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Apr 5, 2024

How Visionary Leadership Impacts Business Success

Continuing on the topics of 9 Core Competencies and vision, we discuss visionary leadership and its impact on business success. We also dive into the core principles of building a thriving company and draw upon insights from influential books like "Built to Last" by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. Learn how a cohesive vision, rooted in Core Values and purpose, serves as the guiding light for organizations. Explore the challenges of maintaining authenticity and trust as companies grow, and discover ways to integrate a compelling vision throughout your organization.

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Cole Abbott (00:00:01 -> 00:00:19)

So now we're back for the continuation of the vision topic. Yep. So today we're gonna be talking about how you sort of developed your beliefs on vision. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then how do you build a company's vision. Yeah. So let's get to it.

Mark Abbott (00:00:19 -> 00:00:23)

All right. So what was the first one? Beliefs. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:00:23 -> 00:00:29)

How, how did you form your beliefs around vision and the, the philosophy around that? Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:00:29 -> 00:00:30)

Whether it

Cole Abbott (00:00:30 -> 00:00:30)

Deserves

Mark Abbott (00:00:31 -> 00:01:15)

First place or not in the sort of etymology, um, I, I think built to last the book by, you know, back then I think it was called Porous Collins, even though Jim's become much more famous than, than Porous, um, was instrumental for me. Uh, so, uh, my recollection is that I got that book right when it first came out, which has to be late eighties, maybe like 89, 90. Obviously we can go fact check it if Joe Rogan's fact checked over here, he could check it for us. But, um,

Cole Abbott (00:01:15 -> 00:01:17)

Pull it up, Jamie. There

Mark Abbott (00:01:17 -> 00:04:56)

You go. Exactly. Um, but, uh, but that book really hammered home on a bunch of things for me that I kind of intuitively had begun to, you know, uh, think about or develop frameworks for in my head. Um, 'cause this is, let's just say it's 1990. Um, and, you know, so I started, you know, with the bank in 82, uh, did the 14 months of training. There's a lot of things that they teach you in the training program, but mostly around, you know, it was around, uh, you know, accounting and economics and things like that. Um, but then obviously I went in and did, uh, did, did went in on my first real job with the bank was workouts. And so I started to see what happens when, you know, companies are poorly run, as we've talked about before. Um, and then, you know, from there I went and, and, and helped start a lower middle market oriented lending and investment platform, um, at the bank. Um, and then I started, you know, sort of get into the art and science of, of, of business building. But, you know, I would say that whole journey was sort of like, you know, it, it, it was not a structured class on vision. It was not a structured class on, on company building. It was, you know, just sort of figure this stuff out on your own. Um, and so, you know, during those initial years of, of lending to, and investing in businesses, you know, I started to develop some perspectives and then along comes built to last, and it's like, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense. That book had a profound impact on me. And, um, you know, I actually have not read it in, uh, decades. I should go back and read it again. I know I've skimmed it. Um, because as I think, you know, I, I'm, I'm a big, I write all over these bloody books, um, and I have that, that copy with all my writing in from 19, whatever, it's 1990. Um, but the whole idea of, of clock building, um, of playing an infinite game, I think in the, in that book, they certainly talks about BHAGs. I think that was in the book, A core values and culture was in that book. Um, and, uh, and I even believe, uh, some version of purpose, passion just causes in that book should have it right with us. But, um, I think, I think a lot of the vision stuff and the importance of it, uh, was first brought out in a framed effective way by built to last. Um, and then, you know, started doing what, you know, I'm apt to do, which is then going down each of those little rabbit holes right? On court, on culture, on purpose, passion, just cause on B hs, um, on the idea of clock building, right? Which big idea there is, right. Building a company, right? Taking that long game and, and, and, and, and trying to, you know, be really thoughtful about creating a business that will endure for decades and decades and decades. So, um, so I would say it, you know, you know, my belief system as you put it, um, my framework, uh, for thinking about vision, I, I have to give built to last, um, you know, number one spot in terms of credit. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Cole Abbott (00:04:57 -> 00:04:58)

I have not read the book.

