008: Honor Thy Label with Gero Leson of Dr. Bronner

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello everyone. I'm thrilled to be here today with Dr. Gero Lasson. He's the Vice President of special operations at Dr. Bronner's, the top selling brand of natural soaps in North America that many of you probably have sitting somewhere in your bathroom like I have, studying the tiny words on the back of these very fascinating labels. Garo joined the company in 2005, helped transition it to sourcing all its major ingredients directly from certified fair trade and organic projects. Under his leadership, Dr. Bronner's has become a pioneer in the global movement to establish socially just and environmentally responsible supply chains. We are celebrating and talking about his new book today. Honor thy Dr. Bronner's unconventional journey to a Clean, Green and Ethical Supply Chain. Garo, welcome to the show.

Vinny, thanks very much for inviting me. Looking forward to our conversation.

First and foremost, I think we have to celebrate that you have your own label now that goes with the book.

And I think the JO is I'll be using it on my gravestone. I mean, how much better does it get than having a Dr. Bronner's label that references your book? So I think I can die in peace now.

I think so too. And it's a collector's edition that comes with the book, I mean, you have arrived, Gero. This is maybe your proudest professional accomplishment.

And it is in several respects. And just to throw in a personal note, my dad was a publisher back in Germany, and for years I used to be his secretary. This is how I made my money when I was in high school and a student. And unfortunately, he passed away in 2003. But I am rather certain that he would be super proud of what I managed to do to write my own book and even have people with an interest in reading it and talking about it. So this is a great moment for me for personal, very personal reasons.

That is so, so beautiful. I'm sure he's smiling upon you and celebrating you. Wow. And to just have that publishing is kind of in your bones. And then to really, as you say, a book. Your acknowledgments section is so wonderful. Just all the teammates and people who helped make it happen. Which is, of course, also partly the story of your career and intricately woven with the story of Dr. Bronner's.

There's many close connections, and it's in part that's the story and the topic of the book. It's networks. It's people you've known for 60 years, and they turn up on your projects and do the architects for some of the buildings. There's so many friends that cross. And it's a network that pulled me into Dr. Bronner's whole. I didn't know anything about until the late 90s. I had completely missed the soap while we lived in Santa Monica, and I guess I found the label too difficult to read. I don't quite know. It's. It's really interesting. So I. I was pulled to Dr. Bronner's, really, through a network, and it had to do with industrial hemp. This is how I met David Brauner. Had nothing to do with coconut oil and all the other items we're dealing with now. And then there was just this gradual immersion, I think, in Dr. Bronner's world, while at the same time, for me just bringing in my own old world, which is just lots of friends who had skills that I desperately needed in setting up our projects. That's the part I really like a lot, how these networks overlapped over time between what Dr. Raunners does and where I came from. And then, of course, the fact that Dr. Bronner has a very interesting, tragic, but also inspiring history that started in Germany in 1858. Naturally, that wasn't lost on me. So this is part of the work I really enjoy is the overlap in our histories and my connection to that through my own personal history of having lived in Germany for my first 30 years.

You mentioned David Brauner, his title, CEO, Cosmic Engagement Officer. And he wrote a very beautiful foreword to the book saying that, you know, his grandfather, Dr. Brauner, lost his family in the Holocaust and that having you join the team and then establish the company in Germany has been very healing. It sounds like on a personal, familial and organizational level.

It has in. In many respects. And it's a slow process and one, you know, wants to look at accomplishments. A really interesting one is it so happened that the house in la, this is the town the Halbraners business was first set up. This is in southern Germany, the house where he started making soap in the basement of his residential home. That house was on the market just a few years ago when we went back to LA for research and giving talks at a high school. House was on the Marcus and we just bought it and are currently rebuilding it. So it's really interesting to even physically have the ancestral home of the company coming back to us. And of course it's going to serve the purpose of. It's not so much about healing. Jenny, you know that the Second World War is long ago. The Holocaust was a terrible crime. But the way the Brawners address it is not so much dwelling on the past, but always using Grandfather Emmanuel's vision to, to move forward. But for us to explore what actually happened and also how this company created its position as, as a significant maker of high quality liquid soap, which was pretty uncommon at the time in the. This was in the 1910s, 20s, 30s, and then just explore that, built on that. But also mostly look forward and take Emmanuel Brauner's vision of a soap that cleans up the world, so to speak, to just keep that vision in your mind, but become more aware of the roots. I guess that's. That's the fun of it, right? It's just to have strong roots and in fact still ultimately try to do what Emmanuel set out to do in the 40s, but didn't have the means. He definitely had. He didn't have Zoom conferences, for instance. There was a serious problem, right? So Emmanuel, with his activism, he couldn't do what we do today. He didn't have email. His communication was rather different. And it's really enjoyable to see a modern company like Dr. Brothers fast growing with just more modern, I'd say, goals and just modern technology and a modern mindset. It's really enjoyable.

