How to Differentiate Your Payroll Business, the Value of Associations

Hi Cheryl, so you've been in the payroll space at IPPA for a little over 10 years, 11 years I think you said when we were just chatting. So you've seen a lot over the last 10 or 11 years. What has you most excited about the future of the payroll and HR industry?

You know, the, the landscape has really changed. We had kind of a boom of members A few years ago, there seemed to be a lot of people entering the space and really new members joining. And now we're kind of seeing a little bit of a consolidation, but also a broadening within that for each individual company. And I think what has me the most excited is that our members are positioned to become true trusted advisors for their clients now. The, the old days of just kind of cutting the checks and, and being more of a vendor that's just performing a single service is over. And if anything positive came out of the onslaught of regulations and tax credits and things that came out of COVID when everyone was just petrified and didn't know where to go, a lot of our members really stepped up and became that person, that go-to for their clients. And I think that's just going to snowball now as they go, they'll have earned that trust and can really start upselling some of those HR services and increasing revenue for their individual clients. And I think that's where I'm the most excited is just the, the potential for this new role that our, our members can serve over just being a vendor.

Yeah, it's really interesting. We saw a lot of that over the last 2 years as well. I just, I I joke, it's terrible, but I say starting back in March of, what was it, 2019 now, 2020? When did this all start?

2020?

2020. Okay, so that was like our Super Bowl, right? When the CARES Act came down, like you had the opportunity to step up and like you said, be a trusted advisor for your clients, start providing proactive content and resources. And I think it was a great opportunity for the locals and regionals. I mean, we were taking clients from gusto, from ADP, from Paychex, and specifically one of them, I remember him mentioning, he's like, we're getting all of our information from you guys anyway. So why would we keep working with Gusto when we're getting all of our information from you? And so I think it's a great opportunity to differentiate yourself and continue to, you know, like you said, I mean, sometimes is it about adding additional services, adding additional revenue? Yes, but really it's about creating value for your clients. And that's what we have the opportunity to do.

You're gonna become indispensable. Like they get so much from you, they're not gonna look to be switching 'cause The thought of having to figure out where they're going to get that guidance and that content and that knowledge, you know, is overwhelming sometimes.

So you have an interesting purview working for the IPPA. About how many member companies are there? Are you, are you able to say or no?

Yeah, absolutely. We have about 200 member companies and then additional 75 vendor companies.

Awesome. So you talked about some of that expansion of services and, and HR stuff as an example. Like what are some of the things that you're seeing people start to expand into at the member base as far as service offerings go?

Yeah, they're doing a lot of consulting, especially with, you know, the ERC and the tax credits that they can do. A lot of people were doing proactive outreach to their clients because their clients didn't even know about it. And so crunching those numbers and then bringing that conversation to them— so that's one thing that we saw a lot of. And IPPA, I know we tried to To assist with those conversations, we had a roundtable discussion where we brought in a couple of our members that have just really had a lot of success around that offering and let people just listen, kind of like you were saying, like how this kind of spun out of just having great conversations with fellow members. And so that was one aha, at least for the association we've had over the last years. We used to spend a lot of time at the board level trying to think of the content we could create to push to our members. And really our members are already doing it. We, we have this amazing knowledge base. And so we really just need to find the people that are doing it well and give them a forum to share it with the rest of the group. So that's really been our— we've done a lot more roundtables than versus one-sided webinars where we're just pushing content out because that sharing of ideas. And a lot of this is not a one-size-fits-all. And so to get on and, and hear the pros and cons and why maybe it won't work for you, but it's, you know, growing gangbusters for Romeo Chico down in Florida.

