125 - Optimizing Operations: Harnessing External Expertise for Success with Cornerstone Paradigm Consulting's Amanda Russo

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Amanda Russo, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of Cornerstone Paradigm Consultants, which can be found at CPCChangeAgent.com. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. You are a high-level process and change agent consultant. Tell us a little bit about your backstory before we get into who you are.

Sure.

So really, Doug, actually, this is, this is a new epiphany. Um, I realized very recently that the seed was planted many, many decades ago, right? I was just a teenager kind of working this part-time job, um, in a restaurant, right, in high school, that kind of thing, and helping the business owners of this part-time job really run the business. And I really liked it, um, and so it kind of sounds a little bit funny that that's sort of where it started. I was just a kid, but Really, I sort of learned a lot about supply chain and I learned a lot about the running of the business and I was inherently just very good at it and I kind of gravitated toward it. And so that sort of love for running businesses, which I now know is a fractional COO, kind of carried throughout my career. I worked on the trading floor, I worked in some of the major retailers and I always just sort of gravitated toward the running of the business as opposed to some of the other sort of things, you know, that are components of running a business like marketing or sales or whatever it might be. I always just kind of gravitated toward the, the operations of the business. So here I am almost 7 years later in my own business running, um, you know, a process improvement fractional COO business helping other companies kind of become more efficient and, and just, you know, run their, their overall businesses better.

What'd you do before you formed, uh, your, your company?

Yeah, so I've worked for, um, corporate entities. I was, um, I worked for a major insurance company. I've worked for financial services companies, uh, all in an operations capacity in one way, one, you know, one form or the other. Um, always just loved it, you know. Um, yeah.

So when you wake up in the morning, what gets you really excited to go to work?

You know, I think the idea of what we do is going, you know, here's the way I could frame it. So the thought that we can change, and we do change people's lives is really fun and exhilarating for me. You know, we had a business that came to us. The leader had an idea of what she believed was wrong, or, you know, why they weren't able to meet their numbers and meet the demand of their customers. And, you know, we kind of start digging deep into what's going on, and long story short, it actually wasn't what what the leaders thought, it was something completely different.

Pretty typical, I would imagine.

Say it again.

I said that's pretty typical.

It is, it is. And, and so that's kind of what's really fun about putting this puzzle together. It's, it's first taking it apart. It's first understanding what the picture should be versus what the picture is. And, um, and then kind of making some sense out of it. And so in that particular instance, one of the leaders that was sort of removed a bit from the C-suite, when we were done and we kind of automated some of the manual tasks and fixed the situation, she actually called me and said, you changed my life, right? Because she's incredibly stressed, you know, physically ill over some of this. It's an enormous amount of pressure. Um, you know, people who aren't doing the job really don't understand the job, and so they don't understand the minutia of it. And so when I think— sit back and think about the lives we can change, the weight that we can take off of someone's shoulders, it's, it's pretty amazing. It's kind of a cool feeling, I gotta be honest.

Yeah, you know, when you're serving others and you're successful, yeah, gratitude makes, makes, makes your life a life worth living.

Yeah, it really does.

So the kind of work that you do, are you, are you primarily doing consulting where you're going in and making recommendations, or are you an implementer as well?

We're an implementer, so we cover end-to-end business operations, those people, process, technology and customer experience. We don't do any financial oversight. We really stick to our wheelhouse, and that does a lot of the times include identifying technology debt, looking for things like shadow IT, which is just a fancy way of saying third-party applications that let's say IT hasn't, you know, approved. We look for things like zero-day vulnerability, which maybe some of your audience might understand as, you know, a piece of technology that may be sunsetting or should sunset and is leaving them exposed to, you know, cybersecurity risk and so on and so forth. So we really cover end-to-end ops, and then with that, we either eliminate technology, consolidate, stack the technology that they currently have. You know, it's quite a process, but we implement, train, we can do business continuity planning. So it's really end-to-end. Yeah.

I take it that the skill set that you and your colleagues bring to the table are skill sets that a client typically wouldn't have in-house.

