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Welcome to the Revenue Rebels podcast, hosted by Alan Zhao, Co-Founder of Warmly.ai.
We feature B2B SaaS revenue leaders who have challenged traditional methods to achieve remarkable results.
In each episode we cut through the fluff and dive deep into modern tactics used to achieve success: intent-based outreach, social selling, B2B Netflix, video marketing, warm calling, customer led sales, influencer marketing and more.
On the show you can expect episodes with those who create demand - marketing experts, partnerships gurus and social media superstars and those who capture demand - outbound and inbound sales experts, leaders, and practitioners.
Our goal is to shine a light on modern, effective and unique revenue generating methods and equip you with the insights you need to unlock your next strategic advantage.
We're huge proponents of signal-based selling and signal-based, data-driven B2B go-to-market as a whole. Ask us what "Autonomous Revenue Orchestration" means and we'll be more than happy to shine a light on our vision of what the field of B2B revenue will become.
For more content, check out our YouTube page and LinkedIn newsletter!
Adam Jay: [00:00:00] What is the number one problem your product solves for your prospects and customers? How a founder answers that and how concisely a founder answers that is very telling to what a potential engagement. And what a potential success of the product is going to be. And everyone's asking all these questions.
Adam Jay: How do I make more money? How do I sell more of this? How does the product do that? But very me, me, me questions. What can I do better? What can I, how can I make more? And all I'm sitting there thinking to myself is, you're asking all the wrong questions. Like it's all about you. And I remember I had this rep with me and she was talking to the doctor and the conversation was all about like, Our device and how our device would make the doctor more revenue and listen, don't get me wrong Our products certainly made the physicians more revenue You can't lead with that when you're talking about patients lives The doctor literally told us to get out of the office He said you think all I care about is increasing my bottom line [00:01:00] And i'm going to recommend a product that I don't believe in so I can make a few more dollars You have no right to be in here.
Adam Jay: Don't ever come back in this office again
Alan Zhao: Welcome to the Revenue Rebels podcast brought to you by Warmly. On this show, we cut straight through the fluff and dive deep into the specific tactics that B2B revenue leaders across sales and marketing are using to find success in today's environment. I'm your host, Alan Zhou.
Alan Zhao: Today we have on here Adam Jay. He's the co founder and CEO of Revenue Reimagined, a go to market special ops team that helps get startups to predictable revenue responsibly. He also co hosts the Revenue Reimagined podcast, which is a top 10 sales podcast. This guy was a radio show host in his previous life.
Alan Zhao: And prior to that, he's had nearly two decades experience in sales and a decade experience in sales leadership. Most recently as CRO at Falcon. And today we're going to be talking about how to get ahead, not being an asshole. Adam, welcome. Thanks man. Thanks for having me. A topic that's near and dear to my heart.
Alan Zhao: And we're going to dive really deep into this one. Adam and [00:02:00] I actually met at Costa Rica and Scott leaves his surfing sales program, shredding waves. We did. I just, I was in Austin with Scott least last week. That's great. Hope it was a fun time. So not as well as Costa Rica, but yeah, we had a good time.
Alan Zhao: Yeah, it's those that has a very special place in our hearts. Of course. Let's get into it a quick background by yourself and then we'll dive right into the topics. Yeah,
Adam Jay: so I, I like to call myself a recovering CRO. I have led sales at seven different startups over the past, call it decade and a half, started my career in big healthcare, working for very large companies, which is where we'll get into a little bit of the don't be an asshole story and got the startup bug, realized that I don't love so much tweaking.
Adam Jay: I really enjoy building. Started a restaurant tech, moved over to sales tech, FinTech, MarTech, I've done a little bit of everything else. And ultimately, Alan, what I realized is every founder struggles from a lot of the same problems. And it's getting that product that you're so [00:03:00] passionate about to product market fit and ultimately scaling revenue.
Adam Jay: And there's so much bad advice out there, be it from VCs, be it from other investors, be it from other founders, that the same mistakes kept getting made over and over again. And I got tired of being sold to like an investor when I was interviewing for a job, being told about the great product and the great runway and this fantastic model.
