Marc Saris on Mastering EQ and Cultural Dynamics in Negotiation

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Hey, Mark, how's it going?

I'm going good. How are you? Perfect.

I'm great. Yeah, it was, it was really good. That's awesome, man. So for you with negotiations, how did you get into the space?

So just professionally, I started my career as a procurement professional at Shelton and joined in the graduate program and within no time was responsible for these crazy values, procurement values. And to me, what was really shocking, kind of a turning point in my career is when I started working in Dubai supporting projects in Iraq, I was made responsible to tender this massive wells contract. It was a $250 million worth scope and they basically just made me responsible for running the commercial sides of it and the we were doing it on behalf of the Iraqi government and they basically turned around after receiving the tender results. And I presented all the bids to them and I said, look, this is the deal. We followed all the processes, this is the amount you're going to pay. Please sign on the dotted line. And they said that was kind of the turning point in my life where they said like, listen, that's all great, but there's no way we're going to be doing that for the price, so you better get working to get 50% off of that. And here I was like, wow, holy crap. Like, okay, so we did all of that work and now I have to break the news to these suppliers that they better sharpen their pencil. And I don't know how to do that. I was 28 at the time. So I confronted the winning bidder and I told them the news. I said, well, on the one hand we're in conversation with you. On the other hand, you really need to reduce your prices by 50%. And it was a French guy that I told and he was, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the drilling industry, but he was a, a driller that worked his way up from the drill floor all the way to kind of the regional EVP level. And he basically stood up, turned around, took off his pants and showed me his ass and then started swearing at me.

Like literally, that is what he actually did.

Well, I'm not allowed if I can swear. He basically told me, he said, and these are kind of, these words will resonate the rest of my life. I will take them to my grave. He says, mark, what you're doing right now is you're effing me in my ass and you don't even have the decency to put any lube on it. And that's how we ended the meeting. And here's me at 20 years, 28 years old thinking, holy crap, this is a fun, fun thing to do. In the end, we did land a deal and they went down significantly. Took months of work. It literally took months of work. But we got them there. So I guess I did bring some lube the subsequent meetings. But yeah, yeah, that was a turning point in my kind of life where I said, well, this is really interesting. And just the whole emotions and all of that was to me, two kind of things sprung out. One is how the hell do you, as a company that's making billions, how do you make a 28 year old responsible for just going in and negotiating that? That was one thing. Of course I had my kind of technical colleagues and my project manager. They were all very experienced, but I was the one kind of having it to execute and doing it. And what was even more absurd is I had had zero formal training in negotiation. And that makes you really wonder. And I was like, I mean, of course I've grown up across the world, Brazil, Taiwan, us. I've been everywhere in my youth. And that already gave me kind of a more cultural understanding. And of course, in the markets in Taiwan kind of haggle your way down from 100 to, to 10. So I love that game. But this I just found wildly irresponsible. But that did trigger me. It's like, I want to make this my career. So I joined the Gap partnership after that, and from then on, I wanted to become a negotiation consultant. The Gap was too much focused on just training. I did transition into the kind of the smaller consulting team within the Gap, and together with some of the colleagues at the time, we really were innovative in what we were doing in consulting projects. And we grew project sizes from just being a couple of K to 150k projects, and that was also going much deeper. So left the Gap, worked for private equity for a while, and then founded Impact. And we're now with five doing predominantly consulting work. So 60% of our revenue is focused on consulting and just helping. And then where in these consulting trajectories, we also do training to kind of get people on board and to maximize result. So, yeah, that's fit the journey.

Wow, Mark, this is great. So we are, we're almost at a thousand episodes of the podcast and I will tell you with confidence, I have never heard a story, anything close to that in my life. That's like baptism by fire. That's incredible.

