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Instagram- @jeffdavis_bridgestone
YouTube- JeffDavis_Bridgestone
Twitter- @bridgestonecap
https://www.youtube.com/@ChainReaction-vh7rm
www.bridgestoneinvest.com
Welcome everybody to another episode of Chain Reaction. Today I have a very special guest, Ms. Kelly Barner, with the art. Of procurement. Coincidentally, I was a guest on her podcast and she inspired me. So now here we are, just a few short months later and we're gonna be talking about. You guessed it, the art of procurement. Ms. Kelly, please introduce yourself. I'm very curious to hear what's going on in your world. Yeah, no, thanks Jeff. I'm, I'm glad to be here. It was great having you on. The sourcing hero. So I'm, I'm glad to join you on, on Chain Reaction. Please, if you've, if you're still with us, don't stop playing the podcast just cuz I'm in procurement. I promise you it is way more dramatic and exciting than most people think. Like most people that work in this field, I did not grow up wanting to work in procurement. I, I took sort of a windy career to get here, but if you like to know how stuff is, if you like to peek behind the curtain around how a company operates, if you like to think about how the third parties that companies work with either create opportunity or in some cases create risk, procurement is absolutely the space that you want to be watching. So I've, I've been a procurement for just shy of 20 years. I love this field. I've also worked within supply chain and logistics within procurement. So we can talk about some of that if you want as well. But it is, we're, we're sort of like the group that is way more interesting than anybody knows in the organization. So I'm gonna be interested to have this conversation with you today. Yeah, so definitely I'm looking forward to it as well. And you talked about a, a winding road for over the past 20 years, so mm-hmm. So how did you get started or did you get started right away and, and procurement? Tell us about the beginning. What, what was the beginning. Sure. So I was working for a knowledge management program. The company at the time was called Royal Ahold. Now you may know them as Ahold Del Hayes. They're a a global supermarket retail and food service company. I just also happened to have my degree in library science explains my, my Boston public library shelf. And so I was working as a knowledge manager, which basically means analytics, indexing, search quality, content quality when the company, very inconvenient for me personally, had an Enron style accounting scandal and pretty much laid off everyone non-essential. So that included my whole team. But I was very lucky at the time. I was about two thirds of the way through a full company-sponsored M B A program at Babson College here in the Boston area. It was a ton of money they had invested in me and they didn't have a program requiring me to pay it back. So HR came to me and they said, how do you feel about procurement and sourcing? And I said, I love it. What is it? And when do I start And I spent the first few years in procure. Working to arrange contracts and manage supplier relationships for grocery store location-based services, pass control, floor cleaning, window washing, snow plowing, property management security guard services, all those kinds of things. Seriously, it's eye-opening now to walk into a supermarket. There is so much more complexity there than most people realize. And from there I spent some time working as a consultant within the space. That's where I got the opportunity to take what I had learned about procurement in general and, and program management and reporting and spend analysis and apply it across. C p g Pharma Logistics a bunch of different industries and spaces and, and truthfully, companies at different maturity levels. But I've been covering the space independently since 2009. Which has given me the opportunity to interview folks like yourself, executives, solution providers, consultants, and continue to both learn about the latest practices, but also truthfully to advocate for the profession. Because there's a ton that procurement can be doing for companies and it is an excellent place for anybody that is business bound, but doesn't necessarily know maybe totally what they wanna be when they grow up. Procurement is an excellent place to do a rotation and spend a little bit of. Yeah. So that's amazing. It sounds like you came out of a, a kind of a first, a first job. And got thrown into it completely. Yep. I spent my first few days at that job googling strategic sourcing. Yeah. Just so that if anybody came by, they wouldn't think I was a complete idiot. But it's, it's one of those things, it's almost instinctive. You start to see the world a little bit differently once you recognize all of these systems and processes are in place. Most people that fall into procurement. Then fall in love and stay, and I'm definitely an example of that. It's, it's like the thing I love most that I never know existed. And most people that work in procurement have their own similar story. Wow. One thing that came up that you were talking about all the categories, snowplow, we're in the south So see, I don't have a lot of need for those service. Well, we're curious what, what is it? Snow. Is this really pretty, we're gonna be Googling stuff. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna Google. What is snow plow? Oh, I can just tell you, you do not wanna be the person that gets the phone call from the store manager if the snowplow in upstate New York doesn't arrive on time. You do not want to be that person. Very high stake stuff if you're in the Northeast. Wow. Yeah. And you're in Boston? I'm in the Boston area. In the haba. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you, you're taking over a, a number of different roles and it looks like you went the self-employed entrepreneur route. I did in oh nine. Let's see. Yes. Oh nine. So I consulted right until early 2008 when I had my daughter. I actually was full-time consulting until the airlines told me they would not allow me to fly anymore. So I was, I was hardcore, I was right up until the end. I contracted for my company for a little bit as sort of a, excuse me, a freelancer after that. But then I, you. Ironically, I went to the number one business school program in the country for entrepreneurship. Didn't take a single class. If I could travel back in time and give myself a piece of advice, I'd say, you know, while you're there, just take one. I never saw myself as, as an entrepreneurial person. I never thought I would start my own business. But quite a few years later, I'm still here. And what I usually say is at this, I don't have a dog, but people crate train their dogs. Right? Like the dog is comfortable in the box. I am the opposite. I don't think you could get me back in a cubicle if you had like a shoehorn and a bunch of people pushing. Yes. At, at this point I'm just outside the box. I love the flexibility. I'm sure I work more hours than I would Yeah. If I had sort of a nine to five job. But I love every minute. I love being accountable for myself. Yeah. I, I, so, I, I mean, I'm gonna kind of go a different direction here. So, oh nine, was there anything big happening in 2009? Any anything like maybe a carryover from 2008, like maybe a really lousy economy, maybe recession. So I'm just trying to think. You decide I'm gonna go and start my own deal in procure. It's gonna be a procurement company during a recession. Yeah. Well, so here's the good thing, right? The good thing is when you start a business, you don't make any money initially anyway, So why not overlap that? But did you know that economy? Did you know that? Ah, well, are you learned? No, I don't. Eventually I learned very quickly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't think I realized it was going to take as long as it ended. It probably took almost five years. to be sort of neutral, like revenue covered costs. So it, it took a long time to, to get things stood up from a financial standpoint. But, you know, it's, it's given me kind of an experience. People will say, oh, I'm thinking about going on on my own and start on my own business because I wanna make more money and I wanna spend more time with. Yeah, can I give you some advice? This is not, this is not the way. Join a small company that's eight to 10 years in, like, if that's really what you're looking for. Find yourself a small company environment and jump in, because if you start, man, it's a runway. Like it really does take time to find your footing and figure things out. Find your space in the market and get your, your messaging all figured out. It is definitely a journey. And, and you went during, I mean, in, in oh nine, that's a, that's a tough one. And then you're branding and, and so it's, you're saying it took around five years. It did. How, what was that process like? And, and then you found your niche and, yes. So and I did actually, I had a co-founder that I had worked with at a previous job. What we thought was going to be our value proposition actually ended up being sort of the raw material for, for what we found out in the end head value. So we thought, That, that buyer's meeting point, the business that I founded at that point was going to be sort of like a white pages. Okay, you're in procurement, you need information, resources. Where do you go? Who do you trust? Who could you get in touch with? And so we started gathering all of this information thinking that would be the resource that had value. What we actually found out is that the more information we centralized. nobody used the term curation at the time. Mm-hmm. But what they would need was a trusted, somebody, a trusted term to help curate all of the content that was out there and help them connect with the right books, events, reports, people, that kind of thing. Interesting. And so from there, we, we actually moved into content creation. Nobody was a creator back then. It wasn't a thing. I'm, I'm sort of a writer by training and so that's what I went back to and I ended up finding that there are very few people that both love to write and also know anything at all about procurement, and it became a really unique niche for me to operate in. There's, there's not a whole lot of people that, that play in this space and can bring an authentic voice to written content or, or at this point, podcasts and video interviews about procure. Wow. So you kind of found your niche and it does take a little while, right? It does take Avatar, it takes a little while. You found your avatar, I found my avatar, yes. And it, and it, it takes a little bit, you have to be very honest with yourself. Mm-hmm. You have to use data to figure out what resonates with people. Yes. A lot of times what you think people are gonna be excited about, they don't. and, and you have to be willing to move away from that. I was always flexible. I, I