John Hildebrandt: His Journey from the Ground Up to Success

I came from operations and from operations all of a sudden I assumed the member experience role, the real estate construction role, the logistics role, the merchandise role, and human resource role, and the B2B role. You know, I think back on my personal story, kind of growing up as a kid in PB playing tennis, not really knowing what I wanted to do and how fortunate I was to latch on to Price Club at the time. My boss at the time, Anne Neil Harris, called me into his office. He said, 'Listen, I got to tell you, you really did a poor job of opening up but we're going to give you a second chance.' I mean, one day a dream would be just to hook up an Airstream to the back of my pickup truck and just go visit every state in the union and spend some time in Alaska.

Yeah, it's an honor and a pleasure to be here.

Okay.

What was your first job at a price type enterprise? It's a great story. I was a senior in high school living at home and my mother was constantly encouraging me to get out of the house and at least get a part-time job, do something, because all I used to do was play tennis, go to school and play tennis. And she said, 'You know, you got to get out.' She ended up having a friend of hers who was a buyer at a business called Price Club, which I had never heard of. So, one day she said, 'John, tomorrow I got you an interview at Price Club.' And I said, 'What's that?' She goes, 'Well, I'm going to take you there and you're going to see what Price Club is.' So, we got in the car, we drove down to the only Price Club at the time. This was in probably August of 79.

3 years. And you were living in San Diego.

So I got out of the car. Her friend, her name was Sharon Lancis, who was an office supplier at the time, met my mom and myself at the front door. Introduced me to a gentleman named Joe Uchek, who happened to be the club manager at the time. The interview process was interesting. Joe just walked me onto the front end and he said, 'You see what those kids are doing there?' And at that time, our cashier processing system was there was no UPC back then. All the merchandise was marked with item numbers.

So, what I saw was a cashier and then an individual working with a cashier transferring merchandise from one basket to another calling out the number and I said, 'Oh, I see what they're doing.' He goes, 'Well, that's what you'll start doing and you can be here tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.' Hell of an interview. So, that was that. The next day I showed up. I will tell you within an hour I was like, this is just a great place to work because everybody was 17, 18, 19 years old. Everybody had a ton of energy. Everybody was having fun at work. Oh, and let me mention something. Price Club at the time was probably the highest payer in the San Diego market. I started out at $3.60 an hour and that was big money.

Probably a buck 25, a buck 50 an hour at that time. Imagine. So I started what they called calling. You would ask the member for their card, you'd give it to the cashier and the cashier happened to be a long-term moody individual. I'll put it that way. And by the end of the day, the supervisor called me over and said, 'I think we have to find something different for you, John. You just call too slow.' So the next day I was assigned to the parking lot to gather up shopping carts. And it's interesting because at that time I met a couple of individuals that I would get to know. One person's name was Tom Martin and the other was Casey Breen. They taught me the ropes of pushing shopping carts, letting me know that all you need to do is wear your shorts because there was no shirt necessary. You can get a suntan during the job all day long. It was a great job. So Tom and Casey, of course. Tom Martin went on to become our CMO. Casey Breen went on to become vice president with Price Club. So anyway, those were the humble beginnings.

From there though, I realized I'm not so sure I want to be spending all my days outside in the sun just pushing shopping carts. So, I ended up getting back inside and I started again working on the front end, became a cashier. Got interested in merchandising. I really wanted to know, because that group, the merchants, those were the everyone admired the merchants. 'Oh, you're just a cashier, but the merchants, they're the tough guys. Those are the guys you want to really be.' So, these were the merchandisers in the club, the stalkers. We'll call them the stalkers. And at that time, David, everything came in brown boxes. Everything had to be cut open. Everything had to be labeled. So, it was a lot of physical work. So I went out there, did that for a while and right about that time, about a year and a half, about 1980 I guess 81, Price Club had opened up a second club in Phoenix, Arizona and then had come back and opened up a third club in Santi and then they were going to go north to the Bay Area to Redwood City. And I realized then that a lot of these people that I've seen so far in the last three years, there's been very little upward mobility. So I realized at that time, you know what, if I want to grow, I'm going to start moving around and see how it goes.

