#76 Why Brilliance Doesn’t Sell Rainmaker Strategies for 2025

What are they trying to accomplish in their careers? What are they stressed out about at work? In a world that's crowded with really talented trusted advisors, the personal value is the difference maker. Clients we talk to say their number one complaint about partners is.

Hello everybody, and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mary o', Carroll, chief operating officer at Goodwin. If you're a partner at a law firm or at a professional services organization, odds are you didn't get into this work to sell. In fact, for most lawyers, sales is a bit of a dirty word. It feels transactional, inauthentic, even quite uncomfortable. But what if business development wasn't about selling at all? What if it was just about being helpful? That's exactly what we dig into in today's episode with Matt Dixon, one of the world's leading thinkers on business development and the client experience. He's a founding partner of DCM Insights and you might know him from some of his best selling books like the Challenger Sale or the Effortless Experience. Today we're talking about his newest research and book, the Activator what Today's Rainmakers Do Differently, which was a book recently released by Harvard Business Review Press. Matt and his team studied thousands of partners across professional services, and what they found is there are five distinct types of partners and only one profile consistently outperforms the rest. The good news? This winning profile isn't about golf outings, cocktail parties, or schmoozing. It's about showing up differently, being more proactive, adding value in moments that matter. This episode is packed with practical insights about what high performing partners do, what holds the rest of us back, and how each of us can get just a little better. Because this isn't about turning into a salesperson. It's about learning how to lead client conversations in a way that is helpful, trusted, and ultimately more effective. And who doesn't want that? I know the clients want it, so let's get into it. So Matt, would love to hear your background story and like, how did you even get into this. This world?

Yeah, I was planning on being an academic, so I went and got my PhD in Political Economy and then decided more than half the way through that I had no interest in academia, but I was very interested in research and writing and this kind of thing. So I actually ended up at a company called, at the time, Corporate Executive Board that was later shortened to CEB. And CEB was. Yeah, CEB was acquired by Gartner Group in 2017. I spent almost 20 years there and the bulk of my Time there was running the sales and client experience research groups. That was kind of my experience or my exposure to the world of business development and sales. So we actually published a number of pieces in Harvard Business Review. We wrote a couple of books off the research. So one of the books we wrote was called the Challenger Sale. It came out in 2011, and it ended up being pretty popular in the world of B2B sales. In a couple years after it came out, I got a phone call from one of the big strategy consultancies that asked me if I would come and present to their partners at their annual retreat. And so I showed up for the event and I knew something was wrong because I never had a chance to talk to the managing partner or the CMBDO or any of the folks who hired me. It was just, here's your time slot. Send us your slides. We'll see you there. I get on stage and I'm about 45 minutes into my presentation. It was planned for an hour. And the managing partner stood up in front of the 400 partners that were in this conference hall and starts waving his arms and saying, can you please stop? Just stop. I'm thinking, oh, man, this is not good. So this has never happened to me before. It's thankfully never happened to me since. He gestured for a hand mic to be brought over to him, and he said in front of everybody, Dr. Dixon, you've been talking about this research. It's fascinating stuff. I'm sure our clients would be very interested in this. But you keep talking about salespeople and sales effectiveness and selling, and so using the S word a lot. And what you need to understand is that none of us are salespeople. We are partners in our firm, in fact. Then he said, I would go so far as to say that we don't sell anything here. And I. What I was thinking at the time was, what time is my flight home and is it possible to move it to an earlier flight? But what I actually said, which could have been a career limiting move or very funny, fortunately they found it pretty funny, was let's stipulate to the fact that there's a mysterious process by which the client's money ends up in your firm's bank account. Can we just call it sales for the next 15 minutes? So I made two mental notes at that time. This is back in, like 2013. Mental note number one was to turn down every invitation to present any of my research to partners in professional services firms because it was interesting at a high level, but it wasn't exactly on point for them. And as I came to appreciate what makes partners and doer sellers different from salespeople, I understood why. And then the other mental note I made was that this would be a pretty cool study at some point in the future. So Fast forward to 2022. We kicked off a large global study, which at the time was called the Rainmaker Genome Project. And we collected data on close to 3,500 partners across law, accounting, consulting, executive search, investment banking, public relations. And we studied them at scale, collected performance data, and really took a deep dive into what is it that today's top rainmakers are doing differently? And that's what birthed the activator research. So was it was that horrifying experience I had that I think led to this, though? I think, you know, there is an occasion for the research which you can talk about, which is the client buying environment is so different today. I think the market was ready for kind of this study as well.

Yeah, love it. So before I joined Goodwin, I was at a B2B SaaS company in Leeds.

Oh, you know what I'm talking about then.

Yes. And so when I got here, one of the observations I made, and I actually got up in front of all of our partners at the partner meeting and said, we have this heroic partner model at law firms where we don't just expect you to be like, awesome attorneys, but guess what, you're also billing and collecting and pricing and selling and doing business development and marketing and customer success. And how on earth do we expect you to do all these things? And should there be different skill sets, different roles, or different ways that, like, my operational business team can actually help support lawyers? And you know, of course, everywhere you go that people say, oh, it's not sales. We're lawyers. It's a totally different industry. You couldn't possibly understand. But what I think we all know is all industries are basically the same thing. They're all sales. And you sell something and you do well and you get paid. And what can we learn from all these different industries that we can apply to the professional services world? And so I came upon you because I saw the book, the Activator Vantage, I listened to some of your podcasts, and I have to say, I was, like, nodding in my car, listening to your podcast. Yes, yes, this is it. And I sent it around to so many people at our firm. And then, of course, I reached out and was like, why can't I have you on my podcast? So I'm super, super excited for you.

And here we are.

Yeah.

Here we are. Let's go. I'm glad, very glad you did. Thank you.

Yeah. And the term activator, now, is that from. Is that from one of the personality type tests? Is it strengths finder or which one is that?