Mark Abbott (00:04:58 -> 00:05:07)

Yeah, you should, you'd probably find, well, I, you, you know, I know somehow or another you should figure out how to access what the book is all about. 'cause I know that reading is not your favorite thing. Well, I,

Cole Abbott (00:05:07 -> 00:05:12)

I should at least read a summary about, if not read, I mean, I can, yeah, I can read Yeah,

Mark Abbott (00:05:13 -> 00:05:48)

<laugh>, but it'd be interesting. Um, you know, there's so many different things we could, we could do here, but it would be almost interesting. Um, not almost interesting. I think it would, could be pretty interesting to go through each chapter. You know, I, I don't have that book with me, it's actually at the farm, but to go through each chapter and talk about what it, what they had written about from the perspective of today, knowing everything we know, because, you know, like I say, that's, that's what, that's 30 years ago now. 32 years ago. Yeah. And I bet you most of it stands the test of time,

Cole Abbott (00:05:49 -> 00:05:53)

Probably. And then there's more to build off of those things, right? Things we've

Mark Abbott (00:05:53 -> 00:09:41)

Yeah. Figured out. Well, it's like, I, I remember, so the, so the, one of the big ideas behind Built to Last was, uh, they took the, um, exemplar companies in, well-defined industries, and then they compared it to, you know, the, that exemplar company to the other company that was also well known in the industry. And if you had invested in the exemplar company as opposed to the also ran, you know, you would make like 10,000 times more money. I mean, and I'm probably exaggerating, but it was a, it was a, it was a big bloody number. Um, and then they had, you know, they said, these are the characteristics of the exemplars, and these are, you know, the characteristics of the companies that are no longer, that are not exemplars and Disney as an example. I, I, I clearly remember this was an exemplar. Um, but then later on, I don't remember if it was Collins or others pointing out, you know, di Disney kinda lost its way because Disney was always about making people happy. But then you go and acquire a, b, C as an example, and, you know, the nightly news is that making you happy, right? Um, and so, uh, so you know, that's a good example. And there are other examples of those companies that it would be really interesting to look back on them, those who are no longer the exemplars, but were on that list and say, Hey, you know, why do we think they're no longer exemplars? I mean, Disney, we just talked about why I think it's, it's, it's had its fair share of, of issues. Um, and I won't go into the politics on Disney, right? But, you know, if you're generally about, this is my ideal client and you know, we're here to make you happy, we're here to entertain your family, right? We're here to provide stuff that is good for you all as opposed to leaning into the negative stuff, right? Which Disney obviously did a little bit of, right? Um, those are, that, those are examples of where a company had a very clear point of view about who it is, what its ideal customer is, what is what, what it's, you know, just cause is, or, uh, passion or purposes. And, you know, and all of a sudden you have A-A-C-E-O who, you know, goes in a direction that's not really consistent. And, and as we've talked about before, you know what happens when you go off script, for lack of a better term, um, whether it's your core values or it's your purpose, passion, just cause or your ideal client, um, um, you, you had a bunch of people right, that joined you because this is who you are, right? And those people, they, they, they could be your customers, they could be your employees, they could be strategic partners, right? But they joined you because this is who you are, and they believed in what you're doing. And now all of a sudden you go off script and it's like, well, that's not what I signed up for. Right? And then you can go off, and I think we talked about this last time in the, in, in, in part one. Then all of a sudden it's like, okay, now I'm hurting trust. Right? Uh, character wise, I said, I was this, now I'm acting like this competency wise. I said, I was really good at this stuff, and now I'm saying I'm really good at this stuff. And then, and then connections wise, right? I said, these are the values that, that, that were important, right? These are the goals, these are my interests. It's my per purpose passion just cause and now I'm going this direction. So all of a sudden, you know, you're violating some form of trust with one or more of your ideal stakeholders, and that's usually gonna cause some issues.

Cole Abbott (00:09:42 -> 00:10:09)

Yeah. 'cause you get, right, you start trying to play a different game, but you still claim, you know, you have that facade of like, oh no, we're still this company. We still have these values, and we just, this is, these are our beliefs and everything. And then you behind the scenes are doing a bunch of things that clearly do not live up to that and indicate that you're not playing that game. Right. That's, that's never a Right. That will not be built to last. Right.