Well, I was going to college at San Diego State University and not really knowing what I wanted to do, but I really became attracted to the idea of what we were doing at the time, watching members come in and buy in bulk and listening to them as a cashier saying, 'I'd come in here to spend $50 and I'm spending $250.' And it was busy. Price Club at that time was just starting to take off and there was energy, there was a buzz about it. So when the opportunity came to move north, I said, 'Why not?' So a friend of mine, we moved up to Redwood City and I became part of an opening team. Again, not knowing the first thing about it. That was Price Club at the time. The processes, procedures, they just didn't exist. We were making these things up as we went. And obviously I think we did a pretty good job at it. So we opened up Redwood City. From there, an opportunity came. Your grandfather and then your dad had signed a joint venture deal with a company in Virginia to open up a Price Club on the east coast and that didn't work out that well and we ended up buying out their interest in the business. So, I was asked, 'Hey, how would you like to go to Virginia?' And again, single at the time, I said, 'Yeah, I'm going to jump on the opportunity.' So, I got another promotion, went to Virginia Beach, spent a little time there. Then I went to Richmond, Virginia. Then from there, I was asked to open up a club, become a warehouse club manager. I think I was 24. It was one of the youngest club managers in our history at the time. So, I went to Fairfax, Virginia. Imagine the responsibility for again, very little sleep, a lot of butterflies every day of the week. And really, again, not understanding so many different aspects of the building, running that business. The administrative side was all new to me. I knew how a club should look like, how the front end should run, how the receiving area should run, but administratively, I didn't know the first thing about making sure that things were running smoothly. So we opened that up about four months later. My boss at the time, Neil Harris, called me into his office. He said, 'Listen, I got to tell you, you really did a poor job of opening up this club, but we're going to give you a second chance. So, we want you to go up to Connecticut because we're going to open up a club in Connecticut.' And he kind of winked because I knew that he was joking, but he was serious about it. What ended up happening is my admin manager wasn't the best and we had a lot of invoices that weren't paid for months at a time. And again, that was obviously not the right thing to do. So, anyway, I went up to North Haven, Connecticut, outside of the New Haven area. And at that time, I had learned a lot from the first club opening, so I was much better prepared. And we had a very successful opening. And shortly after opening, this is a life lesson that I learned that has followed me through my entire life, and I've tried to teach other people this, share my experience. At the time, we didn't see your dad that often. Your dad was on the West Coast. Saul was still active in the company. And I got noticed that Saul and Robert were going to come to visit. So, of course, it's all hands on deck. Let's get the club as good-looking as possible. Let's make sure that everything is perfect. And most importantly, make sure you know your numbers. Because when Robert and Saul came, at the time, we carried about 3,000 items. And their expectation was, you'd better have a pretty good idea what every item is doing in the club, at least the items on the end caps. And so, I was prepared. I thought, you know what? I'm going to really impress Robert and Saul on this floor walk. And the walk went very well and I was feeling very good. And about 3/4 of the way through the walk, Robert asked me a question about an item. And I honestly blanked and I did not know the answer. And I probably could have made up a number and just hoped that he wouldn't double check on me to see if that number was correct. But I told Robert, 'Robert, I don't know. I honestly just don't know the answer to your question. But you know what? I'm going to find out and I'm going to get back to you.' So the point of the story was a couple days later my boss called me and he said, 'John, I got to tell you the floor walk went well. But I got to tell you that comment that you made to Robert and to Saul was very impressive and it reflected a lot on your character about you know what, you were honest enough to say you didn't know and you had the courage to say you didn't know and you would find out and get back to them.' And so I've kept that thought with me through my career and as I have mentored many managers and direct reports, non-direct reports, I've tried to let them know the same thing. It's okay to not know every answer to every question because we don't and we're not going to. But try never to not tell the truth. Try to just be honest and say, you know what, I'm not sure, but I'm going to find out and let you know. And that has served me very well through my career.

Well, David, if you have a question, somebody else probably has that same question. And that's what's amazing about our business and I've been walking the floor for 45 years, probably the last 40 in a managerial role. And the beauty of this business is you continuously learn. Today was a great example. We take some steel down. We move the merchandise a little bit this way, a little bit that way, and look how the members react.

We're tinkerers. Exactly. We're always trying to improve. We're always looking at what we could do better and we're never satisfied. And what goes along with that and what's probably even more important behind that is the fact that we've taught our management to be entrepreneurs. And to not be afraid to try things differently. We don't send down directives on planograms that everything has to go in a certain way. And that in itself has really helped create a lot of great ideas. I call it the bubble up process where the majority of the great ideas come from our people as they're on the ground, on the floor.

In general, each one has the same sort of departments and categories. Correct.

