GA 205 | How to Use Lean in the Cafeteria with Willy Bustillos

A lean manager, a lean practitioner respects all of their people just the way they are, but they respect them too much to leave them there.

I don't know about you, but the memories I have of my high school cafeteria aren't exactly good. I remember long, slow lines and pretty bad food. That's the bad news. The good news is my guest today is making massive changes to the high school cafeteria he works at. And as you'll hear, lean thinking is behind it all. His name is Willie Bustillos, and he's a food service manager for a high school in the Anaheim, California area. On today's show, Willie and I talk about how they got started with lean, how they initially focused on the many tools of lean in order to deal with things like a 4.9 second takt time. Willie then shares how he had an aha moment when he first learned and began practicing Toyota Katan. The show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything Willie and I discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 205. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning System over@gembacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Now let's get to the show. All right, Willie, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Ron.

All right, well, this is, you know, we've done a lot of podcasts over the years, and I can't say that we've ever talked to anyone that is in your field of work, which is hard to believe because we've done a couple hundred episodes. So I'm really excited to talk about the Lean School Lunch program. So this is pretty exciting. I know many listeners here have children who go to school, and all of them probably have been a customer in the. In the cafeteria of one. One manner or another, whether they're buying something or eating there. Just to see how someone like yourself and your organization is applying lean to improve that really important part of our children's lives is pretty exciting, right? So. All right, well, hey, let's go ahead and begin kind of old school, like we've done in the past, with a quote. Do you have a quote that you like?

Yeah, I'd like to share a quote with you guys. It comes from Peter Drucker, one of my favorites. And the quote says that a focus on rules creates a bureaucracy, but a focus on mission makes an organization effective.

What's that mean to you?

Well, I think especially with programs that are so regulated, sometimes you can become distracted by the rules, and that becomes Your primary focus, if you're not careful to step back, to focus on your mission, your purpose, your goal, connect that to the challenge, connect that to your target conditions, and make that part of your frontline operations. You have to keep the big picture in focus, and you have to have their daily operations aligned with that.

Yeah.

Love it.

Love it. All right, Willie, tell us about yourself and maybe how you first got introduced to Lean.

Sure, Ron. Well, I've been working in the food service industry for my career. I began my work as a chef, restaurateur. I had my own Mexican food restaurant that I bootstrapped and got started and eventually sold off. And after that, I wanted to go back to school and study more culinary and nutrition. And after that, I got into managing school cafeterias, managing the school lunch program. And the first time I came across Lean, I guess you could say it was early on, in an indirect way. I grew up in a family that bought and fixed up Toyotas, and I remember one day changing the oil on my brother's Tacoma, and I loosened up that oil filter way too early, and oil started gushing out, and I thought I was going to have a disaster on the garage floor. But by some engineering miracle, the oil dripped down the frame and right into the drip pan. And in a small way, that just represented so much thought into that work, that engineering. It didn't have to happen that way, but I remember thinking, wow, what kind of a company would do that with attention to detail.

Yeah.

And so in an indirect way, that's Lean. And later on, during my weekly visit to the library, I came across this book, the Toyota Way, and I'm like, hey, that looks pretty cool. I read it. I fell in love with it. I caught a vision of what Lean could look like applied to the food service industry, and I've been hooked since.

Now, were you working in the high school already when you came across the Toyota Way, or is this before?

This is before. Yeah. So it's been ruining my mind before that. Yeah.

Love it. Love it. All right, well, so talk a little bit about the school lunch program and what you do. And it is a high school, correct?

That's correct. Currently, I'm working with the high school level and nationally, the school lunch program. We feed over 30 million students a day, and over the course of a school year, we're talking over 5 billion meals served per year, and we're talking 100,000 schools participating in this program. So I get to manage one of those high schools, and I love what I do, because when you think about it. This is the only guaranteed meal that some of my students get. And so it's a cause that I believe in and I'm very proud to be a part of. And what I do on the site level, what my dream is, is I want to develop an effective school cafeteria program that has Lean working in and through it. So I want to create a model of Lean in the school cafeteria that I can share with other people and make a difference in this world. And I believe that, you know, if Lean can work in the school cafeteria, then it could probably work anywhere.

