SAM CENTS Episode 15

[Music] The views and opinions expressed are those of the hosts, our colors and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of the society, its management, or our advertisers. We hope you enjoy this week's episode. Welcome to SAMSense, the show that dives deep into the fascinating world of management. I'm one of your hosts, Allie, and I'm thrilled to have you join us on this journey of exploration and discovery. In each episode, Will and Ravel complexities share thought-provoking insights and engage in captivating conversations with experts and enthusiasts in the management realm. This podcast is designed to both educate and entertain. Joined with me today are my co-host Patrick, Hank, and Wesley. Welcome to our podcast. So here we are, another special episode at the New England Tech Studios, so if you're wondering why we sound better, we're in glorious Rhode Island. And I really welcome you guys to campus again, but I wanted to bring in really special guests with us. One of my co-workers, one of my actually management colleagues, Professor Shron Trainor. Shron, how are you? I'm doing very well. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Yeah, so we do a little bit of a different topic today because we don't usually talk about manufacturing and operations management very much in our first few episodes and Shron's in expert net. So Shron, would you like to tell us a little bit about what you your previous work experience and kind of some of the work that you did? Sure. I started off with the same organization and manufacturing primarily in the automotive and firearms industry, metalworking. I went through the ranks from supervisor up through safety and environmental. I spent a few years on what I termed at that time, the dark side and went to sales and marketing. And then back into operations, was a business unit manager, production manager. And then because my opportunities were limited, I went to another corporation and became operations manager at the corporate headquarters or the plant manager at the corporate headquarters, also metalworking and a lot of heavy industry and a lot of motive as well. That's interesting. How did you how did you get your start in those industries? Was it, you know, when you were younger? Yeah. So what happened was I actually my undergraduate believe it or not was English. And I get out of college and they were they were not hiring the next great American writer at the time. So I started looking for work and I had I was working landscaping for someone who not far from here had an estate that who was revamping and I was running a landscaping crew. And he liked the way I approached things and he said we have a startup plant down in Virginia. Would you be interested in going down for to interview for a supervisory role? And I did that and started off in manufacturing and realized that I needed to extend my education into business management and here I am today. Awesome. So you went on your MBA? I did, yeah, at Babson and I did that. That was a challenge with traveling and sales and marketing at the time and two children and diapers. And so for those people out there who are doing the work, school, life, balance, I recognize how challenging that can be. So you said you started off, you know, basically then in a working entry level supervisor. So the very first step in management, what would you say was the most challenging part of transitioning from that first step to the next step that you went to, you know, because you went through quite a few levels of management and you're, while we were getting your introduction. So what was the most, you know, interesting challenge that you had moving from your entry level management into your next step in your management ladder? I think for me the most challenging step was from going to managing people on a day-to-day basis and going from workstation to workstation and doing work assignment and being dependent to really managing managers and allowing them to do what they did best if you sit down the parameters and and to find that balance between coaching and being there and supporting and guiding and also not micromanaging or doing it my way because I believe it to be the best way. So is that that difficulty in, well, I would approach it this way and at the same time backing up and allowing a person to develop their own style, their own way of doing it, which could be as effective or more effective than mine, but sort of setting those that scaffolding of where we want to go with that. I love that actually. That's a great way of thinking about it and I wonder too, did you have some interesting challenges managing, you know, a manufacturing type of workforce or maybe even you could speak to like a landscaping type of workforce and how do you see, you know, those types of skills? How did they help you, you know, as you approach problems these days? I think one of the, as a first time supervisor, I think that the challenge for me personally was to, you know, it's real simple to look at a task and look at it in as a snapshot saying that I could do that and that's not why is it taking this long? And one of the things that the Chief Operating Officer insisted on is that I had three months training in that some of the training was in Rhode Island and then I went down to Virginia and he had me do every single job in the plant for a full week, including from the chemistry labs. We were doing high volume plating, half a billion fuel injector parts a day to Siemens. And so I, and that's kind of a dirty industry, a tough industry plating. And so doing every job with the chemicals, with the heat, it was in air condition when we first opened up and all of that type of thing. And then having a different type of perspective as a supervisor, as to what my expectations might be having done that. And I think that that was a perspective that you don't get later on, but I carried with me with when I went into other types of industry and managing things. That's great that they had the foresight to have you do that so that way you were able to take that with you. That's awesome. Yeah, I think that that speaks to the investment in training and what that can really yield long term. And I, the older I get, the more I appreciate that investment, not only within myself, but as something of priority, what I feel a priority should be for any manager. Absolutely. So Sean, one of the interesting stories that you share is very related to the society, which is about efficiency and effectiveness and Frederick Taylor's principles. Would you mind sharing the story with us about your ISO 14,0001? