GA 247 | Using Lean in the U.S. Air Force with Greg Butler

Not all improvements require an event, and not all events produce an improvement.

One of the most exciting aspects of my work is hearing how lean is being leveraged across the world and in just about any type of work you can imagine, including the US Military. This is why I'm so excited to welcome Senior Master Sergeant Gregory Butler to the show. Mr. Butler serves in the US Air Force and as you'll hear, is a extremely passionate about the world of continuous improvement. During the show, Greg and I talk about how lean is being used within his maintenance group. We also talk about some of the biggest barriers to continuous improvement success and the countermeasures. We also work in some fun airplane talk, as I was curious to know what his favorite airplane was. Show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 247. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning System over@gembacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Greg, well, welcome to the show. How's it going?

That's going pretty good.

All right, well, thanks. Thanks for coming on. You know, we've had had some conversations offline, so I'm super excited to. To finally get you on. And. And first of all, thank you for your service to our country. And then hopefully, I know we're recording this right after than, so hopefully you didn't eat too much and all that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, I try to watch the eating a little bit, but yeah, definitely had a good holiday and proud to serve with the United States Air Force.

Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Now, where are you. Where are you located?

Currently I am in Barksdale Air Force Base working at the second bomb Wing.

Okay. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. So I mentioned your. Your. Your title in the intro, so make sure I get it right. Senior Master Sergeant, 2nd Bomb Wing, Assistant Wing Process Manager. How's that, Roger?

That's perfect, Ron.

Yeah. And I know you wear two hats right now, so you're also second maintenance Group CPI Manager, Right?

So, yes, yeah, we're also doing that.

Very good, very good. All right, well, let's just jump right in, Greg, and we like to begin with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I do have a couple of quotes, actually.

Okay.

One is from my former mentor, Seaman Sergeant Woodrow Lemon. He did the same job that I'm currently doing for the bomb wing in the group. And, you know, he used to always say, not all improvements require an event. And not all events produce an improvement.

That's pretty awesome, man. I love that.

That is because, you know, we've got it really big written on our door to our office, and it's just kind of a reminder that, you know, when you do CPI events especially, that first part is, you know, if it's a mindset, then you don't necessarily have to have this big event to do it. Once you get people thinking lean and kind of doing it, then it kind of becomes in their nature and just part of more of what they do than having to have, you know, hey, let's do an event. They just make these small improvements in their area and, you know, keep using that mindset. And it also helps them also see issues that are in their workplace. Yeah. The other part I like about that is that not all events produce an improvement. And that, you know, strongly with my, when I teach my guys and my courses that I teach every month is that, you know, you might do an event, you might not succeed the first time that it's okay to experiment a little bit and it's okay to fail because if you don't experiment, you know, we aren't sure if the new process is going to work and it's just going to be, you know, out of the box perfect. It's like, just understand that, you know, we may have created another issue somewhere else, but as long as we're seeing that, then we know that. Okay, well, let's go back and let's try it again and re. Engage on it.

Yeah, Yeah, I love it. Did you have another one?

I do have another one. Okay. And the other one was from a former retired Chief Master Sergeant Rob Langston, that I worked with at Charleston. When I did IT for the 2nd Air or 437th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron down there. I used to help him do it. And he was training me as a green belt at the time, and he used to always tell me, you know, keep it simple, stupid.

Yeah.

Which. Which kind of got into, you know, some of my mind when I first started doing this as a green belt. I would get caught up in a lot of these small, tiny metrics that are inside the process that, you know, just trying to over complicate things, get that analysis paralysis going on. And that was just his way of telling me that, hey, you know, just slow, think, slow roll a bit. Think about what you're doing and, you know, what are the main things that we need to solve and what are the important metrics inside this process?

Yeah, I love it. I Love it. Very good. All right, well, Greg, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, maybe how you. How you got into all this continuous improvement stuff there in the. At the Air Force and. And any. Any other information you think is pertinent.

Okay, so I'll go back to. Wow, way back. I'm not going to say how far along ago. And I'll give away my age.

Okay.