No, we actually came up with that on our own. That. You know, it's funny because the naming process of those. Those five. So there were five profiles for the listeners who are not. Haven't read the book or are not familiar with research. So we published the research in the late fall of 2023 in Harvard Business Review. The book just came out in May of this year, 2025, which is the EP. We collected a lot more data and really unpacked this research. I made the mistake of having too many arm wrestling matches with the editors at HBR about things I wanted to include in the article. And they said, oh, you should write a book if you have so much content. And then here we are a couple years later. So what we did is, as I mentioned, we collected data on 3,500 or so partners around the world across those various segments. And it was a global study as well. Also collected performance data on these partners. You know, how effect not. Not the doing part of their jobs, but the selling part of their jobs. How effective are they at bd? How effective are they at landing new clients, expanding existing client relationships, bringing the breadth of the firm's capabilities to a client versus selling their own expertise, et cetera? And we ran a whole battery of different types of analysis. And I think the thing that was most interesting was the output of what we call a factor analysis. And that yielded factor analysis, in layperson's terms, looks for kind of the way that variables in a large model kind of clump together and move together in the model. And what it yielded was this insight that there are basically five types of business developers when you look at partners. So I'll go through them really quickly and then it will land on the activator, which is obviously the winner. And everyone knows that because of the title of the book. So I'm an okay storyteller, not a great one. So the first one's the expert. These first two that I'll talk about, the expert and the confidant, are very prevalent in law in particular. So the expert is the reluctant business developer. They are, as the name suggests, deep experts in their domain area or their niche, their subject matter when it comes to business development, because they don't like selling, if you will, nor do I think many experts believe they should have to they believe that they are so deep in their area and their subject matter and so well known in their space that clients should just find them if they need them. You know how to get a hold of me. If they need my help, they should find me.

This is the. I hang my shingle as a lawyer.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And so what that means is they focus very much on marketing themselves, so they really care about their chambers ranking, they speak at conferences, they are the ones publishing a lot of thought leadership with the help of their marketing teams, et cetera. And when they post on LinkedIn, it's a little bit more of here's this thing I just wrote, or here's a point of view, or I'm speaking at this conference and then they sit back and, and in the words of one CEO who said mean spiritedly, but I thought it was pretty accurate, said they then aggressively wait for the phone to ring, which is I think the go to market approach for an expert. Now what this means in practice though is that because it's so reactive, the expert gets pulled into a lot of competitive pursuits, especially in today's client buying environment where those clients, yes, they are loyal to their incumbent providers who've delivered value and with whom they have great relationships. But clients increasingly today are not going to automatically give the work to their incumbent provider. They're going to shop it around, right? Whether that's procurement making them do it, whether that's other corporate pressures or just the breadth of options they have in the market today, alternative service providers, boutique and niche buyers, et cetera. And so for the expert, what that means is by the time the client reaches out to them, the client's probably talking to several other experts at other firms. And now it can be erased to the bottom on fees. The second one is the confidant. So the confidant is an old school trusted advisor. And it's, this is not meant to denigrate that concept at all because I think all of us hold that up as the gold standard in the industry, but it's the way that they do it. And I, in fact, I would argue that if Charlie Green or David Meister were here, they would say that's not really what we meant when we wrote that book. But what they do is this extreme version of it, this kind of caricature of trusted advisorness. The way it comes across or the way it plays out is that these folks build a small portfolio, a handful of very deep client relationships. And in, in the words of one managing partner we spoke to said, look what they're really trying to do is build a personal set of ATM machines and then stand by those ATM machines and collect fees for as long as humanly possible, ideally for the breadth of their careers. Now, the way that they expect those follow on pieces of work and that client loyalty is, or the reason I should say is because they deliver great work. These folks are very prideful of the quality of their work product. They build very deep relationships with their clients. Not just business relationships, but ideally personal relationships. These confidants talk wistfully about the fact that they go their family and the client's family go skiing together on the holidays. One of my favorites was, and this happens a lot in law, where partners will talk about their clients as former law school classmates. And then we work together in the GC's office when we're coming up the ranks at this Fortune 10 company. And now I am a partner in this big Y2 firm and this person's a GC themselves. And now we are not just friends and former classmates, but we are client and partner. They also really provide exceptionally responsive client service. They really do bend over backwards for their clients. Some of those things sound pretty good. But I think the dark side of the confidant is because they've invested so deeply in these clients, because they believe if I do these things, that client will automatically come back to me with the next piece of work. It would be unthinkable given our relationship, given the value I've delivered, the great work I've done for them to shop it around. But because they've got so few of these clients, they tend to have very sharp elbows inside the firm. So they don't collaborate with their colleagues. They don't put notes in the CRM system. They get very upset when others and other practice groups or offices call into their clients without permission. They think everything should go through them. And so that's a little bit of the dark side of the confidant. The other two, before it gets to the activator, are the realists. So the realist is the partner who's more focused on telling the client things are going to take twice as long as you think, they're going to cost twice as much as you budgeted, and the impact is going to be half as much as you think it should be. So that sounds like an odd way to sell. But the reason they do this is that realists know that every client out there has been burned by a partner, whether it's an investment banker, a lawyer, an accountant, a tax advisor, somebody who is over promised and underdelivered left them in the eyes of the client holding the bag. Or in law, the one that we hear a lot is the lawyer who sends the surprise invoice after the matter is concluded, which is way in exc of what the client said the budget was for the work. So because realists know this, they try to do the exact opposite. I'm going to give it to you straight, I'm going to be brutally honest with you. And they think that's the right way to sell. Now you find a lot of these folks in management consulting where, you know, in law, I think is it's hard to fake it. But I'm an IP litigator, it's pretty hard for me to fake employment law expertise or transactions expertise. But in management consulting, there's a lot of people who say, oh yeah, I can do that for you, I can do this for you, even if they're not the best people in the firm to do it. And so that's why I think you see more realists in the space where they try to make their mark in the market by being the truth tellers to the client. Now, clients will say, I appreciate the honesty, but I also would like you to paint the art of the possible, not just tell me what we can't do. The fourth one's the debater. So the debater is a sharp out, but opinionated, know it all, very focused in their BD approach and telling clients they're thinking about it wrong, you're doing it wrong, you're heading down the wrong path. They really want to reframe the client's understanding of the opportunity in what they should be doing. Because clients will always approach us as partners with a frame of mind or mental model about what should be done in this matter. And I just need your help as outside counsel or as a consultant to help me execute that. These folks are very much in frame of mind that I'm going to win this business by telling you, no, you're going left, you really need to be going right. And I'm going to tell you why. Now what's interesting about these folks, they don't do very well in professional services. And the reason is that I found this kind of autobiographically interesting because this book, the Challenger Sale, I mentioned before, this profile, the debater is very analogous to the challenger in B2B sales. They're sharp elbowed. They look to reframe the client's perspective, upend their understanding of a risk or a threat or an opportunity and Those are the winning people when talking about selling software or medical devices or products.