What's also so inspiring is in a video one of his grandsons, Michael Bronner said that that Emmanuel built the company on the principle of uniting the human race. And just to see what Dr. Bronner's and that you have been so instrumental in creating this constructive capitalism. So for me it's really exciting to just read more because I always I have had Dr. Bronner's products. I love the metaphor of soap as cleaning up the world in a way like through soap, but actually it is sitting in every person's bathroom and we say the shower. Speaking of technology and innovation, it's now the only place we're not on our phones pretty much. And so what can we do? We can pick up this bottle of soap. And what he created was lasting enough that as people like you came into the organization, you could build on this principle of all one. There's six cosmic principles which we'll come back to that. But I know one of your early initiatives was creating this special operations team and I'm really interested in team dynamics, but particularly what I call delightfully tiny teams. So I don't know how tiny the special ops team is, but I know it's really a special dynamic that you created. Can you tell us a little bit about that, the origins and what you think makes the special ops team so special?

Well, for years actually it was a really tiny team. It was just me. This was from 2005 to 2011. And maybe just for the listeners benefit, just the driving idea was for Dr. Bronner starting in 2003 that we should know where our raw materials come from. And those raw materials are for soap, as you would imagine, mostly tropical oils. It's coconut oil, it's palm oil, there's olive oil and then there is a whole range of essential oils. Mint oil, as most people know, gives the tingle. Mint oil being the largest one. And you need those raw materials to come from the tropics, not because they're cheap, because they give functionality to the soap, such as the coconut oil makes the fantastic lather we have. And we're not the only ones who are using it. So these tropical oils simply are the materials you want to use for a good natural soap. And that's what the halbrowners have done in in Germany. So the question came up, where do those oils come from? How are they being made? How about the workers? Are they exposed to pesticides? What's, what are the wages? So initially Dr. Broner started buying organic coconut oil and palm oil. This was available in the early 2000s already. But she bought from brokers and ultimately didn't know anything about the social conditions on the ground in the Philippines, for instance, where most of the coconut oil came from. And then David, we knew at the time and he kept bugging me about is there any fair trade coconut oil? And since I was working in Sri Lanka on a development project in those years, he said let's just look at whether there's fair trade coconut oil, fair trade being just an indicator of responsible production conditions all around. But it didn't exist. But the standards were not made for these products. They focus on coffee and cocoa. And then after a project, a relief project for the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, David said let's build our own coconut oil mill. And which I hadn't done before, but I had great partners on the ground from this relief project and we just said yeah, let's do that. So we just started something without any prior experience, but our friends in Sri Lanka had, and I'm, you know, reasonably intelligent and new coconuts. So we just started setting up a project to make organic and fed rate coconut oil. That was just a lot of work. We learned it was, it's a real factory. It's a project with now some 1200 farmers on 10, some 20,000 acres of land. It's sizable, it's a, it's a commercial, it's not a boutique project with 350 staff. So this was the first project. Then in parallel we set up palm oil projects in Ghana. We started buying olive oil from a project in the west bank which we also helped become organic and fair trade. We started a mint oil project in India with a partner and work became more and more because we were involved in the business side of it. So I'm by training a generalist. I'm a scientist and came to the US to get a doctorate in environmental science and engineering at ucla. And so I like diversity. I like being, being broad but also technical. And in 2011 projects kept growing and it was time to bring in more people. And over the years I've hired by now seven other teammates that live in the us, in England and in Germany. Mostly we essentially help projects. So we're not just buying. I think that's a big difference between Dr. Bronner's and most other companies that buy organic and fair ingredients. We don't just, we're not just a buyer, we're actually making those. We're involved in the production and everything else that goes with it. So we do have three companies where Dr. Bronner has a stake, majority and the responsibility of ownership and also an involvement in day to day operations, expansion, recruiting more farmers, certifying them organic and fair. That the day to day work though is done by teams on the ground. That's our model. So we have in each project there is a sizable number of staff with competent management teams we've have, we've built over the years. And then my team with the special ops team with eight people, a range of backgrounds and just a lot of compassion for what we do, we visit. Last year we didn't visit at all. We couldn't. And that was an interesting experience. You know, I spend half of my time usually on the ground. The last 15 years I was at the projects half of the time and my teammates somewhat less. But we're on the ground and it's super important to help develop teams. And zoom saved the day or the year 2020 because we could not have communicated with the teams on the ground. So you just have to picture team sizable teams with different levels of competence to run quite sizable integrated operations that work with farmers, buy raw materials such as coconuts, make in a factory coconut oil, ship that to Dr. Bronner's and also sell product to third parties. It's not just for Dr. Bronner's that those projects produce and why I always joke that a company that has a single product and a single customer is doomed. It's, it's really, it's a bad idea to not diversify because you just rely on how your customer does. And Dr. Bronner keeps growing. You want to diversify these products and these projects. And that's what my team really does. We support human resources, hiring people, engineer, expand operations on farming, bringing in farmers, implement regenerative agriculture which the local teams often don't have experience with. So we bring our experience, we bring our hands on knowledge, get our hands dirty, bring in support. So in effect we're running right now it's around four companies where we have serious operational involvement. And that's a little different than just buying raw materials from an existing and completely self contained project.