didn't have a master plan, clearly starting a procurement business in, in 2009 with, by the way, a newborn and a 20 month old. Seriously, Jeff, like maybe I was just delirious from lack of sleep. Cuz it doesn't sound like a great combination of circumstances to start a successful business in. But longer term, it, it really worked out and I, I took years that weren't going to be professionally fruitful in any other way, and I sort of used them as my ramp to be successful someday. Yeah. And, and I can relate to you on, on a number of those fronts, right? I mean, I have a, a Well now he's a year and a half. But so a number of those factors we have in common, it gets easier. I will tell you this, it gets so much easier. Yeah. By the time they're like, you know, four, they just raised themselves at that point. I have, I have I have five kids. Oh, you have five kids. Oh my gosh. Okay. So. I can't, I can give you the, I can tell you all the different ranges that you're gonna be experiencing from Yeah. Plus your zone defense, like once you get past two or four of them. Right. If you're, if you're raising with a spouse or partner once you get past that number. Yeah. Completely different strategy. Yeah. It's, it's different. And then, you know, you bring in the challenges of, of the business and then work. Yeah. So let's talk, what's going on now? I mean, it's, it's been, you know, what are you seeing from clients? What are you seeing are the challenges? I mean, we know covid through a wrench. Yes. And it was a real mess. For every single sector. Mm-hmm. There was some companies that benefited Oh, absolutely. By their platform. Yeah. Amazon. Great for you. So can you kind of give us a, a 50,000 foot view of how are companies adjusting to the new, what's going on? Yeah. And. what is the, well, I'll let you go there. How, how sure. What are companies telling you now is the challenge? Yeah, so I mean, it, it really comes down to like three key things. One is data. data and digitalization, right? Every space is, is focused on that. The more quality data you can throw into any analytics engine it, it completely changes your competitive opportunity. The second thing everybody has in common is risk. We're concerned with monitoring it, managing it, mitigating it and especially being in procure. There are so many things that a company does through third parties, whether that's contingent workforce, whether it's material suppliers, whether it's service suppliers, back to the the snowplow people. All of those people are an opportunity to either create or stave off risk to your business. So that's been an enormous thing that procurement has dealt with. And then the third thing that falls into our wheelhouse that has also been huge since 2020 is the whole supplier diversity and e s g movement. Because a lot of times companies are executing against their E S G vision and their E S G strategy. Through suppliers. So it's about partnering with suppliers that are certified, minority owned, woman owned, veteran owned, right? There's all those specified categories but then also working with suppliers that have certifications that demonstrate what their carbon footprint is or how they're trying to make sure that their supply relationships are not having a negative impact on the environment. All of those different in. The rubber hits the road in procurement. And so we've been trying to do all of this at the same time without increasing the cost of operations, which has required a lot of creativity and sophistication. It's made it a, a high pressure time. But I think the benefit of that is that we've had attention from the C-suite like we've never had before, and most professionals in the field are highly aware that this is a moment that could be fleet. And so we're trying to make the most of it and demonstrate not just, Hey, we can help you get through this really difficult moment, but we have all of these other capabilities that can help the company over the long haul. So it's been, there's been a lot of reflection, reorganization, different types of investment bringing in different skillsets, even to procurement teams. But it's been a really formative and exciting time to work in the. so data risk. Mm-hmm. and, and ESG slash diversity. Yep. Yeah. Data I get, and I've, and we've had a lot of guests on hitting on that. Yeah. Can you touch on the risk a little bit? Yeah. And, and what absolutely that entails and what are, what is the C-suite looking. Sure. So what the C-Suite would really like is for us to tell them they don't need to worry, but Correct. That's not gonna happen. Yeah. So instead, it's about making really good decisions on who to partner with. And like anything else, I mean, the Pareto principle comes into play here, probably. 80% of your suppliers are gonna be somewhat transactional. 