Playing for the Championship

episode we're on. I think it's three three three of yeh three into I'm so proud of Alexa for coming into the studio today. She's like from the star spangled banner the Super Bowl pink she had the flu. At least you're not spending lozenges out you know what during the super Bowl, guess what I was doing sleeping? I was asleep and he wants three for three. I'm sick three times already. Well, hopefully this is the end. I blame it on you. Many people say that I'm contagious,

so take that as you will. Um, But that said, twenty eighteen, we are kicking it off. So much change is happening in the industry that we will be opening up the I a B Annual Leadership Meeting out in Palm Desert, California next week. If you have an already booked your ticket, book it, come join us. I think that it's going to be a lot of really good conversations, and I think the IB this year is doing something

different than they've ever done. They're having a lot of kind of up and coming brands on stage talking about what it means to be a twenty one century brand, and they're going to be the ones talking. Well a lot of I think legacy brands are going to be also talking, but in the audience participating right, So we're excited to talk to brands like Glossier. We're going to see a way out, They're excited to see our girl Rachel typograph and action on the knowledge with T Mobile.

So a lot of exciting conversations and mashups of different types of brands on stage, so it'll be definitely an interesting dialogue. And now have people like Jet dot Com there, you know, Leaver is going to be there, Lo is going to be there. So a lot of people representing the content space, the entertainment space, the software space, the

text space. I think it's going to be a really interesting conversation and we will bring it all back here and talk to you guys about what we learned UM and what we think are kind of some of the

most interesting trends. But one thing I'm really impressed with is that Randal Rothenberg and the team over at i B has done some killer research around not just what it takes to be a century brand and the brand side of it and the consumer side of it and the branding in the marketing side of it, but really like what's the infrastructure that's underpinning this growth in direct to consumer brands. And it's a really really interesting piece of research that they're going to be publishing at the

i B Leadership Forum. So one of the big takeaways that we are learning is leadership, UM. What it takes to obviously not just create Century brand but certainly run one, but be a leader of the right, be a leader of the twenty yeah right, a visionary that I think

brings people up. We there's some really awesome quotes from our next guest, Roth Martin, who's CEO and founder of Blackbird, really a new consultancy out on the field, who is combining UM kind of harvesting and maturing leadership like people right, and companies and thinking about new ways that established companies change the way they create and market and the way they show up in market, right, and how they create more meaningful ties to their consumers and maybe even open

up new verticals that they can play in. So interesting conversation, and I think that leadership is really at the center

of it. Yeah, And I think in with the rise of so many DTC brands, like some of those we just rattled off, whether it's Glossier, Casper Away, all of your fan favorites in the podcasting space, so to speak, it'll be interesting, um to see how those who have had a tremendous trajectory challenging some of the legacy bra ends in some of the biggest categories react and adapt to sort of what the new leadership and business plan

or model looks like in and beyond. So with that, we're going to talk to CEO and founder of Blackbird, Ross Martin. We'll be right back and we're back in the studio with Ross Martin, CEO and founder of Blackbird. Hi Ross, thanks for coming. I'm so excited to be here. I've wanted to come here since you started this podcast. I think we were talking about it at the beginning and I said, would you come when you come? When you I'm all about this, I'm like your biggest fan.

So Ross, you have had kind of an amazing career and I want to talk about Blackbird, but first I want to talk about your background. Where did you start? Well, I just I have the strangest background for someone who's in media. I don't even know how I got here, you know, I I think we all feel that way, right, Yeah, Like, what did you want to be when you were growing up? Um?

So I first wanted to be an elevator man in Manhattan. Yeah, you know, I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I think that's why I've never in my life besides my first job, never in my life had a job that anybody had before me. Like I've never inherited a job description. Interesting. My first job was selling women's shoes, That's it. I didn't even

know what the funk I was doing. God, yeah, I was Albundi, but I was sixteen years old and I sucked, Like I don't even think I sold more than five pairs in like an entire summer. But regardless, that was my first job, and every other job I had since then it was a made up job. And the thing is I went to school for poetry. So it's like that where blackbird came from? Well, it's interesting, you know, Alex talked about that, and now he's going to tell

us the story because it's damn good. Look, there are like five origin stories for the name blackbird. So the obvious one that everyone who's you know, read any poetry before will always say is thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird poem by Wallace Stevens. And there's an incredible first stanza for that poem, which just so I don't get it wrong, and are you going to free? I'm not going to free, no, not So the first stanza

is three lines, rightam, drop a beat on this. Yeah, among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird. And so what I love about that stanza is in three lines, Stevens goes from this huge, wide, establishing shot of twenty snowy mountains where your camera, your eye is so far back to be able to take all of that in right, and then not even two lines later, he's all the way in on the single eye of a single blackbird on a single snowy mountain.