I'll say yeah, that's quite different. And it's, and it's a lot of complexity that you and Special Ops must be holding. And you know, part of this speaks to the values of the organization which are this fair, fair trade and you know, constructive capitalism. And I like the word constructive because you are building teams and companies and I love that you're even diversifying for these partner organizations. I don't know exactly how you call them, but that you don't even want Dr. Bronner's to be there. Only it's client in a sense that you want the production facility itself to be robust in terms of who they're serving.

It is this, this is funny. This is why it's constructive capitalism. It's. We had this idea very early on when we started building surrender pole the company in Sri Lanka. And we realized it's just dumb. If you just have a single customer and jealously try to keep the supplier to yourself, you strangle that company. But that's bad. It's not just bad for the company, it's bad for you too. Because if that company, for instance, if your own demand goes down and you just cannot buy everything that's there, you put that company at serious risk. So it's just wise, even for pure business reasons, to let those companies sell to third parties and to diversify. And that we got really early on. So it was always clear. Or for example, in Sri Lanka, there's two different grades of coconut oil you produce and one makes a great food grade and the other can go into the soap. Well, we realized early on that we had too much good oil that was too expensive. So what are you doing with this? This is when Dr. Bronner, this was around 2010, he said, I think we better sell our own food grade virgin coconut oil or vco, because the company needed an outlet for this and to just put it in the soap would have been a waste of money and frankly too expensive. So it was almost an economic need to diversify these companies. And then we realized it's also much more fun for the teams on the ground to deal with other customers than just with Dr. Bronner's. Just having a single customer is just boring and not very motivating. So you just do do this for your own best interest, plus for motivation and more. More recently, you may think this entertaining, but, you know, three of our projects are now certified regenerative. That's, that's sort of the highest level of producing agriculture ingredients to meet social and ecological standards. We were the first ones to certify. And believe it or not, there's companies in the United States that beats gluten free flour because gluten free is hot. So what are they using? They use cassava flour, which is one of the world's most common root crops and we just happen to grow that in Ghana too. So right now we're on our way to become a major supplier of regenerative Cassava flour. Even though this has nothing to do with the original purpose of the project, which was to make our palm oil. And that's interesting because number one, it helps projects grow, but it also offers new challenges to the team and it can be a real headache. You need to grow the cassava, you need to plant it with oil palm and cocoa. You need to process it, it needs to meet quality standards of western buyers. But that's all fun and a great challenge. And we sometimes joke, we play university at these projects, but it's, it's not a game. Those are real business with profits and losses and just the constant challenges you have. But I, we think it's a great way to learn and maybe that's constructive about what we do. It's capitalism that needs to have a positive financial bottom line. But there are the other aspects. It's the people and it's the environment that you have to consider. And that's the same what we do at our headquarters in Vista. It's just do business, but in a way that doesn't just look at making money, but looks at the impact all around. For that you have to provide and give the resources. And that's what Dr. Bronner does. That's what I love most about the company, that it's not just a slogan of the triple bottom line. That's how they do business.