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That to me was the really the interesting part of that story to me was I was very cynical going in when we spoke ISO 14,0001, which is an environmental standard that dovetails with ISO 9,000 and TS19649, which is the automotive equivalent of that. And essentially, it's, it's have procedures, say what you do, do what you say and prove it to lower your carbon footprint. And we were coming out. We had just after 30 years, finally fully resolved a super fund. We were a super fund site from what we had done legally back in the 40s and 50s. I had the laws changed and it was cradle to grave. And I was kind of feeling that this whole initiative and we were corporate. So I was at the corporate operation. So we were going to pilot it there. I felt it was a PR campaign. And being an operations guy, I mean, I was like, I've got things to ship. I've got dates to hit. I've got customer needs to meet. I've got cost to control. Why are you going to distract me with a PR campaign? And as it turned out, it couldn't have been more wrong. So we made a part that this particular component was a pin that would trap solution in it very easily. And one of the things we discovered with an avariance was we were throwing a negative variance for heavy oil usage. And that oil at the time was about $12 or $1300 a barrel. And I was using four barrels instead of two a month. And which we shouldn't have been using even two barrels. So we took that on as a project to lower the overall usage of the oil. And then we started looking into it. And as we investigated, the operators were reporting that they were using more oil because the machines were sloppy when we get down to the root cause of it. And the reason the machines were sloppy was because the previous before I had gotten the other previous operations manager had cut PM expenditures. and the result was the machines had gotten sloppy. And they were processing, in many cases, hundreds of parts per minute. So we then started to say, OK, we need to change our PM. We'll do that. And at the same time, we're saying we started to look at other variants as being thrown in metal finishing. We were trying to clean the parts, and our costs were all out of sorts there with waste treatment, with chemical cost, with processing time, were also negative variances. And looking into that, following the same components throughout the whole process, we realized that the-- because they were using so much heavy oil, the people in metal finishing were having trouble processing, they were processing it twice, using twice the amount of chemicals, and all of that. And we said, oh, well, that maybe we're killing two birds with one stone. Parallel to this. And at the time, in our minds, not connected at all, was that we were having a very low incidence of some heat treat failures that we didn't understand, which is certainly a concern from a quality perspective. And we were dressing it very seriously. And as we started to get people in the room and talk about one problem and talk about the others and how we were resolving it, we decided that we had to dig into the furnace and more depth. And the root cause ultimately was that even with all the extra cost and effort that metal finishing was putting in, we still were not able to remove all of the oil. The oil would contaminate the furnace environment, the contaminated environment when it was ignited, would deconstruct the baffle, the graphite baffle, which causes leaks in the atmosphere, and therefore, really low frequency soft parts. So one project led us into a whole mushroom cloud of problems, but ultimately it was great because we got to address them. And at the end of the day, I came, I'd be really lined up in the thought process of we can be environmental stewards and lower our costs at the same time. And it's not just a public relations campaign. So that, to me, was a real positive. Yeah. How did that explanation go when you guys figured out the root cause just curiously? That's a-- OK, well, now I have to tell my boss what really happened. And you know, well, Bob, the guy who was here before me, decided to cut maintenance, and that caused all of these problems. All right. That actually-- and that was one of the few cases where it was really fortunate to be at corporate because they were unable to keep tabs as we were doing our investigation. And the people who were at that location understood that PM hadn't cut. But one of the results was my goals became to change my preventative maintenance costs from 80% reactive to 20% reactive, not lower the cost of maintenance, but to lower it from reactive to preventative, and flip those numbers. So that's really where that went. And I think I had a little bit of a grace period because I was stepping into a situation that they knew was a little bit of a mess. Oh, yeah. I'd say so. That's a lot of problems for we skimmed out a little bit on maintenance. And then-- Yeah, and it was a true lesson because in the day-to-day operations, it's so easy to say, well, I can't-- I don't have time today. I don't have time today. And you don't have time today. You're taking away from all the time you have tomorrow, six months, a year from now, in that same way. That's a great way of thinking about it, too, as you just go about life and you think about life now important is to take care of your preventative