Fear of doubt.

Exactly. And what was so interesting to me, when you contrast their success in B2B sales, but their lack of success in professional services, is that you can be a challenger or debater if you're selling a product, but if you are the product, it's a bit of a tough posture. And you gotta be really careful. Cause really what we're selling is a relationship with our client. And if they don't want to spend time with you, you're never gonna get off the starting blocks. Clients will say when we talk to them, look, I want the partners I hire to push my thinking, tell me when I'm heading down the wrong path. But if every time I sit down with you, you're telling me I'm doing it wrong, like, it's just exhausting. And then the winner is the activator. So when we look at performance, these folks dramatically outperform the other four. We can talk more about that in a moment. But the activators are super connectors. So they are very active on LinkedIn. They do post things like the Expert. But the way an activator uses LinkedIn is a little bit more like treating it like the world's biggest business conference or biggest firm sponsored event. Right. So they're out there liking and commenting and reposting and sharing and they're in the discussion. Right. They're trying to deliver value and flow value through their network. They're very active at events as well, whether it's a firm sponsored event or it's an industry conference. These are not the folks who are hanging out with their colleagues in the corner waiting for a client to approach them. These are the folks who go to the event with a game plan. I know who's coming, I know who I need to talk to, I know who I'm going to have lunch and dinner and breakfast and coffee with, and I know whose business card I'm trying to grab. Now, they're not simply LinkedIn connection aggregators or business card collectors. And this is, we get this question a lot. Why didn't you just call them the connector? Which goes back to your question about the naming because we think that actually is part of it, but it undersells what's really happening because what happens next is why we chose the word activator. They're trying to take these contacts they've established in, activate them and turn them into paying client relationships. And the way they do that is really unique, especially in this World of professional services. They pay it forward by bringing free advice and free perspective to these clients. So they reach out proactively to these clients with ideas to make money, to save money, to mitigate risk, to respond to regulatory change or new court decisions or what have you. But they're trying to bring these ideas to clients before the client realizes there's a threat or opportunity and has to, and then picks up the phone. So very unlike the expert who waits for the phone to ring, these folks are making the client's phone ring, right? They're reaching out, saying, hey, Mary, I don't know if you saw this court decision, but I know you operate in this jurisdiction. I'd be happy to tell you what we're doing with other clients like you who are responding to this right now, just to give you our perspective. Now, I'm not looking to send you an invoice for that time. I'm looking to pay it forward because I'm trying to do a few things. One, I want to establish a bit of goodwill with you, right? I want you to see me as the person who is thoughtful enough to bring this idea to you and not charge you for that perspective. The person who's thinking around corners for you. Because I know you're so heads down in your own world that you don't have time to scan the court decision, scan the regulatory environment, etc. The other thing, ideally is if I can get to you before you realize this need, I can shape your understanding of it in a way that establishes preference for me and my firm in what we can do for you as far as compared to others. Now, the last thing I'll say about the activator is, unlike the confidant who tries to keep their colleagues out, the activator actually actively brings colleagues into client relationships. And when you talk to activators, it's pretty fascinating. They all have expertise themselves. In fact, the secondary posture of an activator is that of an expert, which I think is pretty interesting. But what they all talk about is the fact that to really create sticky client relationships and solve the most complex client issues, you can't just be an expert yourself. You have to be a general contractor for expertise. You have to harness the capabilities of your colleagues, the other practice groups, even folks in your extended network, right? If I'm a transactions lawyer, the folks I know in banking or in tax advisory or accounting, right? And how do I leverage that breadth of expertise to bring a more holistic solution to you? And when I do that, that shifts the locus of loyalty, from loyalty to me as a talented partner, to loyalty to the we of our firm and the we of my network. And that's a much stickier relationship that is more lasting in today's more competitive environments. That's why we came up with the term activator. I've heard lots of ideas from people about the different names and, oh, you should called this that one or that one, this name or what have you. But nailing those is always a bit tricky. It's part of the fun. But it's always, once you hit print, it's gone. And then. And then you live with regret about how we should have called it something different.

You can call it whatever you want, but what you've done is articulate. What I think is some of the things that I've observed over time. And I think I'm an activator at heart. I'm. I'm actually not a lawyer or don't practice in professional services and have nothing to sell. But it's always been, I've been a connector. If you read Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah, I have always been a natural connector. And that's why I've had roles in community building, because it is that I often give free advice. I love to give free advice. People call me for it and at the end they always go, thank you, you're so generous with your time. And what I want to say is, honestly, no, I'm not. I'm actually very selfish with my time. And I got so much from that conversation. I just learned I've given you advice, but I've also learned all the challenges, all the things that you're dealing with now. And you're on my mind, and Matt's on my mind. Next time I talk to someone who's in a similar situation, I go, you know what? You should meet my friend Matt. He was just telling me he's in the same type of industry. Right. And you start bringing people together and you're not part of that conversation. But what are those two people remember?

They remember you and the fact that you made the case. Yeah, you're spot on. It is such a good articulation of what it means. And you are an activator because you've described it so perfectly. One of my co authors, Rory Channer, who's also a co author of the book His Definition, I think he was on a podcast, he was asked in just a nutshell, what is an activator? What is the simplest definition? And he said, it's a commitment to flowing value, to Those in a purposefully constructed professional network. So you've got to be. And it isn't altruism, as you said, Mary, it's not free consulting. There's a give and there's a get. In a world where we bill for time, like law, we've got to be very careful about where we do that free work and where we deliver that value. Gotta be very choiceful. Right. And very directed and purposeful. But I love that articulation. And you're right. Even when you're not in the room, they're thinking, who got us together? What's the thing we have in common?

Yeah. So forever I have friends that I've made through the industry that I've been friends with for 10 years. And we always remember who introduced us 10 years ago. And so, like, curious about this because I was one of those people who was like alumni president. I could run the Google ex Google network. It's just something that comes naturally because community building. Is that something that you think activators are just naturally born with?

Yeah.

Or is it something that we can train them on?

