of like family income, like they could afford it. But they're like, it's not for me. Like I don't wanna go into that much debt. I wanna explore alternative education. I'll get some certificates. I wanna work. So like, I just think that we're, on top of demographics, we are also going to see a lot of people opting for alternative education because when you zoom back, you could learn anything you want, without paying anyone a dime, right? And you've got employers, you didn't state governance here. And you talk, you don't have to have the bachelor's degree to work for the state anymore. - That's right. - So you've got governments and employers sort of rethinking how they're doing their requirements. So I just think it's, it's, we used to be able to rely on this, this pervasive belief that like everyone needs to go to college. And I am still 10,000% in massively education is the key to bringing more equity to the world, to elevating lives, to ending poverty, like education is the key, but there are so many more options in terms of how I'm gonna educate myself these days. And there's definitely massive advantages to the network you build and the relationships with professors and how you can learn and the labs and everything. And there's certain firms you have to go to a university for, but that's just another, that's another competitor to higher education are all these alternative educations or self educating, et cetera. So like, it's a dog fight. And it's going to only increase over the next decade. - Yeah, I actually remember that research, 'cause it just came out recently. And I think either on page five or page six of that, you had a graph on like, what is the most concerning to you about higher education? Of course, the top three are like expense, price, this and that, but like, I wanna say maybe number five and number seven were too much work for me. It's going too difficult for me to do. It just takes a lot. And there was something there about mental health, right, like the sort of stress. And that's, 'cause I know I posted something about it. I actually took a snapshot of this specific chart in there. And to me, 'cause it's been kind of a topic of conversation lately, I feel like with this new generation, right, their concern is not necessarily, and tell me if you agree or not, but their concern is not necessarily just their alternative ways of education out there, right? But their concern is, you know, AI is coming. If I wanna be a software engineer, my job is gonna be gone in 10 years. What am I even gonna study for? Right, right, all of our jobs are going to be replaced. What's the point of going in there, spending $30,000 a year, and then being in debt for $150,000, when I don't know if what I'm gonna finish with is even gonna be around by the time I'm done, right? - Yeah, yeah. - I know that it gets-- - Yeah. - I think it's that, I think it's a lot of the narrative of so many people saying, "I never have used my degree "when I get into my job." It's even, and I think like, it's like the student loan forgiveness campaign, again, you could sit on either side of should we do that or should we not, but what did come about from that is a huge national conversation about how much student debt there is and how crushing it is. - Yeah. - That's not gonna do you a lot of favors for people saying, "Hey, I'll sign up for a loan." - Yeah, so let me, I mean, you know, following through the same line. So when you a Lance kind of sit there and kind of go, "Okay, what's the future of our organization?" Giving, giving all these headwinds in terms of education, number of, you know, the market is going to shrink and things like that. What are some of the things that's going through your heads? Like what is some of the planning? I'm really curious about that. - Yeah. No, I'm glad you asked. I think that when you have these types of headwinds, it forces organizations to get fit. You can't spend like a drunken sailor. You can't spend on stuff that you don't know if there's an ROI. You can't, so what does that mean? I mean, you need to be more efficient and the best way to be more efficient in our current era is to improve conversion rates. I'll have more value because then you get more out of every single dollar that you're spending on trying to recruit your students because you bring in them into a digital ecosystem that's engaging. They can capture the increase. So your mission can follow up and have conversations and give you the best chance at converting them and enrolling them. So as this happens, we've seen it be a tailwind for us actually because organizations all the centers are saying like, oh, I need better rigor around this. I can't just spend $80,000 on a mobile geofence ad campaign that says apply now on Flappy Birds apps and chalk that up as a victory. I actually have to know if that does anything for me. It probably doesn't, by the way, pro tip. Don't do that. So it's forcing institutions to think a lot more like a business and to have some real rigor behind what they're doing. And so we think future for all this super bright, I think the future for education is really bright. We're just at this moment where the strong have to get stronger. The weakest will probably not make it. And there's a real fight for this middle ground. And we think that any institution that adopts the mindset of when the student wins, everyone wins. And we innovate around the products that we're offering. There's the schools that make it through this will be stronger than ever. They'll just be so buttoned up, they'll be efficient with how they recruit. And they'll probably have done a lot of innovation around their products by which I mean programs. Like what are the programs you're offering? 'Cause like all the or any marketer, we can't fix product problems. Right, if there's a product market mismatch, there's nothing I can do about that. I'm just here to help you convert traffic. I also can't convert traffic that's not there. I need traffic on your website. I'll be able to convert it. So there's a lot of problems I can't solve. So I think the institutions that come out on the other side are ones who did some real good market research, who broke the constraints, sometimes imposed by faculty that don't want to change, that are imposed by tradition. And just like who really take this from a beginner's mindset of like what are the educational products? If we really believe education is gonna save the world and I do, what are the products that will serve the students of tomorrow best? How do we deliver them faster, cheaper with better outcomes for the student? If we all can continue on that North Star of when the student wins, everyone wins, that's how we'll make it through, right? Because we'll build better products for students, we'll recruit them better, we'll personalize our experiences