maintenance. We take that many different ways. You could learn a lot from that lesson. I mean, even in your own careers, and your own mental health, and your own lives, I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for that advice right there. I would agree 100%. I know the organization. I was with the longest. It was culturally acceptable when we were in management. And if we weren't, if the sky wasn't falling, and if we could go to the gym during lunch and take a little bit of an extended lunch, but we were all working 65, 75 hours a week and traveling. So it was very much encouraged to get some exercise, break mentally and physically, and then come back and dig into it. Nice. And one of the interesting things is when we talk about manufacturing, project management, and those types of fields, it's such a niche kind of field, because it really blends in mathematics, it blends in a lot of critical thinking skills. How do you, as someone who's had those type of experiences, bring them into the classroom to get the students ready to face those kinds of issues? One of the things I try to do is really put them in real life situations. So one of the examples we have from an operations perspective that I post to students is we talk about redundancy within processes, and we also talk about cost. And I have a scenario where there are six machines that can make widget X, and the capital is about $200,000 a piece for those six machines, or a $1.3 million machine. And you have one or you have six labor is more on the six machines, less on this, on the one machine, and floor space is less, but you don't have redundancy. And which one do you go with and why? And so the students have to make that decision within teams, and they often have-- they have to do the cost part of it. But they also have to assign a cost to the floor space, and they have to assign a cost to having some reliability. What happens if you-- that one machine at $1.3 million goes down and a tarot from Germany is three months away. So how do you reconcile that? What's the best decision to make? And at the end of the day, my answer to them is what is your strategy, your tactics, and that should align with your core confidence season, make your competitive advantage? The decision we made, because it is based on a real decision, is we went with the $1.3 million machine. And if we were in a jam when we invested more in inventory, we did carry $40,000 tarots in stocks. So we'd now have to lead time. And that was our approach, because we value the floor space as a great amount. I also love that that speaks to contingency planning. It's something I spent a lot of time in cyber security for sure, but to see the application there and manufacturing and being able to apply that to a real world problem, I think, for students. That is really special. When you sit in a classroom, it is sometimes very difficult to imagine or even put yourself in that scenario, so to actually be able to give them a real life scenario and watch them walk through it in their logic to see how that would play out is actually it's fascinating. I'm glad to see that's happening. That's awesome. Yeah, I think that at the beginning, it's a little intimidating to them often times. And at the end, they really feel as though they can take something and do something similar analysis in their own field, whatever it might be. It's just really about how they want to break it down. Yeah, so that's awesome. So before you moved into sharing your knowledge in the classroom, you were running entire facilities and business units and things like that, what do you think is the most useful bit of advice that either you got from experience and dealing with whatever the challenge was or a mentor or something that you had? What was that piece of advice that really kind of connected with you and helped you get through the cold, dark day, sometimes when the balance sheet looks a little scary? Yeah, believe it or not, it's not financially related. And this was something that was shared to me more than once by my mentor, who was the chief operating officer of the organization. I was with for 14 years first. And he really, he had been with the organization 30 years and taken it from half a million dollars to about 104 companies and 130 million over that time. And he said to me, I'll tell you what the biggest bold bleep line in businesses. And he said, it's just business. It's not personal. He said, if you're involved with it, if someone else is involved with it, it's always personal. It's deeply personal. And that can be sales. That can be a quality problem. That can be a small conflict on the floor. Everything is personal. It's personal every time for every person involved in it. And he said, so I don't buy that at all. Wow. Interesting. I'm to follow up on that when the challenge, I think, with the younger generations moving into some of these established companies that have been around for hundreds of years. is they still have this unique corporate culture that still might be rooted in 1950s, 60s, 70s, maybe even 80s ideology. And they're coming in and it is personal, but like it's not personal, like we have to come to an acceptance of one another. It's personal like no, you have to accept me coming in, like, or you have to accept me not hitting a deadline. And like how dare you? And as somebody who's, you know, also teaches HR and some of those things, what's your thoughts on that kind of stuff? - Well, I think it's, I would say it's twofold. And I'll answer that in two ways. One is I spoke about the capital costs earlier about some of the equipment and typically our equipment was 750 to 500, $750,000 a machine. Typically a machine operators would run two, sometimes three machines. So you have an awful lot of capital here. If someone doesn't come to work, that's eight hours of three machines, could be $2 million in capital. That's probably $75 to $100,000 a month in lease costs over a five year payback plan. You divide that into the production of eight hours