Adam Jay: And then you get hired and it's wait a minute, like that wasn't really true. And this is a little bit of falsity. And I, I like you sold me like an investor. How can I fix the problems if I don't know what they are? So about a year ago, I made it my mission to help as many founders as I can avoid those pitfalls to hold on to their equity, decrease their dilution and ultimately try to help bring the best products to market in a scalable and predictable in a non grow at all
Alan Zhao: cost way.
Alan Zhao: That's really interesting. So a part of this is actually identifying the best product to start off with. If you don't have the best product, then you can't scale the [00:04:00] revenue. So any tips on how to spot that?
Adam Jay: You have to have a good product. I don't necessarily think it has to be the best, right? Like, there, there's certainly lots of companies that do lots of things out there.
Adam Jay: For example, Outreach, Clary, Gong, Sales Loft. Like, one of them is the best, but they all compete very well. For us, prior to working with any client, We do a deep dive audit. It's mandatory. It's part of our process, and it's not an audit like we're going to send you an excel spreadsheet and ask you to fill out 20 questions.
Adam Jay: It's arguably a 30 day process where we get really deep into your business. We want to understand the product, how it works, the problems you're trying to solve, what the customers are saying about it to determine if we believe that there's a chance of success. We're not, none of us on my team are product experts, but we certainly are go to market experts.
Adam Jay: And every engagement starts off with the same. And I actually have it on a posted on my screen here. What is the number one problem your product [00:05:00] solves for your prospects and customers? How a founder answers that and how concisely a founder answers that is very telling to what a potential engagement is.
Adam Jay: And what a potential success of the product is going to be. And that's the number one question we work to help founders refine.
Alan Zhao: That's, that's so funny. That is so close to the heart right here. Because in the beginning we were very simple product and it was, okay, we do this. Now it's how much time do you have, man?
Alan Zhao: I wish we actually enlisted your help early on. I want people to actually go to revenue reimagined and talk to you to get the advice, but any teasers as to some of the unique approaches of how you scale a bit of market that you want to introduce.
Adam Jay: Yeah, I think it's a few things, right? We, the fractional space, the consultant space has really heated up over the past 6 to 18 months.
Adam Jay: I think the biggest thing for us is we are not consultants. It's actually the headline on our website. We are [00:06:00] not consultants. We are operators. We are in your business, talking to your customers, talking to your team. Thank you. We are an extension of your go to market team, bringing over 40 years of GTM experience to your company.
Adam Jay: So our secret sauce is that we are asking your customers, tell me more. We're trying to go three or four layers deep and every engagement we have. Is a bespoke engagement. We are never the people who are going to say, Alan, here's the playbook I developed at ABC company. We're just going to drop it here.
Adam Jay: That shit doesn't work. It's gotta be different every single time. And I really think that's what makes us stand out from the rest.
Alan Zhao: Fantastic. All right, let's dive into the topic, which is starting off. How did you get to be so good at your job that you were allowed to be an asshole?
Adam Jay: It's a privilege. I guess I was allowed to be an asshole as an individual contributor, but it certainly held me [00:07:00] back.
Adam Jay: How do you get to be the best? I think it's a few things. For me, it always started with two ears, one mouth, right? Like I say, a lot of times LinkedIn posts when I'm coaching a lot of people like God gave you two years and one mouth for a reason. It's so that you can listen. Twice as much as you speak, and this should go not just in your professional life, to be clear, but your personal life as well, especially if you want to be happily married, but separate conversation to me, it was not having to be the smartest person in the room.
Adam Jay: It was really trying to deeply understand the questions That people weren't asking. I remember a very clear example. I was a new high newly hired district sales manager at toast. Uh, we were series B at the time, definitely up and coming, but certainly not like everyone knows toast. Now people did not know toast then.
Adam Jay: And then the onboarding was a two week training in Boston, Massachusetts, with 30 other people sitting in a room, um, going through sales [00:08:00] training, product training, and all sorts of training. And I remember Larry Benoit was the head of sales enablement, and he's like giving this presentation. It's like day three, and everyone's asking all these questions.
Adam Jay: How do I make more money? How do I sell more of this? How does the product do that? But very mean, mean, mean questions. What can I do better? What can I, how can I make more? And all I'm sitting there thinking to myself is you're asking all the wrong questions. Like it's all about you and I, I didn't say a word.