It's such a good question. This is the number one question I get after I present at partner retreats. And the funny thing is that I answer the question in my presentation. It's still always the number one question I get because you hear these profiles and I think your mind immediately goes to personality traits and what makes you comfortable and uncomfortable. And as you said, you are an activator. But if you look in other parts of your life, you've done this your entire life. Right. And you're activating everywhere. And so it just comes naturally to you. Now I think what's a few things I'll say first, to be technical, when we built the profile, the survey was looking at behaviors, not at personality traits. So there's lots of things. Like you mentioned strengths finder, there's Myers Briggs. There's a number of personality trait assessment vehicles out there. We were looking at more. What do partners do with their time? What do they do in front of clients? What do they do in terms of working with their colleagues or not? What do they do with technology? What do they do with their BDM marketing colleagues? So we're looking at what they do, not who they are. I can say that, but I think still people come back and say, yeah, but it still feels like you need to be an extrovert. Could I really be an activator as an introvert? Now, in our experience, what's been really interesting is we did a Lot of interviews. To follow up this quantitative research, we spoke to partners who fell into each of the profiles and we overweighted those interviews towards the activators because we really wanted to unpack it. The quant told us what they were doing, the interviews told us why they did it and how they were wired and what their thought process was. And the number of people who proactively said in those interviews, who we had already classified as activators quantitatively, but who said proactively. Two things. One that they were introverted was the percentage was way higher than those who said, oh, I'm just, I just worked the room because I'm comfortable doing it. I like float around the room like a butterfly. A lot of these folks said, no, I'm quite introverted. In fact, I'll tell you, there was a woman we interviewed, one of the top rank makers at a really big firm out of New York, $30 million book of business, very successful partner. And she said when we started getting into this networking in events and LinkedIn and things like that, and she said, look, I. And she travels between New York and D.C. all the time. So I'm on the quiet car on the train. Like I, I don't want to talk to people when I go to the firm sponsored events or the industry events. I know I need to network because this is the most concentrated BD time I will have all year. And so I've got to flip the switch. But I don't go to the after party, I don't go to the bar afterwards because I am exhausted. I go back to my room and I just, I have to recharge. It just takes a lot out of me. So that was really interesting. And then the other thing that was really interesting is the number of partners who said that this did not come naturally to them. And these are very successful partners. And almost to a person, I think it was like 80 or 90% of them said I was not comfortable selling, if you will. I was not comfortable with business development. I experienced a lot of failure early on and I had to learn, I had to make my own way and I had to learn and have small successes that then beget larger successes and make progress on my own. And now I look back on it and people ask me, how did you become such a successful rainmaker in the firm? And they said it was a lot of hard work and it wasn't easy. Now for us in our work, so we obviously are researchers, but our business is teaching people to be activators and we've Worked with, I don't know, it must be 5,7000 partners across professional services, not just law. And what I would say is because the relationship between activator and performance is a linear relationship, there's a stat in the HBR article, which HBR loves, I love, but I kind of also hate, which is going from not very good to very good on activator can increase your revenue generation by up to 32%. That's a very eye popping number. It's a very attention grabbing number and it's exciting, but it's also a little bit misleading. And the reason I say that is that it can lead partners to psych themselves out. Especially when partners look at these profiles and they say, boy, I'm really not very activator. Like I'm much more like a confidant or expert or one of the other ones. And I have a long way to go and it just feels too hard, the chasm is too broad for me to cross. And what we always say is look at the relationship. There is no point of diminishing marginal returns. In other words, if you're really low on activator behaviors, just increase it up to 10%. Right. If you're in the middle, get it to the 60th, 70th percentile. If you're all the way at the top, get it to the 90th or 100th percentile. That always yields benefits. So the better thing for partners to think about is not how do I become an activator. The better thing to think about is how do I keep all the great stuff I do today that's made me successful, that's led to great client relationships, that's won me work in competitive situations. Keep doing that stuff and then think about how do I maybe incorporate a little bit more of what activators do to enhance my own BD motion. And so I think this is one of the big differences in working with partners as opposed to salespeople in B2B. In sales, we can roll out Challenger or any other methodology and say, hey, this is the way we're all selling. And if you don't want to sell that way, there are the exits. It doesn't work so well in professional services where partners are co owners of the firm. Right. And they're highly autonomous and rightfully prideful of the way that they build client relationships. And so what we always do is say keep what's made you successful and then incorporate elements. And you know, what Susan is going to incorporate is going to be very different from What Bob is going to incorporate and you're going to develop your own approach as activators. Right. And it's going to be Susan's or Bob's approach. It's not a one size fits all. And I think that mindset of you don't have to go to zero, from zero to activator, you don't have to become an activator, but and you want to incorporate elements in different ways really resonates with partners because it doesn't feel like a force fit. It doesn't feel unnatural to them. It feels like they can make it their own as opposed to maybe doing something that might come unnaturally. Oh, sorry. This is like the world's longest answer to your question. But it is a great question. The there is this question I still get from folks, which is, okay, but why do some before this research, like what caused partner A, B, C, D or E to end up in these different profiles? Is it personality? And I think there probably is some of that. Right. There probably is an element which is what am I most comfortable with? But I found this really fascinating. When we asked these partners, we never showed them the profiles, but we asked them, why do you develop business this way? What led you down this path? Because you could have done it in many different ways. We've learned from our research, there are lots of different ways to do it. Why do you do it this way? The number one answer we got was not, this is my personality, it's what I'm comfortable with. It was, this is what my mentor taught me to do.

Yes.

So I look at the practice group leader or the rainmaker I apprentice under, or I look at the senior partners in the firm and I try to follow in their footsteps. And that I think is interesting but also troubling because these are people who made their mark when the client buying environment was very different than it is today.

So that was the point that I was about to make because you said in the beginning that professional services, particularly law firms, are made up mostly of realists and debaters. Oh, sorry, excuse me, of experts and trusted advisors, not realists and debaters. And when you described those, I was nodding heavily because I was like, yep, that's pretty much what we see in every law firm. And I was going to say that must have worked before, that must have been the best to do things. And then this whole industry is built on precedence, is built on mentoring and apprenticeship and looking back to see what worked well, you repeat that and it's a very risk averse environment. And so if it's not broken, keep doing it.

There you go.

But you know what we spend most of the time on this podcast, which is about legal innovation, is that this whole industry is getting disrupted and the clients have completely changed, and the role of general counsel has completely changed. And because of that, what they are looking for in a trusted advisor is completely different. And so they don't want you to just wait by the phone, and they don't want to just have you assume that you're thinking about them. They want. They want to hear from you. I spent most of my time on the client side managing the relationship with law firms. And I would tell from the client side, we're like, please call us. Please tell us what you're seeing with other clients.