And the idea that you could move from one perspective all the way down just that little I and be so specific or atomic is really a pretty big driving force behind Blackbird and what we're trying to do. Like, I got it immediately. I love it. You think a lot like artist or filmmaker, and you have a little bit of background in the entertainment world. I mean that's where you really started. After the shoes. I want to tell,

how do I get from elevator? Man? I went to Yeah, so I went to poetry school and I went to wash you in St. Louis, and there were five Did anyone even know that you could go to graduate school for poetry? Yes, you can do that, you guys know. So I was the only one that wasn't on scholarship, right, and I just I had to work at a bar like and I was getting everybody else drunk while I was working behind the ball. But the idea of taking five poetry classes at the graduate level every semester for

two years drove me nuts. So I was looking for an easy way out, and I took a screenwriting class and I wrote a screenplay that was really shitty, but it was like the best one that year. So I won like the hundred dollar prize from the school. And my professor, who is a producer, said, you should do this for a living, like you can be a screenwriter. I want to introduce you to Spike Lee. And so he did, and um, and I met Spike and he

invited me to come work for the summer. I read about five hundred scripts and then after grad school, I returned and I was his story editor and my job was to find projects for Spike to produce or direct that the rest of the Hollywood system was not seeing, not betting on. This was like the Blacklist before the Blacklist. Yeah, it was. And Spikes, you know, he's an amazing champion of talent and voices that just otherwise would never get hurt.

He doesn't get credit for that because he's so loud, but he does a lot of work behind the scenes. And I got to do a lot of that work at a really young age. And well I should tell you, um that, just so nobody thinks I have good taste at all. The first script I read for Spike completely rejected. In fact, I fell asleep in the middle. It was a boxing movie. I fell asleep in the middle of the fight scene as I was reading it, and I was like, this is horrible, and I told him, don't

even read it. I'll pass. So I passed to the agent and then the movie got made with Russell Crowe Cinderella Man Academy Award, produced by my now friend Brian Grazer. But anyway, it was a great first real job in the industry and reading, you know, having the kind of access to Spike in his community was just outstanding. So how do you take that and start applying it to what you did Viacom and now starting your own thing at Blackbird. Right, So, look, I don't think you work

for a company. I think you work for people. And you know, I wanted to work for Spike because he's a visionary and he's so human. He makes gigantic successful films and also big mistakes and in every movie he has triumphs and he has you know, just big errors that just make part of the movie suck. And I loved that. Um, well, you talk a lot about leadership. You put a lot of color behind leadership, like what is a good leader? You've been doing that for a

long time, you know. I just believe cultures everything you had. Linda Yakuarino recently on the podcast and UM, she talked about it. She talked about, like, over the last five years, what's made the difference for her organization, And she talks about leadership and culture and she's right. And you you walk into any company today, you know in thirty seconds if they've got it or if they don't. You can feel it, you can smell it, you can taste it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So now you started Blackbird. Yeah, so when I left five Com last summer, I started two different things at the same time, probably out of fear of failure. But one of them is Blackbird, which is a brand strategy and business innovation firm, and the other is Lunch Partners, which is a venture capital fund. So two very different things. Um, And why anybody thinks that a poet should be running a venture capital fund, I have no idea why anyone

agrees to that, but it has happened. We are underway, and that is the super exciting element of my daily life and it's connected to I mean, as it connected to Blackbird. Is that totally separate from Blackbird. They're not connected, but they end up being symbiotic. You know, I learned so much about early stage startup companies in all different

industries from Launch Partners. I mean, in the first two months we looked at seventy five deals and the kind of people you meet are just sort of outside my everyday sphere and a lot of people I know, jack shit about that world. And the people we are meeting and learning from our extraordinary and they're the next generation of great business leaders. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We've had Pierced Fox on here from PSFK was a writer. We've had you who's a poet. We talked with Sara Fisher.