It's really— frankly, they might have a version of it. We see that a lot. They have a version of us. Sometimes you'll hear Lean Six Sigma or something to that effect. And so there'll be a version of us, but it is really hard to do this when you're in-house and you're so close to everything. And then of course there's, you don't want to step on someone's toes and then there's that component of it. And so hiring folks that are external and kind of a fresh set of eyes is sort of like hiring a new employee, right? As a new employee, you sort of see all the things that you're like, holy moly, like this shouldn't be this way, but we're experts. So we have an expert eye. It's kind of like that.

And so you come in without the political baggage and without having to deal with the internal politics to, as you say, give a fresh eye on everything and make suggestions that might be politically unpalatable to some people but necessary for business success. Yeah.

And I think there's a little bit of a finesse with us. There's a little bit of a finesse in delivering that message that, no, it's you. No, but there is a little bit of a finesse to that. You know, everyone could exercise the muscle of improvement, right, in one way or the other. So it's about collaboration, it's about improvement, it's about improving the company overall and improving the lives of the team members. It's an overall sort of not what you're going to lose, but what you're going to gain, rather than, you know, pointing the finger or blaming someone. It's really like, okay, this is what it is, let's move on, let's fix it and move on.

I'm curious as to whether or not— when— I wonder what the pain point is that people have to get to before they call you and say, hey, Amanda, I need some help.

Yeah, I mean, I think the best way that I could word it or position it is when you've got a business issue that you or your team or your executives have tried so many different things to mitigate it or to correct it, whether it's a lead time in your warehouse or improving the contact center, you know, your call flow, taking on more customers. There's something that's happening, right, positive or negative, and you've tried a number of things. Usually it's the DIY, right? Every company tries the DIY version of fixing problems. And it doesn't work. It's not getting better. That's typically when, you know, because you're seeing the symptoms or the company is seeing the symptoms of a problem, but we're going to get to that root cause of it. So, yeah.

So are you typically called in by high-level C-level people?

Usually, usually it's C-suite or, you know, a level below C-suite. You know, I would say our business partners within the organization are folks that are not quite frontline, right? So they're not doing the work. Those are— they don't usually have, you know, the purse or the power, but they're not so far up the chain like in the C-suite. And if they are, that's fantastic as well, but they're typically not so far up in the C-suite that they don't really understand. They usually sit kind of in the middle, but there have been instances where COOs have brought us in and said, I give up, I don't know, I don't know what to do, you know, and we're, you know, and that's, that's also a great position to be in. Yeah.

So when you see your most challenging moments doing your work, what are you usually seeing?

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say in my line of work, because we don't work— we work for the organization but not in the organization. And so when we are up against resistance from someone who has been there for however many years, or— here's how I would say it. Change is scary no matter who you are. It doesn't matter if you want the change, if you need the change, no matter what it is, change is scary. And so a lot of the times when I am facing resistance or my team is facing, usually it's me, it's the horse's mouth delivering, right? Like that kind of news. But like, you know, when I'm facing resistance or the team is facing resistance, it typically stems from fear. Typically. And so it's me spending a bit more time, or one of my team members spending a bit more time, understanding their why and what their resistance is about and kind of talking them through, you know, why we suggested this and, you know, what it will do for the business, for them, for their role, you know, and kind of like Managing that anxiety because, you know, you're dealing with a leader who doesn't want to show you he or she is terrified. And I know that, I already know that, right, going into that conversation. It's, it's, you're terrified. The arrogance comes from being terrified or very nervous, right? Or, you know, you're gonna then be obsolete, then everyone's gonna know that you don't actually know what the heck's going going on or something like that. So it's a— most of it is fear.

And it's interesting that, uh, that you're describing, um, strong emotions and strong emotional reactions with people in corporate— in the corporate world. I've been writing lately, I just did a LinkedIn post today on a new concept that I'm playing around with called adult normative alexithymia. And What that means is a big word.

Yeah.