Adam Jay: I sat there and listen, and I remember we walk out of the room and the room was called croissant because in typical toast, every conference room was named a type of bread. Um, and we walk out of croissant and I say to Larry, I'm like, everyone's asking the wrong questions in my opinion. And he's like, what do you mean by that?
Adam Jay: I'm like, we spent a whole ton of time talking about what we can do to make more money. I said, but my question for you is what are the customers want? Like when we walk into [00:09:00] prospects or we walk into customers to try to expand, what are they asking for? What do they need from us to feel comfortable either giving us their business or giving them more of their business?
Adam Jay: And how can we shape it? Our sales process, our verbiage, our offerings around that. And I remember him looking at me and saying, that's the right question. And it sticks with me to this day in my mind, you have to sit back, listen. And deeply understand your customer if you want to be the best, I don't care if you're selling software, I don't care if you're a plumber, I don't care if you're an electrician, if you're selling used cars, whatever it is, especially in today's economic climate, Alan, and you know this, like you up, you sell a product if you don't deeply understand your customers pain point, Alan.
Adam Jay: You are shelfware, or at best, you are another product that is barely going to get used, and you might get that deal, you are never going to get that renewal.
Alan Zhao: Again, that hits very close to [00:10:00] home, having pivoted four times and made those mistakes. So, no, totally makes sense. And I'm also curious that this is a perspective that everyone in the room didn't have and it's easy to be told the answer like, Oh yeah, you're supposed to listen to your customers.
Alan Zhao: But how did you independently come to this conclusion? Was there something the way that your mind works or was it experienced from your previous life? How did you How do you get to these conclusions faster than other people?
Adam Jay: Yeah, I think for me, the benefit I had as I started in health care, which is a extremely regulated An extremely complex space.
Adam Jay: I sold in the operating room. I worked in women's health and while it's very much a sales job selling medical devices, the one thing you learn really quick and that they train you really well on is the second it becomes about you and not about the doctor's patients. You're fucked. Pardon my French. So I got taught very early on that everything is about the customer, the patient, right?
Adam Jay: The patient's [00:11:00] quality of life, the patient's medical problem, helping the doctors offer something unique to their patients to build their practice. Because they're serving their patients better and I took that with me to tech and I remember Whitney Parachak and we'll talk about her later was my VP of sales and it was ingrained in me from early on the day you try to sell a doctor a device or get them to use more of the product or whatever because it's about you.
Adam Jay: And not about helping their patients is the day that physician will never speak to you again. And I watched before I was a manager, I was a field sales trainer is a very popular role in health care. It's field sales. You are like a top rep and you get a new hire that comes and rides with you for a week is basically what it is.
Adam Jay: And I remember I had this rep with me and she was talking to the doctor and the conversation was all about like our device and how our device would make the doctor more revenue. And listen, don't get me wrong, [00:12:00] our product certainly made the physicians more revenue. You can't lead with that when you're talking about patients lives.
Adam Jay: The doctor literally told us to get out of the office. He said, you think all I care about is increasing my bottom line and I'm going to recommend a product that I don't believe in? So I can make a few more dollars. You have no right to be in here. Don't ever come back in this office again.
Alan Zhao: If only sales reps had the same perspective about how they sell and they get speak in a way that helps their customers, how different would the world be
Adam Jay: night and day?
Adam Jay: Everything has to open. With pain. And that's where discovery comes in and constant discovery. I think the problem we have with discovery, not to change this into a discovery workshop, but discovery is like the Spanish inquisition, right? I'm going to get Alan on the phone and I'm going to tell me about this.
Adam Jay: And what do you do for this? And what do you do for that? And how do you, and it's so offensive. It needs to be natural and it needs to truly be understanding physicians. Patients, tech founders, tech CEOs, CFOs, [00:13:00] CROs, whoever. They can tell if you genuinely care and you genuinely want to solve problems. Or if you have commission breath and you're going through the Spanish inquisition to figure out how to tweak your slide deck to hit what they want to talk about.
Adam Jay: Fantastic. It can't be the
Alan Zhao: latter. So now that we figured out how you got to be so good at your job, what were the transformation to asshole like? Wait, how did that happen?
Adam Jay: The transformation to asshole? Oh, I. I'm a fiercely competitive person. I always have been. I want to win. Whether that was playing football in high school, whether that was dating in high school, whether that was having the best car, whether that was selling, no matter what it is, I wanted to win.