Last episode we took sales skills and translated to journalism. I think we're really starting to see this sort of tri anxient fluid thing happening in our industry where people are taking their skill sets and feeling them into passions. And it's it's really fascinating to see you take the commercial side, but then also what I assume the business of Blackbird being your passion. So that's exactly right, Laura.

And I feel like, once you get what you're great at and you understand kind of what you suck at, you can do anything with that now, right, Look at Peers. I mean, he's a massive success story. You know, Sarah at Axios is someone you would say, like, well, if you look at her career, her trajectory, you would never put her in the position she's in right now, right, And yet she's massively successful and influential. And when she was on your podcast, she did feel like a force

in the industry totally. So I feel like once you know you're true north, once you understand your purpose and your identity and you get your values down, like, you can do whatever you want with that. And that is exactly what Blackbird's doing for big businesses and little business is.

But most of them have never been forced to ask those existential questions about themselves, and all of a sudden, because of the forces in every industry, they have no choice but to ask those questions, right, why does my brand even exist? And I mean, you guys are struggling with those questions every single episode, and you can really tell um who's thought about it and who has not.

And I listened to some of your guests. Let's listen to every episode, and some have really thought about these issues, and others just seem to have avoided them. It's interesting. Do you think it's a sign of the times that people and brands and companies are starting to think like this or do you think there are other you know, kind of forcing functions that are happening that we don't see. Look,

I think that um I make a distinction. Blackbird has been very successful in its first eight months, making the distinction between operating systems and belief systems, which do you gravitate towards. You cannot have one without the other. To run as successful business today, where you may have multiple operating systems, as most of my clients do, to do

that effectively without a belief system is nearly impossible. And I learned that from Seth Farbman, who's the CMO of Spotify, and he was a gap and he didn't look, that's a brilliant, brilliant guy. And when I was at Viacom that we had three my last three years there were really chaotic and confusing, and what we needed was true north and an understanding of who we were as a company.

Thousands and thousands of people who needed to understand, even if it wasn't communicated externally yet, what Viacom was about and what it stood for and what you were part of and why these brands are all in the same portfolio. And Seth really gave me the language to understand how to go about doing that. Um, what is the idea of a belief system, which you know, to some people just sounds fancy, like a fancy word for brand architecture. Well,

we all do positioning, sure, um. But the more I thought about what Seth was challenging me to do at Viacom, the more we began the hard work of the methodology itself and trying to understand how do you surface the key insights and derive or distill from them the brand idea that is irrefutable, and that is four things, big, simple, useful, and true. If it's not all for, it won't be successful.

And we've gone to work doing that. We've done ten belief systems in the last eight months at Blackbird, and they're accompanied by the question that comes right after, which is, well, now that we know who we are, what do we do with that? How do you land the plane? And that's all about execution and about living your brand and such an interesting skill set though, because it's most people

have to one or the other. And I think what makes certain people special and Beth compact this law is like being able to see the you know, the whole field. And then very Blackbird pointed yeah, and that and Linda have been, you know, masterful at that and both have taught me quite a bit about this. You know. I think you asked about context, like why does this matter now? Um, I had a gut feeling that this would matter in the world, and I went on that and bet on

myself and my team to launch Blackbird. Two of my favorite people sat down to collide worlds. Two of my favorite worlds, politics and hip hop. So Van Jones, Alex and I are obsessed with the episodes Fantastic She sat down with jay Z and one of the things that I pulled out of it that it gets the heart of what you're talking about is a difference between a job and purpose and they're not they're not mutually exclusive. Um, and I think what you're saying is what a lot

of the entrepreneurs in our business are finding. You know, you talked about Sarah Fisher. It's like, what are you

really good at? Go chase that down. And the problem is though that I think it gets really foofi really quickly and kind of ephemeral, and people are like purpose and values, like oh that sounds offt and often it sounds like an HR exercise and you're like okay, you know, and for some people that's all it will ever be, but not for Jay Z. And the thing about Jay is Jay is the prototypical business leader of today and tomorrow. He doesn't have a job. He has a portfolio career.