I agree. I mean, I think it's, and again, let me reflect back on a couple other stories that I want to share.

And this goes back again to your grandfather and I'm probably one of the few people within the company today that can say that I actually was working with Saul when Saul was actively involved in Price Club. And again, I'll never forget I was in Connecticut. It was about 7:30 at night. I was at my desk and I was looking at a payroll report and nobody was in the offices. Everybody had gone home. The front end manager was running the club and I was just taking a look at the payroll report and I heard this, 'Hilderbrandt, you're still trying to figure it out.' And those are your grandfather's exact words. And I looked up and there was Saul and it was February and so he had this long winter coat on, this big hat on, heavy hat on. I can picture it. I almost fell off my chair and I'm like, 'Wow, Saul. Great to see you. How you been?' And he said, and he always called me Hilderbrandt. Never mind my first name. He goes, 'Hilderbrandt. I got to tell you something. I saw an employee out there on the floor standing there. We're paying them. You're paying them, and they're not doing anything.' And I'm like, 'So what do you mean?' He goes, 'You want me to show you?' And I said, 'Please, let's go see. I got to see this.' So we walked out to the floor. God only knows what he was doing in Connecticut. I have no idea. I wasn't going to ask. But anyway, we walk out to an endcap and he's standing there and he's looking at me and there's no employee around and he goes, 'Do you see it? Do you see that?' And I'm like, 'Saul, I don't see the employee not doing anything.' He goes, 'It's not an employee, John. Look, there's no sign on this end cap. So, this is like an employee standing here you're paying for doing nothing because if a member can't see the price of the merchandise, how do you think you're going to sell it?' I haven't heard that one before. That was another one that just stuck with me for a long time. So, anyway, those are some fun stories from the old days.

Basics. It's a lot of blocking and tackling. But again, it's a very creative environment that we have in our clubs that we talked about earlier. The managers, the department managers, they have the opportunities to tinker a little and to try to find ways to either drive sales or be more productive. And one of the roles of our regional managers, because what happens David is a club manager if they stay in a club for a period of time, it would happen to you, it would happen to me, what happens is you start to get blinders on because if you're in one place long enough you start to miss some of the things going on around you. So, one of the roles of our regional managers is they visit the clubs. Obviously, they're making sure the standards are correct and they're talking to the employees and making sure that the employees feel they're being treated correctly, but they're also looking for what we call best practices. And that's part of their responsibility because they'll pick up ideas that maybe a club manager or a department manager or a marketing manager had created on their own and the results were great. So their job is to make sure that those best practices are shared around the company.

Correct. Mexico, Canada, South Korea. I think that's it.

I'll back up. There is a section of time there where we were called Price Enterprises and we had a business model where we were actually selling know-how. So we would find a licensing partner in Asia at the time and we would make a deal with this retail partner to go over there and to teach them how to build, operate, and merchandise the club format. So we tried that for a little bit. So I spent some time in the Philippines working with a partner there. Great experience I bet, but we realized very quickly that we don't do well with partners and we really want to control A to Z. So we folded up our tents overseas. We came back and at the time from the split of Price Costco when we split, we did retain the one piece of the one club, the Price Costco in Paitilla in Panama. So, I moved from the Philippines to Panama and it was a great experience. Obviously, different culture. And one of my regrets, and I'm ashamed to admit it, but one of my regrets is I really didn't take the time to immerse myself and learn the local language. And I felt that that has hindered me. And it's also made communicating to a lot of lower level employees more difficult. And that's something that I personally enjoy doing is teaching. And so I have to teach through people who can interpret for me. So anyway, at the time we had the one club, the Price Costco. And it was a struggle. We were really trying to figure out how to make things work systems wise. We didn't have the greatest system and we didn't have a great buying team because most of the talent actually went with Costco. I think they offered just about everyone a job. Everyone had the opportunity to go. I had the opportunity to go as well and Jim Sinegal personally came to me and asked me to move up to Kirkland. And I thought about it for about five minutes and I gave him my answer right then and there and I said, 'Jim, I appreciate the offer, but honestly, Robert and Saul gave me an opportunity as a kid and I feel a sense of loyalty. I'm not sure where this is going to go, but I felt as almost part of family, a distant family member, but I felt that connection with your dad and your grandfather at the time. So I said, 'Thanks, Jim, but I'm going to see where this leads us.' So we got off to a slow start. There's no doubt we got off to a slow start, but we then opened a second club in an area called Via Brazil, which was a much better location from a demographic perspective. More high-end members. We ended up closing most of Paitilla in time. Via Brazil of course has gone on to be one of our very best locations. So back then we had Via Brazil and Paitilla and I think our goal at that point was listen, we want to validate that this model will work and we want to validate that we can make it work. Our buying team, our accounting team, our logistics team, marketing, all the departments and we actually turned a profit in the second year and at that time the CEO was very ambitious and we said okay we validated this model so let's go out and let's get some scale. Which we did. And there was a period of time over 15 months where we opened 11 clubs in three different countries with about six what we call expats at the time. And the expats were the experienced folks from the Price Club days that had come with us that would move country to country to country staying for six, seven months at a time helping teach, open, teach, and then move on to the next project. So we had some very dedicated folks putting in a lot of time, sacrificing a lot of their personal life to really getting the scale of our operation up and running. And from there we started to see some positive things go and obviously we continue to expand. From Panama, we go to Guatemala, almost simultaneously with Costa Rica and El Salvador. Honduras. The last country we opened was in Nicaragua in Central America and then obviously the DR. The rest is history. Aruba, Barbados, Jamaica.