Absolutely. And the word regenerative is so powerful in this case because it's not just sustainable, it's constructive, it's regenerative. These are words that are so active, it's creating businesses. And it's interesting to me that they're not just under the Dr. Bronner's production umbrella. They're their own standalone companies. I find that very interesting that it's set up that way.

It's, it's not without conflict. I started selling to Dr. Broner's competitors, coconut oil.

Well, that's early on interesting.

But this is, this is how we've always operated. It's you, you need to, you start hunting in your own territory. So we have, I think we sell to two of Dr. Bronner's competitors in the United States and we sell two competitors in Germany. They're not that close competitors, but David Brawner has always done this. When I met him, you know, one of the first actions in hemp was to bring other hemp companies together. Because as an industry, you're just stronger if you push your cause not just by yourself, but with others. The big guys do the same. Right. I think it's called pre competitive and we've always done this religiously. But I took it a step further with our projects and we sell to competitors and we think it's a good idea. We always get the benefit out of it. People know that this is a Dr. Bronner's project and we have no problem with just selling raw materials. We like to get of course, a little more credit and we'd like to be the first ones, but we sell to competitors routinely and we have to watch that there is no conflict just on availability. And I like it this way. I think there's room for collaboration and regeneration and by yourself you can't do that anyways. There is a need to have other companies come along.

It speaks to really an abundance mindset as well. And that saying that a rising tide lifts all boats, as you mentioned, David, and just saying that cooperating elevates the cause of constructive capitalism and regenerative. And in a way I see Dr. Bronner and you Garo, of course have had such a influential part of. It's almost that now you're understanding these systems of production. So from a systems thinking perspective, there's not just the product, the Dr. Bronner's soaps, there's the product that is this type of production that fit these cosmic principles. One of the, one of the principles I wanted to ask you about because it gets tossed around a lot in business circles is treat employees like family. And I hear a lot of businesses say you can't treat employees like family. Would you fire your mother, brother, sister? You know, and I know that because Dr. Bronner's is privately owned, it gives you more leeway, which I appreciate. I think this publicly traded company mania of like ruthless capitalism is completely out of control. But I'm wondering how do you juggle a value like treating employees and the suppliers and treating everybody like family while running a business?

It's.

That's a real good question. And I know what the people you mentioned, what they will say. They will just say it makes it really difficult to be fair or strict with staff. But in reality you still have to do that. And Dr. Bronze is a family business. And you would imagine working with your family, even in management is not always easy. Quite the opposite. And to learn how to be fair.

And sometimes strict, but also human is something that the Bronner's family sure had to learn over the last 20 years. And when you say family, you really mean you want to consider the other side too. And it means you have to make tough decisions but you don't do this lightly. So personally, we've had several situations at the projects where management we had engaged local people. They turned out to be incompetent, fraudulent, or both. Now you have to draw conclusions there. And we did this. It took us a long time to make those decisions, but it was always in consideration of their side, too. And in one case, it took us two years, ultimately to move people that were just holding back the entire project. Plus, you know, they helped themselves to money to separate, but do this on fair terms. And I think that's really the point, is that you treat people. Friends is a tough word. Family. It's just you have an open mind also to their personal needs. I think the point is, we've been discussing this often. What's so different about Dr. Bronner's the way we work here, at home or abroad. I think much of it is that you know the people you deal with. You know them firsthand. And that doesn't mean they can get away with anything. Definitely not. But it just means that if you make a decision, you consider your impact on people much more than you would when you are at the top of a large public company where you have many levels in between you and some of your staff. So I think it's the immediacy of the connection between management and people say on the floor. And Corona just gave great examples for that issue of child care, for instance. You just know that you have to accommodate the needs of those who work at home, mostly in administration. And you need to figure out how to help them get child care. Same for those on the floor. And then you have to deal with the fact that all of a sudden our production jumped by 40%. We did 40% more in 2020 than we did in 2019. In sales, imagine we had to add second or third shifts. And all that needed to be done in a style that didn't put undue pressure on people. And you just, you can do this better because you're closer. And I think that's the, that's the, that's. That's what's meant by treating staff like family. It just means you consider their personal needs more than you usually would, and you actually do it. Most companies love talking about it, and I think we provide the resources to do that. And that's in wages, that's in having extra profit. That does not go into dividends or into owner's bonuses. You know, the management salaries are capped at a 5 to 1 ratio. So simply there is more money that you make you can use that to accommodate your staff. But I guess the point you started with is you don't want people to think they can get away with anything. There needs to be a high level of responsibility. And that's, I guess the trick, right, is you want family members that trust you and know you'll support them, but they also know they have to consider your needs, the needs of the company. And I don't want to glorify this, but I think we've been able to do this in all our project locations. Not always from the beginning, but now. What I enjoy most about these projects, we created them, but we mostly created teams that run them. And it's the motivation that drives staff to see that they actually have a company, you know, that has beneficial impacts with farmers and the local communities. And I think it's that motivation and their competence that makes that a successful model in any company. In their right minds, of course, they look at leadership and team building and all these things, and there's definitely a move towards it in the United States, which is much closer. And I think we were extreme in considering the needs and the motivation of staff. Why? Because it doesn't really work otherwise. It's the only way you can run projects like this. You need to be on the ground, you need to relate to people. You need to think about what their wishes are. And sometimes you have to tough. You have to talk pretty tough with. With people. I have that all the time.

