M&A Career Path: Transitioning Roles in M&A | Kerry Perez w/ Kison Patel

I am of the school of thought that, yes, the company does need to help you develop, but you need to be also in charge of your own career. You need to raise your hand when you want more. You might even need to bring to the table exactly what you want to try. Having been a leader and developing team members, it is so much appreciated and I know exactly how to help with a busy schedule when someone says, 'Here's where I want to go, and I've thought of an opportunity I'd like to get involved in.' Then at that point, it is my job or my manager's job to help me figure out how to get that, to course correct me if it's not the right thing, or to support me. So I'd say it's both, but I often hear different schools of thought that it should just be the company tapping you on the shoulder. No, you really do have to steer your own ship.

Doing well, Kisan. Great to be back and chatting with you. Thanks for taking time to come back and hang out.

For sure. So yeah, Kerry Perez. I'm a native San Diegan, now living in Dallas. I've been at AMN Healthcare for 15 years, and as we'll talk about today, going through several different roles. I also spent a little bit of time at Amazon. But as you mentioned, AMN Healthcare is a workforce solutions company. We focus a lot on staffing solutions, so think travel nurse, locum tenens (traveling physicians), as well as more recently getting involved in technology-enabled solutions, specifically through acquisition. I'm on the board of a non-profit organization in Dallas called CitySquare, helping to fight poverty. I'm really looking forward to sharing a bit about my story today.

Yeah, actually I'll go back in time to my marketing days at AMN Healthcare. I started actually entry-level in sales at AMN, and then for the majority of my career I was in marketing. I think there was a pivotal time where we got a new leader into the organization. He came from HP, helped start up HPShopping.com, and he brought an e-commerce lens to our company and really helped change us from top-of-the-funnel marketing to going all the way down to our key revenue driver, which is placements. I bring that up because it really helped change us to be more strategic as well as more operational. We really got to understand all aspects of the organization because we had to follow our top of funnel down to bottom funnel. So that really helped my introduction into not just AMN Healthcare, but really the budding things of what it would be to be a strategist and helping businesses achieve their goals, helping to learn more about the entirety of my organization, as well as getting exposed to several different people. So that when it came time to get more involved in an integration, I already had a really good background of knowing the different departments and different players. So that's the first marketing stint. I'll pause if you have any questions, otherwise I can keep going into how the heck integration came about.

Yeah, definitely. I always try to get involved in some special projects that would help get skills outside of the department that I was in. There was a call to get involved with a particular integration of a company that was in Kansas City. So I joined just as a marketing representative to help integrate their marketing functions. But what was really key there is that I joined all of our weekly integration update meetings and was just in a constant state of learning and listening to all the rest of the functional areas and what they were talking about and how they were integrating. So my first step was just to observe the integrations from afar. Then I got a little bit involved in a particular segment. Then cut to a couple years later, maybe a couple integrations later that were just marketing focused, and I got tapped on the shoulder to go and move from San Diego to Boston to lead an integration. Mind you, I didn't have formal experience necessarily. It was really what I had observed from my colleagues and some of those departments that I got to know in marketing, my foray into integration from a marketing standpoint, and then I just took the leap to lead it. That was a little bit nerve-wracking. I didn't really know all of the parts of it, a trial by fire a bit. But through the six to nine months that I was there living there alongside the team that I was helping to integrate, I really cut my teeth on how to integrate. Since then, I've certainly gotten better and better each time and learned from it. I think that's my first initial lesson: observe it, try it a little bit, and then just go for it. I was happy to get the opportunity and have the trust from my colleagues and my leaders to go and trust me with that integration. But I had a little bit of confidence just from what I had seen and observed prior.

Luckily, yeah. I mean, there are certainly areas that if I could have done differently, I would have. I'd say it was more just understanding the jargon of what I was talking about. There's a period of time where you're relying on just your problem-solving skills to connect the dots, but you're not necessarily sure of the depth of what that function is talking about.