Alexithymia is a condition where we don't have the ability to express, understand, be aware of, or express our emotions. And when we talk about it being normative, our culture has created a series of rules and practices that force us to suppress our emotions. And then as adults, we're no longer able to process our emotional experience, or we process it poorly. And to your point, we end up engaging in maladaptive behavior like arrogance or denial. And what I'm working on, what I teach is the antidote to that, which is how do you get around, how do you teach people to become emotionally self-aware? How do you teach people how to be able to read emotions and work with emotions as data as opposed to, some woo-woo crazy stuff that everybody's afraid of because everybody's afraid of emotion. So I can just imagine you in a conversation and you're looking at this CEO who's terrified, terrified of failure, terrified of being discovered, terrified of the imposter syndrome, terrified of the facade being ripped down, and terrified of ignorance.

It's— and to be honest with you, it's not just the COO, it's usually managers below the C-suite There you go. Who maybe aspire to be in the C-suite or aspire to be promoted or, you know, whatever it might be.

Yeah, and they're afraid of failure.

It's a very real emotion, and I completely get it. It's, you know, yeah, so that part of my job is hard.

I bet.

But we know, I know it's coming. I mean, there's always at least one.

That's the other thing I've learned, uh, is that human behavior and human emotions are totally predictable. Oh yeah, there's no—

there's no—

once you understand what you're looking for, there's no longer chaos, it's just emotionality. And now what are the tools we bring to bear to deal with that emotionality? Yeah, interesting.

Yeah.

Um, so what is it—

I can already know part of the answer, but what is it unique about you that you bring to the table that makes you and, and, uh, your company so successful?

Yeah, I mean, I would say as far as like the way that we operate and go about what we do, um, I think the thing that makes us a bit different is we get very granular. And, um, I know you and I spoke about listening, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna include that in a second, Good. I think the thing that makes us, specifically us, different is we take the long way. So our process mapping and our technology stack mapping, it's not high level, and that is deliberate because I really need to understand the full picture of the current state from the people doing the job.

You're going down to the line level.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And that is imperative for us to understand what the boots on the ground or the frontline folks, what they're doing, how they are doing it, how they feel about what they're doing, how they're doing it, so on and so forth. Some of the workarounds, some of the, you know, we find out like the manager reprimands me in front of other people. Like we find out all of these different things that you wouldn't learn from a stakeholder. I wouldn't learn, you know, that it's embarrassing when the manager yells at me in front, right? Like, we won't know that from a stake, so we need to learn all of those things. And so it does take a little bit longer, but it tells us a very real picture, and then we can have a very real, mature conversation about what is actually going on and ways that we can approach, or, you know, addressing it. So, um, it's— I think that's what makes us a little bit different. Um, I will let you in on a little bit of a secret that I probably shouldn't share, um, but folks who are in my profession and have not Googled this, because you really can't Google it and learn it, it's, you know, I mean, I, I don't know that you can really learn it in school, but You are listening not with your ears, but your eyes.

Right. That's correct.

And so I am listening for what you're not saying.

That's correct.

I am listening for what makes you uncomfortable as you're telling me that you love something, and I can visibly see that you hate— you hate this with every ounce of your being. Or you're not saying something about your manager or whatever, whatever it might be. I'm listening with my eyes. My team is listening with their eyes. And they will ask questions and we're very, very skilled. So I think that's what makes us a little bit different is asking the right follow-up questions and genuinely being curious. And I think lastly, we don't share that information. So if someone tells me, their managers throwing staplers or whatever it might be, like being crazy, we're not— I'm not going to say, oh, you know, Doug said Mike is throwing— like, we don't out anybody.

You maintain confidentiality.

We do. Um, and of course, if it's something like someone is actually throwing a stapler, right, like that's— of course, right, that's, that's very different. But, um, I think those are some of the things that make us different, is that we're really good at this.

Yeah. How do you, how do you, how do you, how did you and your team develop these skills? Because everything you said about listening is spot on. It's, I teach, I teach people, my mantra is ignore the words. Don't even, they're going to give you, they're not going to give you any information.

And they're never going to tell you the truth. Like they're never going to tell you the truth. Not out, not right out the gate. They don't know you. They don't trust you. You know, you're likely going to fire them, right? There's a whole story that's happening. Um, how would it— you know, I think it's— I hate to say it this way because I don't want to deter people from getting into this profession because I love it so much, um, and I want more people to love it and more people to, to gravitate toward it. But I really do, I think it's one of those things, and I'm— I could be wrong, this is just my opinion, but I think you have to just be inherently good at it. I, I don't think everyone is cut out to be everything. And if you go into this profession for the money, or, you know, you just, you look at, you know, these really large consulting companies and that's your goal is to make a ton of money, I don't think you're going to be very good at it. You've got to really love and be good at problem solving and doing puzzles and kind of the really tedious work, it's got to be something that you, that you genuinely truly love. And you can be not— and you can try to be as unbiased as possible when doing it.