So the way kind of the deal was that Shell had with the Iraqi government is we were a contractor to them, so we had to obey to Iraqi and a tender tender law. So kind of the, the commercial laws of a government that you cannot purchase anything without going to market and doing a formal kind of tendering exercise. So that meant that I had to do for a kind of 2,000 page tender contract, I would get 10,000 page tender bids, but I had to invite everyone that was willing to participate. So I got 10 suppliers to kind of put in a bid. I had to physically bring all of those boxes in suitcases from Dubai to Iraq and get them all, every single page stamped when I opened the sealed bids. So I spent literally a week in a container in Iraq with Iraqi officials stamping every single page. Now, the guy that was stamping, he didn't have. He wasn't on the clock because he just went home when his time went. But I was still there. But I wanted to go home on the weekend. So I did ask, can we replace the stamping guy? Does he have to do the stamp or can I do the stamp and he just watches me doing the stamps? No. So that'd be fine. So I got three people to one turn the page, one to stamp and one to kind of turn the other page. That was kind of the dynamics and then these guys kind of in negotiations, throwing chairs, tables. It was fantastic. Loved it.

This is so cool. Okay, so we're going to take a pivot on this episode because I'm thinking we can just dig into these stories because these are incredible case studies because you're doing consulting now. And I think it would be really interesting too when you think about what it takes with these deals to break through some of the theatrics and emotionality of all of it. Because we have a guy essentially like assaulting you and people throwing furniture and everything. But you find a way to break through all of the noise and get back to discussion. So how is it in those really tense situations, how do you lower the temperature so we can actually talk about business?

You don't do it there. I mean, so you don't do it at the moment you recognize the emotions. And I think so. A lot of these learnings I've taken that when people revert to these type of emotional outbursts, it can either mean one of two things. A, it can mean they're really, really upset, honestly upset. And they just need. And they're irrational in that moment. And you better just give them space and just replan in another moment. That's probably the wisest advice that you can have in those moments. But it can be another instance and that can be what you named as theatrics. They can be doing it to influence, to, to manipulate you, to have some behaviors on you that then gets under your skin and that you then start acting upon. And in that moment, you need to see for what it is, not act on it, because you don't want to call them out on the spot, still want to take a pause and you want to recognize it. But you should not at that moment do any form of concessions or moves. You just validate. Okay, is this what's happening? Right. I think we need a break. And really get yourself out of that situation because it is going to get to you. Funnily enough, just last week I had a client who experienced this very similar emotional outburst from the counterparty where they were berated for an hour by the other party in terms of they're in a difficult situation, bad performance, but still needing a massive price increase to just keep afloat. And the CEO of the other company went completely wild on them for an hour in a top to top board meeting before they took a break. And then they put in their proposal, which was nowhere near what they needed. And they did the best thing they could. And they said, we're not going to reply to you in this instance, we're going to get back to you next week. And they re anchored their position, they re anchored their offer. And in the end, we don't know yet what the results is going to be. But it was the best thing they could do. So it was. And that's what we called it out. We called it out as a tactic, we called it out as a emotions to influence. And part of that, I mean, the best thing that you can prepare yourself for is what we do with our clients. And that's more kind of the scenario planning what's going to happen, what can happen and what are you going to do when it does happen? So what are kind of the challenges that we can face? No, I would have never been able to plan on someone kind of unbuckling. And the way he did it, I mean, it still is very much. It's a. They can make it a scene in a movie because this guy slowly stood up and he's this big hairy French guy and he started unbuckling his belt. Can you imagine sitting there, I was with two other colleagues, but can you imagine sitting there, just this guy just standing up very slowly, very deliberately, kind of unbuckling his belt, unbuckling his pants, but just thinking, what the hell? And then just turning around and very aggressively pulling his pants down and saying that. I mean, that takes balls as well to do in a professional setting, especially in Dubai as well, because that's a whole lot of other kind of legality. So nobody could have prepared me for that scenario. But it's wise. Lessons learned.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. Incredible. Incredible. I mean, the fact that he did it so deliberately makes me wonder, is that his move on his team? Do the people say, like, man, you know, Pierre always takes his pants down and he gets good deals. That's so bizarre.

I Mean, I've heard some. In the trainings I've given, I've heard some crazy things come by about people physically trying to unsettle the other party. One of them being there's a famous Tescos buyer, I believe it was Tescos in the uk, where there was a very senior buyer who would get these key account managers over the floor. And he was known for having a water gun in his desk. And when people would come in to make proposals, he'd just start spraying them with water. Kind of in the, in the sense of you need to cool down your proposal because this is not going anywhere. And once you've heard, I mean, if someone tells you that's what's going to happen, you. You'd put on a rain jacket for the hell of it. Right. You're going to say, come on, bring it. But if you haven't experienced that before, wow, that really takes the wind out of you. Right. It really diminishes you, all of your confidence, all of that. So it is a. And that is really what happens at the table, and which is a lot of fun. But I believe that a lot of these scenarios. But in the end, a lot of your negotiation strengths come from preparation and proper doing all of that analysis, which is, which is kind of the, the route that we've taken in our work and where we spend most of our time with our clients on.