So yeah, I like the roundtable approach personally as a member because I like sitting in. I understand, you know, there might be somebody on there with 50 internal employees and thousands of clients, somebody with 10 internal employees and hundreds of clients. And, you know, it gives me a great snapshot of how different folks are handling it. And how we, you know, kind of are in our life cycle and how we handle things differently or the same as others. And it brings me back to like IPPA as a whole. So I think we were, I think we were in business like 4 or 5 years before we joined IPPA. And I always had this mindset, I'm a little ashamed to admit, but you might've heard me talk about this on a prior episode of like, okay, IPPA is like the old school, old guard payroll companies that are just trying to do the traditional blueprint of grow a payroll company to a few hundred clients in their local market. And Nothing innovative. They're all using the same softwares. They're all doing it the same way. Like, I don't want to be a part of that because we're trying to do something bigger, right? Like, this was my machismo where I was like, yeah, I want to— yeah. And so, so finally though, I joined. I think I'm Holtz. We talked about Matt before. Shout out Matt if you're listening. Um, was finally the tipping point and saying, hey, you got to come out to Vegas. You got to go to the IPPA show. Like, come out, trust me, you'll have a blast. It'll be great content. We'll, we'll We'll get together. And ever since then, I've been so bullish on the IPPA. I love it. The content's been fantastic. The conferences are amazing, especially love the virtual stuff. I get my whole team involved here over the last couple of years. But so talk to me a little bit about the value of being a part of an association like the IPPA and why folks like me have been coming and more folks are coming into the association.

Yeah, absolutely. It's It's about networking. I mean, we can push all the content out that we can, and we can give you all the resources online, but it's those connections you're going to make with your peers that we can help facilitate that's really going to be what helps you grow. And it is— we try to be very cognizant of the fact that people are at different stages in their company. We have startups, we have people who have a huge You know, footprint, it's, it's not just regional, they're national and there's something for everyone. We want to make sure that we're, we're providing content for all stages of your business. And then something that we've just really kind of turned our focus on in the last year or two with a lot of the virtual opportunities that we've had is we want it to be for every role within your company too. So it really, it, I mean, 10 years ago, it was an owner kind of a little bit more old school, you know, grow your business forum. And we're really trying to replicate that great network that our owners have been able to build within their companies so that when something comes up, a new regulation comes down, your tax manager knows 20 other tax managers in a similar position as you in the market that they can call and say, what are you guys doing? And so we're trying to, to bring that down throughout the entire company so, so that everyone can kind of benefit from being in the association. I mean, there are tangible benefits like economies of scale, and some of our allied partners do discounts and stuff which are wonderful and, and very helpful, but it's really those intangible relationships that we try to grow.

Yeah, I'm gonna give you the perfect example here. So if you aren't an IPPA member and you're listening in, the most recent conference was virtual and it was really cool, flat fee, your whole team gets to come. So that means, you know, your client success people, your sales people, your operations people, everybody was able to listen in and there was content for everybody. And there's a lot of, you know, chat going on in the conference. So they use an online platform that has a chat feature inside of it. And one of the things that came up just as a good example was, talking about what project management systems people were using, talk about what support ticketing systems people were using. You know, for us, we connected with a couple of people that use the same ticketing system and the same project management system as us. And we're bouncing best practices off each other. You know, people out of Colorado, people out of Tennessee that we would not have known otherwise. Right. And they literally just— oh, you use Zoho Projects too? Cool. So do we. How do you guys use it for this? Great. And so it opened up relationships and doors for us to bounce new ideas off of people and learn from them because they were further down the path than we were. So great example of how those things happen. I mean, it's not just this networking and the more forced way of like, oh great, now I know Cheryl and, you know, twice a year I get to see her and say, hey Cheryl, great to see you, and, you know, how the kids, whatever. It's real tangible business results where I can go, oh, how did you set up that blueprint in there? How's your workflow look? And so it's really exciting stuff for us. And, and I know that that kind of leads into the next thing I want to talk about of like this in-person versus virtual events. So I'm an East Coast guy, Last trip out to Vegas nearly killed me. I don't go to the West Coast that often. So like the, going to Vegas is a whole other story, but you can't replace that in-person networking. You can't replace that keynote on the stage. Jeb Blount just killing it. If you're listening and you haven't checked out the Jeb Blount episode, make sure you do. He's fantastic. So talk about what you see, some of the pros and cons versus the in-person and virtual events.