Well, we're always going to be biased. It's just a question of how much of those biases can we recognize.

Yeah, you try not to be. You try to be kind of like a new employee, right? Um, is certainly in the discovery process, but it's hard. I mean, human nature does make it hard, but you, you know, you, you— I work at it. I mean, I think the team also probably works at it. You know, you try to be as, you know, neutral as, as, as you possibly can. So yeah.

So you run into, you run into, you run into a, a situation where you see that maybe part of the problem is you've got managers in the middle somewhere that are dysfunctional.

Yes.

How do you, how do you, how do you handle that? And you say part of the solution is figuring out what to do with these people.

Yeah, I mean, depending on where the dysfunction— what, how much of the dysfunction has to do with the process in and of itself, right? Like, if you're not setting up your team for success because the leadership doesn't want to invest in the technology or whatever it might be, right? There, there are different ways to deliver that message. Um, if it's just management is dysfunctional, what, what does that mean? Is that— are you not a great listener?

Are you a manager?

Are you a micromanager?

Are you in control?

Aloof? Are you— what, you know, what is— what does that mean? And then we'll say something like leadership training. And I will suggest programs. And of course, like, I'll have a, have a conversation. This, this actually did happen. I had a conversation. It was, there was, I wouldn't say that they were dysfunctional. I would say like, like a lot of leaders, and I'm sure you've met many of them, they were promoted within the company. No one taught them how to be a leader.

They may not even have wanted to be a leader, right?

Right.

You just, you know, like aptitude to see, do you have the aptitude or the essential skills of leadership? Yeah, just getting promoted because that's a natural sequence and you get a bigger paycheck.

Exactly. Um, and you're next in line and you're never late and you're all right, all these other things. Um, and maybe even the person that promoted you is also maybe, and I don't want to say lackluster leader, but like maybe it doesn't have a ton of solid skills to be a leader, right? That's why I always say like there's a muscle. I think the muscle of improvement everyone can exercise, everyone. And so leadership training is not a negative. And that's really what I said to this CEO is it's not a negative. I think we can all learn how to be intentional listeners and learn how to manage up and how to commute, right? And so it's, it's not a negative. I mean, in this particular instance, they really needed it, you know, the folks that I was mentioning. But, you know, it's not a negative. It's— I don't— I've never met anyone who is perfect and didn't need improvement in some way, right? So it's not a negative. We can all use it. If not for nothing, you'll learn something new that you didn't know before, right?

So when you suggest that kind of remedy to people, how is it normally received? I'm sure you're very graceful in the way that you deliver it.

Yeah, I mean, I try. I certainly try to be. I mean, sometimes I think leaders can see something like that, and I don't mean get a coach, you know, there's a whole host of coaches out there. I don't mean that. I mean, an actual program that is structured and right, and we help them sort of come through some of that. I think it's viewed as an expense and it's yet another thing we gotta spend money on and I get it.

Where's the ROI and why should I spend money on something that's not gonna affect the bottom line? What happens if I invest all this money in them and then they leave and yeah, all these excuses.

What happens if you don't invest and they stay? There's that old saying, but, you know, yeah, I think it's viewed as an expense, and I completely understand it. Sometimes we— so I did suggest this twice now, offsite, you know, team meetings and offsite— blanking on the word— but offsite sort of all-team meetings so that they can all collaborate and kind of hang out and get to know each other, but in a structured way. That's also another way to help people stay connected if they're a remote company. You know, so it's, it's sometimes it's viewed as expensive. If I, if I feel like the company is small enough, and when I say small, I mean like under $100 million, and they can do that and it's pretty seamless, it could be overall beneficial in a number of ways. And And we kind of list that out. We make them a priorities list. We categorize it by people, process, technology, right? And I'll say, look, your people feel disconnected, or we'll make the case for it to back it up with evidence. And we don't just flippantly say, like, leadership— there's evidence to back it up within the organization.