Mark Abbott (00:10:09 -> 00:13:08)

And then, and then we, you know, you go down some of these paths where people, because of the intensity of politics these days, right? Where, where, you know, you can't help but step on some sticky stuff, right? When you talk about this stuff, but it's the Bud Light thing, right? It's like, are you, you know, don't make fun of or worse your ideal customer, right? It's just gotta be right. Just, you know, don't get lost. Right? And, and, and, and, and denigrating your customer, which they did. I mean, come on, let's not, right? They did. And, and, and maybe not with the, the co the, the commercials themselves, right? But I would say the way they defended themselves after the commercials came out, or, or some of the interviews with the marketing, um, human that, you know, basically said, you know, we can't be, I, I forget what it was, but they, they, they were bad mouthing a portion of their customer base. And it's like, I just, there's that, no. Right? Just, you know, there's, there, there's, there's positive ways right? To go about things. It's like we always talk about truthful specific and positive, right? Just let's, let's be a little more thoughtful, um, about how we say things. Um, and let's do it. Let's, let's really try hard. And we're all guilty of saying things we regret saying, right? We're all guilty of not thinking things through as much as we should have in hindsight. And so that's, that's just to be human. But, you know, once you have your vision and once you've been working on it, like, we'll talk about ideal customers again, once you've been working on it over and over and over again, and developing these high trust relationships with them, yeah, you can have interesting conversations, but there's, there's nothing. There's, you know, so why we talk about feed forward as opposed to feedback, feedback is, you know, you're stupid, right? Or you did something stupid, as opposed to, Hey, you know, if, if we thought about that a little bit more, do you think we would've done that? Or another version is, you know, what would have to be true for us to have not done that? Or, you know, some form of positive, constructive, let's, let's make ourselves better, not try to actually make ourselves worse conversation. Right? So, uh, so just being thoughtful, really focused on, you know, sort of who you are and what's important to you, engaging in a positive, constructive manner. Um, you know, back to the whole vision thing, I think, uh, the, you know, staying consistent and evolving feels like people make it harder than it should be.

Cole Abbott (00:13:10 -> 00:13:36)

'cause if people are trying to control the perception of it, rather than control it from inside and really sort themselves out and understand themselves so that they behave in a way that is in alignment with what they believe. Yeah. And that's, that's a lot harder to do and requires a lot more self-awareness. But it's, it's the right thing to do. Yeah. And also, when you act that way and you screw up, people are very willing to forgive you for your mistakes, because

Mark Abbott (00:13:36 -> 00:13:37)

If it's genuine, because

Cole Abbott (00:13:37 -> 00:13:48)

It's authentic and it's genuine Yeah. And everyone understands that people make mistakes. Yeah. But if you do something, you make a decision, you take repeated actions to go against what you say you believe. Yeah. Then that's just a red flag. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:13:48 -> 00:14:55)

But, you know, going back to the point here, right? Back to Built to Last, and I think, I think, I think the basic concepts for the most part, I, and I do wanna do the, another podcast on this, in terms of the book itself. I think they really have stood the test of time. And I think people, um, CEOs in particular, um, need to think about going. I said, you know, I use the phrase off script, right? It's like, no. Right. It's worked for decades and decades. It's like Chesters and Defense, we've talked about that before, I think on the podcast, right? Don't tear things down that have stood for a long period of time, right? Understand why they're there. And if they no longer make sense, then a hundred percent right, let's get rid of things. But if your core values, if your ICP, if your purpose fashion just cause has worked for decades, be careful if you're gonna get rid of something or change it because you've got all these people who have a strong relationship with you because of who you are and who you have been. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:14:55 -> 00:15:11)

Yeah. And so, right, that, that leads us very well into the next idea of how do you take these difficult concepts and or timeless things that we've talked about previously, right. And build them and integrate them into the company. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:15:11 -> 00:16:22)

So how do you build a vision? Yes. Right? So, you know, I love my friends at EOS, right? Um, uh, but this is an area where I have a slightly different perspective than they do. I believe that, Well, we've talked about before, there are five types of the five archetypes and we talked about in the last episode, right? They're all gonna approach vision differently, right? But I'm gonna, I'm, I'm going to talk about vision specifically from the perspective of either a visionary or a legacy type archetype, right? So if you have a visionary founder who genuinely has this perspective about where the world's going and where it's gonna be in five to 10 years, um, I believe that that founder should go take advantage of something like our Vision Builders workbook as an example, and they should go off into the mountains, um, or some, you know, to the ocean, I don't care. Someplace where you can see the grandeur, the

Cole Abbott (00:16:22 -> 00:16:23)

Metaphorical mountains.