Adam Jay: And I was blessed. I was truly blessed and [00:14:00] fortunate to Going back to my medical device days, like I was rookie of the year. So what does that mean? You, you weren't hired for the full year. You're the new hire and you rank the best out of your new hires. I backed that up with territory manager the next year and the year after as well.
Adam Jay: So I'm now in my mind of shit, like. I'm the best, right? Three years in a row. No one's touching me and people would ask me, like, how do you do it? And I would always give this like bullshit. I don't know, man. Like, it's just the way I sell me answer. I had this belief for this mindset, wrong mindset that if I gave you my secret, if I told you how I sell or more importantly, how I listen, how I interact with my physicians when I'm out in the field, What we're saying when we're at dinner, this is like back when you could take people out to dinner, you're going to then take that and you might be better than you might overtake me.
Adam Jay: And that can't happen, right? Because I have to be number [00:15:00] one and it turned me in to an a hole. And I remember clear as day. I was, again, after three years, a district manager role opened up and of course, I'm going to apply. I'm the number one rep. Why wouldn't I get this job? And I apply for it and I don't get it.
Adam Jay: And my, my mind, like even sitting here now, like my mind was blown that I didn't get this job, but I didn't ask for feedback because I'm too, I have too much of an ego to ask for feedback. Like I'm going to be pissed at the world and stomp and I remember Nick was the person who got the job, his last name shall go nameless.
Adam Jay: And he called me after he got the job and I congratulated him in some half ass backwards way. And then he told me like, what, like he's right, he's the manager now. So this is what I need you to do. We're going to have a weekly one on one and I should have been fired for this. I was like, great. We could have a weekly one on one, but the time you asked for, it doesn't work with my schedule.
Adam Jay: Like I work at this time. So we could have a weekly one on one at this time. Yeah. Young 20 year old son, 20 something year old kid. And like, Looking back, so [00:16:00] uh, again, I'm the asshole, and he very much put me in my place. As he should have, and Nick then had something, something happened. He moved and got a, you know, lateral position and the role came open again.
Adam Jay: So I apply for the role second time, of course, I'm going to get the job now. I didn't get it the second time. And this time I started having really good mentors around me. Who would coach me and guide me. And they told me like, you need to ask your VP why you didn't get this job. Otherwise, you're going to be in this vicious cycle.
Adam Jay: So we were at the San Diego Marriott marquee at a national sales meeting and Whitney Parachak, one of the best leaders I've ever met in my life. Sat me down right outside by the, I can remember it like, like it was yesterday at the water. And she's don't ask a question. You don't want the answer to, do you really want to know why you didn't get this job?
Adam Jay: Cause if you want to know, I'm going to tell you, but are you sure you're prepared for the answer? She knew the answer wasn't going to be like, Oh, your sales skills are off. Like some [00:17:00] little kind thing that we could tweak. And she told me very clearly, the reason you didn't get the job was because you're an asshole.
Adam Jay: And my mind would like, What do you mean you're the number one rep you won't tell anyone why or how people ask you for help you brush them off and you tell them it's not your job to help them people ask for your secrets and you tell them that you won't tell them there's your secrets you have it in your mind that If you share what makes you successful, you're so afraid of not being on top and no one wants to work with people like that.
Adam Jay: You don't realize is that winning is a team sport. And if you tell people what you're doing, how you're doing it, you coach people and guide people motivate you. Sure, you're going to lift them up and sure they're going to perform better. But they're not going to overtake you. It's not like they're suddenly going to use what you've been using for years and be the best person.
Adam Jay: And if they are, God bless them, but the goal is to make everyone better. [00:18:00] And by teaching and sharing and showing you actually are improving your skill set as well. And P. S. People are going to start to like you and start looking at you as a resource. And that's the kind of person People want to work for and I use the term work with Whitney very much use the term work for but she said to me as a leader.
Adam Jay: You have one job. Your job is to make people want to run through a brick wall for you. Period. The end. I need you to do this. I'll certainly explain the why, but that your team trusts you and believes in you so much that they're willing to do anything for you and they can't be. Oh, I need you to do this because I need to make my commission like it's got to be the why and that conversation still sits with me very much to this day and has shaped my entire leadership philosophy of don't be an asshole to the point.