Back right out of high school, you know, I worked at Taco Bell and, you know, first job, you know what I was doing. And I remember even thinking then about process, but I never really tied it together and thinking about how I could use it. But I just remember everything I did in my mind, I was thinking, how could I do this better? How could I be more efficient at this? And that just shows you that it's kind of in our DNA, I think, to think that way. We just don't necessarily know how to necessarily quantify it and talk about it a lot of times. Then I actually joined the Air force. Wow. Actually 1998. So 20 years. 20 years. And really didn't see a lot of CPI mindset, but seen a lot of processes out there that were just kind of frustrating. And then I would say about 2009, Little Rock Air Force Base, I kind of got my first little bit of exposure to process improvement because the Air Force had started the AFSO 21 initiative back, I want to say about 07 time frame. And I remember being at lead tech, and they came to me with an improvement of how we were going to do our scheduling. And I guess that's the key thing I hone in on now is include the people that are going to actually need to implement this change on the processes that you're trying to change. Because I didn't understand why we're trying to change the schedule, didn't understand the benefit of it. So I was less than receptive to the program at that time. So then I went on to Charleston in 2010 and I started helping out with a couple events and, you know, hey, we're doing this rapid improvement event. And I just remember thinking, you know, what are these guys talking about? Rapid improvement event? It's like, okay. So I was like, yeah, I'll help you guys out. You know, help them implement some countermeasures. You know, we built some. I think it was about a recall when we actually have to. When we get that call that we all need to come in and report to the base. You know, it's just a tracker that kind of helped them Keep up with who's calling in what time. They called in that type of stuff. So I kind of built that for them and kind of met some of the guys inside the. Then was the AFSO 21 program there at Charleston. And they're saying, hey, you know, this other guys was. Tech Sergeant Dion was getting ready to retire and they started kind of spooling me up to be his replacement at that time. And I was like, wow, you know, this is really cool stuff. After I went to a couple of classes, went to a Greenbelt class, I think, in McConnell 2011. Really enjoyed it. Really got to think. And I was like, man, we can really do some great things with this tool, this tool set and this. This way of. Lean way of thinking. So really enjoy doing it. And that's kind of how I got started in the program and then got away from it for a few years. Went on to be a aircraft production superintendent, where you're more or less controlling the daily operations and maintenance. Fly in schedule for the. Actually for the. For the base there at Charleston and PCs to our change stations in 2016 to Barksdale and met Sergeant Lemon. And I was like, wow, really loved how they had their program set up inside the maintenance group and started talking to him and he was getting ready to retire and go on to do better things. So I was like, saw that as an opportunity to get back into it and, you know, do what I love, which is doing process improvement.

Yeah, very good, Very good. All right. Well, I think kind of the topic of the day is, is how to keep continuous improvement thriving inside of an organization. But before we get to that, Greg, I want to. If you could just give us an overview of lean at the. At the Air Force. What's it look? What's it look like, man? You know, I mean, we're many of the folks listening work in a. In a company and. Or whatever, you know, and, you know, making product and services or whatever. But you guys are defending freedom and all the rest of it, so how does that look?

Oh, well, okay. Trying to think how to put this in my mind. I think that we really want to do lean inside the Air Force, but we don't necessarily all work in the same direction, if that makes sense. You know, kind of the analogy of pulling the rope.

Yeah.

Is like, you know, we all kind of get caught up in our. Our daily task, and we don't necessarily push process improvement out to the forefront where it really needs to be, especially when in regard to, like, operations, which would be for the main thing, you Know, fixing aircraft and flying aircraft to meet the flying. The flying schedule of the base. And we don't necessarily concentrate on that as much as we should. I think we more or less view it as a program instead of kind of a way of life. So I'd like to see it more integrated into our daily operations of everything we do.

I think that's everyone, not just the Air Force, right. I think that's everybody listening. Everybody's shaking their head, go, yeah, that's us too.

Yeah. Okay, so I guess it's similar. Yeah, definitely similar in that way. Like I said, I think we think of it more as sometimes as a sidebar than the way we do business.

So are you guys, I don't know, you like, kind of like running Kaizen events or you're doing fix what bugs you 2 second lean style or what's it looking like on a kind of a day to day, week to week basis?