Mark Abbott (00:16:23 -> 00:20:33)

The metaphorical mountains, right? And, and, and, and they should write down their thoughts on the core components of a vision, right? The core values, the purpose, passion, just cause, um, the, the ideal client, the unique value proposition, right? The big hairy, audacious goals, the sort of the classic stuff we put under the visionary, um, category plus also right? Where they think the company's gonna be in three years and in one year. And, and, and really what they think we should be thinking about over the next 90 days, they should go off and, and, and, and, and do that work because it's in their brain, right? And the vast majority of it, they may not have framed it and thought of it the way that we can help them think about it, but, but a lot of that stuff's already there. And then they should get that reasonably well, um, um, framed up, written down, um, and then bring it back to their, to their senior leadership team, um, and say, Hey, you know, this is, this is what I've been thinking about. I've now done some, you know, some, some real work in terms of putting it into words so we can really see it and talk about it. And then they should talk about it and get, and hopefully get everybody on the senior leadership team, um, on the same page. And even there, you know, quick drill down, I would say everybody that they genuinely believe should be on the senior leadership team and will be on the senior leadership team in a year or two, right? Um, because obviously if there's someone on the senior leadership team that really doesn't buy what he believes, 'cause that happens, right? Um, especially if it hasn't been articulated yet as, as, as as, uh, thoughtfully as we're prescribing, um, then, you know, what you want to get to is you want to get, you know, this whole senior leadership team on the same page in agreement, because now all of a sudden everybody's on the same page. And we have what we call these focus filters. And now, you know, is this consistent with our core values? Is this consistent with our ideal client? Is this consistent with our unique value value proposition? Does this, all it does is, is it all congruent with our, um, purpose, passion just cause, um, does this big hairy, audacious goal, or compelling audacious goal, or 10 year target as, as EOS would call it, um, uh, does this resonate? Should we be marching towards this? And if yes, you know, where would we, where should we be in three years if that's, now we're all aligned there. Okay, so what do we need to do over the next year? Awesome. Now we're all aligned there. What do we need to do over the next 90 days? Right? What are the priorities? Um, and so I believe that for visionary archetypes and for legacy archetypes, they should present it and have it debated. Um, and then ultimately, right. Hopefully get everybody on the same page. I think that you move into the other archetypes and they may not have as strong of an opinion. And if that's true, then, you know, the traditional EOS approach, which is you bring the senior leadership team in, you get it facilitated, and you collectively get on the same page. That could be a, you know, could be a, could be a really good, healthy exercise. I would say the same thing for an accidental entrepreneur, right? So they don't have this stuff, so let's help them and help the whole team get on the same page. Uh, and then the last category is the opportunistic, um, one, and I don't know if they're truly opportunistic, they're probably not gonna wanna even care about this stuff. And so maybe we don't even really worry about that, that that particular type at this moment in time. So, but, you know, I don't think one size fits all process wise. I, I, I, I do think that if I are a visionary and I am a visionary entrepreneur, um, you know, I'm, I feel pretty strongly about this stuff, and so, you know, I want to debate it with you all, but I wanna present it as opposed to sit here and think that we're just group committing the vision. Does that make some sense? Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:20:33 -> 00:20:35)

Well, you can't create a vision by committee.

Mark Abbott (00:20:36 -> 00:20:39)

I think it's really hard. I don't think you can,

Cole Abbott (00:20:39 -> 00:21:23)

Is it, you gotta have one person that's sort of the director of the thing, and it creates that essence, that purpose passenger caused from their why or whatever, right? And if you try to get a bunch of people to have their opinions on it, and you're just sort of aggregating all these other things, and then you're not really gonna understand whatever's built from that, you're not really gonna understand why it became that way. Right? So there's no real source of truth. Yeah. And it's also just not gonna be as resonant and because, I mean, you look at any, right. 'cause it is a creative idea, right? Right. It's, it's creative. It's like art or anything like that. And how many,

Mark Abbott (00:21:24 -> 00:21:27)

How many great pieces of artwork created by committee Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:21:27 -> 00:21:33)

Examples where it's like two people, like brothers or something. I, I, I'm struggling to think of, but

Mark Abbott (00:21:33 -> 00:22:18)