I don't believe as I look at you two that in the next three years, three years from now, I don't think either one of you will have a job. I think you're five right. I think you're gonna have a portfolio career. And I think that portfolio career is going to express your purpose, your values, and your capability, and it's going to be how you, you know, live your brand in the world. Hello, this actually is exactly the architecture for brands as well. So click because that's

the thing. And I want to ask before we go there, I want to ask one question. Everyone talks about brands finding their purpose now right. I actually am convinced that there are going to be brands that can't they can't find their purpose and then will effectively disappear. Well, if you don't find it, it's very obvious what happens is

that top line growth doesn't happen. And you know, so you look at the financial engineering that's going on in the short termism that you guys talk about frequently on Atlantia, and you know that's what happens when you don't know who you are. Are you working with big public brands? Yes, and are there receiving this message from Blackbird and they're embracing it. We're not calling them, they're calling us. And I don't mean to say that in any kind of

egotistical way. I mean that there is a sense of urgency. And we are called by boards, we are called by c e O s, and we're called by cmos and when that phone rings, it's you know, it may not start out um with a question about purpose and identity. It may not start out with the I heard you do belief systems and belief system playbooks that will transform my business. But doesn't happen like that. It usually starts with a like a problem with our product, there's something

wrong with our marketing. We need to be direct to consumer, right, one of those kinds of things. Right, And you you get about seven minutes in and it's very clear what's going on. Are you working on executive kind of image stuff as well? I mean, does that become part of this. We just started what's called Blackbird Leaders and that's because, um, I just believe in betting on people like that's everything.

And it became very clear to us that during the kind of work that we do with big companies and medium and small companies, but doing the work we do on brand strategy and belief systems, that's the same kind of work that tomorrow's leaders are beginning to do on themselves today. And that's a remarkable place to get invited into. When someone trusts you enough to say, hey, listen, I want to make a bet on myself and I think you can help me be better. I think you can

help me realize what I'm meant to do. You brought up jay Z before. May I be so bold. I think we're kind of copying jay Z here, except as jay Z is signing athletes to Rock Nation, we are signing business athletes, superstars of tomorrow. We're signing them now. I've always wanted to be already gold in my next life, so we should talk about this. So we're developing. We've already signed our first two. We are developing their talent, we are supporting them, we are positioning them. Hello, that

was an exclusive right, it was blackbird Leaders. I think it's interesting when you start talking about where people are betting on or recruiting from in the world of athletes in sport. Right, it's very easy to wrap your head around that in terms of placing bets to pull in

your quarterback, Right, you know what you need? Why is business in the world we're playing in any different Just like you're talking about with brands, there are leaders and people who are out there in the sunshine, but aren't really doing those things, doing the work, doing the work. Yea. So those people have already approached us and we say no, And how so how do you vet do you know who they are? These are the people who are the

CMO of themselves? How do you do blackbird leaders in a meaningful way so that you are truly making it about someone who has the talent right to get on the court and lead a freaking team and actually grow the next generation. Well it's interesting, alexas so as you As you were speaking and the audience can't see this, but I'll paint the picture. You were making a triangle with the tips of your fingers together. You were going like this with your hands, and um, that is what

I would say. I used to be that. I used to be someone who felt that there's only room for one at the top and that I was gonna have to beat a lot of people to get to a position of authority and to feel like I've achieved anything. And then you know, I sort have learned to open it up the other way, right, to say like, actually, I'm more successful the more open I am. Actually, the more people I can support and empower, the more powerful I will feel and I will the more rewarded I

will be. And I think that's what Blackbird Leaders is all about. It's about turning the triangle upside down or inverting it, opening up and understanding that your job, when you become successful is to create opportunities for other people to grow, not to try to beat anybody. Yeah, I'm not compete. I'm competing with myself every day myself if I could give a sports analogy. Right, So it's interesting stuff.

Curry and the Warriors, right, And nobody thought, or at least I didn't, that Kevin Durant would go to play with the Warriors, right, because he's an appointed leader. He's kind of the tip of the spear. But when you to your point, you start stop thinking about yourself and you start thinking about the purpose. And the vision is to win an NBA championship. Now you're comfortable playing number two or side by side? You know, given the choice, do you want to do you want to win the

m v P or do you want to win the championship? Right, it's like that's right. Blackbird Leaders bets on people who are going to win champions that's the name of the show. What type of the clients are you working with? So it began with media, like the first month, phone calls from media companies going like we really could publishers, no, most networks, UM and social media companies as well. But thankfully, because I've spent a really long time and that part

of business, we've diversified quite a bit. So we're working with a huge PR firm, We're working with an architecture firm, we're working in higher education, and we're working with an energy company, and those are all, you know, so different from one another that, as we were talking about earlier today, after I leave here, I'm work with five different clients the rest of today. And if that doesn't keep you fresh on your toes and excited, I don't know what does.