and the levels for it, right? Like that's how you build a brand and like as an institution where you have rating fans who are gonna tell their friends and have a word of mouth and send their kids when you really are a champion for them. And I think that there'll just be a lot of disruption in the industry at large to be able to get to that point. - Yeah, we're coming kind of to the end of this. So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions on specifically AI. I'm sure you kind of utilized that in your software. What are your just overall thoughts on just AI and education? The reason why I'm asking is because, and I'll tell you where I'm coming from. I actually feel like AI and education. To me, this feels like 1999, where everybody's coming up with AI, you know, tag an AI behind everything. Our software is, you know, and then, but you have to do all the work, but then AI will tell them where all the work is. You know, like, well, how's that? Okay, fine. I just feel like it's over height. You know, tell me where I'm wrong. I saw this video on X, formerly known as Twitter the other day, where it was like modern software companies and AI. And it was a video of a guy like making some food. AI was the sauce that they put on a layer of food. The sauce all over. The next layer, it's sauce all over. It's like, it is super overdone. But as you might expect, I'm very, very bullish about the future of AI and how it impacts what we can accomplish as a species. And it's interesting. Like, you had your first wave of your chat, GPT-3, 3.5, or, and it was good. I'm on my second love affair with AI. There was a minute where it's like, I feel like it's stalled out for a minute, which is funny. Like, this is advancing faster than ever. Our expectations are just too high. But it came back around in these newest models of fouros. They're just so incredibly good at automating things. So I think that where I would be cautious as someone on the institution side reviewing software is if what you're looking at is essentially a thin wrapper around the general models, right? Where it's like chatbots, right? Oh, I think that's silly. It's really dumb just to build a chatbot because the general models are going to be so good at that. Like, for those software businesses, it's like, don't just have an AI product. The AI product is chat GPT's, it's Googles, it's FOD. You know, it's like these build general models, and especially with Meta doing open source. Like, having the baseline stuff, it's like a chatbot that answers questions from a knowledge base, like that is their job. They will dominate that space. Like, there might be a little advantage that the software company has over the general models for a year, right? But eventually, those things are going to be like free from these general models as they fight for it. So I wouldn't advocate anyone to build a software that's just a thin wrapper around AI, and I don't even think that bigger businesses should have like AI products. But if you infuse your product with AI, that's where it came become really powerful. So what do I mean by that? Obviously, I think the way that all this doing is pre-clever. We don't have an AI product. We just use chat GPT, right? Like, I am not making my own LLM. I think that's a facility. - No. - But what do I do? I put it in there so that building and personalized experience is faster. Meaning, when I say, "Hey, here's all my list of programs." And I want to give a personalized response based on the program they list. Well, that's what you've already written that. It's on your website. But I don't want you to go and copy and paste it. So just hit AI generate. What do we do? We find the content from your website. That's approved and published. Run it through and auto-populate. Right? So I just saved you an hour of work. So from my perspective, what you need to look for are tools that were unique before the advent of AI. But now they're being automated and enhanced using the technology. It's automating your work away. And that's sort of going back to where we were at earlier in the conversation. That's where the big opportunity is to create agents essentially, right? Where it's like, no, it just does the work for you. And I think that's where the future goes. And then speaking to what you were saying before with regard to like students and are my jobs going to be there, humans have always, like this type of scare has happened with every new piece of technology, right? And even in education, there was a time where people wanted to ban calculators, right? It's going to rot their brains. They can't lean on a calculator. What are you going to have a calculator in your pocket all the time? Yes. Yes, I will. It's called a cell phone. A calculator is literally in my pocket all the time. So I think that we really just need to embrace it because the cat's not going back into the bag. And the people who will be most successful are the ones who really know how to leverage AI to automate a bunch of their work and increase productivity. And as we increase productivity, we increase prosperity, right? Because we're able to produce more things at a lower cost. And that, if we do it right as a society, we'll increase prosperity across the board. And we can solve so many problems with it. So I think AI is going to be super impactful. There will be a lot of stuff that people have invested a lot of money in that goes on there because it wasn't the right solution. There's definitely still some turmoil to be seen. But from my perspective, the big opportunity is just to automate systems, is to take work that someone used to have to do and make it so you don't have to do that anymore. Gotcha. So I think as a species, we have to figure out what to do now that we're not going to be working, right? Well, it's going to be a more-- Yeah, but I mean, we're going to work on more interesting things, or you stay in the realm of what humans are uniquely good at, which is like interpersonal relations, having these types of interactions being together, or art and creation. I think that human beings have this inner desire and drive to create, to build, to an event. And I think that we'll be able to do that all the better when we have really powerful assistants that are smarter than us in a lot of ways, right? I mean, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm definitely an optimist in terms of what we'll be able to accomplish. Awesome. This is a great way to end it. Where can people find you and Halda? You can find us at www.halda.ai online. That's our website. And yeah, if you go there, you can learn about more what we do. And if you want to take a demo, we would do that all the time. Can you get you up and running same week if you're ready to start converting more into traffic? Awesome. Well, thank you so much, darling. Thanks.