Yeah, like you said, there's no replacement for in-person and it's the keynote speakers and the excitement and being there in the crowd, but It's those little nuggets that you're going to take away from a side conversation at the bar that's really good. I find, you know, those usually are the most valuable and the ones that people can take away and really implement something new in their business or really helps them push something forward. And so there's going to be no replacement for that, but they— that comes at an expense. It comes at time out of the office. And so it's not a solution, especially for some of our smaller bureaus to be able to send their whole company. And that really is a focus of ours is to be able to reach everyone. And so I think you're always going to see maybe going forward a virtual component to our conferences, whether it's live streaming, whether it's an additional day. We're still kind of looking through what that would— what that will be, but we, we have committed to sticking with that path and being sure that we can reach everyone while we know that we want to be in person and we want to get everybody in a room again. So we're hoping that we can do both. And deliver to everybody where they need to be met. So coming to, coming to you through computer or live.

And those of you listening, feel free to provide your feedback after the show of like, what do you, what do you think if you've gone to these events? For me, loved the virtual stuff. Like I said, it was so compelling and awesome. The convenience cannot be denied of being able to join a conference virtually, being able to engage and interact with all these different people while a session is happening too, which is also impossible. Impossible to do in person, right? It's like never would have made that Zoho Projects connection in person because they would have been sitting across the room doing their own thing. And, you know, we wouldn't have been having a conversation while it was happening. So, but yeah, to your point, like definitely plenty of great conversations in person. So, so what do you think? I mean, so you guys are talking about possibly adding an additional day that could all be live stream, just having certain sessions live streaming. What are some of the options? What are you thinking?

I'm thinking probably more that certain sessions would be live streamed. And then when Maybe the roundtables and the open discussions that we have in person, maybe those are taken and then we have a separate facilitator for an online conversation for those of us joining virtually. I really think we want to bring both opportunities, but with a really strong in-person presence. So whether that's, you know, you need to have somebody attend in person and then your whole company can join virtually. You've kind of unlocked that ability. That's kind of one of the thought processes we're having right now. Because we do, we know that, like you said, Matt said, you have to go to Vegas and you're going to be hooked. We know that, especially with our new members and people who are maybe kind of just getting started, you got to get in that room. You've got to get with your peers. You've got to visit our vendor hall and see what ancillary products you could put to add some additional revenue to your, your current offerings to your clients. And that's, that's when we get the longevity out of our members is when they've seen it in action.

I mean, you've got to go to the Poster Elite Suite.

They did— they do some fun stuff. Yes, they did.

Shout out Paul and Brittany, always make that a blast post-show in Vegas. So you've obviously seen a lot. So nearly 11 years in this seat, you've seen a lot of members come, you know, probably some come and go, some that have been in there the whole time, some that have, you know, been in the last few years. What are the members that are getting the most out of the IPPA, out of the association itself, doing differently than others?

They're showing up and they're sharing. They're the ones that are coming to conferences and, and speaking up and participating and having members log in on the webinars. And they're the ones that are volunteering. I mean, the old adage of you get what you give, it really rings true right here. And it's not a plug to get involved in And, but it's true, you know, you've done podcasts with Lori Winters and Matt Elmholz, and Brittany's a huge volunteer for us on our planning committees. And I feel like the people that really put the time in to help shape what we're doing and have say in the content and, and how we're delivering it really are the ones that walk away with, you know, the biggest impact and the most value out of being a member.