Every half hour is going to be different for the rest of the day. So people they're calling you because it's it's a different, differentiated offering in the market. Right. You're talking about brand strategy, which is something that has traditionally sat within creative agencies. I think if Boston Consulting Group and IDEO had a baby, they would look a little bit like Blackbird. Interesting. There's nobody really doing it

the way we do it. What I would say is most of our clients need support finding the best way to express their power and their potential internally and externally. They're having some things in the way um and they need to clear it out, or they've reached an inflection point and step change is right there. They see it. They need help getting there. But this is really about business impact, and what we do is not foofy. It's like real change, and we're putting real points on the board.

We're also allowing brands to go back to the way earlier point. Right, You're letting brands completely diversify what they do and probably how they do it. That's right. I think that's kind of been my career, especially at Viacom. So this is new products. This is thinking about i P in a different way. This is thinking about right all of those things. If you know who you are,

you know very quickly what you could become. So do you see yourself getting into the execution game or just super high level right now kind of building out operational. We're in the execution game a little bit. I did make a pledge to myself when we launched Blackbird to not make anything. I've already broken that a couple of times.

We've made some stuff for people. But um one of our investors is an awesome production company in Los Angeles, one of the best creative shops I've ever worked with there called Stunt Creative, and Stunt makes a lot of stuff for our clients, So it's great to have access to them. UM, And when we decided to take on investment. When you're a s this is business like Blackbird. You don't normally take on any kind of investment you don't

really need to. We wanted to because the two strategic investors in our company offer us a way to sort of differentiate our offering and just really make us unique, right the other So can you talk about that because it's something that people have asked us about on the show, but our listeners have asked us about the VC world in particular and as a services business. Can you talk

about how did you pitch yourself in that regard? And then some people that we've met talk about the advisors you bring on should not just be um people that didn't give your money and go away. They should have pictually be help you grow and build your your business. Right, So I can answer it personally, I'm not a good example because, to be honest, we didn't go out and pitch Blackbird UM. Two companies came to us and said, you're a fucking moron for not starting this. What are

you waiting for? And sometimes I think it takes that kind of pressure from people who know what you can do, because something inside me was just not starting and you know, uh, they de risked the launch of Blackbird for me. But when it comes to investing, you know, I'm astounded by the variety in the quality of pitches that we get for the VC fund for Launch Partners. I mean, we have seen the most complex, compelling UM presentations that you know,

I just don't have any heart. Yeah on paper, you know, I think the bankers would go, fuck yeah, let's put our money on that. UM, my group of LPs would not. And yet the opposite is also true, right, So we see we see some entrepreneurs that have come at us that are all hard right and UM, they clearly don't have the operational chops to grow the business the way it really deserves. So, you know, and r LP group

is very u nique. It's UM. Everyone who's in this group with me is a CMO or a CEO, So they are all leaders, most of them big name people who are killing it in their companies UM, and are investing as a group with Lunch Partners so that they can take advantage of pattern recognition through deal flow, that they can have a mechanism for doing diligence in the companies that they're going to invest in, and that they can activate both their network and their skill sets as

you're sort of alluding to Laura to put what they're great at to work for the companies that we invest in. Right. That's the thing about venture investing. If it's just your money, dumb money you can find anywhere, dumb moneys everywhere, but smart money that wants to work hard behind the cash, behind the capital to make your brand and business successful. That's the kind of investor that the entrepreneurs who seek

us out want. So when entrepreneurs and other vcs come to us and invite us into a round, usually it's seed or early A. The hope is that we will not just feel that through diligence, this is a smart bet, but that it's a heart bet. To write that your heart is in it, and that the LPs in our group believe in this entrepreneur and his or her team, believe in the brand and the vision and the business and want to go do things to make it successful.

That's why our fund exists. And I think also one thing I'm really proud of about the Fund and Blackbird is that these are the two of the most diverse groups you will ever see. I mean, it is a group of that was the most important thing about really reaching out to a group of limited partners for lunch partners was to say, like, we want a diversity of thought, we want a diversity of gender, race, ethnicity, background, age, and we got it. And that's the most exciting thing.