Adam Jay: And I was telling you this before the show that like I have to remind myself [00:19:00] now of yeah. It's okay to take credit, right? Like it's okay to acknowledge the things that you do. I do a great job of saying things like I have a team that makes me look really good, right? Or hey, Adam, like you had a record breaking quarter this year.
Adam Jay: Yeah, I did. But at the end of the day, like the team had a record breaking quarter, right? Like I'm just the coach. And I believe that's true, right? My job is to coach. But it's okay to take some credit.
Alan Zhao: That's a fantastic story and character arc change. And so what happened next? I mean, you went from manager, eventually manager, and you got to VP in 18 months.
Alan Zhao: That's incredibly fast. How did that happen?
Adam Jay: I mean, it was a few things. I changed industries, what I realized in healthcare. So I was with Hologic for almost 10 years. I loved every minute of it. And I realized that I was never going to, in any foreseeable future, be the VP of sales at a public, at a multi billion dollar public [00:20:00] company, like I was 20 something years old, like it's not going to happen.
Adam Jay: And I learned a lot, but I wanted to try something new. What I realized is I got to, one of my best roles ever at Hologic was I, I was like a regional director for special projects, which basically means like I got to experiment all day long and try new things. And I loved that. Um, and that's what got me into tech.
Adam Jay: I was talking to a friend of mine who's what you do is you're this little startup incubator inside this big giant company. Go work for startups. I didn't know what a startup was like, what's a series a, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. And someone introduced me to the folks over at toast.
Adam Jay: They had the best recruiter I've ever met in my life. Jeannie Wilkinson. They were looking for someone to come in and lead Florida. And that was my foray into like tech startups. And I worked my way up there from a district manager to a regional director, to a regional VP. And then ultimately got a VP of sales role.
Adam Jay: And it was all based on helping others. Like if I look at the number one thing that's made me succeed, don't [00:21:00] get me wrong. Like you're not getting promoted unless the numbers go up into the right. That's just a fact. But in most companies. There is a likability trait. No one wants to work for or with an asshole.
Adam Jay: Like you don't want an asshole on your executive team. And I think that taking what I learned early on, listening to customers, changing that to listening to my colleagues, to listening to my peers, to listening to, I call it managing up, down and sideways and listening to everyone is what allowed me to make that transition because I was always willing to listen.
Adam Jay: I was always willing to experiment. I was always willing to learn, but like I was the guy Allen that, Hey, you want, you, you need someone to try this out with a team. Great. My team will do it. You want to try this wacky initiative? My team will do it. You need someone to go bring four new field reps in Podunk, Louisiana.
Adam Jay: I'll even go do it for a month. And that willingness to always try new things, I think, allowed others to see that, number one, I'm a team player and I'll do anything for the company. But [00:22:00] number two, allowed me to try and experiment with so many things that, I'll just use the term, let go, let God, right? Sure, I might take a money hit.
Adam Jay: Maybe this team isn't going to perform as well. But man, I'm going to learn something and I'm either going to learn something that's really good that I can bring that back to my team, or I'm going to learn something of how we ain't ever going to try this y'all cause this is horrible. That that's how I got into like senior level leadership.
Alan Zhao: It makes sense. Cover as much surface area of wacky ideas until you find the truth of what actually works and then democratize it.
Adam Jay: Do the shit that doesn't scale. Like at the end of the day, and listen, I have a business based on scalability, but to get to scalability, you got to do the stuff that doesn't scale first.
Alan Zhao: So what does this look like before you painted the picture of what it was like to be an asshole and be incredibly successful as an IC now as a manager, a leader, an executive, what does it look like to not be an asshole and word likes of the It's secondary order effects that [00:23:00] people could see.
Adam Jay: I think there's a huge difference in what people think leadership is and what leadership is.
Adam Jay: And I, I liken that to, and I'm going to give myself a shameless plug here cause we, I built a course on it. There's a difference in being a manager versus being a leader. And I think that arguably is the difference in how you build and scale as a asshole versus non asshole. Managers manage processes.
Adam Jay: Managers tell people what to do, how to do it, use this system, use this tool, follow this process. Anyone can do that. I can arguably train my soon to be 13 year old on process and tell him to go tell everyone else how to do it, check the boxes, run the reports, look at the spreadsheets. Anyone can do that being a leader, having people want to work with you, choose to follow you from company to company, [00:24:00] seek out your advice requires a different skill set.