On a day to day, week to week basis is we are working on events. Since I came from the aircraft maintenance side, I'm always thinking, you know, what's going to help us meet the mission of the Air Force, especially in regards to flying aircraft. So we work mostly events in that area for the maintenance group. And normally the way our events come up is, you know, it's just those folks in the, in the everyday, kind of in the everyday kind of grind that are out there doing the work and they'll come talk to me and then, you know, I'll talk about it and we'll get ways to quantify it in regards to lean and you know, I'll teach them how to look at a problem and then we'll kind of push that up to leadership. It's like, hey, you know, we, we need to work on this because part of what I'm doing for the maintenance group and the wing is I'm kind of prioritizing these event and saying, you know, this is where we should put. Put our efforts into because this is going to apply to directly what, what we're doing for the Air Force.

Yeah.

And then we also do a lot of training. So I'm really big on the training piece of it. So that's where I'm always, you know, teaching these guys. I teach a monthly classes there from the maintenance group, but we also open it up to the entire wing, which a lot of Air Force bases don't have that piece where we don't necessarily offer courses on a monthly basis these guys can go to. So they could give me probably three hours to their time. And I can help them, you know, through pieces of the process. Like we have one that's identify waste and root cause analysis. We'll actually take them through and we'll map out processes. We'll, you know, talk about the seven waste, get them up to speed on that, where they can just kind of get the feel for it and kind of decide, okay, now I can see these issues every day, and I kind of have that lean perspective, so that way we can help resolve those issues for those.

Got it, Got it. Very good, Very good. All right, well, let's kind of jump into the topic of the day, Greg, and talk about keeping continuous improvement thriving inside of any organization. Not just the Air Force, but anybody anywhere. So I want to start with kind of just barriers. What are the barriers to continuous improvement success that you see?

I think the main thing we see is kind of that what you would call the frozen middle. And that's where you kind of get that middle layer of management between what the supervision or leaders want to do as far as, hey, we want to move in this direction to make things better. But then sometimes in that frozen middle, that's where a lot of ideas actually really get shut down before they actually make it anywhere outside of the organization. Sometimes it's that airman, or it could be that person that's just, you know, at that tactical level actually doing the work that they see this issue. But sometimes when they bring it up, that doesn't necessarily make it outside of that, that frozen middle kind of layer where they're kind of like, you know, we got other bigger fish to fry, you know, type of thing. And then they go on to something else or they'll shut it down. And then that person is like, okay, well, I had an idea and it just kind of didn't make it anywhere.

So how do we overcome that? What's the counter to that?

Oh, wow. So you're gonna always, you're gonna get me. Because I'm always saying training, it's. It's getting that culture built up in the, in the units and in whatever organization you're in. And the main way to do that is just training, just, you know, talk some real world examples, even take a team, do a go and see walk of, you know, the issues they're seeing every day, and just give them a method to help elevate those issues. And I think one of the biggest things that I like seeing inside the Air Force right now is our medical group, which is there at Barksdale, is actually using what they call leader Daily management boards, which they'll pick a metric that is important to them and then they'll also have basic things in the middle where you sit basically on the board where they have brainstorming to kind of bring up those ideas and those frustrations that they're seeing in their everyday job and then actually do some on the spot problem solving right there as far as identifying root cause analysis, doing, you know, developing some countermeasures. Or it could be, you know, something that's very simple that, you know, what we call in the lean is a just do it is it's very simple thing. You know, maybe it's a phone call or you could fix this very easily by some of that two second lean that could be done. And I really love seeing that. And the leadership actually comes down from the medical group and looks at those boards in each section and that kind of helps elevate those ideas up to the higher levels. So that way when they see those issues, they're like, this is something that we need to put our efforts to, to solve.

Yeah, yeah, good, good. Let's say that we, we, we have made some improvements, right? We've, we've made some, we've had some success, We've overcome some of those barriers and we've had some success. But you know, as we've all, I'm sure, experienced, you know, we'll make something better and then we come back three months later and you know, it's falling apart or sometimes it's even worse than it was before we made it better. Why is that and what's causing that?

I think a lot of it is one of it's going to be like personnel turnover. When you have a, if you have a high turnover rate in your organization or if you, in regards to the air forces, we have a lot of folks that get moved around or we'll do an event and then three months later, like a lot of those folks aren't there that actually were part of the improvement team. So maybe we don't necessarily standardize the processes as well as we should. And we often fail to keep track of the results long term. It just seems kind of like something that we should do and we try to do it, but a lot of that turnover, it ends up getting watered down and then when it gets passed down to the next person, it gets changed a little bit. So that's kind of one of my things that I'd really like to improve upon is, you know, how we're tracking those results and how we're reporting them.