20% of them are going to be highly strategic partnerships, and that doesn't always fall out. Aro along money lines. So you can work with, we're the big companies. Everybody works with, I don't know, Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, right? These really large companies, regardless of how much money you spend with them, chances are they're not going to be a strategic partnership for you. So instead, it's about looking. Who are the suppliers that we work with, and which are the ones that if they disappeared tomorrow, did something bad that made them hit the headlines, you know, all of a sudden had their costs go through the roof. It would change our ability to deliver for our customers. And so we've, we've really done a lot of digging to help the company understand who are the most important third party relationships and where is there the most exposure. Now some of that is around understanding, you know, we have a multi thousand dollars part or assembly that we sell, but we have one supplier that provides this 5 cent widget that was customized for us that nobody else can provide. And so if that supplier goes out of business, we have a very serious business continuity problem. Maybe we should invest in. Maybe we should buy them. Maybe we should try to get on a standard spec. Maybe we should see if we can partner with somebody else to have them replicate the part, at least in enough of a comparable way. There's been a lot of very high intensity conversations around that, trying to understand it. Both what we would call first tier, right? Who are the suppliers you directly do business? but then also trying to get visibility into the risk beyond that. So if we're doing business with a supplier that seems to be doing a good job, they don't seem like a financial risk, a brand risk, an operational risk, but they're not doing a good job managing their supply chain. That's something that procurement has gotten more actively involved in, trying to create transparency around and then alert the C-Suite so that we can figure out a way to respond. Because whoever the biggest name is in the supply chain, that's who's going to bear the brunt of the risk. And one recent news example, I'm a news junkie that I can give you as an example of this. So at this point, everybody knows about the Norfolk Southern train, right? That derailed on February 3rd. They owned the train. They owned the tracks. They did not own the car where the wheel bearing caught on fire and actually caused the derailment to happen. That was a different company. That company had leased the car out to someone else. We still don't know to this day, it's not been publicly announced who leased the car? And so if you think about the different levels of company brand impact, there's the company that leased the car. They're getting no negative PR cuz we don't know who they are. There's the company that owned the car. They haven't been discussed at all because they're not really a household name. And not that a lot of people are discussing Norfolk Southern around the dinner table, but they're a major railway. Most people have heard of. It's their CEO that had to go to East Palestine, Ohio. Right. And so if you think about those operational tiers, that's where procurement can figure out where's our exposure, right? And, and what do we ultimately do about it? I guess what I would say to, you know, to that last part, if you didn't know who they were, You do now. Exactly. And nobody wants the way that people generally discover them to be, oh, we're really sorry. We just destroyed a small town in Ohio. That's not great pr. So everybody needs to be thinking about that downside before the event happens. Yeah. So yeah, that, that is, that is a great example. No. How do. Bring that up. Is, is that your way of, of addressing risk or assessing it? Because, you know, when I think of, you know, we're in Houston, we're an oil and gas country, and the way that large energy operators work is they've got manuals. Yeah. You know, an inch and two inches thick. For widgets for a single widget. Yeah. That is highly specified. You know because my friends in procurement, they've, they've been like, oh yeah, we're. it is very detailed for this, yes. For this bolt which most people looking at wouldn't be able to tell from a completely different bolt. Yes. And you know, I'm like, look man, I just, I just want some freight, bro. he's like, yeah, good luck. Okay. He's like, I'm so far remove, I'm trying to find this bolt, Yes. You know, we're talking about Yes. This one bolt. The, the type of alloy, you know, the, the hundreds of a 10th of a millimeter. Yes. That the threads are a apart. He, he's showing me like, yeah, these are, this is for the anchor and, and it it is very intense. Yes. So if you're that specified, On the, you know, individual units and, and you're building a 75 acre refinery Yep. You probably need more than one of those bolts. Correct. Yeah. How, how does an organization diversify their yeah. You know, how, how do, how do you go about doing that? Is it protecting. Manufacturer of that, of, of that product? Or is it really trying to source, and I'm gonna go deeper after this, but is it trying to find another source for that product? So it really depends on why. the, the centralization happened in the first place. Okay. So in some cases it's because either this widget manufacturer is so clever or you partnered with them to design a very customized widget. Mm-hmm. that's sort of one case. Mm-hmm. The other case that led to a lot of companies being overly reliant on sort of a single point of failure is procure. Over rationalizing their volume with fewer suppliers in order to save a fraction of a penny. So if we can take all of our. and focus it on one source of supply, we are going to get the best possible price for that widget, whatever ha it happens to be. Unfortunately, what that does is it deprives us of, of a plan B. And, and another story from the, the headlines. Ford had thousands of trucks sitting and waiting inventory that could not be sold, and the only reason it couldn't go is because the blue oval that says