Yeah, it's interesting. So how do you— like, I know for me I felt a lot like an outsider at the first one I went to, in that there was this group of folks that clearly had been around for a while, and it kind of the, the, you know, the good old boys club, if you will, good old boys and girls club of like, you know, they've been in IPPA for years, they all knew each other, and, you know, they're kind of all very vocal and having their thing. And I was just, you know, I'm traditionally not a wallflower, but I definitely was and continue to sort of be the first couple of years as I'm getting my feet and understanding the association, which is common in most— whenever you join association, there's a bunch of people that have been there for years and some, you know, you're just coming in. But how do you get folks more involved and kind of out of that shell in the early days? And what are some things that newer members can do to get more involved, do you think?

You know, I think that's a great point. We used to be— we used to do like a new member reception and things like that at the conferences. And that's definitely something that I think now that we're getting back to in-person that we should look at incorporating. And personal outreach. I mean, you were a new member, you obviously were new to the industry, you had a lot of great connections. I think if, you know, Matt had come and said, hey, I know somebody that would be really great on this committee, or if, you know, you, you know, wanted to volunteer, I think that's a little bit— is just gonna have to take that leap and, and jump up and get involved and start talking to people. But I do think that as an association, we can do a better job of personal outreach to our new members, whether it's a phone call from me or a phone call from somebody on the board, to outline what opportunities are available, just to see where there might be interest and where there might be a fit.

Yeah, that would have been good for sure. I'm, I'm still, to be fair, not entirely sure what opportunities there are to get involved. So this definitely might be some Some opportunity there.

Never turn away a volunteer, Matt. I mean, I signed up for our next conference planning committee right here.

Am I getting recruited on the spot? This is totally fair. What about— to what lessons can we take from that? I mean, what success stories have you seen? Have you seen any of the members really come in and just say, hey, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get involved in this thing, and that's gonna, you know, that's gotten and helped me to reach XYZ, or help me to get more exposure, just generally brought me out of my shell? What are some success stories you've seen over there? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, From a vendor standpoint, I know you had Nathan Christensen on this. I mean, HR AnswerLink, back in the day when they first started, you know, they came in and they made— decided that this was their market and they were going to have a presence at the show. And they are, you know, used by so many of our companies now and just have such a huge footprint. And so that, that is one. I mean, they came in and they just said, we're going to support the IPPA and we're going to come to these shows. And, and the members really respond to that. We— our members are really great at supporting our, our vendor partners that come out. Other success stories, I mean, our current president Deborah Sandeman actually touched on this in her president's message in our last newsletter, and that some of her closest personal relationships have come out of the association. And I know that they did— her and Renita Best just had a girls weekend a couple weeks ago. It's just really great to see things like that and And, and the sharing that— there's always was a stigma, I think, of people not wanting to share a lot of things in the round tables and the discussions early on because they felt like maybe they were sitting in the room with a competitor. And I think that has just gone out the window. Like, the people in the room and in the association are, are there really truly to help you grow. It's, it's not a competitive situation at all. I mean, yes, when it boils down, we're in a similar space and there sometimes can be some competition, but I've never seen that hold people back from wanting to help someone else. And I think that's really shown when you, when you sit in on those conversations.

So collectively, ADP and Paychex have about 1.5 million clients. And so that means there's 1.5 million opportunities for all of us to get new clients, right? And one of the things that I've, I've found really interesting, and you were just talking about it with the group, is how willing everybody is to share, or at least enough folks are willing enough to share that it's incredibly helpful to me as a business owner. KPI sessions, KPI sessions, you sit there and go, you know, on one hand, you're like, wow, we're not tracking nearly enough, or we're tracking the wrong things, or, oh, we're tracking the same things as them, or we appreciate this metric for a different reason than maybe they do. You know, sales strategies, all this stuff. It's, you know, we had a great conversation, Matt Umholtz and I go back to the first episode. If you haven't listened to it, just talking about trying to be different, right? You can't be, if you want to be different, be different, right? Like we're all out here saying the same message about our great local support, our great, you know, how nice and friendly we are. We're right up the road. Well, that's not that different once there's, you know, 5 other local competitors and there's 16,000 payroll companies in America or, well, sorry, 16,000 people that process payroll. So payroll company is different animals. But, but so, you know, we have heavy competition, but at the same point, like, you have to get out of that scarcity mindset of, hey, oh, if I share my metrics with, you know, Sean over at Resolution Payroll and he shares his with me, like, all of a sudden, you know, we've got to have some weird dynamic of who's doing better, who's doing worse, or what it is. And Sean, if you're listening, I think I've tried to recruit you into IPPA before, but you should, you should join.