Well, why do you think, I mean, standardization is pretty obvious on why that would. You know, if you don't standardize it, you know, people are going to possibly do it any way they want, but don't track results. That's interesting. Like why do you think that will, that will help?

I think that will help because it will give that key to metrics is, you know, indicates when you have a problem, when things are going wrong. Because we do look a lot of metrics inside the Air Force. But I'm going to get down to this. It's not necessarily, we don't look at what makes the salt, the sausage making metrics. And that's where that, that real grassroots, ground tactical level where you're looking down there and those metrics are very hard to get and very hard to, for us to track.

Oh, so, so when you're saying don't track results, you mean just kind of like operationally, like where are we at each day? I, I was kind of thinking like, well, we made this improvement. Maybe it's the same thing. Right? You made some improvement in some area and now we're gonna, you know, control chart it or something like that. Right, whatever it might be.

Roger. And that's, that's the same thing that I'm getting at is like we don't necessarily consider that metric as important because we have, you know, bigger metrics that we look at every day, but we don't necessarily look at the smaller metrics or processes that tie into that.

How do we find that balance? Because I've always struggled with that myself. You know, it's like, you know, you got, you know, here at Gamba Academy we've got some major things that we monitor, you know, on a regular basis. But like you said, there's, you know, there's a million other results where earlier you were talking about analysis paralysis, right?

Yep, absolutely.

So how do we balance that? Because it can get hard. Right. There's a million things we could monitor, but obviously we could also then just be staring at our computer all day, right?

Absolutely. And I think what it is, a lot of it is dedicating the manpower to do it because often we don't have a lot of, I say, electronic methods to tie us into data points that might make it easier for us to track. Because one of the hardest things to do is to build some of these in process metrics, especially inside of a service based organization like aircraft maintenance, where we're going out to the jet, we're working the aircraft and we're tracking that Big metric of, okay, how long did it take to fix the aircraft? But we don't necessarily get all these small in process metrics like how long did it take to get a resource or an asset out to the aircraft? How long did it take us to start working the aircraft? We don't necessarily get that piece of information.

Well, just a lean geek geek question, like what kind of like process mapping or value stream mapping or do you do anything like that to, you know, say you got this big airplane out there and you got to go do a bunch of stuff on it. Do you. How do you break that down?

We usually try to. What I try to do is I try to look at the steps that we take from the time an aircraft lands until the time that we have it back ready for flight. That's one thing that we really need to start looking at as far as getting those kind of in process metrics, kind of what is impacting the flow of what we're doing out there as far as far as maintenance goes on an aircraft.

Now what's different between say a maintenance group in the Air Force and you know, some standard airline company out there? Right. Like that you see in a DFW airport. Like what's different or is there. Are they similar? I don't know.

I think, I think we're fairly similar. Mm. In the way we do things. It's like. But they're. I guess their focus is more on getting the aircraft ready so they can make money because they turn that aircraft faster.

Yeah.

Fix it faster, then. Okay. They're going to be able to get more flights out of it. We don't necessarily think that way inside the Air Force. When we get it, we kind of look at a rate which we call that non mission capable rates, which means the aircraft is broken. We don't necessarily again, look into that to see what is tying into that as far as power cards and you know, did they have the available tools out there that they needed in that kind of process where as far as on the commercial side, I don't have much experience there, but I would imagine it's a little more important to them to get their aircraft back in the air because they have to turn it to make money. And so we don't necessarily have that motivation to get there. So as long as we're meeting the rates for the aircraft and we have so many of them available for flight, then we say, you know, that's good, but we could definitely be better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the coolest airplane out there? These days from the Air Force.

What's the coolest airplane?

Yeah.

Wow. I have so many. Private B1 is absolutely the coolest plane. No doubt about it.

Why is that?

Just because it's a big fighter jet. That's when you see that it's just like we used to call it the sound of freedom.

Yeah.

When it would take off, because you got four F16 engines on the back of that thing. It's like, you know, four rockets pushing that thing through the air.

How big is it?

It's pretty big. I'd say it's probably about a. I'm not a B1 guy.

Yeah.

But I'd say they're about 140ft long. 130ft long. Definitely a big bomber. Definitely just a powerful machine that, you know, again, it's like a big world's biggest fighter jet is what we kind of call it.

Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So, last question on this topic, Greg, what do you think? Someone's listening to this right now, and, you know, if you could just give them, like, the most important component in your opinion of continuous improvement, success, like, what would you say?

In my mind, it's going to be leadership, commitment, leadership kind of setting that, okay, we want to improve on this. We want to move in this direction and communication with leadership and follow up on those goals of, okay, this is what we need to go. This is the direction that we're going, and then everybody is working towards the same direction. It goes back to the old analogy when you see the rowboats all going in different directions, and then once they get that pull, it's okay, everybody's moving in the same direction. We're focusing on the same thing to make sure that we are working to establish the same vision that we want to go to long term, strategically, that we just keep moving in the same direction. Very cool.

Very cool. All right, well, hey, Greg, I want to transition into the reflection questions. I got a couple questions I've been and really curious to get your feedback on. So this first one is, you know, we've been talking a lot about continuous process improvement there at the Air Force and, and, and, and how that goes and how it impacts, you know, your work there. But, but what about you personally as a, as a, as a person, like, how has continuous improvement impacted your life?

All right, so the way I would feel that a lean has impacted my life is, you know, when I look at it is, again, that management style of, you know, just thinking about the 7 waste in the process, listening to the people that are Actually doing the work going down, because that's one of my favorite things is, you know, that maybe I used to not do as much as I do now, but just going out and talk to people that are actually doing the work, see what issues are going on with them. And then, you know, just that being that kind of that lean coach, I really love doing that with those folks. And I think as. As far as my life, it's definitely helped me be a little more organized with what I do. And it's definitely something that I absolutely love doing. Actually, you know, kind of leave it live, eat and breathe it.

Yeah.

As far as that goes. And it's always something I thought maybe I wouldn't necessarily identify with when it. When I first was exposed to it back in 2009, but it's, you know, it's just grown on me. It's just become kind of what I do.

Yeah. Very good. Hey. So right now, there's some servicemen and women listening to this, and. And perhaps they're just getting started with their. With their journey, their. Their continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma journey, whatever it might be. What advice do you have for that person?

Listening for that person I would definitely get with my senior leadership and, you know, look at those mission and look at those vision statements that. That are out there, because every unit or squadron in the Air Force has one that's all going to tie into, you know, higher levels of alignment with your. With the Air Force goals, with, you know, wing goals, Air Force goals, on up to Department of Defense goals, and just kind of be familiar with those and make sure that, you know, you get your leadership on board and you kind of get an established direction to move towards. You know, what. What does good look like? That's a lot of the questions.

More.

One of my favorite questions I like to ask leadership when we go into something before we make that improvement, is like, what does good look like? How does the organization look? And then they'll give me that kind of their ideal state of what it looks like. And that way I kind of know, okay, this is the direction we need to move in. This is what we need to work on. Because that way you have that leadership support in there, and then you kind of get the pull of the rope, more or less, I guess, as far as resources with folks, because once you get senior leaders on board, things move so much more smoother. You don't have a lot of that, I guess, say, in the middle layers. You know, you kind of got that frozen middle. They kind of unthaws that A little bit, yeah. And that way that airman is, can get that idea or improvement all the way up from the go and see level all the way up, you know, to the, to the top leadership where we can work on those things and really try to make things better for them and for the Air Force.

What are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with Lean?

What I'm most proud of is being able just to help folks because that's just what I like to do. Because I remember being an airman and necessarily seeing not so good processes out there and a lot of these are actually very similar these days, which we haven't improved on them is what I'm saying. And I can really identify with that and I like to hear those issues and really help them figure out, you know, how do I get this idea off the ground, how do I get started? And that's what I really love doing.

Very good. Are you a big reader at all or anything like that, Greg?

I am a big reader. I read a lot of Lean books.

Any recommendations for folks out there?

I'm going to go back with the tried and true Lean Thinking.

Oh yeah.

It's probably one of my favorite books because before I had read that book I somewhat understood it. But after I read that kid really gave me a lot of ways to make examples of, hey, this is how we see it because we're not exactly a manufacturing organization inside the Air Force. We're more of a service based, transactional process type. So it's a little bit different. But you can always apply those principles to anything. You just have to think about it a little bit differently. But that Lean thinking will definitely get you there. The value stream mapping, learning to see. Yeah, love that book because it kind of helps you get that big picture of, you know, what does our organization do. And you kind of lay that out and you can start thinking about it to give you kind of a picture because I really work better with pictures than I do with a lot of words. So when I see that picture and I can lay out kind of a bigger process map then it give me an idea. Okay, this is where we should concentrate our efforts on to get the organization moving in the right direction. And then probably my other favorite one is going to be is, I want to say Leading Change by John Cotter. Yeah, and that's a really good book that really gives that leadership perspective and you know, how can we make, how can we get this going in our organization?