Full understanding of how the pieces work together. And if you don't know how all the functions work together, just being personable enough to understand why you're hearing something over here and it's not aligning with some sort of progress over here. You might not know what the solve is, but you should know why these teams need to come together and talk about the issue. Now that has transferred even further into the actual setting up of a diligence and integration management office after several rounds of learnings, to understand the clusters of what has to come together to drive not only value but to actually do the nuts and bolts of the integration. And certainly understanding the chronology of what has to happen first, where the landmines are if you move too far with one function and not with the other. It is about these clusters of milestones and how you need to bring the right people together versus being siloed in a function.

Yeah, so I think one of the things that we learned—and I guess I'm jumping around with some of my history here—I left AMN for a little bit and went to Amazon, and got a call back from my now manager, who's our Chief Strategy and Experience Officer, and our CEO, saying, 'Hey, we've got four active acquisitions and integrations going on at one time. We really need to evolve from a model where we'll just pick a person from a department function or a business unit and have them go run an integration, to really having this be a more systematic approach centered in driving value and executing on time and budget that's repeatable and scalable. Can you come and do that for us?' So through again a little bit of my sort of three-step process—observe, try a little, and then really jump in and do—this was my next evolution of jumping in and setting this up. I did a lot of self-education: reading books, listening to other webinars, talking with other folks in the industry, and then really trying to evaluate the specific problems or opportunities that AMN had to say, 'Here are the key things that we need to do in order for us to be successful in alignment with best practice.' One of those things was getting consistent players in the integration roles, as opposed to a round-robin of who's available in finance or who's available in IT. Getting commitment and dedication from our CEO committee members and those departments to say, 'When we have an integration, here's the person that you're going to pull and be dedicated to it.' That's where we really started to get a more well-oiled machine in understanding all of those nuances that happen within each integration that you take with you as lessons learned. It's one thing to have a debrief and to have it on a piece of paper and hopefully you read it again before the next integration, but it's another thing to live it and breathe it with the same people who know how to raise their hand and call out, 'Oh, we did this three integrations ago and there was a problem.' That has helped us get more and more streamlined in solving for value, solving for speed, and of course an experience for the new company that we're bringing in.

Yeah, so it was before. I'd say concurrently. After I did my first integration, there was another acquisition coming up where I was asked to lead diligence. That was another example where I had participated in a diligence before, but I had never led it. So I just kind of jumped right in and used some of the tools that we maybe already had. Again, it was a little bit trial by error, really work your way through it, rely on what you know about the company, rely on people who can help you, raise your hand when you don't know something or when you feel like you might be going into a section where you need some help. And then really it was just running through a natural process with some support right away, no big training. Then from there, there was another acquisition that came up, so I led that diligence. Again, just being in that constant state of learning and understanding the differences between when we're fully running diligence ourselves. The next one that I did, we involved a banker to kind of lead it, and so I picked up on some of their best practices and incorporated some of their templates into our next evolution. So there's a little bit of your own experience and intelligence that you can bring to a role, there's others that have helped bring you along the way and share their guidance, and you have to be very much open to constructive feedback and take that with you. There's being in that constant state of learning where you are focused on your job at hand but in the peripheral you're picking up what others are doing and adding that to your arsenal. And then there's just sometimes trial and error of 'okay, that didn't work the best, how do we change it for next time.'

Yeah, I mean, I think that's some of the beauty of it. Because on any given day, I could be doing a diligence and also running an integration and trying to improve it along the way. So being involved in integration, of course you wonder, 'Why didn't they solve that? Why wasn't that question asked?' So I could bring some of that to the forefront when I was setting up the DMO. The knowledge transfer between diligence and integration is so important. How do we memorialize that and formalize that and ensure that there's a proper handoff? That's a lesson that I learned: if your team members aren't the same from diligence moving into integration, there has to be a really, really solid handoff that is written and can be referenced and is memorialized. The other thing in particular was pulling up key questions that are difficult, that might be sensitive. I think talking about maybe a brand change, or in some of our instances, the discussion around moving away from a homegrown system that the new company is very proud of and bringing them into our fold. Pulling some of those difficult conversations forward, or at least getting a feel for it, really helps the integration team as well as the new company feel better about how this integration is going to go. If the integration team is not aware of a sensitive topic that may or may not have been skirted around during diligence, you're just setting them up for a landmine to walk in and say, 'Okay, so we might be changing your systems.' If that hasn't been discussed before, that could be very, very touchy. So in summary, it's key handoffs between diligence and integration, bringing forward potentially sensitive topics if possible during diligence at the leadership level, as well as clarity of what type of integration this will require. That will then set up the rest of the integration team to know that from a modular perspective, it's an absorption model—we know that we're going to definitely fully absorb them into our people and our shared resources, we're definitely going to absorb them into our IT—versus something where it's more of a symbiotic model, where we're going to absorb these key functions but they need to run autonomously here to create value. So it's really about that clarity.