Ford on the front of the grill. That supplier had an issue. Nothing wrong operationally with the truck, no reason it can't be sold. But from a branding and accompanied standpoint, they're not sending those trucks out without the blue oval. And so they sat for months waiting for one supplier of a blue oval. No way. Yeah. And so somebody along the way I. I don't actually know what the blue oval is made of, but it's probably not some kind of space age, highly custom titanium somewhere along the way. I dare you say that. Okay. Because I will tell you that my F-150 platinum out front, that is, it better be. Yeah, well, I'll another connection point here. We're an F-150 Harley Davidson edition. Very last year they, they made that truck. Oh, that's a nice one. So we got one of those here too. Yeah. But you know, as a company you don't wanna send something out, out branded. but you know, cars sit and they age and the model year comes to an end and they depreciate even from a perceived value standpoint. Mm-hmm. somewhere along the way if somebody made the decision, either because there was a partnership incentive working with that supplier. or because they could save a penny per truck, and that helped a little bit when you did it for every single part of the truck to bring the cost down, drive the profit up. Those are the types of decisions where procurement is involved. That over time can become a huge constraint. And so it's, it's digging into each one of those situations, figuring out. that the Blue Oval producer is a constraint in time to hopefully not have this enormous grouping of trucks sitting around waiting to be sold. Those are the kinds of things where CEOs are looking at procurement to say, okay, where should I be worried? They look to us to help them figure out what's the thing that hasn't gone wrong yet, that we think there's a decent likelihood, and where we actually have some kind of option to do something to mitigate. Yeah. Where have we kind of maybe where do we need to simplify? Yeah. You mean as far as, and where have we not thought this through enough? You know? Yeah. Maybe the oval thing we, we went a little overboard. Yeah. Exactly. Maybe we should have had, had a couple suppliers, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the breaks, let's make sure we're covered. Yeah. Or the emission system or the airbags or the quality of the leather or, right. You know, any of those things that are gonna steer customer decisions you don't want to. impact the ultimate customer experience. You don't wanna impact perceived value and the dealership's ability to negotiate the best possible price. And so it's always this trade off. You know, I talk a lot, you know, in Newton's cradle where the little balls go back and forth and, and click and click. They're usually silver on little strings. Yeah. That's the world that procurement lives in because all the way, this way it's gonna be the cheapest thing possible. Probably stink. The supplier may violate some sort of regulation and go out of business. Okay. But if you pay the most. The value's not there, right? You, you're never gonna get that money back. So we're constantly playing this game of evaluating the circumstances, testing retesting, figuring out where constraints are, and ultimately finding out what makes a difference to customers, and then making sure there's an information circle so that we can factor all of that back into decision making. Yeah. Awesome. I have several topics that I wanna cover still. Okay. But limited time, so I'll let you choose. Oh, good. I get to pick. Okay. Yeah, you get to pick and then we'll, we'll finish off with a fun one. China, the economy, the globe global sourcing. So instead of just China Global, so pick from those. Okay. All right. So I'm going to pick China because I've never shied away from a really complex topic. And there are two different things that come to mind, and I think they're both examples of places where let's say Western based businesses have to make very difficult decisions. Good one. Okay. Is sustainability, right? So everybody wants renewable energy. Solar panels are enormous part of. The majority of the materials used to make solar panels comes from a place called Jinjiang China, where the Uyghur Muslims live. And in the United States, I believe it took effect in June of 2022, there was the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, U F L P A, which basically says if you export. From Xinjiang to the United States, you have to be able to whitelist prove that going all the way back to the molecule, forced labor was never involved. And there have been enormous shipments that either got caught up on the wrong timeline or didn't have the right paperwork that made it all the way to US shores and had to be shipped elsewhere because they could not legally make it through customs. So what's interesting about that is are we concerned about human rights and forced. Are we trying to bring in solar panels so that we can become more sustainable and have more renewable energy? You know, very difficult situation with China. The other one, you can't not mention, Taiwan. Right. We are highly dependent on not just Taiwan as a country for global semiconductor supply. I think 63%, 63% of the global semiconductor conductor chip capacity is associated with Taiwan. 