Yeah.

And so to kind of give you a snapshot of what we do on the site, at the high school level, out of a school of 1900 students, we're feeding 1100 of them plus every day. And when that bell rings, we could feed all 1100 in less than eight minutes.

Wow.

So if you're doing the math, that's about a half a second or less per transaction per student. There's a lot going on. You know, this is the right poem for Lean to take hold of and improve. So my goal is I want to feed more children. I want to give them better food. I want to make the lines faster, I want to make the cost cheaper, I want to make the waste decrease. And to kind of give you an idea of what Lean has done for us. Every time I go into a new school and I implement Lean concepts, that site will rise to the first place rank and participation in the district. And what that means is basically you divide how many kids are eating by how many kids attend that school, and Lean will actually get quick results. They'll rise to the top.

So kind of a dumb question, but, like, let's say you had a thousand kids in a school and only 200 of them ate in the cafeteria or purchased food in the cafeteria. That would be bad, right?

Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, our goal is to feed as many kids that want to eat. Right. So the higher the participation rate, the better. That means we're meeting the needs and demands of the students. Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's the goal.

Now you said that when you go to different schools. So I like, you're working in one particular school right now, right? Or are you going to different schools? Help me understand that.

Yeah, correct. I manage one particular site, the operations on that site level.

Yeah.

And on occasion, you know, if the district needs, as they're opening in different schools or whatever the case might be, then I might move, move schools and bring my, my Lean tools to that new school site.

Mm. So if you, if you were to come to my kids high school here in Texas and walk. I mean, I'm just generalizing because you obviously don't know because you haven't been here, but, like, would you guess that if you walked into the cafeteria and I don't want to pick on Texas, Iowa, California, Ohio, doesn't matter anywhere, would it be. Would it be a mess, you think?

Well, you know what? I would just say in general, to be fair, kitchens can be a messy place, very busy place, and, you know, management system, I think is the kind of the root problem a lot of times. So I would say that there's plenty of room for growth. Any kitchen across the country.

Yeah.

That lean is needed, I would say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's kind of, let's walk through the journey, you know, of how you did this. Just, I don't know, start at the start, if you will, and tell us how you got going with lean in your cafeteria.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I was new to my role a little over five years ago. Okay. And I came in with fresh eyes, and I did notice that there was this reoccurring issue with a lot of the team members frustrated, upset with each other. And, you know, I wanted to do the right thing and just slow down and really understand what's going on, ask myself why and why again. And I did notice that at some of the routes, there was unevenness in the workloads and some frustration because of that, and there were some elements of hidden factory going on, people hiding in certain things and whatnot. Okay. So it was a real practical need. I needed to even out the workload. And what I decided the next step would be for that would be to make what was going on in the kitchen visible. Just document it. And so we came up with what I call the responsibility board, which basically is each team member's responsibilities listed in, like, checklist form. And we attach how many minutes each task takes and obviously divide that by how much operating time each person gets, and you get a workload percentage off of that. Real basic. And so we did that for the whole site. We put it all on the wall and we had the whole team come over and say, okay, is this reality? And there was some obvious things that we needed to fix because it was in black and white in mathematical terms that, yeah, this person was overloaded. This person's rowing at 100 miles per hour and this person's not paddling at all, as fast at all. So we need to balance our team Out. So we're all rowing that boat together and it was great, it was effective. You know, it brought a lot of clarity. It becomes like this living document that everybody is vested in because as the team rotates and these different jobs, you know, it's a fair, it's a fair rotation. It's nothing off balance.

Yeah, it sounds like the classic, you know, we talk about the three M's, right? Muda is the one everyone talks about waste, but Miri is that overburdening. And then Miura is unevenness. So it sounds like you were probably dealing with, you know, obviously probably everyone has Muda but Miri and Miura, as far as overburdening your folks and with the unevenness, is that fair?

Exactly, that's very fair. Exactly. And so, yeah, yeah, it was a great tool. It continues to be sort of our daily go to, you know, communication. What we're supposed to be doing, how we're supposed to be doing it, is it even mathematically? We could prove it's even. And on a cool side note too, is that whole idea of shared destiny. I know, like studying some of the lean ideas, that shared destiny of working with your union hand in hand. Because if we both win, if we both survive, we both win. If one fails, we both fail. And so obviously I work within a unionized workforce as well, and this kind of a tool was well received by them because it really proves that it is a fair workplace and everyone has a voice. So it's very applicable to the school cafeteria.