I lived. I savored it. And no disrespect to all my friends in Panama, but I certainly enjoyed Costa Rica. The climate in Costa Rica was just warm to my liking. Panama is a very hot and humid climate. A lot of expats in, either Canadians, Europeans, Americans. I made a lot of close friends while living in Costa Rica. And so I would say that was probably my most enjoyable expat assignment. And then from Costa Rica, ended up coming back to Miami.

That's a great topic to discuss and to bring up because you're right. In many ways, I kept in contact with many of my friends at Costco. And financially they were doing very well. And I had friends that were retiring in their early 50s at the time because they had done so well. And I would always reflect back on, well I could have done that but I did this. And I will tell you and I mean this with all my heart, I think the experience of living in country and continuing today to continue to visit the countries that we operate in, to interact with our employees, our members, to understand what we're doing. And I look at it as a mission. I like to call ourselves the Robin Hood of retailers because when we go into new markets, it's not only the members at PriceMart that do well, but it's all the members that live in the areas that we open in because every other retailer has to lower their prices. So, everybody benefits when a PriceSmart comes in. So to your point, the experience was invaluable. And as I think about the day that I hang up my boots so to speak, I think my legacy is going to be the relationship I've made with folks from Guatemala to Trinidad to Colombia. That to me is priceless and it's very enduring to me.

So David on that, and again going back and thinking about my personal story, growing up as a kid in PB playing tennis, not really knowing what I wanted to do and how fortunate I was to just latch on to Price Club at the time and to get to where I am today. But that speaks a lot about our culture. It was the culture at Fedmart. It was the culture at Price Club and at PriceSmart, which has really given individuals the opportunity to really aspire and grow as far as they possibly can. And to your point, there's just too many. We don't have enough time in this podcast to talk about the individuals that started at entry-level positions and today are at senior vice presidents, vice presidents, director levels, living that same story that I have. So again, that is another very important part of our legacy, what we leave.

That's a good question. I look back and I'll remember the day, David, where you and your dad and I spoke. We were in Costa Rica and we talked about the future and 'John, this is what your role is going to be' and it was very exciting the conversation, but the minute I got in the plane and started flying back to Miami I'm like, 'Oh boy, what's next?' But in retrospect, applying a lot of the basic principles that I had learned over the years about working with people. I don't like to say people report to me. I'm their partner. I like to be more of a subservient type leader. I need to learn from them their business and then how can I help them. So coming into this new role, there was a lot of areas I had never had any experience in.