Adam Jay: It requires being deeply invested in your people. I cannot tell you the amount of sleep I have lost because people on my team have struggled, whether it be not hitting sales, not hitting commissions, family members passing away. You have to be deeply committed to your people. I do not believe that personal and professional lines cannot cross.
Adam Jay: I'm actually the opposite. I want to know your wife's name, your husband's name, your kid's name, what your what your kids want for their birthday. I think all that is important. I want to get to deeply know those on my team. It doesn't mean we're family. I don't believe like any company that tells you your family, cancel me if you want, run away.
Adam Jay: You're not family. But if you don't care about people, don't care about you. You have to get to know your team and understand what motivates them and how you could get the best out of them. My job as a leader is to get you where [00:25:00] you want to go longterm while at the same time Maximizing your potential for the time that you work for me.
Adam Jay: So what does that mean? Shannon Brennan is one of my favorite people of all time. She worked for me at SwagUp when I led sales there and she wanted to be in marketing. She was in sales, she wanted to be in marketing. And my job was to get her to marketing. As much as it would hurt me and it sucked because she was great, that's what she wanted to do.
Adam Jay: So we put together a plan and I certainly maximized her sales ability when she was on my team. www. swagup. com But my job was to get her involved in marketing special projects and get her exposed to the copywriting side of the business and get her exposed to working with marketing leadership and all of that.
Adam Jay: And ultimately, she moved on to the marketing team within the company and has since moved on. But that's what a leader does. Uh, not a manager is going to hold you back, right? Sure. You want to be a marketing, but Alan, your job right now is sales and I need you to sell. What's going to happen? You want to be in [00:26:00] marketing.
Adam Jay: You're either going to do it here and I'm going to retain you as an employee or you're going to go do it somewhere else. Period. The end. So as a good leader, you get the best of both worlds. You have to be deeply invested in your people. And I think the other thing that people don't talk about enough when it comes to not being an a hole and how to lead Is you have to be willing to take feedback, you have to create an environment with your team that if you do something, say something that doesn't inspire or comes off wrong or rubs people wrong, or you make a wrong decision, like you roll out a wrong initiative.
Adam Jay: You have to be willing to walk it back. You can't die on your Hill. One of the first things I said, I remember I inherited a team of 170 people. I was like, listen, like I'm going to experiment with a lot of stuff and some of it's going to work and some of it's not. And if I roll something out that you think is absolutely stupid, I have no problem with you telling me so privately and respectfully don't do it on a call of 177 people.
Adam Jay: [00:27:00] Um, but privately and respectfully, and let's have a conversation about it. And if I'm wrong, or if we try something that doesn't work, I'll be the first one to get up there and be like, man, that was not a bright idea. Shouldn't have done that, but thanks for trying. That willingness to admit mistakes is something you don't see from a lot of leaders and the leaders that I know and respect out there, the Scott Lisas of the world, the Kevin Dorsey's of the world, the Sam McKenna's of the world, the Kyle Coleman's of the world are the ones who will say, you know what, I was wrong.
Adam Jay: It's okay.
Alan Zhao: I really like that a lot. I think you're right. The leaders who can admit that they're wrong, they get a lot of respect from the people that follow them.
Adam Jay: All in on this, right? This is gonna change the game. Not so much. You could die on the hill because what a lot of, what a lot of managers will do is, this was a great idea, but you guys didn't execute it properly.
Adam Jay: That's why it didn't go anywhere. You didn't execute it properly. No, it's not that you didn't execute it. It's that the idea sucked. [00:28:00]
Alan Zhao: We, we've all been there. I think it's very hard to admit when you're wrong. I might, I really enjoy the story arc from beginning to end. I feel like this complete transition into this new personality, it's new person, it shows your adaptability as a leader, as an individual tribute as a person.
Alan Zhao: So such a pleasure having you on. How can people find out more about yourself?
Adam Jay: Great LinkedIn. com backslash Adam B as in boy, J A Y or. The better place to find us is revenue hyphen reimagined. com. There you could find information about us, the podcast, the newsletter, all things go to market. Fantastic.
Adam Jay: Adam,
Alan Zhao: thank you so much for
Adam Jay: joining. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. [00:29:00] Cheers.