I'll stick— sign up, Sean.

I'll stick Cheryl on you. This is over the, uh, But that's been really exciting is just to hear people really open up, see that abundance mindset, the understanding that, look, even if we're in the same city, I mean, heck, we just had one of our competitors in town here get acquired. And for years we had a friendly relationship where when we would go into one of their accounts, I'd give them a call and go, "Hey, Kevin, I just want you to know we just went into this account. I'm giving you fair game. They're looking at possibly leaving, so you guys have the opportunity to try to keep them." And there's fun and there's competition in that. And there's all sorts of great lessons to be learned. But I think a lot of us, you need to get out of that scarcity mindset and understand that there's plenty of business for all of us out here. If we did nothing other than just target ADP and Paychex clients, which is a perfectly valid strategy. Paycom just named an NBA arena after that was their entire strategy all along. So, or bought naming rights to an NBA arena. So what have been some of your favorite sessions over the years at IPPA events?

Man, that's not fair because normally I'm stuck at the registration desk and I don't film a lot of them. You know, Lou Holtz was fantastic and I snuck in the ballroom and listened to that presentation and he was really gracious with everyone coming up and speaking with him afterwards. Anything on the big stage at Sales and Marketing has always been just so much excitement, and especially this last year with the production that we kind of brought into it and it just made it fun. I like hearing the stories. I mean, when Lee Roberts got up there last year and played voicemails that people have left him and why he didn't call them back. I mean, that's what I love, I love to hear. I really like the member-led sessions and I feel like that's where the most value is. And that's when you kind of really get to know people and, and what they're trying to accomplish.

So what were the voicemails? They were salespeople who left him—

salespeople calling him trying to get time on his calendar. And he's like, and this is why I didn't call them. And he plays them for his, his sales team, like, and as a learning of what not to do, or, or which one he did call back, you know, put a positive spin on it, which one grabbed his attention and why he called them back.

Awesome. I had no idea Lou Holtz came to speak at an event. So I don't think I've talked about this in the podcast before, but over here on my wall. I have it. It's WIN. It's an acronym from Lou Holtz. That's what's important now. He used to tell his players to ask themselves 35 times a day, what's important now? And you think about how many times per hour that would be. If you ask yourself 35 times a day during your waking hours, it'd be a couple times an hour. But what it does is recalibrates your focus for that moment, right? So like, ask yourself that question while you're driving down the highway, get your fingers off your phone and off your stereo and off of it and get your mind out of whatever other thing it is and focus on driving. What's happening right now? So should I be looking at my other monitor over here? Should I be talking to Cheryl, engaged in this conversation? What's important now? But I think if you Google, you know, search on YouTube for some Lou Holtz keynotes, you will not be disappointed if for those of you that have not seen him speak, and he was a former Gamecock coach here in Columbia. So obviously we love him a little bit more, but yeah, that's awesome. And really appreciate that bit, Lee.

I'll have to dig into that a little bit more, but that's such a great reminder. I mean, just just to everyone, especially in this virtual world, it is so easy for me to be, you know, checking my email or checking my phone right now. I have everything at my disposal, but this, this is where my focus is. And I just think that's it. That's what I'll take away from this conversation today is just reminding myself to slow down, focus on what's important in this one moment and, and leave everything else to the next moment. As we get overwhelmed, right? I mean, who, who has, who has extra time these days?