Even, even then, right? If we go to, so, so, and this is horrible, right? My, my, my bad broke memory, right? Um, but you know, you go to the visionary integrator pairs of the famous ones, right? And you, you know, you had Henry Ford and his person, you had Walt Disney and his brother, there's a bunch of them, right? Right off the top of my head, I'm not gonna go there. But one of them was the visionary, right? And then the other one was, was super good at helping that vision come into, into reality. So I, I, you know, I I I, I don't even think when you think about these pairs coming along, that there's a visionary pair that we're really, maybe there is, right? But I, yeah,

Cole Abbott (00:22:18 -> 00:22:33)

I was just thinking in terms of like, film Cohen Brothers, that's all I could, in going through the list of film, literature, art, sculpture, architecture, it's like I, that I got the Cohen Brothers is the only thing I could think of in terms of directors. And

Mark Abbott (00:22:33 -> 00:22:35)

We should interview them <laugh> and say,

Cole Abbott (00:22:35 -> 00:22:42)

Hey guys. And, and maybe one of them is, you know, I just, I know is directed by the Cohen brothers. I don't know if one of them is the more visionary type and the other

Mark Abbott (00:22:43 -> 00:22:56)

Plays role. Yeah. But somehow or another, they, they, they, they're dividing and conquering. Yeah. Right. It's almost assured. Because otherwise, if they both were vision, there's no way they'd have the same vision. Yeah. Right? So it's an interesting conversation. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:22:56 -> 00:22:59)

But the fact that you only think of one really makes that,

Mark Abbott (00:23:00 -> 00:24:04)

Now I know I'm gonna get slings and arrows from my friends at DEOS, but, but, you know, um, I love you all. Um, but I mean, it's because, you know, we, you and I've been talking lately about, you know, great brands, right? And, and, and, and, and, and just greatness how there's just this, there's just this coherence. And, you know, whether it's a film or whether, you know, I, I, as you know, I use the book Great Gatsby. 'cause to me, I'm pretty sure that it's gotta be in the top 10 of every single sentence was so thought out and purposeful. Right? And so there's just this, this, this book, 156 pages or something, like, just this unbelievably well structured book, and then of course, art, um, and then the movies. Um, I know, you know, we, you're a huge fan of, uh, the Dune director. What's his name again?

Cole Abbott (00:24:04 -> 00:24:05)

De Vov?

Mark Abbott (00:24:06 -> 00:24:06)

Deni.

Cole Abbott (00:24:07 -> 00:24:07)

Vov

Mark Abbott (00:24:08 -> 00:24:46)

Vov, right? Sure. Something close to that. And just how meticulous he is in just putting the whole thing together and Christopher Nolan, right. How amazing people like this are and Michelangelo, and, you know, just like they have this, this so coherent mass. It just, like, it's all these things and, and, and great art paintings wise, right? You look at it, there's no, there's, there's, there's no weird like committee moment in this art.

Cole Abbott (00:24:46 -> 00:24:46)

No.

Mark Abbott (00:24:47 -> 00:24:50)

Yeah. And it's the same thing for a great brand, right? Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:24:50 -> 00:25:17)

And, and it's just making sure that everything, every brush, stroke, and every word's written on the page is in service of that vision. Yeah. And in alignment with that. And, and, and Right. We like to make that as explicit as possible, but to some extent, on the big picture, it's, it's a intuitive subconscious force that creates these things. And that's why it's, we haven't really seen AI

Mark Abbott (00:25:17 -> 00:25:17)

Be able

Cole Abbott (00:25:17 -> 00:25:32)

To replicate that very well. Right. Is it just Right. It's just an aggregation of all these things, and it does an amazing job at that. Right. But in terms of having that unique creative perspective of connecting a lot of things and then internalizing it and expressing it, that's really, really difficult to do. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:25:33 -> 00:25:51)

And it's, it's the, it's co coherence not the right term. Right. But, but it's that everything makes sense. And some of it you can't even explain, you can't articulate particularly well. Right. But it's, but that it, but the whole thing is whole.