It's so crazy.

It's so obvious, right? It's so obvious. Of course I want to hear from you.

Yeah.

And we've had clients come in and say, we loved it when we hired a new law firm. And their associate, this junior person, even said, hey, your industry is very complicated. I'd love to come in and see your fabs, your manufacturing plants. Would that be too much to ask? And partners would be horrified. I can't believe you dared infringe on their time. But what you hear from the inside lawyers is, oh, my God, finally someone cares about learning about our business. And beyond just the legal aspect, it is crazy.

This is the number one thing I talk so in activator, we talk about, we talk about the behaviors, but one of them you just absolutely nailed, which is this idea of creating value proactively for clients, meaning not waiting for the phone to ring, but reaching out to them. And I always, especially with lawyers, in front of partners at retreats and said, look, we also did research with clients. And just as you said very well, better than I'm going to that the clients we talk to say their number one complaint about partners, but lawyers especially is they don't hear from them often enough. And the looks I get from the audience are like, really? And what I then say is, listen, what they said next is because the partners are thinking, I don't want to impose partners. Our clients are very busy, right? They're busy in their worlds, and they don't want us imposing. And when we reach out to them, it feels like we're selling to them, Right? If we should do our job as lawyers and wait for them to identify need and then reach out to get us, they know how to get a hold of us. They have my phone number. They have them. They have my email address, et cetera. But clients say, look, I am so heads down in my world, you're going to Talk to more GCs in a week just like me than I'm going to talk to in two years. So tell me what they're worried about. Is there a risk that's going to blindside us because we're not thinking about? Don't wait for me to find it. Bring it to me. Is there some opportunity that you could make me aware of? I will always make time for that. And I will never think less of you for not bringing those ideas. In fact, I'll think less of you for not being thoughtful enough and not doing it. You're Totally right.

Yeah, 100%. And I get it all the time. They don't want to impose and they don't want to feel like they're selling this, sell that. This S is like such a bad word. And what I try to tell them is, you're not selling. Remember, your job is not to sell. Your job is to be helpful to your client and like you said, to add value to the client.

Right.

So if you're thinking, sitting around constantly and thinking about how can I help? And I have an idea about how I can help that client and I'm going to call or email and tell them, hey, I have this idea about how I can help you, or I have advice on something you might want to be thinking about in case it's helpful. Yeah, when have you ever been irritated by a call or an email like that? Hey, I can't right now, but I'd love to hear more. Yeah, send me a note about it it, but everybody wants to hear it. Everybody wants.

I think you also hit on something really interesting. So we spend a lot of time with partners talking about and really trying to get it all out there around our aversion to selling. And when we think about what activator is doing, like, they don't like selling either. But I think when you talk to them and you really understand what they're doing, it doesn't feel like selling. And the reason is, I think for most partners, their mindset is, I will deliver value to you and I will be helpful to you and I will be thoughtful and I will build a relationship with you after you sign an agreement and agree to hire me and then I can invoice you for all that stuff. For activators, they are trying to build relationships and deliver value before the client is paying them. And so for them, it just feels like the natural evolution of A value based relationship. So if we are, if I'm just got to know you at a conference and then I'm reaching out to you with some ideas and then maybe you're responding saying, hey, Matt, have you heard of this or have you seen that? I just love to hop in a call for 10 minutes and pick your brain about, absolutely, let's do it. And we're flowing value back and forth. Then it doesn't feel like a long jump to paid work. It just feels like a natural evolution. Somebody said to me recently, it's a little bit like going from dating to maybe living with your significant other to getting married, that's the way. But if you just go from like I bumped into on the street and then asking to marry, that feels like selling. Like it's a little awkward because you've not delivered any value, you haven't built a relationship in advance.

So that's very true. That's very true. Okay. I wanted to go back also to the LinkedIn comment. So I tell folks all the time I was not someone who was active on LinkedIn, I never accepted connections. I was very skeptical about this platform until someone said, no, Mary, in your role. And I had this whole community that I was building, so it was important to actually build the brand of that community. And they said, no, you've got to get out there and talk about it and bring people together publicly on the community. And so I started doing that and of course that exploded. And then people started calling me a legal influencer, which I thought was comical because that was not anything that I was trying to do. But people get really nervous about LinkedIn and particularly lawyers because of their reputation, the brand of professionalism that they have to have and how does it look, reflecting on the firm, their own sort of points of view, how do you play that? And that comes up a lot. And I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, so we spend a fair amount of time in our training and there's a whole chunk of the book where we talk about just getting the basics right. And the number of partners I see, especially in law now who don't even have a headshot and the experience is very thin. And the only piece of people they're connected to are maybe some law former law school classmates and things like that, maybe some colleagues, but that's about it. And the mindset, I think for many, the way we approach this is trying to break down the mindset which a lot of lawyers have, which is my clients aren't there. And since My clients, they are. That's the thing. And so we can show them that and we can demonstrate that. And one of the things we, we recommend, and this always gets, like, horrified looks from lawyers in particular, is go back in your calendar 3, 6 months, and then look forward in your calendar 3 to 6 months and go ahead and send a personal, not a generic, But a personal LinkedIn request to every single senior person, team member from the client side that you've engaged with or that you're going to engage with. And the first reaction we get is, oh, my goodness, like, my clients don't want that kind of relationship with me. So weird.

That'd be so weird.

So weird. It just. It feels presumptuous. It's like they absolutely. That's why they're there. They absolutely want that kind of relationship with you. And if they're still skeptical, what we say next is here's the real reason to do it. That once you connect with them, you are. The way LinkedIn works is you are tuning the algorithm so that now you are being fed in your main feed, things that person likes, they post, they comment on, they repost and share. And so it's almost like being in the client's office. You're in the flow of information and you're seeing the issues they're talking about, the risks and opportunities. You're even increasingly, we can talk about whether LinkedIn is becoming more like Facebook or not. But like it or not, people do share more personal things, personal accomplishments and struggles and challenges, causes they're passionate about. And so you get that look as well in looking for those elements of personal value that present themselves. And you might still get partners who are a little bit skeptical. And then what I say is, okay, here's the real reason to do it, is if you don't connect with them and your competitor does connect with them, then they're in the flow of information and you're on the outs. And then you are in the situation where you're waiting for the phone to ring and you're waiting for your client to think of you. They're in a situation where they're spotting opportunities, proactively bringing value, building relationships that lead to paid work. And how frustrated does it make us as partners when our client goes with a competitor for work that we're actually better at than our competitor? It's so frustrating. But the problem is the client didn't even know that you were capable of doing this. Somebody else beat you to it. So this is just a golden opportunity to be in this flow of information with your clients, identifying opportunities to deliver value and identifying opportunities to pitch for paid work.