Absolutely. And I think there's a lot that our client, our listeners, can get from this, because first of all, the way that you describe this, this is a fun situation. And, and I think a lot of times if people hear this situation, they'd be like, this is not fun. That's terrifying. Right. But it sounds like for you, given your number one experience, the skills that you have and the ample preparation that you put into it, even though these wild things happen, you can still find some stability. And when you go back to the, the what you've done in these tough situations, we recognize if there's an outburst like that this is not the time for a negotiation will validate what they're feeling. But then we are going to reset and go back to the table like the drawing board and come back when we are. Everybody is calmer because first we have to recognize that they need to calm down. They are not processing things effectively at this point. So we need to calm them down. And then we have to be humble enough to recognize that when these bizarre things happen to us, it will have an impact on us as well. We need to gather ourselves too and one of the things that you said that was so important is that you don't concede in that moment. Just a standard negotiation rule. Never trade substance for emotions. So if you give in when somebody has an emotional outburst, what you're doing is you're training them to treat you badly in order to get what they want. And you're making a toddler, you're turning them into a brat, essentially. So that's so important to do. And then that last thing, and this is something I want to dig deeper into because this is something that I hear my clients talk about a lot. They have a lot of questions on this. So I want you to go deeper on this too. How do we tell the difference between whether it is a tactic that they're utilizing or genuine emotion in the moment?

If people ask who has a head start in being a negotiator, it's the people that have a high EQ emotional intelligence. My advice, and that would be if you are even expecting that something could happen, never go alone. Really never go into these negotiations alone. Because if you are the spokesperson going in, you are not picking up on subtle things. You're really focusing on delivering your own messages, how you're answering questions. So you will likely run the risk of not being able to pick up where they are true or non true emotions or where they're faking it or just doing it. A tactic. If you have an observer there, as long as you've done your proper preparation, that you've got a spokesperson and you've got that role of observer, doesn't matter who it is in terms of seniority. But they will like likely be able to much more accurately say this is honest. I believe he's being very honest in this. Or this is just a show. So that's one thing I would say in order to kind of protect yourself, take someone along. That's anyway a very wise tip for, for crucial negotiations to never go alone in the first place. It's also kind of getting to know kind of how are these people? So for instance, my lessons learned in Iraq was that in the majority of the time my Iraqi stakeholders were in general, that was theatrics and for the reason that none of the deals were ever made in public. Because my kind of conversations in public were always with them having a delegation of 5, 6, 7 people of their side. And it was always the senior leader talking and in front of his people. He needed to be the man and he would not concede on anything in public. But then during the smoking break we would send out our kind of Arabic speaking colleague. He would go out, smoke a cigarette, and that's where the deal was made. And that's where he would kind of prod and probe, saying, okay, what can we do to kind of satisfy where you can then say yes to. And then in public we'd give them the recognition and say, right, we've thought about it. This is so you keep their honor in terms of the rest. So that's another dynamic because in a lot of ego driven negotiators, that's what you need to can kind of feed the ego. An emotional outburst is also oftentimes an ego thing. Kind of people doing that. It's kind of the great back gorilla kind of doing the look at me standing on top of the rock type of thing, right? It's like, okay, yeah, okay, I'll bow down to you, but I'm keeping my eye on the prize. Yeah.

Oh, this is so good. This is so good. I first of all love the advice of never going alone, especially when strong emotions are involved. I think that's so powerful because people will behave differently when there is an audience. And it also depends on who that audience is. If it's an audience of their peers, then it's like you said, it's the gorilla standing on the rock asserting their dominance. Hey everybody, I'm the alpha of the group. Look at me, I'm strong. But if you bring in somebody from your own side now, it makes it a little bit more difficult for them to behave in that manner. And I want to go deeper into that example of the deal being made during the smoke break, because I think there we can see this in a typical deal making type of scenario where they want to save face in front of their team, they need to look strong and then we go to the side. And I think this same dynamic expresses itself in everyday conversations in the workplace as well, but not in such a kind of theatrical type of way, but in a more subtle type of way. And so can you think of any other examples of how this type of dynamic might manifest itself in a work scenario that's not as transactional? Because I know for me, a lot of my. A lot of the listeners are like traditional dealmakers and a lot of them are like just leaders in corporations. Because I think there are going to be times where, for instance, let's say there might be a leader in an organization where they need to look good for shareholders or other leaders. You know, that type of dynamic. I'm trying to, I'm trying to Think of one too.