I came from operations and from operations all of a sudden I assumed the member experience role, the real estate construction role, the logistics role, the merchandise role, and the human resource role and the B2B role. So it was taking on a lot. But the good thing is, when I first came on there were a couple people that I just recognized that these weren't the right leaders for the role that they were in at the time and I knew to move the needle forward we were going to have to work with them and see if we could get them there but if not we'd have to make that tough call and move on. That's just how it works. So I was fortunate again to have earned a lot of respect over my years as the EVP of operations and that crossed borders. I spent a lot of time working with all the buyers. I knew the buyers very well. I knew a lot of the logistics people. Even the membership marketing, I knew our team a lot of our team members in country. So adapting to the new role in many respects wasn't as challenging as I thought it was going to be. But I will tell you the area of logistics, prior to taking on that role I truly didn't understand the complexity or the importance of logistics in our business. And today what I've learned over the last two years, I've come 360. I've really learned the importance of logistics, what it really means to our members in the forms of the lowest possible price. So again, my style has always been I like to communicate our direction with my direct reports. I like to make sure we're all on the same page as far as what we feel the objectives are. I don't micromanage. I'm a believer in giving each individual their space to do their job. I don't meet with people every day. I set up consistent meetings, some every week, some every other week depending on the need. And I do a lot of what we call managing by walking around. Fortunately, in the Miami offices, all of those direct reports are there for me. So, it's very easy for me to get up and walk over to Juliana's desk and say, 'Juliana, help me understand something. What's going over here?' or to walk over to Paul's office and say, 'Paul, what's happened here in merchandising? Why are we seeing this happening?' So there's a lot of that managing by walking around that takes place. But I try to respect that everyone's time. But I think I've also set ground rules with people that we have a job to do, we have an accountability, each one of us has a very high role in the company and the expectations are not unreasonable. But we can achieve them if we work together. And I'm a big believer in supporting the team and giving them the tools they need to get the job done.

No, my pleasure. I enjoy talking. I know you can't tell. I enjoy talking.

My pleasure.

I learned years back from a former manager that I worked with. They ingrained in me that there's doing the right thing and then there's doing the right thing when no one's looking. And I've thought about that a lot over my career and I preach that to those who I work with. To really make sure that you know what you're doing. It's easy to walk by something, maybe a piece of trash on the floor and no one's going to notice, you don't pick it up. But the simple thing of picking up that piece of trash when no one's looking or no one's expecting you to do that, that says a lot about somebody. And I think that's one of the lessons that I've learned. Integrity is critical in our business. And I've also learned that it's very important to let people know that we're going to make mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen. We're not machines. We learn from mistakes. We have to understand that if a buyer isn't making mistakes, the buyer isn't buying some bad items occasionally. They're not doing their job. And so, it's important to understand that mistakes are going to happen. We learn from the mistakes. But no, that's not the goal, but you've got to try. And sometimes you have to go out on a ledge and try something and get a little risky. But again, we've had operators try to do some things, go a little bit out of the boundaries. We give a lot of latitude, but sometimes someone may go a little bit further than that. And you could easily terminate somebody for doing that. But we typically sit back with that employee and we talk about what did you learn? Another experience from the past is a buyer made a big mistake and it cost the company some money. The initial reaction is well we should let that buyer go. The funny thing is the person looked at me and said, 'Well why would you fire that person? You just invested $50,000 in them because the mistake cost 50 grand.' And I took from that and I go, 'You're right.' So it's very important that integrity means doing the right thing. Try to do the right thing when no one's looking. But also, be that type of person that when people make mistakes, you're there to support them. Or if you made a mistake, just own it. Admit it. I can tell you another funny story quickly going back to my early days. In the early days, we were as managers judged heavily on what's called shrink, which is unexplained losses. And we would do physical inventories twice a year. And one day my physical inventory auditor who I met with every week came to me and said, 'John, we're missing a pallet of this Kodak instamatic film.' So again, I'm dating myself here, but what's film? I'm just kidding. And I'm like, that's impossible. There's no way that somebody walked out with $3,500 worth of this Polaroid instamatic film. The little sheets. And actually they made a comeback. You can still buy those cameras today. But the thing was as a club manager, I was like, 'Oh my god, how can I tell my boss? How can I tell him that this happened?' Because we were very conscientious of our shrink, making sure that we stayed within the company numbers. But I had to give my boss, that was a tough call, but I called him that night. It was Neil Harris at the time, and I said, 'Neil, I've got to tell you something. We've lost some merchandise. It's about $3,500 and we've gone through the paperwork. We're not sure. We're still trying to research it.' Obviously, we never found out what happened. But the reality is it's a lot easier to admit your mistake than to try to cover up your mistake. And we've had many experiences through our management where we've unfortunately had to let go of some people that made mistakes that were forgivable mistakes. If they would have come clean and said, 'Listen, we made a mistake. I don't know what happened,' or 'We're missing 10 TVs. Okay, let's figure out what happened.' But unfortunately, sometimes people don't take that approach and they try to cover up the mistake. And covering up the mistake is usually worse than the mistake itself.