Exactly. And two other points on that. On the sensitive topics, one thing that I learned moving from integration into diligence is why you can't have some of those conversations. If it's a super competitive bid process, it's just not the right time to bring that up. There's an art and a science to that, so that helped me realize in integration why you can't always go so under the hood until you've actually signed a deal and you're having discussions. And then the other point on the clarity: sometimes within building out the DMO, it was really about just establishing language with each other and a certain lexicon. Whereas before, maybe each individual person who was running an integration came in with their own flavor, their own way that they spoke about things, and that can cause some confusion. Even just a simple term like 'when is it going to be IT go-live or IT cutover?' For one group, that can mean X, Y, and Z systems, and for another group, that means A, B, C, and X, Y, and Z. So just getting to that certain point of clarity where it allows for that speed and efficiency, sharing a same language with the same people, really helped for clarification.

Exactly. And specifically for the reason of how important it is to have some continuity between diligence and integration. And if it can't always be the same people who are doing the diligence, at least the leader—in this case, myself from the DMO—will have that continuity.

In fact, what's even better is that not only am I involved in diligence, I've been now more involved in management meeting discussions and prior to LOI discussions, where I am cataloging all the bits of information to help package it and connect the dots. So if it's possible, or at least this is how it's worked for our organization, the more upstream that I've gotten—even when we pass on deals and we don't even get involved into an IOI—it helps me understand the strategy, the rationale, the value that we're looking to achieve, to better design both the diligence and the integration. And then ultimately, the handoff from integration into your fully functioning business unit. How do I help talk with finance during the operating model of things that I've noticed that maybe the new company isn't attuned to think about when interacting with ops planning for the first time?

I think so. I mean, I think it certainly worked in the model that I have. I can see some arguments for why not, and where specialization really matters, and where it's more of a machine and they have team members that are solely dedicated to diligence and solely dedicated to integration. In my organization, that's on top of their day job often, and so we don't necessarily have the luxury to have that sort of specialization at all times. But it certainly has been helpful for me and for the perspective of our company. And I do have to give a lot of credit and thanks to my leader, Nashan, and my CEO, Susan, for advocating for my development and bringing me along. That's another example of that similar model of observe, participate, lead. I had that same thing happen with the management meetings. I first got invited to one with a colleague, and frankly we didn't really say too much. We heard how the questions went down, we heard the answers, we saw the flow of it. Then the next one, I participated. And then finally, I went out and led the whole thing and went to dinner and gave the toast to everybody. So that's been a maybe not novel model, but it's been something that I've been able to track throughout my career of how I've gained a little bit of knowledge and then had the confidence and the support—more importantly—to take that leap when maybe I wasn't necessarily ready on paper. Which I think is actually a kind of a segue too to strategy. On the off time of diligence and integration management office, we're not constantly—I mean, we're constantly shopping, but we're not necessarily always in a process. So what do I need to flex to when I'm not involved in an M&A process? That's where I started cutting my teeth more on strategy, pulling from what I learned from marketing and really getting involved in our strategic enterprise strategic process with my leader. Again, it's a situation where I observed the strategic planning process with our CEO committee. The next year, I was developing the content and the materials and leading up one particular session. Cut to this year, when it's officially now my role and I'm driving it, of course with support from our wonderful AMN colleagues participating. But that's just been those three steps that have helped me move along my career in M&A and within my company.