I'll even add to that because someone will probably click on your profile and assume you've built it out. You might get them to say, oh gosh, that was fun chatting with you in whatever meeting we had. I didn't realize you went to such school. Did you know my friend? Right. I used to work with so and so. I was close with the managing partner there. Months and months go by and they say, hey, we're interviewing so and so for our team. I see. See you're connected. Do you have five minutes to chat about them?

Yeah.

Forcing more touch points.

Absolutely. It is so important. We didn't write this book for B2B sales leaders, but I think it's been interesting how many of them have actually picked up the book and said what they see in B2B sales. And I think this, having spent time in that world is that there's been this kind of degradation of relationships where these B2B salespeople are all armed with AI powered spam cannons and they're just last thing though, they're everybody on their cold call list. And then you add misinformation and distrust in institutions and all this stuff and it just feels like for salespeople it's that much harder to build relationships. And so why sales leaders who are not selling legal advice? Right, they're selling products. But why they like the activator advantages for them. In a world where their salespeople are struggling to build relationships, what they've concluded is if you really want to understand what good looks like in terms of relationship building, go to the purest form of that in the world, which is professional services where you don't have a product to sell. You literally are selling yourself, you're selling a relationship. And look at what the best are doing there. And the best are very much using LinkedIn. They're very active there. They're using it quite strategically. They're using a lot of the advanced capabilities to sort and manage and prioritize and target and engage. And it's, it is a must have resource for top rank makers.

Yeah. And I think for lawyers you should know kind of that question of like, are my clients there? Where do your clients live? I do think in house. Lawyers, general Counsel, live on LinkedIn. That is where they are communicating. That is where they're getting sort of their industry news and chatting with each other. Now if you are targeting the investor, the venture capital, the startup world, they were On Twitter, I think they probably still are on X or whatever we, whatever it is now, but I think they're still there, and that's where they are talking to each other and consuming.

If you're anyone who's a watering hole. Yeah.

So you got to figure out where your audience is and you've got to be there.

Yeah, that's right. I1, one thing I'll mention, I hit on this kind of at a high level, but this idea of productively creating value, the fact that activators are proactive, I think makes them unique in the fact that they're not looking to build a client for the time they're. One activator said, this I thought was a great line, said, look, my billable hours pay my bonus this year. It's the unpaid, proactive value I deliver that pays my bonus next year and the year after and the year after that. And that's what lays the groundwork for a healthy and thriving book of business for many years. But I think there's also this wrinkle, which is the kind of value that activators are trying to deliver. 1, 1 activator we interviewed put it really well, and we stole this framework, which was, there's basically three types of value in professional services. There's business value, we help our client make money, save money, mitigate risk, et cetera. There's trust value, meaning we do the work that the client hires us to do in a trustworthy way that delivers it in a way the client expects, ideally better, even better than they expect. That is ethical, it's transparent, it's honest, it's rigorous, et cetera. And then there's personal value. Now, I'll come back to personal value in a moment, but what this activator said is when I think about the market, so many of my competitors, and honestly said, so many of my colleagues are laser focused on business value and trust value because those are the components of being a trusted advisor. You deliver business impact in a trustworthy way, but it's the personal value. And these activators also say, look, everybody does that. They're. I'm not. I don't. I think I do it, but I don't have a monopoly on that. There are lots of trusted advisors in the market. The thing that makes me different is that I try to layer on personal value as well. And I asked, I said, you mean knowing your client's birthday or their wedding anniversary or things like that? And that's. Or their favorite hobby? He said, no, that's just being A nice person. That's not personal value. And this activator schooled me and said, personal value is knowing what is important to your client outside of the scope of the paid work that you might be engaged in. So what are they trying to accomplish in their careers? What are they stressed out about at work? Is it a new ownership structure? Is it a new boss? Is it an initiative that's gone sideways? Is it an underperforming team or team member? Or what are the things that they're passionate about outside of work? A cause, a foundation? Is there a challenge or a struggle they're dealing with or an accomplishment they're particularly proud of? And it's always thinking about, what can I do? Or maybe what can one of my colleagues in my firm do, or maybe somebody in my network, what can they do for this client to move the needle on those personal value dimensions that again, are outside, often way outside the scope of paid work. That's the stuff that creates real stickiness in a world that's crowded with. With really talented trusted advisors. The personal value is the difference maker. And so it's not to say don't be focused on being a trusted advisor, you should, but it's really not enough. And it's that personal value and thinking of your client as a person who has aspirations and fears and challenges and seeing if you can help them and be thoughtful towards them.

And that's the key. And I think I said this earlier, right? You're not selling, you're helping.

That's exactly right. Yeah.

Constantly be thinking of it like, how can I help them in all the aspects? And that's what client value is.

Yeah. There was a chair of a big firm who said during the research, partners have to understand why they got into this field to begin with. Why did they become lawyers? And they became lawyers to help people with legal challenges, with legal opportunities in risks. Selling is just a different way of helping them. It's. It is. Maybe not in the courtroom, might be a little bit. Might be on LinkedIn, might be a little bit different in the form, takes a different shape, but it's really just helping when you get down to it.

And instead of selling, we use the term relationship building, but the key word is building, not just relationship stagnant.

That's right.

You gotta be active about building it. So on that, then. Partners are very busy. We're asking them to actually practice law too, and manage associates and do all sorts of things. And I'm going to lead you because I think I know the answer of this. How you gotta be proactive but how also intentional do you need to be about your time and carving out time to do this type of work?