So one of the things that I often say when I'm helping companies prepare for larger initiatives. So take for instance pricing increases. When it's a public company, there's a tendency. So when we talk back upon this, this ego thing, they have to do their quarterly reports, they have to do their quarterly results or in the annual results and these are often very nice and expensive drafted presentations. And they have their, they have their management teams kind of contributing parts of it and providing a word. And if you start reading through these reports, the positive is always highly kind of highlighted. Right. Because which management team doesn't want to look fantastic because they're out in the open and they're thinking about their next career step. So they want to seem like we are the bomb. When it doesn't go so good, they tone down kind of massively and it's not, it's usually, it's underplayed. And these type of dynamics I often kind of steer to because we do a lot of work in terms of preconditioning and communication planning and trying to influence through these methods. And the biggest struggle that I have in kind of larger initiatives is to kind of warn their public team saying look, I know that you're drafting your annual report or your or your quarterly reports, but you're also asking me to kind of help you push through this massive price increase before the end of the year. Now one thing, please, please, please. I know that the last couple of months have potentially been good and still you need your massive price increase, but you're not over exaggerate this time. Actually I want you to over exaggerate all the negative because the first thing your other party is going to do is they're going to pull up your quarterly report and they're going to slap your key account managers across the ears with it. The moment it's all positive news and they're going to say, hey, why do we need to support you? It's all positive. So when we go back on this kind of ego driven thing, managers oftentimes have a, have a significant role and it goes all the way up the chain to senior management is what are they saying in public and is it in line with the commercial initiatives that are being trying to achieve? So that's one of the kind of the watch hours that we say and the other big watch out is well, we all know the moment you bring your manager into a meeting there's a huge risk that they'll take over and they'll give everything away. It, it's happened to me plenty of times where my jaw just dropped. Where I was one of those procurement guys that had to sometimes berate their supplier and say, look, guys, we're not doing this. You're going to pay this claim and you're going to do that. And literally two seconds later, this project manager walks in, kind of not prepared, not aligned, and he just gives everything away. And here's me looking like, okay, well, might as well just stop the meeting there, because we've just conceded. And that's ego. Because they want to take over. They want to have the word. And what they oftentimes leaders do not understand is that in negotiations, they are the target. I mean, if you're sitting across from me in a negotiation, I'm not talking to the junior guy. I'm talking to the decision maker. And if you are the decision maker in that room, you have an ego, and you need to park that ego and you need to let your people do the work. Because your roles should just be to sit back and watch and observe. Because then you can think and you can make better decisions. But the moment that I can get to you, then I can get a lot more value. That's another thing. So when we talk about ego, how it gets in the way and more in kind of normal business, it is managers trying to take over the negotiations because they feel it's their job or they feel that they can do better at it whilst not realizing that, in fact they would be doing much better by just shutting up and watching what transpires and only stepping in during the breaks, by giving clear instructions but not taking over.

Brilliant. You're absolutely right. And ego is something that will hold us back because you will. We will run into situations where we know in terms of negotiation strategies and tactics and fundamentals, we know what the right thing to do is. But our ego will pull us in the other direction because, you know, it wants to show off, essentially. And it's so important for us to understand that about ourselves so we can recognize how ego might get in the way of our ability to communicate effectively and negotiate effectively. And the savvy negotiators also know how to leverage the ego on the other side, because just like you said, all right, I see who the decision maker is on the other side. Oh, I see that they have an ego. I'm just going to keep on going at that person. Keep on going at that person, and they might make a bad deal because it feeds the ego. Yeah, I can do what I want. Yeah. Well, let's make it happen.