Yes, because technically Corp Dev is embedded in our strategy function. So in theory, the head of strategy and M&A and our Chief Strategy Officer is Chief Strategy plus M&A. We don't have a specific Corp Dev function, but it is more of a team sport right now in which we are having a finger on the pulse. We're here talking to all of our business line leaders. We have at least 12 to 15 different business lines who really have their ear to the ground and are informing us. But it's actually funny that you mentioned that because I am building out a team to be more Corp Dev focused. We are big enough now where not only should our strategy be focusing on running the business and growth and incremental value, but really being systematic and thoughtful about where we're going to be going next from a new solution, from new emerging markets. And having two to three team members focus specifically on that in a Corp Dev sort of role.

I'd say they're bubbling up through the business lines and they are bubbling up through our relationships with bankers. I think we've had the luxury slash necessity for deals to kind of come to us, but we do want to be more proactive in outreach, which is a deliberate enhancement that we would like to do over the next couple of years. We've done it throughout time, but to the point of having dedicated resources, that's really the area that we want to focus on next.

Well, I'm sure it hasn't been. There are certainly times where my palms are definitely sweaty, where I think about what it would be like to be classically trained, come up through a consulting arm from a strategy perspective and have all these different arsenals and tools and specific frameworks under my belt. But I have been very grateful for the mentorship that I have had within my organization and outside of my organization, constantly seeking to learn what I don't know. I just recently joined a group called Chief, a kind of women's networking group, and with other people in my pod, I'm beginning to try and learn from them. I will also give a shout out to my CEO, Susan, who definitely has a motto of not only being a mentor but being a sponsor and an advocate. Not just meeting with you and sounding boarding with you, but actively looking for opportunities for you to increase your skills. So it's not just 'here's a job,' but 'hey, have you thought about getting involved on the board of something?' That helped trigger that thought for me, where I get to practice my strategic skills outside of the organization. Or 'have you gotten involved in this cross-functional product or project that's going on?' I really appreciate that mentorship, but also that advocacy and sponsorship to work with me to understand where my strengths are and where my deficiencies are, and then let's actively go figure out where those deficiencies may be and put me in a situation where I've got the opportunity to learn.

Yeah, I think you summarized it way better than I did, so I appreciate that.

Yeah, no, that's a thousand percent. And I'd say the gap sometimes between the observing, the trying, and the leading—between the trying and the leading—sometimes has been a pretty big jump. So that is just the preparation of 'okay, keep your building blocks going, what you know, and more importantly, sometimes you know what you don't know so you can actually get closer to knowing it by seeking out whether it is educating yourself or taking a specific use case to someone who knows to help you work through that.' So then a shout out to my manager, Nashan, who is always encouraging me to take that step when it feels uncomfortable, to the point now where it feels very comfortable to move into something uncomfortable. And exactly what you said before, when I don't feel like that, I know that I need to consider what else I need to try.

That is a great question. I mentor several individuals, and I am of the school of thought that, yes, the company does need to help you develop, but you need to be also in charge of your own career. You need to raise your hand when you want more. You might even need to bring to the table exactly what you want to try. Having been a leader and developing team members, it is so much appreciated and I know exactly how to help with a busy schedule when someone says, 'Here's where I want to go, and I've thought of an opportunity I'd like to get involved in.' Then at that point, it is my job or my manager's job to help me figure out how to get that, to course correct me if it's not the right thing, or to support me. So I'd say it's both, but I often hear different schools of thought that it should just be the company tapping you on the shoulder. No, you really do have to steer your own ship.

Yeah, no, I think it's a kind of an equal partnership between the mentee and the mentor. There are actually some programs even at my company that's called Ignite, and it's a specific mentor program. There was a template that they would help get people initially started with from a formal mentorship process. But the key there is that the mentee is driving the conversation, it's not the mentor pulling from that conversation. So that is where I will work with individuals to say, 'Bring me something that I can help you with.' Then I'll be able, similar to the conversation we're having right now, to hear some themes and expand on it. That's exactly what I would like to do: hear some themes, understand what their strengths are, understand if they know what they're interested in, and then start to encourage them to job shadow, look at a job description, understand where their skills are transferable—especially if they want to move from one department to the other—and then just give them that confidence to kind of take a leap even if they're not ready. So that's kind of my approach.