I'll give you my best shot here. As a manager who manages a team of employees, you first off have to engage with your employees. You have to get to know them. You can't just manage from a distance. I think you have to have a relationship with each employee where you understand them professionally, but understanding what we ask of our people is hard. The employees at the club work very hard. But what I've always tried to do is identify the diamond in the rough. That is the person that seems to want to go the extra mile, the person who's trying a little bit harder, who's not just stopping when they can't solve a problem, but trying to figure out a problem. And when you find somebody that has that type of talent, and this is something we've been preaching and walking the talk for many years in the operations side of our business, is for our managers to identify that talent and when you identify talent then you need to start mentoring that talent. It takes a lot of time and energy but mentoring those individuals is important. I'm not saying that you have to create the perfect alter ego, as we like to say sometimes, but I think trying to instill in them the values that you find to be important that have led to your success. Sharing those with those individuals and encouraging them. But at times if disciplining is necessary, it's necessary, but they fall down, you pick them up, you dust them off, and off they go again. I think Chris Sherata has done an amazing job of following that. He's the person that currently has my previous position. When I think of those type of individuals, and we have many of those individuals, but Chris stands out because I think if there's any one individual within our organization that has really done a good job of identifying that talent and then working with that talent and developing that talent, I would say it's Chris. And a lot of people have learned from Chris's style how to do it. So again, for me, I think a lot of the basic fundamentals that we all talk about, you treat somebody like you would want to be treated. You set the expectations. You're there to coach. You're there to be a subservient leader. And that's another key attribute that I look for in somebody, somebody who's willing to do something that maybe it's not within their job title, but they're doing it to help somebody else. Those are the characteristics that stand out in individuals. And it's not always the best buyer that's going to make the best manager or the best forklift driver that's going to make the best merchandise manager. We've made those mistakes in the past. There's other attributes you have to look for and then work with. So again, a lot of it's just learning over time.

It is. And if you're not into that, I tell my people all the time, listen, if you don't enjoy working with people, helping people, teaching people, you're in the wrong business. You may not be in the business you want to be in.

Absolutely. And again, one of the key differences that we like to talk to our people about is we're very different than the traditional retailer. Why? People pay to shop. We ask people to pay to shop at our environment. So, the expectations are a lot higher. And that experience, our expectations of that experience have to be higher.

David, I appreciate hearing that. We have an amazing team here in Colombia, but I like to think we have a pretty much equally amazing team in most all of our markets as well. We have people that value their careers at PriceMart. So many of them have started at a lower level and worked up to where they are today. They take so much pride in their work and to your point, there's nothing more energizing than spending a day like we spent today. You really sense the passion, the ownership. And there's a key metric, and I'm not going to get into the percentages, but one of the key metrics that we look at to see how we're treating our employees is really our turnover rate. In our industry, in the retail industry, it's usually pretty high. And we're probably one of the lowest in the industry. And again, that comes from doing the right thing for your employee. Paying good salaries, giving good benefits, creating a good work environment where people are respected, where they have a chance to grow.

Yeah.

That's a great question. I think about the day that I hang up the boots and I'm like, wow, what am I going to do? So, I enjoy tennis. I enjoy golf. I enjoy spending time on the water, doing a little fishing occasionally. I love the outdoors. I truly enjoy the outdoors. One day a dream would be just to hook up an Airstream to the back of my pickup truck and just go visit every state in the union and spend some time in Alaska.

Exactly. I think when you get to, at least this is how I look at it, I've sacrificed a lot and a lot of us have. And I think that's another very important call out. All of us have sacrificed a lot. Our families have sacrificed. They've given up a lot for our success as well. Time away from children, time away from your spouse, your significant other. And that's very important. And one of my goals one day is I feel I have a debt to make up in that regard and I want to make sure that I spend the appropriate amount of time with my kids and my loved ones.

You could, David. I would be honored to continue on.

Well, we could give it a shot, but we might need some subtitles.

That's a very good question. I will mention something right now that is very recent, within the last few weeks. We have one of our senior managers who is going through a very tough personal time right now. Losing potentially a family member, their father. And I've learned that life balance is so important. If I could do it all over again, I probably would have done it a little differently. That's time lost. But what I'm seeing this individual go through now really makes me reflect on making sure that our people take that very seriously. Work is important, but your life balance and time with family and loved ones is critical as well. I'll try to think of a better answer for the next one, but that one rings very true and it's ongoing as we speak. So it's a tough topic to talk about.

Right. Seriously. And maybe somebody in Silicon Valley has figured it out, but surely not here.

No, there's some we probably shouldn't share. We could talk personally about over a beer, but not today.