So I'm sure not everything was smooth and easy. It never is with any sort of lean effort, especially early on in a, let's face it, non traditional environment where lean might be applied. Right. So talk a little bit about maybe, you know, any kind of resistance you faced and what did you do to overcome it.

Oh, yeah, exactly. You're absolutely right. Anytime anything's new, there's always that there's that human tendency to push back, not want to go with that. And so I'd hear comments like, you know, Toyota, what are you talking about? And you know, things like, we're not babies, you don't need to spell it out so clearly. And we know our jobs and I understand coming into a new workspace you have to respect your crew. A lot of these team members have been here for 20 plus years and they do know their work better than anybody else. So I always have the attitude and I say just, hey, let's just try this out. If it helps, great. If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to what was there before. And sometimes it's hard to explain these concepts. One piece, float this and that. These are new concepts coming into an established work environment. So after doing. Taking these steps, and the results start to happen. The results speak louder than the words. And I think as long as you're humble and you build trust and you're patient and you don't expect everything to happen at once, step by step, you can win people over, and that's the way to do it.

Now, I don't want you to use any names or anything like that, but could you maybe give us an example or just maybe tell us a story of. Of an individual or, I don't know, a group of individuals who were resistant. Like what? Like really. Like what did they do? Like, were they, like, bowing up in your face? Were they not showing up to meetings or whatever and then maybe talk about their transformation?

Sure, sure. I'll give you an example. One of the things I got a lot of pushback on was the need for us to start producing more meals in our own kitchen. And that was taking a big turn, because before that, a lot of the things that were prepared were reheated and prepackaged and manufactured in a facility and obviously heated back up in our kitchen. And so once we started having to keep up with that kind of demand when we're producing our own meals, it was hard for some of my team members to even think about that. That just sounded like too much work, more work and not enough. Too much give and not enough take. And. And so going through that was pretty difficult because it was a different pace of work than they were used to. And so it came down to the same thing where you kind of have to explain to them that it is possible, and you have to show them it is. And they have to gain confidence that they can do this new type of work and this new pace of work while still being fair. So, you know, that's one of the things that come up that I've noticed. It's just, I guess they have to believe they can do it, and they have to see it's possible because they have never seen that done before.

Right, right. You know, right. Seeing is believing sometimes, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Don't tell me. Show me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's geek out a little bit. Get a. Get a. Let's talk, I don't know, some tools, lean tools, and just really go to Gemba type application. Talk a little bit about what kind of tools you're using in the cafeteria?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, to kind of continue. What we're talking about before is after we got that, what we call the responsibility board going in, I really wanted to take that next step and start experimenting with pool because I noticed that as far as our products, our menu, and the food industry as we do our products, we were really pushing the food on the students. And after analyzing it, I'm looking at our menu and I'm saying that we're probably doing things that are more convenient for our kitchen as opposed to putting the customer in the center of the menu and responding to what they're pulling. So that kind of turned things on its head as far as as what the students were demanding from us. Like I was saying, they were demanding more in house prepared meals. And that created a new problem because now we had to keep up with that. You know, more kids were coming, more kids wanted fresher meals, and now we had to keep up with that and adjust. So we needed tools and lean came to the rescue. So a couple of things that we implemented were standardized work processes. We use taktime. We began value stream mapping.

Let me stop you there. Let's talk takt time. What is your takt time? Do you know?

So, for example, I'll just kind of give you a broad view. We're producing up to 800 lunch entrees in our little kitchen, and we have about 60 minutes to make all that. And so tak time, that's like 4.9 seconds per lunch item coming out. And I only have a team of six ladies on the floor.

Take that Toyota with your 60 second tack time. Come on, man. 4.9 seconds.

Well, I'm just saying, you know, like the Toyota Supra versus like a spicy chicken sandwich. No comparison, right?

Hey, so it's still five seconds, man. Come on.

Yeah, well, you know, you can appreciate that, right? Yeah. And so. And I'm working in a 60 year old kitchen and you know, I have all my equipment and. But I'm just saying it was like working in a submarine sometimes.