Yeah, exactly. And then but it's for you, it doesn't matter if you're just trying to help and you're answering questions regardless. So it is back on me to be proactive, to put some time and effort to think about the questions I am asking to get the most value out of that conversation.

And yes, I mean, there can be—and I'm open to feedback from anybody I'm mentoring if there are other things that I could be doing better—I'm in a constant state of learning. And I think the key thing too, as a mentor, and I'm going to also hearken back to Susan as well, is you get so much out of being a mentor as well. I learn from the people that I mentor all the time, and I love to incorporate what I'm learning from them into my day and how I can be a better mentor to others. So I think there's a humility about also being a mentor. I'm honored that they would be interested in learning from me, and it's all about paying it forward. I've been so grateful and benefited so much from people mentoring me that I feel it is an honored responsibility to be able to take others along with me.

Oh, that's a good question because I think I kind of went off script similar to you after it initially got that template down. But I think you at least settle on what are the goals that this person wants to achieve, and then maybe some of what are the milestones that they're going to know that they're achieving their goals. So maybe it's more of an objectives and key results sort of situation. I like to, in my organization, we use StrengthsFinder as a kind of diagnostic tool. So if they haven't done it in a while or if they've never done it, I will ask for them to do StrengthsFinder so we can really hone in on where they can sharpen their skills versus maybe where they're super deficient, and play off of that, which is the whole point of StrengthsFinder. And then there's also another tool called the Motivators Assessment. I'm not getting paid by them, just for the record, but it's been helpful for me just to really get an agnostic potential view of what are people interested in. Because I don't know about you, sometimes it's like, 'Oh yeah, what do you want to do?' and that sometimes can be the hardest conversation with a mentor/mentee because they're coming to you because they want you to help them figure it out. But you need something as a mentor to kind of understand a little bit about where they are going or where their strengths may lie. And I also try and pick that up in the conversation too, of where I innately feel like, 'Yeah, you're so great at analyzing a situation, or you're so clear on getting to data.' And just picking up those parts from maybe what I know about the organization, what I know about different functions—which is fantastic in my role of strategy, being pretty well connected throughout the organization—to help them connect and network them to say, 'You should talk with this person, I know they've got something open, or I know they're about to start working on this project,' or going and advocating for them saying, 'Hey, have you considered this person?' So hopefully you could extract a few more summary nuggets out of there.

I did do that though. There was a point in time a couple years ago where we pulled two people from the business to focus on strategic initiatives, and I did do that same exercise with them. We were starting from a blank sheet of paper, not knowing what our roles would be in this brand new formulated team with these new initiatives. So I did use that to kind of say, 'Okay, you would be a fantastic person to advocate for change management. Okay, you're going to be the liaison between IT and the business because of your ability to communicate and transfer ideas in a meaningful way.' So yes, I guess I've done it in the past, but I love that idea of applying it to a dream M&A team. You're on to something there.

Yes, in fact, I participated in a program called a Founders Institute. Have you heard of it? It's kind of like an incubator/accelerator program, similar to maybe Y Combinator or something like that. I took an idea as an entrepreneur and joined a group of entrepreneurs who were trying to get a business off the ground, and went through an eight-week course with them. I felt like that gave way to more organic networking because we were all involved in a project or a process together, not necessarily the same project. It also gave me access to some judges on panels that were local CEOs or entrepreneurs in the area. And then I started really putting together what I'd call my own personal board of directors. The leader of that Founders Institute, Janine, she was on my board of directors. I got actually the former head of strategy and investor relations was the one at AMN who introduced me to that Founders Institute, so she joined my personal board. And from there, it felt just more organic to connect with folks when you're involved in a project. And then recognizing that you have things to offer other people. I think it always kind of comes back to how do you connect the dots for other people and introduce them, and that begets more networking too. In the beginning, it is kind of awkward, like 'Okay, I'm going to go and join Toastmasters or something,' but you always kind of strike up some sort of dialogue and you do have to put yourself out there. And then the other thing too is, I don't network when you need something. Network throughout your career and be willing to help someone, and then you will have fostered those relationships. When you do need something, it'll be more organic to have that conversation because you actually have a relationship. Find groups you're generally interested in, think forward about how you can help and add value to someone, and foster those relationships.