Yeah. So that this is actually the second, it's the first, but the second of the behaviors we talked about. So we created a little bit of like a mnemonic for people to remember what makes the activator unique. Activators commit to business development. They connect broadly and deeply and then they create value proactively. So we talked about that third one already. The second one is obvious, right, Is I'm managing my network. We talked a lot about LinkedIn. It's also about connecting broadly and deeply inside of your firm. Be a general contractor for expertise. Don't just be a single partner delivering a point solution. Right. This idea of committing to business development is about, and we know this, it's not just lawyers, it's endemic across professional services. And it's especially true for partners who have an aversion to business development. They will find almost any excuse not to do it. They'll let the client work, expand to fit the time. They'll volunteer for firm initiatives. They will do anything they can to avoid business development. Now for partners who are in, in charge of driving the growth of the or responsible for driving the growth of not just their book of business or their practice or their office, but the firm, they still have to develop business. But for most partners, they do business development when they have to. Like when I've lost a key client or lost a big pitch, I thought I was going to win. Or you just, things are getting slow and I just have to do it and it's psy, okay, I'll go do it. That is not how activators are wired. Activators have a almost metronomic kind of rhythmic consistency to their business development. Now they are not, and I think a lot of partners hear that and they say, oh, I know those partners, those are our sales focused partners. But activators actually do just as much client work as anybody else. But that means that they don't have the spikiness, these peaks and valleys of business development. Instead, it's a very consistent thing. Now we talk about what kind of, what that means, but why they do it I think is really interesting. Activators will all say that they. We used to, we're coming out of this world, a world in which experts and confidants reigned in professional services, especially in law, because clients could be relied upon to come back to us over and over again. If we were the incumbent, we had A huge advantage. It was a lot of work for our client to go find another provider. They would just come back to us, they wouldn't force us to compete for the work. That is no longer the case increase in every day it becomes less case. Activators know that if you take your eye off the ball when it comes to business development, don't act surprised when you lose a client and then suddenly you're going from like up near the top of the stack, rankings down somewhere in the middle or even towards the bottom. One really shocking story I heard was from a PR firm, their senior partner had one client. It was, I was one of the, I won't mention wish was one of the big four consulting firms and that was his client, had been for years. This firm always felt like this was at risk and the client was pressuring them increasingly about their rates and about their impact and in the firm leadership. This partner's very talented and they generated probably 40 or $50 million a year from this big four consulting firm. That was his client. They kept trying to push him to go find other clients and serve up opportunities and he'd say oh they need me over here, they need me over there, I'm going to really focus on them. And then one day the big four shop got frustrated, put the work out to bid and this partner lost. And he went from the by far the top billing client to the bottom like he was like zero. He had his book of business was completely evaporated. Inactivators are very conscious of this and they said look I always need a backup plan. I've always got to keep the wheels of business development turning because I can't rely on these clients to stay. I could do everything in my power to try to keep them but they might go and I can't be caught flat footed. Now actuators will also say that it's funny when we look at their time spend their self reported time spent on bd. A lot of people look at that and they say there's no way you could hit your billable hour requirement and do that much bd. That just doesn't, the math doesn't make sense. And that's true. In fact when we looked at the firm time tracking data and we tried to map it up with what these activators claim they did, it didn't map at all. They did about as much BD as the average partner. But yet we were talking to them and we had one partner who said, we asked her how much time do you spend on bd? And activator. She said a hundred percent of my time. We said, what, you're responsible for client work too? Oh, yeah, of course. And firm initiatives. Absolutely. I'm chair of this practice. I run this off, you know, all these things. We said, well, then how do you spend 100% of your time on BD? You clearly don't. And she said, every interaction with a client is an opportunity to develop business. And so it's a little bit of a trick question. Right. But I am always looking for ways to double count my time. But activators are also very creative. They're looking for the slivers of time in the day, during the commute, while walking the dog to check LinkedIn, all that stuff. Right.

Yeah. You have to. I continue to love this conversation. I am curious what your thoughts are as we look across large firms like, like Goodwin, for example. And you see different types of partners and different styles. Obviously, you need that sort of diverse approach to things.

Of course. Yeah.

Should we all be activators in some way? Do you need a mix? Or is that something we should all endeavor to be? Or is it like, I'm. I'm this type and it works for me, and that's good.

I think it's a really great question. And I'll say, when we engage firms honestly, one of the biggest obstacles to rolling out an activator program is often the firm's leadership itself, and especially if they've been around for a while, because they often have this mindset that only some partners will ever be good at this. When there are rainmakers, everyone else, you better get. You better hope you get pulled in to get shadow credit on opportunities. Right. And people cut you in. And I think the mindset for firms has to be not that you're born this way, but that everybody can get better at this. Now, does that mean that everybody should swing hard towards high levels of activator? Probably not. And I think the reason is that especially when we're talking about complex clients or key client teams, all of those profiles bring capabilities that are strengths to a client, and there is that diversity that we harness together, and then the whole is greater than the parts. That being said, I think that in our experience, our advice is every partner should be looking to move down the activator path. Now, I think where you sit depends on where you stand on this one. For new partners or for laterals who may have deep industry or government experience, but have never built a book of business, our guidance to firm leaders is be very directive, get them on the path, which is activator, which is much more highly correlated with success into the. In the modern client buying environment. For partners who've been doing this for a while, the guidance for them is what are the things that you do really well that clients value that have proven to be successful? And where are the areas that you might want to sharpen the edge of your business development approach, incorporate some activator dimensions into what you do successfully today and maybe lose some of the things that we know clients don't value as much as they once did. And then for our long tenured successful rainmakers, the guidance we usually give them is look for you. You might be looking for ways to future proof your performance because they like being on top, they like being having their name in life, they like being called out onto the stage at the partner retreat in being one of the top rainmakers in the firm. But client buying environment is changing and even these very successful rainmakers will acknowledge that because many of them been in this profession for a very long time. And they will readily admit clients bought very differently 30 or 40 years ago than they do today. And I am looking for ways that I can provide a little bit of insurance or future proofing of my success. But I think again it depends on where you are in your career. It also we want to think about a key client team. For instance, you would want the person running point with that client be an activator or be very strong in activator capabilities. But they can be very ably supported by folks who are strong confidants and experts, even debaters. When you need somebody to come in and push the client a bit outside their comfort zone, even if those folks are lower activator quotient folks, they can support that from a diversity of team kind of perspective. But our guidance in general is every partner can get better at this, but they should focus on moving incrementally, getting those small wins and not trying to become an activator, if you will, whole hog. Because it's not necessary in that sense. And it can also, as I said before, it can lead to psyching yourself out. And that's. That is I think we ourselves oftentimes are the worst enemies to progress, is that we think, gosh, it's too much, right? I'm not born this way, I can't do that. I'm not going to change everything about what I do. And then I just go back to what I was doing before instead of looking for opportunities to make those develop some different habits and take some of those baby steps to, to getting better. Yep.