Yeah, for sure.

And so we have five simultaneous processes happening and these lean tools apply. As simple as application is, they give us that increased capacity. So, yeah, we're talking fast production and. Yeah, so that's just kind of like an example of the tak time there.

Yeah, I want to circle back to the push versus pull because I think it's obviously a challenge for you because I know in even talking to you before we hit record, you're very conscious of delivering healthy food and all the rest of it. And Sometimes kids may not want the healthiest food. So the poll might be for greasy, fried, horrible food. So how do you balance, you know, if they want terrible food versus a more healthy option? You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, we do it the lean way. We built in quality. Right. The nutrition is built into the food that they like. Yeah. So the buns that we serve are all whole grain, but we don't tell them it's whole grain. But it is whole grain. Right. So the nutritional quality is built into the food. The calories and the fat limitations and the salt limitations, it's all built into it. And we have to work with the regulations that we must follow and make the best product out of that. So I always say it's hard to make vegetables cool. And you're right. The crowd pleasers usually are the things that are more, I would say, fast foodie, but we could take the things that they are looking for and make the healthiest type version of that as possible.

Yeah. Love it. Love it. So what are you working on currently? Kind of, you know, sounds like you've done a lot of what we would call traditional Lean 5s, Kanban and Taktime and balancing cycle time, attack time, all that kind of good stuff. What are you up to these days?

Oh, yeah, exactly. So these days I am busy implementing the Toyota Kata. And like you're saying, I was really focused on the tools for the last five, six years, and I've been a little bit frustrated because I was never able to encourage the front line to do continuous improvement. And so in the past, I had this misconception that it was sort of a spontaneous thing, and if the environment was right and they had the tools accessible and the training, it would just kind of start happening. Right. But it never did. So now that we're implementing Kata, it was almost like I had the second aha moment. Like this is what was missing. This is that next step that we're missing that I've been trying to figure out that it just didn't happen. And so we're busy getting this implemented and very exciting.

Now, before we were recording, you mentioned something about that Hundred Monkey Theory. What is that all about?

Oh, yeah. You know, just like we were saying that missing part. And so if you haven't heard the Hundred Monkey Theory, it goes something like this. If there's an island of monkeys and they begin using a tool spontaneously on the other side of the world, this other group of monkeys will start doing the same thing. And it's just an idea that, you know, sort of at the right time, the right idea just gets widespread. And I kind of feel like it's happening with the kata. It's. A lot of people are having that moment, like, yeah, that's what was missing. And we're kind of in that. In that thing where it's all over the place and it's spreading. And it happened to me too. I'm like, it's exactly what we needed.

So where are you at with kata? Are you really practicing it? Like, you've set a challenge and you're working on target conditions and identifying obstacles or where are you at?

Yeah, well, currently we are practicing daily, and I'll kind of talk about how we got to this point, because at first, there was a need for us to cut out time out of our day because we really weren't giving a home to kata. And so I wanted to have half of our day, you know, scheduled, operating, you know, responsibilities. And when I say our day, I say myself as a coach and my mentee, my number two in the kitchen. And so we had a cutout time, get rid of waste, make things efficient, rebalance things out so that myself and her had half of our day to focus on continuous improvement through the kata. So that was that first step, that first challenge of getting to that point. And so we do practice daily. We have our, you know, our board on the wall, and it's right in the middle of the kitchen. So that. That caused a lot of stir with the ladies. What is this? More work? What's happening here?

You know?

Yeah, so that kind of a thing. But some are really curious, and some, of course, push back, like, what is this foreign concept here? But, yeah, it's amazing. It's really transforming our day to day routine. It's almost like choreography steps. You go through it and it just becomes second nature every day. And I even see the fruit being bearing fruit in my mentee. The language coming out of her sounds like lean talk, and the ideas coming out of her sound like lean ideas. And it's great because it's just a very natural, organic people development happening at the front line. That's what I love about kata, because really, we're taking the focus off the tools and really putting it into our people and growing them and developing their capacity to improve this site on their own. We're trying to enlarge and secure that knowledge base and pass it down one person to another person. That daily routine ized system.