Yeah. Hey, do you this, do you ever get to go out to any conferences or anything like that. I don't know how that works for you.

I have not been to any in a while as far as conferences for Lean.

Yeah, well, you mentioned Lean thinking and you mentioned Learning to see. So the Katakon Summit coming up in February, 18th and 19th next year and it's gonna be in Savannah, Georgia. It's actually the, it's the 10 year anniversary of the Toyota way and in the 20 year anniversary of the book Learning to See, which is the value stream mapping 1. And so Mike Rother and Jeff Leiker are both going to be there at that conference kind of celebrating. So it's kind of funny that you mentioned, mentioned Jeff Leiker and Mike Rother's books there. So you should admit I don't know if there's any way, if there's anyone you could go to that would be the one because it's going to be pretty, pretty incredible. So. But yeah, those that Learning to see, I've always said, you know, that kind of really, it kind of launched my, my personal lean career, you know, this learning how to map value streams and, and boy, that was really a big jumping off point for me personally.

Absolutely. Because after I read those books and I was like, wow, okay. That so made it clear for me, you know, just the language is, you know, not written to where you're just like, you know, losing you, you can understand it. So I'm like really enjoyed reading those books.

Yeah, that's what I love about those guys. I mean they're probably two of the smartest guys out there, but when they write, they don't write like they don't talk down to people, you know what I mean? And that's what I love about those, those two guys, Jeff and Mike. Yeah, fantastic.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think those books helped me so much in my teaching when I teach these courses because, yeah, I try to break it down to these guys where, hey, this is just examples of problems out there that they see every day. And then it so ties it into them where they can see it and you can just see the light bulb come on with those guys. And then they'll come up with me after the class and it'll be giving me, hey, we've got this issue down here and that issue down there and I'm, you know, that gives me kind of a direction to hey, let me go talk to these guys and you know, see how this area or this shop is doing and you know, see what we can do to help these folks.

Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful. All right, well, hey, Greg, thanks so much for carving out some time. I know you're obviously super busy there with, with the Air Force, so let's go ahead and wrap things up with you, sharing some final words of wisdom and then definitely tell people how they can best connect with you over social media or whatever it might be.

Okay. Final words of wisdom is, yeah, just don't be afraid to go out to the place where the work is done. A lot of times we sit in conference rooms or we have meetings and we sit there and talk about, you know, how we can improve something and, you know, maybe people discuss it for hours. It's like, you know, get out there, go see it as a team and then come back, you know, do some brainstorming on it, use some of those lean tools and just kind of think, you know, how can we put some direction to this? How can we. We make this process better? Because it's always going to end up with better results. When you're working with that firsthand information and the team is there and you actually have kind of a lean coach there that's kind of directing and guiding this or facilitating those type of meetings, it definitely gets results a lot faster and gets a lot better problem solving efforts going on.

Awesome, awesome. What's the best way for folks to.

Connect with you as far as social media? LinkedIn profile will be Greg Butler on there. And that's pretty much the only social media I have is going to be the LinkedIn profile.

You're not like a Snapchatter or anything like that?

No, not much. Not much of a Snapchatter. My nephews and nieces, oh, gosh, they're all over it.

But I know my daughters and everybody. Like, I don't even know how to do it. I probably should. It's like. But I don't know.

Yeah, I look at some of the stuff my son does. Okay. I'm a. I'm a dinosaur.

Yeah, same here, man.

Save here.

All right, well, hey, thanks again for coming on, Greg. And as I mentioned at the beginning, thank you for your service and for. For everyone out there serving, serving our country. Thank you for, for what you do and we sure do appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully we can meet up face to face one day. But keep up the good work. Maybe we'll have you back on down the road and you can give us an update on what's going on at the Air Force.

I appreciate it, Ron. Thank you for having me on. Glad to do it.

Very good. All right, you take care, Greg.

All right, you too, Ron. Bye.

Bye.

All right, bye.

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