You alluded to something that that is, that I'm curious about them, and that is remote versus hybrid versus in-person work. And of course, we're seeing in the business press that there's a hullabaloo about calling people back to the office, and which I think is going to be a failure. Once you taste freedom, you don't want to give it up.

Yeah.

How are you?

How, what are you seeing out there?

Yeah, we see all kinds of businesses. I mean, I have seen businesses that are completely remote and they have over 1,000 employees. And then I've seen businesses that have 30 employees and they're all— they have to be in the office. I don't necessarily have a feeling or a thought one way or the other, because I do think it's specific to business leaders and how they want to run and operate their company. We really help them with the how. So I think that's also pretty important is like, I will never tell anyone what to do. I just show them how we do, we do the how part of it. Um, my personal— I mean, I'm a remote business. I've always been remote. I'm also a global business. I have team members all over the world. It works for us. Um, it's a little more demanding on myself, the leader of it, because I need to spend one-on-one time. And, and so that there's a little bit of a complexity there that I think in person you know, companies may not have, or hybrid. So I think it just depends on the business, but they all work, by the way. All three versions of that work, right?

Depending on— I think you're right, it depends on the business, it depends on the leadership style, and it depends on your ability as a leader to let go.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're a leader and you're trying to micromanage people, you're already in the wrong role. You're already in the wrong room. You're hiring people that you don't trust. You know what, who is it that you really don't trust, right? Is it you or them?

Right, exactly.

So, um, you know, I think there's a misconception there. People don't work if they're home or they're walking their dog in the middle of the day. And what do you think they're going to do in your office?

Exactly.

I mean, people online shop or whatever, whatever that you think they're like. It's ridiculous. People have a job to do. They're going to do their job. And if they're not doing their job, whether they're in your physical brick-and-mortar office or they're at home, it's— I think people want to work and they like to work. I don't, you know, if there's, if there's sufficient meaning and reward.

Yeah, absolutely. Where you get, I think, where what I see is that where you get into problems with people working is because they've got a crummy manager, they're not motivated, they're not excited, they feel like they're being disrespected, not heard, micromanaged. They say, 'Screw you, I'm gonna do— I'm gonna quiet quit, right? I'm gonna do the amount that I have to do to keep the job and look for—

look for a better landing.' Oh yeah, I mean, this has been happening, Doug, you and I know this, it's the beginning of time, right?

Like, people look for another job Yeah, the pandemic kind of exploded it all because we see it because we all were forced to go online.

Yeah, but you're going to do it either way. Like, they're— you're not controlling the situation any better if they're in person or at home, or, you know, it's—

and to your point, it comes back to how much have you learned about leadership. Yeah, and I mean, it's something as simple as knowing how to run a meeting. I cannot tell you how many people I run across that don't know how to run a good meeting. Yeah, and it's so— it's— well, it's not that simple, but apparently business schools don't teach people how to run meetings.

They don't teach you a lot of things. It's really quite funny, like, when I think back to this when I was in business school and just what I'm doing now, it's— they don't teach you a lot of those fundamentals, you know.

Um, and the reason for that— there's a reason for that. It's, it's one of the biggest gripes I've got about graduate, even though I'm a graduate professor myself. Graduate professors get tenure by publishing, and you can only publish on stuff that you can measure. And so teaching listening skills, teaching leadership skills, teaching how to— something simple like how to run a meeting. Like, there ought to be an MBA Class 101 on how— on the basics of people management, running meetings, communicating, all that stuff. They can't publish on that because there's no data on it. And so they don't teach it.

Yeah.

It's not hard numbers. It's not quant, you know, and everybody wants to be in quant.

It's a lot of it doesn't really make any sense, you know, um, like some of the fundamentals of just being a leader in general. Um, yeah, I mean, I see it, I see it in, in certainly in what I do is a huge problem. Um, or I should say a huge opportunity. It's not a problem. It's a huge opportunity. To get better. And I think for folks that don't see that as a value-add to themselves, you know, they're gonna— they're really only hurting themselves because you're gonna lose great people, you know, you're gonna leave a lot of money on the table as far as the business goes. And so overall, it's—

yeah, prime example is Amazon. They lose $14 billion a year because quit.