Absolutely right. I think it's analogous to the IPPA thing as a whole. Like, one of the easy excuses is, I don't have time to go to these events. I don't have time to show up to these webinars. I don't have to— I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't have time. You know, the old sharpen the saw analogy, right? Or the, you know, give me 6 hours to chop down a tree, I'm gonna spend the first 4 sharpening my axe. You know, that, that's, that's where you have to be if you really want to grow. If you're an independent person who has a payroll company, that is you, like, you're not going to get to the next stage without learning from the people that have done it. And so, you know, you got to show up and be a part of these types of events to learn from others. So, so with that said, I mean, what are some of the ways that IPPA creates value for the members?

Yeah. So one of the things that we're actually doing, I'm just launching, I probably later today when I get the email out. So it's not important right this minute, but it will be this afternoon, is an online community. So we have worked with a platform called HireLogic that is specifically desig— designed for associations and reaching their membership and increasing engagement. So we will have an online community and we'll have separate communities for all of the roles within your company so that they can start to create these forums. Each community will have a resource library so you can upload documents and share resources as well as have chat. So you can just kind of get on there and ask some questions. It's going to be super accessible, and I think that's what I like the most about it. It will have an online portal where you can go and you can interact that way and check out the resources, but you can also sign up to get Daily Digest or Real Time Digest emailed right to you, and you can respond within that email, so you don't have to log into the portal. And so I know when we have 100 different places we have to go and I have my team's chat with internal and I've got my email and I've got my personal email, it gets hard. And sometimes I don't look in all of those places. So we're really trying to reach people where they're at. And so that is one thing that's coming. And I think it's going to be a big game changer for our group and answer kind of some, some need that we've had in creating the ongoing conversations with the association in between those in-person meetings. We're also committed to continuing to, to bring out virtual content to the group. And so our membership chair, Lee Roberts, he does a monthly webinar every third Thursday of the month where we try to bring a timely topic or a roundtable discussion on something that's really on everyone's mind. And so we're going to continue to do that. All of the recordings are then going to be uploaded and housed on this portal so people can go back and archive it. And that should also create, you know, a centralized streamlined communication where it's immortalized. And so people can go back and reference things even if they don't have the time right that minute.

So immortalized, that makes us super important.

I know, be careful what you write and be careful what you post.

All right, so I've got to ask the, the obvious question because you kind of alluded to it in there, of like, really exciting to have the community access. Like I said, the connections, the conversations, all that stuff to me has been the most valuable part of being a member. But another place to log in, Cheryl? Like, why not Slack or Facebook groups or somewhere that's already set up for this kind of stuff?

I know, you know, the, the robust nature of this portal, it will basically end up taking the place of our current website. So we'll have the public-facing homepage of the website where people can get more information if they want to join or find a payroll processor. But this'll just be the backend. So what we have now, it's not really adding an additional, it's kind of just taking the place of that. And, and I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be good enough. You'll, you'll want to go visit.

I was giving you the opportunity to overcome that obvious objection. So no, that's great. I mean, the content, especially the stuff, the past stuff for a guy like me, that's newer, you know, last couple of years here, been a member, I guess not newer anymore. I guess it's like 3 years. Years now. But, you know, going back and seeing, like, I once again had no idea Lou Holtz was ever at an event. I have no idea what some of the past topics are. Some of these things are going to be tremendous to be able to check out. So, all right, so first of all, if you're listening to this and you are an IPPA member, go tell somebody because 200 is not enough. We need more so that we have more people, you know, 200 of those 16,000 people processing payroll. We need more in IPPA so that we can all benefit from their knowledge and wisdom. And if you're not a member, what would you say to somebody listening right now, Cheryl, who's not a member?

Right now it's the perfect time to join. So we actually did just roll our new fiscal year, just started this month. So you're coming in at the exact moment that you need to be coming in to get full access to all the things that we're launching this year for our existing members, immediate access to this online community, the ability to come to our next in-person conference, our monthly webinar. You unlock all of that instantaneously, but But do it. It really is an opportunity to grow your business. It is the right forum, no matter if you are just starting out, if you have 10 employees, if you have 100 employees. We want to reach you where you are and help you get to that next threshold, if that's what you want to do. And if you want to sustain where you are, we want to help you with that too.