of a shift over say 20 working days in that month. And you're talking real money that's sitting there not getting a return on assets. So my philosophy was, and we partnered with a technical school that was high school that was nearby, who that taught some of the skills that we needed. And I was very strict, I was very clear with my supervisors if they don't, if they point out with attendance, they point out because they're young and because of that and then they were a good person and we want them, doesn't mean that they mature enough to work. And I need to return on my assets. I cannot have equipment sitting for eight hours like that. So that's from an operations perspective. When I was looking at numbers and I'm seeing three machines with red lights on them, sitting dead, that was an alarm to me. From an HR perspective, I think it's some of the same thing and I think it comes down to communicating expectations, hiring for those expectations. And to some extent too, it's a little bit, every generation talks about the new generation as being kids today. And they spoke about us that way, they spoke about the people who spoke about us that way. So I think there's a degree of that and I think that if we hire for the right type of people, then that's not as much of an issue. That being said, a piece of advice I got from interview, like spending an hour and a half with one of our alumni who's a general manager at an automotive dealership. And she said that one of the most valuable things she took from our program was the intergenerational communication that we emphasized. And she used the case and point of all of her people have iPads and many of them are real young goat getters. But they're very inclined to say I sent them a text, you know, on the iPad. And she really has to work to train them to send a text and walk into the walk in and say, "I just sent you a text. I wanted to explain it, especially with people who might not be also 24, 25, 26 years old." And that's really some of what I took from that. - You know, it's so interesting that you bring that up, that intergenerational difference there. One of the things that I discovered being in tech and I had always seen Apple products, you know, an iPad like he used an example there as being relatively self-explanatory. Like I understood what the icons meant and I understood what that did just instinctually, right? I just knew. And so whenever I put an iPad in front of somebody who did not have that upbringing, right? That same experience, somebody who was, you know, older than I was, I did not realize that when I say, you know, press the send button or press, you close that, that they weren't going to understand what that meant because the send button being a male icon or something of that nature to me made perfect sense. But to them, it didn't. And so that was a very interesting realization on my part being in tech to know that not everybody knows what these icons mean. And that was really interesting. - Yeah, and to build on that, one of my shortfalls as a teacher sometimes is that I, because I know something or something happens to come more naturally to me than someone else, I assume that it's simple. And in my mind, it doesn't need a lot of explanation and I repeatedly have to remind myself to back up, go through it as if I'm looking at it for the first time and not something I'm very familiar with. And I think to bring that into the workplace with training is so critical. And you know, I say that that's my flaw. And that wasn't done when I was given a week to do a job every time for every job I had to supervise. So they took every minute to explain exactly how to do it. And I need to bring that with me as I go forward. - You know, that actually reminds me of a specific training that I was holding one time. I was training on a piece of software. And I had this gentleman in the back of the audience back there and I could see I was walking around throughout the training and I could see that he was struggling a little bit with learning it. And so afterwards, everybody had cleared out of the room and it was just the two of us left. And so I went back and I started talking to him. And you know, kind of opening a dialogue like, hey, is there something I can help you with? Like, you know, I noticed that maybe there was something I need to explain better. What can I do better? And it became very obvious very quickly that he on his computer, he was having trouble using his computer. And so I started having conversations with him, well, what if we made the font bigger? Oh, yeah, that would help. Okay, so I went into settings and I did that. And he's like, oh, this is so much better. But I can't use the mouse quite right. It just moves around too quickly. So I went into the settings and we slowed that down a little bit. I kid you not within about two weeks. This guy was a pro. Just simple little changes like that, showing him how to make the screen brighter. Just things like that totally changed his experience. And within, you know, two weeks, he had caught up with the class and was ahead of some people. So, you know, I love the point that you brought up there about the training and working with people and meeting them where they're at, I think, was a really special moment for something that I learned. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's something that repeats itself in at least my career again and again. For sure. Yeah. And speaking of talent and training, specifically talent from, and we were having a conversation the other day in the office. And you had mentioned about, you worked for an employer that did not allow you to match any offers. If somebody was leaving to go to another company, but it was a very unique reason why? 