So when a pitch comes to us, we can channel check across us five six different dimensions within twenty four hours and make a decision. Yeah, okay, what would you kill, rath Martin, What would you kill? What would you buy? What would you do yourself? Right now? I would totally kill a cheeseburger. What's your favorite cheeseburger? And where's it from? This is gonna some weird It's in l A. Why is that weird? No, it's a place called Father's Office.

You've been there. We've been there a million times. Yeah. The great thing about is you can't alter it, like it's just you can't be like, no, I don't want any pickles, Monica. Yeah, so it is what it is, and that you don't get a choice. Thing about that I really like. We've packed in there. Man's really hard to I know, you gotta go at the off hour. Yeah, okay, I love it. What would you buy? Not a burger? You know? I would I would buy more Amazon stuck? Well,

is that such a bummer to say? No? I mean everyone's saying, Okay, I'm gonna change it up. I would buy Atlantia. I would buy Atlantia so fine. I would buy more real estate in Maine, because have real estate Maine, I do. I bought a house there last year, and um, I'm fixing it up. My wife is fixing it up. And uh. But I think, like with global warming, like that's going to be Miami. So I'm banking on Maine.

Is like the new Miami? Are you building bunkers? I feel like yeah, I feel we're getting like we're getting ready for that, stashing it with the world's greatest collection of poetry and chburgers and leaders. Um, all right, So what would you do yourself that you're not already doing? I mean I really would d I y the next generation of great business leaders. That's what I want to build. That's what you're doing, and that's what that's what we're

gonna put Forbes out of business under thirty. Like, is there going to be like a Blackbird ten? It's a good question. No. I think I'll let them keep giving out the awards and the recognition, but I'll get people, you know, to the place where they're recognized for their eavements on their potential and where Forbes is calling them. Imagine if you did an episode like at the end of the year and it's like the ten people you don't know you've never heard of? Yeah, well that was

actually what I mean. The Atlanta has people that are notable, yes, but then you have people who maybe you haven't heard of, and most likely you haven't heard of before you go. What would be your advice to the next gen of who you hope to become blackbird leaders who are out there today? I'll give you my um, mom's and my dad's. Okay, So my mom woke me up every morning and said the same three words, today's the day every morning. Now to some people that might seem annoying, annoying or burdensome.

To me, it just sort of got me out of bed and I felt like I could do anything. And when your mom gives you that, you know you can. So I want to give that to other people. And the other is the last two words that my dad said to me before he died. Be there m hm. And he meant it in every way possible, be there for other people, um be there for opportunities, and have

the confidence to bet on yourself when it matters. And so those are my two things, and those two are the most important in informing my own system of belief, the idea that today's the day and you have to be there. Knowing you for the last couple of years, I would say that those things are very true. You you live that out. Thank you live that out, Ross Martin. Where can people find you at Ross Martin one or why do you just email me Ross dot Martin at

blackbird Global dot com, Ross Martin. We will be hearing a lot more from you. Thank you so much, Thank you, rus Thank you guys. You know I love about rath Martin. You. I love that he said he basically was a shoe salesman, name is sixteen years old and then never ever had a job that anyone else ever had after that. And I love that. I think I'm an aspire to do that salesman. No, alright, no, I think I've passed more on the consumer side. I do love the idea that

he talked about future leaders being overseers of portfolios. I think that's interesting and I think it's something that you know, so many people come up through UM high school and college and they go on to post collegiate you know, degrees and think about these linear trap paths that that that they need to go down and just start broadening and thinking through the vein of being an entrepreneur and

ownership of your own portfolio is very interesting. That means my board of directors is only going to get bigger. That's right. I agree, And I also think that at the end of the day, he said, you don't go, you know, basically work for a job to go work for a leader like you follow the leader, and I think that's right. So with that, big thanks to Ross Martin,

Cameron Drew's our producer. Thank you for getting me my tea this week and telling me I don't found an easily love you camp, our friends and family appanaply thank you to any Bowers and Matt Turk. If we don't see you in Palm Desert, we will be back in two weeks. Also, stay tuned because at Landy events are coming your way. Full disclosure, our opinions are our own.