You rec. If you look in the mirror, you know, if you are that type of person because it's, it's quite apparent and most of them know. But just play out this scenario. If you are being asked questions in these type of settings, are you always the one that wants to answer first or whenever the other party asks a question? Are you someone that goes into a lot of detail because you want to show how knowledgeable you are? Well, that may be a sign of your ego and with that you're giving a lot of insights away. So even if you have all the answers, even if you know everything, silence is key. And that.

Mm, you're so right. I'm thinking about situations. I might preface a question by saying, hey, Mark, you might not know this, but. And then ask the question. Oh, you think I don't know. Okay, cool. Let me sprinkle in some extra details for you. Right, yeah.

No, it's. Ego is such. When you've worked in different cultures where there is a lot of male dominance and these type of sensitivities, it's fun to see it play out in real life.

Yeah, absolutely. And before we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about preconditioning too, because that's a really interesting approach and it's something that I think a lot of negotiators overlook.

Not sure if you're going to have to be editing this part out, but let's be honest, the biggest preconditioning, the best example I've seen in the past 2000 years was Donald Trump. I mean, with his election, a year before his re election campaign, he already started to say, these elections are going to be stolen. I don't know what basis he had, but the elections haven't occurred yet. So either it was this massive conspiracy of people that were going to plan to do it. And he knew about it. But by literally a year before the elections were turned in, he started repeating, elections are going to be stolen. Elections are going to be stolen. He started repeating it every moment he had for entire year. And it was a very consistent message. And that's the power of preconditioning. It needs to be short, it needs to be repeated. It needs to be done way in advance. And then here comes the kind of killer preconditioning. It needs to be repeated by others to have credibility. So after Donald kept on saying it for a while, his advisors started saying it. His party started saying it way in advance without any kind of tangible proof. And I don't have an opinion about it, because I'm out here based in Europe, so I have an opinion, but I'm just not going to share it. But the fact is, if it was true or not, a lot of people believed it was true or assume it is true or still think it's true without us still having seen very concrete evidence on the contrary. And that's the power of preconditioning. And that's the example that when I work with my clients, I say, look, we need to start early. And people always say, why do we need to start so early? It's like, well, if we want to influence the other party, we need time to influence them. And that's not just going to happen a week before your negotiation. You're not just going to drop a message and they're going to accept it. You're going to have to get in early and you're going to have to repeat messages for a long time. And that message needs to be consistent, it needs to be concise, it needs to be short, and it needs to be repeated by a lot of other people within your organizations, because that will just give it credibility. And you know what happens then? That resistance is going to slowly or kind of corrode away because the more you repeat it, the more that people are going to be thinking about it, the more they're going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, and at one point you're going to get rid of all the resistance. So when you get to the negotiation, they might just say, right, hell yeah, I heard. We already heard you way back. We accept it. And in fact, I've had those instances happen. I've supported a client that we started working with and a year and a half before we started communicating to all of their customers saying that the price increase is coming due to this, this and this. In a year and a half, we're going to have to restructure our entire pricing model. The implications are that, yes, prices will go up. We don't know about how much yet, but this is necessary. It's going to be for all customers. We're not going to differentiate. Everybody is going to get the same deal. And that's. It's going to be a fact. And at that point, it's just going to be the reality. And we started publishing interviews between their CEO on their, the trade magazines. We had them on radio shows repeating kind of the messages, still building up that story, but same consistent message over and over. Year and a half later, the. The change of terms goes into all of their suppliers. Do you want to know out of all of their suppliers. You don't want to know how many customers do. You want to know how many customers went back and tried to challenge it, even tried. Who tried to get into a negotiation. Even then they just accepted it in the end. And that's the power of preconditioning.

This is brilliant. Yeah. And first of all, the case study of Donald Trump is. It's spot on. One of the most unfortunate things about the story of Donald Trump, which continues to today, for the people who are listening in the future, it's 2023, October, 22, right now. He's such, he's a character that evokes such emotion that it prevents people from digging deeply into the persuasive strategies that he utilizes. You know, and it's. You're exactly right. He is a master storyteller when it comes to messaging that is short, concise and easy to understand. And he does a great job of staying on message and delivering that message for a long time.