'Cause a lot of people are like, you know, would assume like, oh, the company says you're not allowed to match an offer because, you know what, this is what we pay and that's it, right? And that's what everyone assumes. But in your case, it's a little different. Would you like to share that? It was very different. The reason I was told that I was not allowed to do that was because I should have already given them the increase to keep them and retain them. And if I didn't and I lost a rock star, then I was not paying attention to my rock stars. And also this sort of, and I don't even know if we got there with this, it was an overlap too, that, you know, that some managers would say, but if I pay so and so this, then everyone else is gonna be upset. And then they tell them what they need to do to earn the same. And so, and then it straight into a discussion of in the sales field, I think it's, I don't know that this stats completely accurate, but it's like 80 to 20. So 20% of your top sales people account for almost 80% of your sales, new sales. And so they should therefore be compensated exponentially more than the other sales people. So to me, that was, that was a lesson I took to note. And I actually said that to my mentor when I did leave, which I left for another opportunity, not pay. But yeah, I said, you can't match me. And that was a little bit of a kind of a humorous moment at a time, a little sentimental for leaving. - I really like that just as a, you know, as a general point for, you know, managers, that, you know, well, you're not gonna match an offer because you should have, you were asleep at the wheel. You know, that's really interesting. Did you ever have a case where someone was like, well, like, you know, came up with this offer and you were like, well, good luck to them. - Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it was quite that, but I definitely had times where it was like, in my head, okay, this is how I will replace that person. And it was not a point of panic. And, you know, what I had, I did, I do, here's one. And I say this to my students and it's a, it's a little bit of a point of shame, but I think it's a great teaching point along that same vein as I did lose a really great supervisor once. And I think ultimately he may have moved on anyways because he had some different interests and different opportunities, but a point for him that really, I think spurred him to move on was, I had to finish a quarterly report because it had to make the FedEx package to get to England, to Europe, for my report, to get to the board of directors who were coming to the United States to the Board of Directors meeting or what have you and The again, I inherited some difficult operations. So I'm trying to finish this report and my supervisor comes in and he's, and I always made time for my people if they had to say something, but I had had my door shut and I'm trying to pull out things and I said, "Can I wait till tomorrow morning? "I'm really under the gun for this." And he looked at me a little oddly and said, "Sure." And left. And not having five minutes for him was that little impetus for him to go out and look. And in retrospect, I bet you I had half an hour, an hour, even not just the five minutes. Because certainly when he left, I found my hands really full. (laughing) - Yeah. Well, that actually, that whole story reminds me of a leadership management book that was actually recommended to me by one of my mentors. And I assume I'm allowed to talk about it, but it's, it's "Movie or Bus" by Ron Clark, I actually, to look it up there real quick. So that's what was on my phone for. But one of the things that I love about the book and that I certainly took with me was, you know, exactly what you just said. It's like, hey, you know, if 20% of our people are generating 80% of our revenue, most of the time I'm leaving those 20% of the people alone and I'm not paying any attention to them because they're just, you know, they're great, they're doing their thing. And so 80% of my time is being spent with the people who I need to help and I need to pull up. But the reality seems to be that, hey, I need to spend my time with my rock stars. That's where my time as a manager needs to be. And that was a takeaway from that book that I think certainly helped me that I found very interesting. - Yeah, and I think that also builds on something that Jack Welch sort of held by his really taking care of your top performers. And I think what got more press was that he was cutting the bottom 10% of the GE workforce at that time. So, but he, if you listen or read what he said way back when in the 20th century that he was talking about also spending, you know, really taking care of your top people at that time. So, yeah, there's this kind of push that, like you treat everyone the same. I'm like, no. - You're bringing in $10 million and you're bringing in 500. You want to day off? You're getting the day off at bringing in $10 million a year. - Exactly. - You know, like. - Yeah, I was, one of the things that I learned from my mentor is that in this goes the same person who said it's always personal. He used to say things when I'd been traveling a great deal and working a ton of hours and all that he would say, go out with my children. He said, go out with Ruth for the weekend on the company. Use your A-Mex, you know, do whatever. And I would just, he was just, I bring in my receipt on Monday morning and that was that. And it wasn't a formal bonus or anything else, but it was, you know, I wrote up an expense per so-and-so and he signed it and that was that. And we were small enough to be able to do that without going through the purchasing rig of a role that some institutions might have. - All those administrative hurdles. - Yes, yeah. - Or friction points. - Did you fill out that form and triple-kit, Sean? (laughing) Get that carbon cable. It's an email. (laughing) Some of our listeners won't understand what either of those means. So we won't even go into the mini-old graph. - Right. - Old school copy technology. - Yes, yes, where you actually did that. But we're kind of coming close to the end of time, Sean. But so, you know, I know that you've transitioned into academics and now you're becoming really embracing HR as