Yes.

And that's a third of their reported revenues. $14 billion in turnover.

It— that's my thoughts. And they also— they're— I mean, there's a whole— we can get into— and we can have a whole show just on Amazon. Um, but it's, you know, the errors, the— right, you know, there's a whole host of things. There's so many other things in the operations component of it that I think if leaders understood— and that's— this is not a shameless plug, by the way. It's really genuine, whether it's me or someone else. There's a whole host of things within the operating of the business that if we just got it right, you wouldn't see numbers like that, right? I agree.

Paid people a fair wage, if you treated them fairly, if you set them up for success, if you give them all the tools and the resources that they need You don't work their butts off driving trucks around when it's 110 degrees outside with no air conditioning and they don't have any place to go to the bathroom. It's ridiculous.

Simple.

That's a simple stuff, right? Like, so it's, it's really, um, any— I'm thinking like even in the warehouse, the efficiency of it, the— it's, you know, it would dip just a little bit into their bottom line. But certainly not numbers like they have on their turnover.

Well, what they would see is, yes, it costs them to do that, but the savings on the back end are—

Correct. It would be silly. It would pay for itself.

Pay for itself exponentially.

It would. They would like to fix their operation. No, but I'm just saying, like, it's—

That might be a whale you don't want to swallow.

Right, exactly. But there are so many things, like, even just for your listeners, within business operations that if you just addressed them, it would make not only your lives, but your business, the customer experience, so many things so much better that it would pay for itself.

What I'm hearing is back to basics. Just get back to basics. Do the foundational stuff, the common sense foundational stuff that maybe you can't see because you're too close to the picture, but it's not— it's—

it—

I'm sure it's complex at times, but I'm sure there are a lot of really simple solutions that, if implemented properly, make a huge difference.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I would just also say try not to take shortcuts. I see that more often than not, and it will backfire. Right. So if you do a crummy effort at getting to the root cause, and you ask your leadership, or you ask your me, you know, you're asking the wrong— you're already asking the wrong people. And so I've seen that quite a bit is that they make an effort, but it's not a great effort, right? And so you've done it, but you've done it so poorly that you still see the same numbers. That's why I— frankly, that's why I started this business, because I've seen it. And unless you really get serious about wanting to solve this problem, being comfortable with potentially being wrong, and also being comfortable with just fixing it and everyone's life gets better you know, I think you're going to find yourself sort of in a little bit of a circle. Yeah.

One more question.

Yeah.

Yeah. Amanda, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know unless you revealed it to us?

Oh, what is one thing about myself? I've shared this on other podcasts.

Let's get something new.

What is one thing that you wouldn't know about me? Huh, that's a great question. Well, okay, um, I think you wouldn't know this about me, and I also think it's a little bit unusual, not in the like a weird way, but I'm not really a sit and watch kind of person, if that's funny. Like, I don't really like to sit and watch like a concert or a movie, or I will, of course, but I'm more of a doer kind of person.

So I totally get that.

Yeah, I'm, um, I'm pretty active. Um, I adopted two puppies, and so they, they keep me very busy. But I used to, you know, be very active and run, and, um, you know, I loved it, and I love being outside and hiking and So I'm more of like an active person rather than a sit-and-watch person.

That's great. That would describe me well too. I don't like doing concerts or going to large group gatherings. I'm an introvert, so that kind of stuff doesn't get me going. I'd rather sit and play my violin. Yeah, play some jazz or blues, do something. Yeah, or do something, go skiing. I'm a big skier.

Big snowboarder. I love snowboarding. I wasn't much of a skier, to be honest. It's quite comical to watch me ski because I just, I couldn't, I could never get it. I'm really—

it's just, it's a function of, it's a function of finding a good teacher. I'm a, I've been a ski instructor for over 40 years, so it's just a much better snowboarder, I'll be honest with you. Yeah, but maybe I'll, maybe I'll take you up on that, that we'll go skiing.

All right, all right, all right, man.

It's been great chatting with you. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks, Doug, for having me. I appreciate it.

Absolutely.

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