Yeah, you know, we've gotten really into the weeds, and we talked a lot of pretty specific examples of lean. Use a lot of lean jargon and so forth. Yeah, there might be someone listening to this right now, Willie, who's understood not much of what we've been talking about when it comes to all the technical details of lean and all that kind of stuff. But they are intrigued that they would like to improve, you know, perhaps their school cafeteria, or maybe it's not a school cafeteria. Maybe it's some other non traditional environment that lean's not typically practiced in.

Okay, Right.

Speak to that person. And what do you want to tell that person as far as why they should give this a go and why they should give this a shot?

Absolutely. Well, why you should be is because it works. It gets results. It respects people. It's not manipulative. You're addressing the fundamental things in an organization and you're improving it for the long run. It's. I think it's the best tool set a leader or manager in any setting could use. And so it's. Why is it worth it? Because excellence is worth it. And, you know, being mediocre at anything is just as much work as being excellent. You just have to apply yourself and your energy in the right direction. So I say if you're curious about bringing lean into your own in your neck of the woods, go for it. And it's not easy because anything new is usually pushed back on. But it can be done. And I think it's absolutely worthwhile and it's the right thing to do for your organization, for your people.

Yeah. Love it. Very good, very good. All right, well, we could talk all day about lean in the cafeteria, but let's go ahead and jump into the reflection section. Willie, you know, this. This first question is one that we've.

We've.

We've asked for the better part of a couple hundred episodes, and I want to circle back to it on this one for sure. And, you know, we spent a lot of time in Lean talking about those two pillars, the one being continuous improvements, the tools, the things that we can touch. But that other pillar, respect for people, it's a little bit harder to. To wrap our arms around and understand. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

Sure. Ron and I do like that. Respect for people can also be said as respect for humanity. I like to compare it to a saying I've heard, and it goes something like that God loves all people just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us there. And so I kind of think in the lean world, the lean manager, a Lean practitioner respects all of their people just the way they are, that they respect them too much to leave them there.

Oh, that's so good. That's so good. Sometimes you got to push people out of their comfort zone, right?

Yeah, exactly. It's unconditional love and acceptance for where they're at now.

Yeah.

And you want to see them grow and get to that next level.

Yeah. Very good. Very good. What's the best advice you've ever received?

All right, I want to share a few pieces of advice I've gotten from different parts of my life. So my late father in law, Jim Cramer, would always say, never give up. Never give up. That was his thing. I got a piece of advice from my premarital marriage pastor Sandy Otsuji. He'd always say, don't major in the minors.

What's that mean?

Fry the big fish. Don't worry about the little things. You focus on the big things. And don't let the minor things distract you. Don't major in the minors.

That's a lot. I love that.

I love that. There's lean applications to all this, right?

Yeah.

And then the final one I like a lot is one of my old bosses, John Bruce. He is the president of a pharmacy, and he would say, when you don't know what to do, scratch your head, not your behind. Okay. You know, set that target condition.

I would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good. What are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with Lean?

Yeah, you know, I like to share a story about one of my student workers. We actually get to employ student workers for, you know, about 20 minutes a day. They come and help out in the cafeteria, running the registers and whatnot. And I have one of my student workers is really behind on her grades, and she's like my go to. She's like my mini manager. Right. And she just kills it in the kitchen. She's such an awesome help there. But she's on this borderline of dropping out of school. She doesn't really see the point on it. She's still behind. And she says the only thing keeping her in school is that she loves to work in our cafeteria. And, you know, that blew me away because it's not because, you know, I'm so awesome, but I really think it's because the lean ideas that we've put in has created this environment where she feels needed and important and welcomed and useful. And so, I mean, that's just an example of what, you know, of the effect you have on people.

That's Beautiful.

And now she wants to become a manager one day, and she wants to work in the food service industry, and we'll see where that takes her.

Yeah, that's beautiful. What grade is she in?

12Th grade.

Nice. Nice. Well, very well done. I mean, you just, you know, you never know the impact it could have on a person.

Right.

It could change your life.

So true.

Yeah. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Now, does she get involved in all the continuous improvement stuff as well?

Um, you know what? I only get her for 20 minutes a day, so I pull her to my side and I'm coaching her.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

As I can. And it's pretty fast paced, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we haven't been able to get her in a caddy yet, but that'd be great.