And that's that alignment piece that if you can understand what their community needs and you're serving this additive role, then intrinsic motivation is more present, even if you have a few bad apples. And you know, this is the first time while you were talking that it hit me because I've always read this as both sides. Some business people say we're a family. Others say you should never use that. But in any family, if you had someone that was robbing you, you would eventually draw boundaries and say, even though we're cousins, if you keep robbing me, I'm not gonna invite you over anymore.

Exactly. Jenny, you have to do this in your family too. There's arguments, and with some of your cousins, you don't want anything to do. So it's still a high bar Family doesn't mean that you overlook a bad behavior, for instance. It just means you're open to considering the personal and development needs of your team. I have one nice example I'll tell every time, but it's really telling. So in Ghana, our projects makes palm oil. And it now also Produces cocoa and if all goes well, we'll make regenerative cassava flour and ginger and a whole bunch of other things. So that project is 350 people now. The vast majority is unskilled women. This is what this project was based on. That do mostly manual work and it's just run amazingly well. You have to look for efficiencies of course, because the already is pretty expensive. And the whole place is run by a team of some 20 Ghanaians, professionals with various backgrounds, agricultural engineers, engineers, HR, finances. You have it. That project is located in a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere with no restaurants and no movie theaters. And we always wondered how long will you keep people, professional people in places like this rather than in the big cities of which there are two in Ghana. It turns out that we now we've had of all the 20 we now have, there has been one turnover in the last 10 years. And many of these guys are young, they're in their late 20s, moving up to 40s now. And they, and the majority of them got married and have kids. They stay there. So what does that tell you about motivation? It says that and we have no air conditioning in the office. Right. It's not the fanciest and poshest place at all. So why do they stay? Because they have responsibility. They have standing in their communities, in their churches and they just think what we do on the ground is really cool. Even though it causes endless headaches and arguments with farmers and contractors messing up and whatnot. It's just, it's complicated infrastructure, not so good. Apparently it's good enough for 20 people that could easily get better jobs to stay or air conditioned jobs. Not better air conditioned jobs in the city to stay in this place in the middle of nowhere called Zoom and run their company with our support, it's getting better. The team is growing and it's really nice to see them stick around and not wanting to just call it quits and go somewhere else. Pretty cool.

I have a smile just listening to you talk about it because I can imagine that you're smiling over there too.

It really is a special thing what you're creating and what they are creating. I just love the way you describe that the team members there have standing and they might not have air conditioning, but they have standing. They have work that they're proud of, that's meaningful and that it's so clear that the support and encouragement with even with tough decisions, but that goes all the way to the top. At Dr. Bronner's, I think that's what's been so beautiful to read more about in your book. Like I said, I've always seen the label, but Honor Thy Label is the name of your book. And it's just clear at the highest levels, all the way to on the ground how important this is and how much you do live it.