But even more powerful, I think if you looked at, I saw an analysis once of the, the complexity of language used by US Presidents over the years, and they measure that in sentence length. So how long are the sentences and the type of words that they're using in their sentences? Sentences from president to president to president in the past decades have been getting shorter with less complex language. So, and I mean, that trend has kind of now, I mean, we're going to have a president that's just going to say one word and everybody's just going to be okay. That's it. So that's so it is because it is so easy to understand. It's so accessible. And yeah, there are no precedents for just the higher educated. It is trying to appeal to the masses. And that's why kind of these persuasion tricks. And I mean, I love the book Influence by Ron Ronald Gardini, Robert Gardini, Cialdini.

Yeah.

And I mean, if you look at those persuasion tactics, it is scary what you can do with it. That's the one hand. So they do a lot on kind of ethical persuasion. But preconditioning is persuasion and all you need is time. You need to sit down and think about it. You need to work out this message and then you need to internally align so that everybody's repeating that message. And once you start doing that, you're going to scare yourself in the types of results that you can achieve with your negotiations. This is, of course, it helps with larger initiatives. So for instance, when you're doing price increases or when you're doing trade term harmonizations or those type of stuff because you're trying to reach out to your entire client base at one go or your entire supplier base at one go. For instance, these supplier events, fantastic supplier events are always kind of try and hammer down, give messaging to your supplier. But the companies that do that well will organize supplier events. But start the messaging way in advance, start getting there. The people that are working with these suppliers or working the procurement people, working with these suppliers, getting them already to show snippets and then do the big bang during the supplier events. That's how you do this. And it's such an underutilized tool. It's one of my favorite things about seeing in negotiations when you really want to make a difference, that's where the time should go. That's where the time should be spent up because that will move the needle the most, man.

Mark, this has been an absolute masterclass, my friend. I really appreciate it. And before you go, let the listeners know how they can get in touch with you and how they can work with you and your team.

Well, we're Impact Negotiation group, so we're on LinkedIn. We have our website currently five people. We're based in Belgium, Germany, UK, Netherlands. You can just send me a direct message on LinkedIn or. We predominantly work in Europe now, but we've also done some projects elsewhere in Asia and the U.S. so yeah, we're just looking at growing our business.

Love it. Mark, really appreciate this. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks. Christian, congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you. You and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.

Man.

How's your day going?

Good. It's nearly at the end of the day. It's nine.

Aha. Yes.

Okay.

Yes, yes, yes. I appreciate you accommodating the schedule. Remind me again, where in the world are you zooming in from?

I'm based in the Netherlands. They brought it up.

What? This is wild. I don't. I did not realize that I Was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago.

Oh, really nice.

It was great. Oh, I mean, what's not to enjoy? It's. It's amazing. Lots of fun. So we. It was a bit of business and pleasure, so I. What I like to do is create business opportunities in places where I want to travel. Anyway, so I set up a meeting with booking.com.

Went well.

So I planned it. It's like we had that overnight flight. We landed and it was like 4:00am, 6:00am my time, something like that. And then two hours after my flight, I had my first meeting. And then it was just fun the rest of the time.

Very nice.

Yeah.

So how long do you stay?

I stay. I stayed about a week. About a week.

It was very good.

It was really nice. So it was my. My birthday on September 26th, so we. Some friends came with me and just had a good time. And I'll tell you, Mark, that one of the things that was most noteworthy to me was your people are so tall. I was blown away every single day. That was wild. But it was. It was so much fun.

So it's. I. I've lived all over the world and. And I've that being tall because I'm. Yeah. In foot at a six two, I think. Yep.

That's tall.

Yeah. Well, in the Netherlands, that's average. So I have a. I have a friend who's well beyond 2 meters, and he came and visited me when I was living and working in Dubai. And just walking with him down the street, you literally just see all the heads going, what. What is this?

Exactly. Oh, man, that is great.

It's interesting. It's. It's one of those things that you don't notice because I'm average here. But if you. If you go anywhere El like. Oh, yeah. I stick above the rest. I lived in Taiwan. Walking into a metro, I would literally be able to see the start and end of the metro over all the heads because I just stick out and it's hilarious. Yeah.

Unbelievable. That's so funny because I'm. I'm 6:1, so I'm used to being taller than everybody. And so when I went there, I was like, what is. What world is this that I've stumbled into? And one of my buddies who's. He's like 5 foot 9, he's a shorter guy. And he said, it's so funny to me because the people who are most uncomfortable with other tall people. People is tall people. Like, y' all can.