Yeah, well, I've got some problems with that too, especially when you're busy. But there are just certain people. In fact, there's a woman named Lauren who actually came from an acquisition that we had, and we struck up a friendship through the integration. She has since left the organization, but we make it a point every quarter or something to stay in touch. One example is that she needed a member to join her board of a new startup, and I helped connect her back with our Chief Clinical Officer to start that board. She was the one who introduced me to join Chief, which is the women's networking group. So there's just a sphere of influence where it's just good to kind of stay in touch. It could sound silly, but even commenting on their LinkedIn, recognizing their achievements, being relevant in their social media day—that is kind of the world that we live in a bit now too.

Well, I think you've done a fantastic job there.

Yeah, so I mean, I think just doing the diligence probably is not as everlastingly connected as it is doing integrations, because you're really understanding their business more and you're really looking to drive value together. So I'd say you get a lot more out of going through that year-long integration with them. I will say—and I don't even know if I'm answering your question correctly—I will say that some of the relationship is almost more important post-integration, in particular in my role now with strategy, which the DMO reports into strategy. Because now I have such a deeper knowledge of their business, them as a leader, and what their goals are from the point of acquisition to seeing how that evolves throughout time. So that's where I'd say there's the biggest evolution of a relationship.

Yeah, I know, novel concept. But it has been very helpful, especially on a personal level too. There's been some—the leader in Boston that I worked alongside, he was able to come to our integration team when he wasn't maybe kind of sure how AMN worked and felt that comfort to be able to ask the questions that he thought maybe were obvious to other people. So there's a relationship that I think you earn trust a bit more. You kind of have that bond where people can come to you in a vulnerable moment and ask for your help, and that inevitably hopefully leads to more retention and actually getting to value. Sometimes that doesn't always work, you know, it depends on if you're buying a company or teams that are used to being entrepreneurial and they want to just go on to their next gig, you might not always be able to retain. But I have found a deeper sort of retention when people feel like they know someone at the organization that they can kind of come to and who knows them a little bit.

For sure. And then translating what I can know to our existing business line. So that's what I think part of my evolution at AMN and in my career has been, not only the hard skills that I've acquired along the way, but more the soft skills and the interpersonal relationships, the leading through influence, empathy, and sometimes hard truths with folks. And being almost that liquid in between that can fill in the gaps and connect the dots. Managing the white space, I'd say, is a skill of mine.

Yeah, it does make sense. But also, I think not being so stuck in your ways too, that new ideas come along. You don't want to be drinking your own Kool-Aid too much that you can't adapt to where you should be, or where you should be looking from the outside to help round out your team. Which is kind of what I'm doing, looking for some people internally but more importantly looking for some people externally to help shape those thoughts into new things to help sharpen us and make us better. I will say that from a strategy perspective, when I was researching the role, there was a stat—I'll find the source, it was like a McKinsey or Deloitte—where it did say that 86% of the time, the most successful strategy leaders come from within. Sometimes there are just so many nuances to an organization. And I will say in particular with AMN, or any group that has a lot of organic but also inorganic growth, knowing all the bits and parts of this company and how they have come together, or sometimes how they haven't come together, what has been integrated, what hasn't, why did it happen this way, has really helped me to understand from a strategic lens what can and what should maybe happen that wouldn't be as apparent to someone net new coming into the organization.