That's really the. The principle, Jenny and I want to be sure that you don't want to glorify this. Of course, in a growing company, family business, you have challenges all the time because you need to juggle, you know, humanity. There's fast growth. How do you allocate people? So none of this, it's without trouble at all, but it's the style in which you deal with challenges eventually and communicate and make sure that the needs of everyone, if they're reasonable, are considered. I think that really sets us apart and that a company makes the resources available and that creates a sense of unity. And again, you don't want to overstate this. Right. Many. Some people care vastly, some people don't care so much, but for them at least, it's a real enjoyable workplace. And that's the same in Ghana. It's just so nice to go there. And you've got 150 ladies that do pretty menial work and they have no alternative. They're reasonably well paid, but it's hot, you know, it's hard work, particularly in the peak season. But there is a sense that this is valuable. The one comment the ladies make is, you are a listening company. This is what they tell their boss simply because they're being asked for their opinion. And that pays off hugely. And again, there's trouble all the time. There's always challenges, the tractor breaks down or whatever it is. But just the way you deal with that is different, I think if you have that, that family approach, and that's the same at Dr. Bronner. So none of this goes by itself and none of it is without problems, but I think it helps resilience and I think it's shown really well. Last year everything went crazy and we just managed to get through 2020 in amazing style. Yes, we made soaps and hand sanitizer, so that's a pretty good business to be in during a pandemic, for sure. But we managed all the other constraints we had just amazingly well. Not without trouble, but just in a spirit, I guess, of goal orientation. Cooperation and love is what David always says. But I guess it's just respect and real liking of the people you work with. I think that is a Difference.

Even the companies that did well like yours, that were right on target with what people needed during a pandemic. You still have to deal with supply chain and the increased complexity and demand and physical production. How do you do that? And I mean so it's crazy that you were working on this book. Honor thy label and then meanwhile a pandemic hits, throwing all your operations upside down. Guerrero, before we wrap up, final question. If you could give fellow leaders or business owners permission to do something differently in their business, what would it be?

Well it gets into the detail. Some of it comes down to money of course and we just have rules at Dr. Bronner said that simply take a big chunk of our profits off the table for the owners so we just have more resources. That's one but the other one is really, it's so trivial. Jenny. All these things are about team and leadership building but I think open mindedness and again that's tried as well. But the one thing is to, well maybe to do what we did but with at least one raw material and it's just to look at where does your material come from. And we're not talking about cardboard boxes but if you can just look at where it's coming from, it gives you an appreciation of how things are made and it gives you more realistic assessment of the challenges that people in less developed countries have. So that, that would be one thing I guess I'd let, I let managers of large corporations do is just to send out a small special op team to look at least for some of their ingredients at how could you actually improve conditions there socially and environmentally. You can't do it for all what we did was just to just crazy. But we're small enough and we were able to do it. Bigger companies could do it some other way. And then I think, I think mindset and having a vision that can be clearly communicated to your team. Those, those would be the two things I'd want to do. But you need to act. I guess just talk doesn't do it. That's what I love about Dr. Bronner's it's not talk, it's constant action. We just, everything we do in our projects, for instance, we do as if it was part of the business. And that just, it gives you a different attitude. So it's, it's really, that's constructive capitalism. It's just to think about how to set up your supplies and consider things that are usually not considered in business. Consider those as like an internal business objective and act accordingly. Maybe not for the whole company, but at least selectively in important parts. I think it's a huge learning experience.

Very well said. And I'll take small enough to be a little crazy.

More than a little. More than a little.

Small enough to be crazy. In fact, I added a little. You said small enough to be crazy, Garo. Thank you so much listeners. Be sure to check out his book, honor thy Dr. Bronner's unconventional journey to a clean, green and Ethical Supply chain. Is there anywhere else you'd like to send listeners? Garo?

No, not I, I think. No, I think thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about these things in a free flowing form. It just, it just hit many of the points that have been. Been close to my heart in a way. And ultimately this is what drives it, right? It's it, it comes from the heart. As corny as this may sound.

Oh, not at all. You're talking to the right community because this is all about heartface business. So I just love hearing. I actually, I love hearing, you know, it's one thing if I say it and you know, I have zero full time employees, but it's quite another if you are saying this with a complexity that you manage at Dr. Bronner's as a vice president at this hugely complex organization. You know, so I love hearing you say it. There's nothing corny about it because it's actually, I think, more and more and more challenging as you get to the levels of complexity that you're dealing with. And so for you to articulate it so beautifully and bring it back to you said David's value of love and heart and listening. It's just we need you to talk about these values at the level that you're operating. So thank you very much, Garo, for being a guest.

Thanks so much for your time and the opportunity. Jenny. Look forward to listening to myself.

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