Now, if you've been listening to every episode, and I know there's like a core batch of you out there that have been, right? We can see the numbers and that they try, they continue to trend up, but there's, you could tell there's this sort of like core group that listens to everyone. And every episode, I think we've mentioned IPPA in some way, shape, or form. And every episode, you will also notice that nobody ever gets to come on here and pitch something that they do, right? Even if it's, you know, one of the companies that came on here that acquires payroll companies, like we never got into pitching like why you should sell your payroll company to them or a marketing agency that does it for payroll companies. Like, we didn't let him pitch why you should work with them, whatever. We're trying to provide valuable content here. But with Cheryl, I really wanted to give her the opportunity to share what IPPA is, why it's valuable to you, share some of my experiences with the organization. It's been a fantastic boon for our business. We've learned a ton in the short amount of time and the, the sessions that we've been to. So I really think it's important. I think people should strongly consider joining. When is the next event? What is the next conference?

Early, early spring.

Early spring. Okay, cool. Will that be in person?

I'm working on a, I'm working on a hotel contract, if that gives you— I don't want to show my hands, but awesome. Yeah, but if we will, we're committed to coming to everybody where they need to be. And so even though we are looking to do an in-person meeting, there will be that virtual component as well. And so, I mean, we've just had such a great response from. I mean, we had 900 people log in for the Business Excellence Conference last fall, and that's just something we're never going to be able to replicate in person. And we still want to reach that group. So we're so appreciative of our members and our vendors bearing with us over this last year as we tested out new platforms and ways to come at you. And I think we found a few that worked. So we're gonna, we're gonna stick with it.

I think it's so cool because we've, you know, not to bang home the point, but we just are never going to be able to ship everybody off to some other state for a conference. Whereas we literally, you know, sat down for weeks leading up to the conference this year saying, all right, hey, here's a great session for you to attend. Here's, you know, make sure you're blocking your calendar out so you can be at this session, this session, but also knowing all the while they were going to be sitting there for 60 days recorded inside the archive where we could go back and reference them, which was also hugely beneficial. So, so I love it. Love the virtual, love the in-person as well. So I think that's going to be a great compliment. Any parting thoughts, anything you want to leave the folks with?

Today. I just want to say I'm so appreciative that you asked me to come on and to talk about this. Like I was telling you, I'm super passionate about this group. I've been working with these individuals for so long. I mean, the, the ones that have been here since the beginning— Lori Winters, who was on the board when I first joined, and still get to interact with her on a regular basis. I just, I love it, and it's a really great fun group to be a part of. And thank you for letting me do my sales pitch, but I know I probably didn't do it justice that a current member would do, who actually can tell you about the tangible benefits that they've taken away and the way that it's grown their business. And so if you are listening and you're interested, you can reach out to me. I can give you all the nuts and bolts of what it costs, when, when things are And then I want to give you a personal reference of someone that you can reach out to and talk to maybe in your region or someone that's on our current board so that it's not a sales pitch. You can hear, hear from a peer why it is important to get involved.

Yeah, the cost is pretty negligible, y'all, and it's far— the value far outweighs the cost. I think it's a no-brainer. Um, and I do think, you know, please reach out to me too, if you're considering and you want to talk, I think I've made my points pretty clear here on AARON, if you will. So probably not much left from my side. Other than, you know, how to, where we're going to hook up in Vegas if the next one is in Vegas. Well, I really appreciate the time. It's been a, like I said, it's a delight getting to know the team at IPPA and trying to get more integrated into the community. And I'll definitely touch base with you on ways that I can help serve as well.

Thank you so much. And Matt, if you can in the chat or when you post this, give everyone my contact information. That would be great.

Of course. Will do.

Thanks, Cheryl. Thank you so much.