Cole Abbott (00:25:51 -> 00:26:07)

Yeah. Well, you just look at it and you like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because everything Right, your brain is thinking about this subconsciously a lot more than you realize. Yeah. And it's just like, oh, everything, this all looks like it's from the same thing. Yeah. And so that generates trust Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:26:07 -> 00:26:08)

At the end of the

Cole Abbott (00:26:08 -> 00:26:08)

Day. Because,

Mark Abbott (00:26:08 -> 00:26:53)

Because ultimately it's whole and it's authentic. Right? And so it's like, you know, this, some of the tension we have with, even with our own company is people don't understand why some things matter as much as I think they do. Right. Um, you know, whether it's the, whether it's on being really on brand or whether it's what we teach, um, you know, it's, it's, there, there are things that you're like, yes, that's who we are. That's what we believe. That's, that's what makes sense. And then there are things like where a committee comes along and they're like, they put this thing together, and you're like, but that's not us.

Cole Abbott (00:26:54 -> 00:27:05)

Yeah. And you know, for a lot of startups and companies that are growing, you get away with a lot of like, oh, this guy just gets it. Right. Or someone comes in and like, they just get it, so we're good. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:27:05 -> 00:27:06)

But

Cole Abbott (00:27:06 -> 00:27:14)

At some point, which seems like consistently after something like 75, right? That just starts to become really difficult to do. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:27:14 -> 00:27:17)

Because you move from being, and we write about this implicit,

Cole Abbott (00:27:17 -> 00:27:18)

Right? Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:27:18 -> 00:27:40)

You can get away with implicit understandings early on. Um, and you can get away with that, not just internally, but early on, you can get away with putting stuff out into the world that, you know, may or may not be like perfect. And we're not talking about perfect. We're just like 90%, or, you know, 95% strong. Well,

Cole Abbott (00:27:40 -> 00:27:41)

At least, at least aligned, right?

Mark Abbott (00:27:41 -> 00:28:54)

Yeah. Because, you know, instead of having, you know, right, today we have 12,000 customers running on 90, so Right. And hundreds of thousands of people that are on our email list. And so, right. You mess up with an email and it hits a hundred, 200,000 people, that's a different thing than you mess up with me, mess up with an email that's gone to 50 people. So that just, the stakes are so much higher. And I know that, you know, we're going, we're, we're transitioning right now from, from, from, you know, so from a, from departments that report to me, to a c-suite. And there's tension within the organization because the, the transition is, you know, people love the way it was. Right. They want, they, you know, that's natural, right? We don't want to change. But now it's super important that we take that next step and everything we do continues to be consistent and we scale and people understand why we're doing the things we do. Um, and we're not saying one thing and then doing another thing. 'cause that harms our credibility. And credibility is part of trust. Yeah. Yeah. And

Cole Abbott (00:28:54 -> 00:29:01)

In order to make it make sense on the outside, you have to make it Right. The things that are resident and coherent inside need to be made explicit.

Mark Abbott (00:29:01 -> 00:29:04)

Yeah. More and more explicit. The bigger you get, you have no choice. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:29:05 -> 00:29:11)

<laugh>, you can try it. And there's a lot of big companies out there that don't do a good job with that, but they will not be built to last.

Mark Abbott (00:29:11 -> 00:30:05)

No. And you know, it's like there's something going on. I just read about it today and, you know, don't want to Right. You, you'd love for these conversations to stand the test of time. But, um, I read about, you know, some of the, the, the, the games, the games, the, the changes that are being made at Bayer ab, right? The German company. And they're going to this, right. They're kind of blowing up hierarchy, and they're having these, all these like thousands of teams going out there and doing stuff. It's like, how's that gonna scale? Are we gonna ha, you know, is there gonna be a brand issue? I mean, just I, as I was reading it, I'm, I'm going, you know, I, you know, it is, it is like, okay, so we got to the point where things are so messed up, we're willing to just risk the whole comp. I don't know. But I, you know, I'm cynical that what this guy is doing is going to work. But, you know.

Cole Abbott (00:30:05 -> 00:30:25)

Yeah. So on that note, the gift that keeps giving <laugh>, I think we've gone, uh, we've gone over our time. All right. And uh, I thought this was gonna be a shorter one, but a good discussion. Yeah. And I think, yeah, a lot of you could keep going on this. I'm sure we'll do another one and we'll do more episodes on Built to Last.

Mark Abbott (00:30:25 -> 00:30:28)

I'd love to do that. That'd be super cool. Yes. Well, thank you.

Cole Abbott (00:30:28 -> 00:30:29)

Thank you. Alright.

Mark Abbott (00:30:30 -> 00:30:30)

<inaudible>.