Of course, it's the valuation that is the most important, and legal things that could bite you from a risk or a legal perspective that are just non-negotiables in that upfront process into even knowing if you want to move forward. But we do not, once we become exclusive, skimp on diligence. In fact, that is something I'd be interested in if there are ways to streamline it better. But we have had several occasions where it's that thing you find at the 11th hour that you just kept poking on, kept poking on, kept poking on, that was the linchpin to why we didn't go forward with the deal. Without sacrificing quality.

And it can feel like a lot for a new company, especially if they're smaller. But the hope is too that it makes integration even that much easier because there's a lot of the discovery that's been done up front and we have that clarity going into it of the things that we need to not only fix to make sure it works within a public company like AMN, but to make sure that they're the most successful. We want to help them succeed for many reasons, of course. So that's where I think we are. I wouldn't say the word is 'unapologetic' about our diligence process, but we really believe in the outcome of what it's helped to uncover, both from a preventative risk mitigation but also on acceleration and success.

So I will go back to my three-step process: find that path where you can observe, try a little, and then not be afraid to take that leap into leading. And encourage your leaders to allow you to do that. I would say also be in that constant state of learning where, as I mentioned before, you focus at the task at hand when you're trying, but be aware of what else it takes to potentially lead it and just have that thought in mind. And then seek out networking and mentorship, but drive your own career with an understanding of your strengths and your weaknesses, and look for those opportunities to further strengthen what you have and also give you experience where you don't have experience so you can speak to it when you're trying to move into another role that might not be an exact skill match.

I mean, there was a time I wanted to learn more about the actual math behind valuation, and so I took a Columbia Business Course extension to learn a little bit more about that. Reading books, talking with others. You could certainly learn on the job, but anytime I can go into a place feeling a little bit more prepared, it just gives me that confidence to say, 'I know what I don't know.' So therefore, let me go seek out, hopefully prior to making a major mistake, where I should raise my hand and say, 'I'm going to need a team on this. I'm going to learn it now, and next time I probably won't need you, but I do right now.' And I think that's important, when you can admit where you need help.

Yeah, a thousand percent. But that's another really important part for folks: understand what you don't know. Don't just walk in blindly. At least try and do some research and say, 'Yeah, I don't have that skill set, or I definitely have that one.'

It is a good one. It is something that I just encountered that made me think a little bit. There was a recent process that we were involved in that we actually stepped out of, just didn't end up being the right fit for us. A couple of months later, I got a call from a friend who said, 'Hey, did you happen to work on a deal?' He didn't know the deal, of course, with a guy named X or Y. And I was like, 'Yeah, I did. He was one of the bankers.' He's like, 'Oh, that was my son.' So it was just random that a friend from San Diego called me about a guy that I worked with who was based in New York. And it made me realize that M&A, or at least healthcare M&A, can be a small space sometimes. And what that really made me think is, always try and have the best relationship that you can with folks. Always try and do the right thing when you're going through a process because you never know when you're going to run into someone again, you never know when you're going to know their dad. In that particular acquisition, something that I found—as I always do with my company, very ethical and try to do the right thing—there was a point in the process where we knew we weren't going to go forward, and it was going to be right before the next round where they were going to be sharing some more sensitive information. We knew that they were very cautious about sharing information with a potential competitor. So we did not waste any time saying, 'Thank you, we're not going to move forward in the process, and before you send over this information, we want to exit so you feel that earnest and ethical nature from us.' So it's like, hey, M&A can be small. You never know if you're going to meet again, so do the right thing and don't burn bridges because you're probably going to bump into someone again.

Yeah, I totally get that. In our space, as the largest in the industry in healthcare, we want people to—I know you're being facetious—but like, I get it, you're a public company, rules are different. And we want people to want to engage with us, and also we want to attract the right companies that fit that culture too. Of just knowing how we went about the process in hopefully the most respectful way, that they can see that as an example of how they would be treated when they joined the company as well. And that they go tell other people that AMN did the right thing.

Yeah, exactly. So if you burn that reputation, you're not going to get as many phone calls.

Thank you, Kisan. I love what you're doing. Such a great organization. Congratulations on all of your success. I'm looking forward to staying connected and networking as we should, with a fruitful friendship and relationship in M&A.