53% of it is one company, T S M C, which is Taiwan Semi. And so if we wanna see what the potential downside is between China and Taiwan, We can look no further than Hong Kong. It's not worked out particularly well for freedom of speech, for living conditions for Western friendly business in Hong Kong. If Taiwan becomes unavailable to us from a semiconductor standpoint, the western world is in big trouble because I know we have the CHIPS act that's been passed in the US and the federal government is inve investing. 53 billion I believe, yes, in domestic fab capacity. It's gonna take a really long time. If my little buyer's meeting point journey to profitability felt like a long time, getting to five nanometer, three nanometer semiconductor chips from a big plot of land in the desert is going to take a little while. And so it's a race against the clock. We need to hope that China stays busy doing other things, and that we continue to be able to get this design coming from Taiwan, get their chips, and, and have them meet our demand. Because the availability and the low cost of those chips means that they're everywhere. We're talking about F one 50 s. There are thousands of semiconductor chips in a truck like that, and if they're all of a sudden either unavailable or they double or triple in price, That's a complete product redesign and without a lot of leeway, that's gonna create huge disruptions in the US in the western economy. So we need to be keeping an eye on them. It's not a simple topic. It's more political than most procurement and supply chain professionals either want to get. Or are prepared to get, but it's something that we need to be watching because so many of these supply chains very quickly jump off US shores and go to far flung parts of the world where maybe we're not comfortable with the standards of work and environmental sustainability and, and human rights. And so we really do need to be plugged into all of that. So that is why I pick China as my topic Agree and, and we're all. To doing business with China and some, you know, and, and absolutely some fashion or another. I know I'm daily doing it. Yeah. And I was, I was involved in some solar panel stuff and as soon as that act got passed, we were keeping eyes on it and of course was like, is this thing gonna pass? Is it gonna pass? It has passed and mm-hmm. The, the whole thing got called off. Yeah. So yeah, that's very real. Yeah. Last question, if you could go back to your 16 year old self. Oh goodness. Okay. What would you tell 16 year old Kelly? So I would tell her, it's gonna be really hard, but hang in there. it is so worth it. I'm, I'm very fortunate. I actually loved being in high school. I loved being in college. That transition from college to being a grownup man, that was a rocky landing, that was Like, what am I doing? I have no money. I'm not sure what I wanna be when I grow up, then I'm gonna get laid off. That was a really rough transition and a lot of times I felt concerned about the fact that I didn't have a master plan. I felt like I was floundering. but the fact that I wasn't wedded to a master plan gave me every single option on the board. And at each moment, I just made the best decision that was available to me. You've got kids, anybody else that has kids, if you've seen Frozen too, there is a huge nugget of wisdom in that movie. Okay. Poor little Anna. She's trapped down in the dark cave. She doesn't know what's happened to Elsa. I'm gonna create the scene for you. She's sad, she's alone. She's not sure how she's gonna get out of the cave, and she says, I'm going to do the next right thing. And there is so much unpredictability in the world, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. I'm gonna bring Anna and Mike Tyson right together into this story. Tell you what, you don't have a master plan. It's better off that way in every single situation. Just do the next right thing. And when you look. It's all gonna look pretty great. Yeah. So that would be my advice for, for 16 year old me. Just hang in there. You're gonna get outta this cave. It's fine. No, and it's not fine, but it's going to be fine. It's gonna be fine. Yeah. It's so funny as kids get older. I have my, they're all different personalities. I have one that doesn't stress enough and the other one that stresses too much. I'm like, which you two just, I have one. I'm thinking about selling to the circus, so, yeah. Yeah. would you guys like Blend? I know like you, there is a happy medium here. Calm, yeah. There is. Yep. Kelly, how can everybody get in touch with you? How can these CEOs get in touch with you so that you can help them navigate? Absolutely. Best way to get in touch with me is LinkedIn. Search for Kelly Barner, b a r n e r. You'll find me. You can also visit art of procurement.com. All the content runs through there as well and we're absolutely glad to hear from anybody. In fact LinkedIn's creator mode, which I have switched on, usually directs people to follow. Nah, just go ahead and send me a connection request. Tell me you found me on the Chain Reaction Podcast with Jeff Davis, and I'll be more than glad to accept your connection request and set up a time to. Thank you so much, Kelly. It's been a blast. I really enjoyed my pleasure, Jeff. Yeah, I really enjoyed talking with you. I, I definitely learned a lot. I hope everybody else does. And as always, we are sponsored by Bridgestone Capital, where we provide passive income opportunities for supply chain professionals all over the globe. Go ahead to Chain investor.pro if you are looking for more details. Thanks so much and be sure to like and subscribe.