a field and we're in the process of delting in HR certification program. What attracted you to HR? Like, because it's kind of like almost, like, I wouldn't say opposite, but like counterintuitive. Like when you're thinking production, you're thinking numbers and processes and things. And while there's some of that in HR, HR is people, people, people, people. What kind of led you to kind of spearhead this moment and kind of make those type of changes? - Yeah, I think if anything is perhaps a greater change in the way my perspective has been from when I was a young person and I had exactly that operational perspective on HR is like, don't get my way, type of thing. And over time, similar to the way I was with the environmental with ISO 14,001 and with HR, it changed even more. And I started to really appreciate number one, the hiring process and how really good hiring and taking the time to hire the right people at all levels of the organization. Not just someone who's high profile and a manager, but every single level of the company is critical. And not just from a resume's perspective, but are they a cultural fit within the organization? And I came to understand that HR has a bad name and we as managers are the one who've given them that bad name because they shouldn't be all about payroll or forms, they should really be about, if we believe as most companies say that people are our greatest resource, then it shouldn't just be that you're involved with HR when you get hired and when you get in trouble. It should be HR along the way of what is, has encouraging managers to speak to people about what their development plans are, where they want to be in five years, do they wanna stay in the current position, do they wanna grow, how do we do that, what type of training do they need? And when you think of the cost of retention, it's huge. And the institutional knowledge that is lost when sometimes you see a big management change, when I left the organization, I was with originally after 14 years, there was a lot of change that happened. And for a small company, $130 million, they lost in six months time, 230 years of management experience. And then they struggled for several years. So how much money is 230 years of management experience worth? That's sort of the way I think about it. - That's a great way to look at it. You also added something in there that I think is really interesting, where you hire for culture fit as opposed to, there's the phrase, you can teach anyone how to do anything. It's all just buttons and knobs and teaching them the right way to handle the buttons and knobs and get to where you are. But it's really the culture that you're, what are those persons values and ethics and contributions and for the most part dependability. And what is it as a person who's hired, a fair number of people, what do you have a top one or two questions that you ask to kind of feel out what the right culture fit parts are? - Believe it or not, one of the questions I ask of people is what goal do you have outside of work for the next five years? Because everyone says, where do you wanna be in five years or where do you wanna be in 10 years? And it's the loaded question of like, you want my job and my type who's confident enough to take that as a good response. So it's all of that stuff. But I'm really looking for someone who has some breadth besides just work. And what else do you like to do? But even more than that, I wanna see a positive mindset. Not that someone doesn't make mistakes, not that someone's not gonna have a bad day, not that someone isn't gonna be cranky in the morning before their second coffee. But overall, that is a type of person who if you're on a car ride for three hours to Southern Maine, you feel like you're gonna, okay, yeah, that's a good idea. I hadn't considered it from that perspective. That type of person is the person I want to work with every day. - I love the car ride test. I've heard of that one before in the hiring space and I loved it every time I hear it. - Yeah, for sure. And it's funny how with they haven't yet come up the interview in a car. But we have self-driving cars. I can see that coming. - Oh yeah, for sure. - Here's candidate A, you are now in a car for the next three hours locked in. And hopefully you don't have to stop for the rest of your life. - Right. - Right. - With electric cars now we'll have that sweet in the back. - Oh, there you go. - Well, like those old school limos that were like, and it has a toilet in the back. If you're just thinking like, if you're in the back of a limo with several people, would you really want to use the bathroom in front of your boss and co-workers? Probably not. - Hopefully there's enough road noise and it's everything's fine. It's a lot of close eye contact. - I feel like I'm at Foxboro up there. It's tailgating now. - Oh wow. Well, this is a great conversation, Sean. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up for today? - I think that's it. I appreciate the opportunity. And the only thing I would add is that really just my observations of what our students come back from Samhau and Vigorated they are. And I just happy to be part of the podcast mainly because of the way I see their sort of bounce in their steps when they come back from the same conference every year. So thank you. - I'm so glad to hear that. That's awesome. Thank you. - And thank you for your help with bouncing ideas off of you as someone who's not necessarily engaged with Sam as an organization, but from, you can offer an outside opinion on, you know, so we're not all just stuck, looking at each other, thinking the same thing. And we really appreciate that. - Absolutely. - Awesome. So Sean, thank you for being here. - Absolutely. Thank you, folks. - Thank you. - Thanks. - Until next time, keep exploring, keep learning and keep your passion for management ignited. Stay curious, stay inspired and join us again next week when we help you make management make sense. (gentle music) (gentle music)