One observation I had as I mentioned earlier is that this what I called the heroic partner model where we expect them to do everything. And I looked around and again I came from B2B SaaS tech world where I said in every other organization you have the product or the service that you're selling and then you've got BD teams, you've got sales organizations, you've got customer success. Everyone's there to support the product or service and here it's all commingled. So as I've now come into this role and I'm running the business side of the law firm, I often wonder how can my business teams, because I have a client development team, a marketing and comms, they do thought leadership, we have, have a research team, we have all these, I call it support. How can we, the non lawyers that do the business side of things bring expertise or help to, to push the partners to be more activator like. And I guess the second part of that is I often get you can hire people who are essentially activators without knowing that term.

Right.

Or people in my space who are well connected and who can make those calls and who can out thoughts on that.

I think we are all in a position to create an ecosystem or a platform off of which our partners can go and activate in the market. And so everything we can do as supporting cast members with resources, investments, expertise to help our partners, we should be doing. And I think you're exactly right. Partners are super busy and one of the key roles that we see BD and marketing teams playing is really as that sort of activator assistant or coach or support resource. What's one thing for a partner to commit to business development and put time on their calendar? It's another thing for a partner to have a plan with for what to do with that time. And so often what we see is that the reminder pops up in Outlook. Here's your BD time that you've committed to and the partner hasn't done any thinking, they haven't done any legwork. They stare at the screen, they don't know where to begin and they go right back to that client matter they were working on and they just revert back to old habits instead of developing new ones. So what we see media marketing teams do is provide a lot of that legwork. So let's spend time with our partners up front, really understanding the answer to the question why should clients hire you instead of another lawyer? Why should they leverage your expertise instead of others. Help me understand your unique position in the market, your experience, your differentiators. Then let's think about the market. Let's look at who you're already connected to in your network. Let's think about those who are outside of your inner circle that maybe resemble those who are in the inner circle. And what might we do to connect and engage with those folks? Might it be through an event, through LinkedIn, et cetera? Let's think about the court decisions, think about the regulatory environments, think about the news events happening in your target market and then let me go back and think about what should be on the punch list. So when that 30 minute invite pops up in Outlook or that 60 minutes for you to do BD, I've already set you up with a punch list, if you will, the 5 or 10 clients or prospects you might reach out to about what you know. Here's some background, here's other places. We're working with that client across Goodwin. Right. So you come in with that knowledge and so then you've got a game plan and you can really hit the ground running and get to activating. And then even more importantly, get back to what you were doing before, which is working on client matters, supporting clients on legal risks and opportunities and the stuff that you're here to do as a lawyer. And you can make that BD time super efficient. So that's where we really see those BD marketing teams providing really critical support for those partners so that they have the directed guidance and the support to go forth and activate in the market.

Awesome. Is there ever any danger of bombarding the client too much if we start activating the whole firm and we're all going after the same clients and having been a client.

Yeah.

Right. And this again is it's being helpful. It's not selling like I'm not. I don't feel like I'm being sold to. Then if everyone's sending me helpful snippets and information that probably doesn't bother me. Yeah, that's, you know, you feel like maybe there is a risk that we go overboard.

So I had an old mentor of mine who would call that a high class problem, meaning that we are most firms so far from that. The danger is actually more the client won't hear from us. Right. And they won't get that help and that thoughtful outreach rather than will bombard them. But that being said, I think you do need to be sensitive to that. And I think one of the key roles that technology can play actually at the firm Level is that coordination where we are not digitally, if you will, bumping into to each other in the lobby of the client's building. I'm not sending the client a helpful outreach and you're sending the same client to helpful outreach or somebody on their team. And we're getting our signals across. And the client says, hold on a second, you guys work at the same firm. In fact, I know for a fact you sit down the hallway. Why are you not coordinated? Why don't you reach out to me as a team? That is, I think that hits at something else that really frustrates clients. We talked about earlier, the fact that one of the biggest complaints, actually the biggest complaint clients have about partners is they don't hear from them often enough, especially lawyers. One of the other big ones is where clients feel like they are doing the job of coordination and collaboration, not the partners who work for the firm. So clients tell us all the time, don't make me walk the halls of your firm and explain to your colleagues what each the left hand and the right hand are doing. And also don't make me knit together the capabilities from your firm to solve a bigger problem. That's your job. That's not my job. And if you're not willing to do that, don't be surprised when I go with a firm that does do that work for me. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. This has been really a fascinating, amazing conversation. I think just a last question.

Sure.

What advice do we have for the client side? How can the client sort of help educate firms and partners that this is welcome that we want to hear from you more. How can they go about helping?

Yeah. One of my favorite moments, and it's interesting when I come and present Activator, usually I'm coming right on the tail end of a client panel that the firm is hosting. And I love sitting in on client panels because I find that clients, I mean, think about it like they're paying us. Right. But then they're also doing, contributing their time, they're donating their time to help us get better. And the feedback that clients give on those panels is fantastic. Yes. They tell us about the great work we do and the game changing support they pro that we provided as professionals. But at the same time they give us some tough love. Right. They tell us the things that we're missing on. You need to be more collaborative, you need to be more proactive, you need to be more thoughtful. You need to really understand how we like legal services to be delivered here at our company as opposed to all the other clients you work with. And so they give us some tough love. And that is a very generous thing for clients to do. And I find that clients, our partners, respond very well to that. I think hearing it straight from clients is a very powerful moment, and I think from clients, I would say the firms and partners are very eager to get that feedback. I think, unfortunately, they don't get as much of it as they would like. If we look at the annual client loyalty survey we send out or the call for panelists at the partner retreat, we get some clients who reach out. And unfortunately, oftentimes it's like the same clients who have our best interest in mind are willing to be thoughtful and generous enough to give us that feedback. But my ask if you will for clients would be, when you get that loyalty survey, when you get that outreach from the CMO asking if you'll be on the panel at the partner retreat, say yes. Yeah. The reason is not just because you should, because it's altruistic. The reason is that the partners listen and the firm listens, and then they respond to client feedback more so than they do to researchers like me. I think when clients speak, that's really what drives change and drives action. And it is in your best interest as a client to spend the time to give the feedback and to contribute some of your time, because you will see better client engagement, better service, better support, more value as a result.

Matt, this is such great advice. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time, and congratulations on the new book, and thanks so far. It's great.

It's been great to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.

All right, thanks, everyone, for listening. We'll see you next time.