Well, yeah, but the. The environment's there. Right? You can't avoid it.

Right.

So she's. She is working in a lean environment, whether she knows it or not.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, do you got any good book recommendations for folks?

Yeah. I've been thinking about the E Myth by Michael Gerber. It's more of a business book than a lean book, but I revisited that book and it's funny because you come back with the lean lenses on and you can see a lot of things that apply. And so in E Myth, Gerber talks about just looking at everything as a system. Even if you don't have a system, that's a system. And he really emphasizes the importance that don't just work in your business, but you really have to work on your business. And that's the continual improvement part of things.

Yeah.

You know, step back, get some perspective and say, what am I doing here? And work on that. And that could be if, you know, as an employee or as a business owner, it all applies. And a really cool thing he talks about is this inner conflict that everybody has. And he calls it, you know, the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur. And, you know, basically the technician in us. We like to just do things with our hands and feel like we've accomplished something. And doing is the purpose of work. Right. And then there's a manager part of us that likes to organize people and organize things and label things. And, you know, I would guess the 5s inside of us that that's. That's what work is. Right. And then entrepreneuriness is the innovator, the person who makes the whole thing up in the first place. But it's more of a. They actually bring chaos into the balance. Right. The chaos that the entrepreneur creates, the manager has to organize, and the technicians, like, get off my back. You're making more work for me. I'm busy working over here. And that's a struggle inside of us all.

Yeah.

But you know, in a lean way I can see, you know, sort of sometimes I get stuck in the tools that I want to apply. Tools. Apply tools and kind of, you know, neglect the people and developing them. And then sometimes I neglect thinking about innovations and adding more, you know, capacity to what we're doing. So I can see how that dynamic is inside of me and all of us and how we need to, you know, balance it out.

What's interesting about it though, is if you even think about kata a little bit, there's a little bit of all three of those in kata. Think about that challenge. Right. Like, might be the entrepreneur kind of here's where you need to go, you know, no idea how to do it, but here's where we want to be in about a year, right?

Yep.

And then you kind of back into it and you start looking about current conditions and, and then eventually the technician's like, all right, let's run some experiments.

Right, Exactly. I got that connection too. And I'm glad you see that too, because I'm like, that's exactly what it is and it's there and it's in effect.

But you need all of them, you know.

I do.

That's why I always, you know, here at Gambit Academy's three partners, me, you know, Kevin Meyer and John Miller. And we're all very different. I'm the crazy spaz guy, I'm going a million miles. And John so, you know, super analytical, always thinking big. And Kevin's the business, you know, genius, you know, kind of thing of the group. And so it's like all three of us drive each other crazy from, from time to time, I'm sure, because we're all very different, but we all play, you know, a different role in the whole machine. Right. And so I think you need that.

You do. Absolutely.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, hey, Willie, this has been a fantastic episode. I'm so glad that you came on. And you know, I, like I said, I've got, you know, kids and I really appreciate you for the work that you're doing. I know you're not at my kids school, but, you know, maybe one day the work will come over here and, and, but keep up the great work. I mean, gosh, you're, you're, you're impacting a lot, a lot of lives, you know, in a very positive way. So, so, so thank you and keep up the good work. And let's go ahead and wrap things up, Willie, with maybe you sharing some final words of wisdom and then definitely tell folks how they can connect with you.

Yeah, thanks, Ron. I really appreciate that. And yeah, so some. Just some last words real fast. I like to remind all of us practicing this thing called Lean that it's not just about the tools. We always have to be thinking about the purpose, our people and the processes. And if they want to connect with me, please get a hold of me on LinkedIn. The name is Willy with a Y. Last name is Boostio. So that's a B, as in boy, us T, I, L, L, O s. And I'd love to make some connections with you. Yeah.

Awesome, Willie. Well, thank you again. Keep up the great work. Hopefully we can meet up face to face one day at a conference or something like that. But really, maybe we'll even reconnect here in, I don't know, a year or so just to hear all the amazing things that you've done over the last 12 months.

Hey, that'd be great.

All right, well, you take care, and thanks again, Willie.

Hey, thanks, Ron.

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