Marketing from the inside-out, with Tim Parkin

John Tyreman:  Hi gang. Welcome to Episode 42 of the Digital Marketing Troop, where we go in the trenches with marketing leaders and practitioners to learn more about digital marketing. I’m your host, John Tyreman. And I am joined today by Tim Parkin, President of Parkin Consulting. Tim is a consultant, advisor, speaker and author who helps successful companies maximize their marketing and achieve dramatic growth. And we are here today to talk about why companies should focus on marketing teams first. Tim, how are you doing today?

Tim Parkin:  I’m doing great. John, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited for this conversation. 

John Tyreman:  Before we dive into some of the marketing topics that I’d like to touch on, I’m curious, what’s something that folks might not know about you just by looking at your LinkedIn profile?

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, well, it’s there, I guess, but it’s hidden. I was a former professional magician. So I started out as a young child wanting to be in magic and to be a professional magician. And when I realized that you have to work nights and weekends, because that’s when all the parties and dinners are, I quickly turned away from that career choice. And so I never really made it as a professional magician. But I’ve used magic. And I perform card tricks at conferences, client events, meetings, etc. And it’s been an amazing networking tool for me. And so if you scroll back far enough on LinkedIn, you’ll see recently I’ve posted some magic tricks or talk about magic. And I’ve had people, even from 20 years ago, comment and say, I remember you from the trick you showed me, you know, all that time ago. So clearly, my follow up is lacking. If people from 20 years ago haven’t heard from me, but it goes to show the power of magic as a networking tool that people, you know, form an impression of you and remember you so, you know, learn a couple of tricks, it’s worth it.

John Tyreman:  Yeah, that’s really cool to be able to stand out like that, especially 20 years down the line and have someone be able to recall you from a trick that you did 20 years ago, that’s really cool. Here at Silverback we really understand the importance of healthy teams and the impact that they can have on performance. And that’s really your area of expertise, I thought you’d be a good fit for our show around the notion that marketing organizations should focus on teams first, not customers, and that really kind of struck a chord with me, I guess, let’s start here. In a world where most marketing thought leaders talk about being customer centric, why should they instead focus on their teams first? 

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, well, first, let me acknowledge you guys that, you know, you were recognized by Ad Age, I saw, for having such a great culture and ranking among the top there. I mean, that’s an accomplishment. And it goes to show that you understand this more than most people that we have to focus inside-out here. And too often, marketers get caught up with this buzzword of customer centric and customer focused. And let me be clear here, customers don’t matter if you can’t reach them, if you can’t operate effectively, if you can’t capture the attention that you’re driving. And I’ve seen far too many clients I’ve worked with, when we first start working together, they’re wasting their money on opportunities that they can’t capture, because their team is either lacking the skills or the discipline or the process to maximize all of that spend. So we can get ahead of ourselves and we can put the cart before the horse many times, chasing customers, when really, we don’t have the infrastructure, we don’t have the team, we don’t have the processes to really capture the value that we’re creating for ourselves. So it’s a very big and very easy trap for marketers to fall into.

John Tyreman:  Let’s talk about some of the… maybe the skills or the attributes of a healthy team. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, absolutely. There’s a couple of key ones, the first being transparency. I just wrote an article about this for MarTech. But radical transparency is required for two reasons. One, your team has to know what the other parts of the team are doing so they can collaborate effectively. It’s impossible to collaborate in silos. And it’s impossible to collaborate when you’re all wearing a blindfold. So transparency is key in that regard. But as you get bigger as a company, transparency helps from the marketing organization’s perspective, so that other parts of the company, you know, executive leadership, the sales team, can see what you’re doing and collaborate with you better. And this helps justify the ROI that marketing as an organization is bringing, is contributing. So transparency is one of those. I’ll mention two others and I’ll pause. The second is expectations. You have to set really clear, very specific expectations for your team. And too often we hire people, and we give them a job description, and we say go do it. And they don’t know what’s expected of them, or when or how they’ll deliver it, and we leave them to figure it out. And so if you’re managing people, you need to set very clear expectations. And when you have one on one meetings, you know, I’ve seen too many of these go south, because they’re not very clear about those expectations. And the third is accountability. You have to keep your team accountable. And this goes hand in hand with transparency and expectations. But it’s not enough to have transparency expectations alone. You need to keep your team accountable. And too often we’re too lax on our people, or we let toxic people rule and reign and that ruins the morale of the rest of the team. So accountability comes in many forms, but it’s a required aspect of a really high performing successful team.

John Tyreman:  I like those three attributes. We recently had an example with a client who we didn’t have that level of transparency, right? And the client thought that they were making reasonable requests. But our team felt like we were getting bulldozed by the client. And they didn’t know that. And so we had a, kind of a very direct and open conversation with them where we level set and the client didn’t realize that their actions and how they were acting was impacting the team. And we thought that we might churn the client, but it ended up that that conversation really level set, and it made it for a more productive working relationship, and things are much better now. So that’s just one example about how radical transparency can really, really help.

Tim Parkin:  That’s a great example, John, because too often we don’t realize, or rather, we think that things are obvious. They’re obvious to us on our side, whether we’re the client, or whether we’re the agency or the provider, or what have you. But the more we can be explicit and open up and have those direct conversations, as you talked about, the more valuable. Sometimes we make so many little assumptions, and that they add up to a giant assumption. And then that creates this barrier, this wall between the communication that’s happening. So it sounds like you guys did a good job of knocking down that wall and exposing that, and that’s really the key to transparency, right? I love the quote that sunlight is the best disinfectant. You know, we have to shine a light on these things, to expose the problems and to address them. And it’s often through those direct conversations, we can have those positive results.

John Tyreman:  Agreed. And the bystander effect. If you have a large team, and they’re working together in lockstep and key, but you don’t have that accountability, there could be a challenge or a task that needs to be done, but no one wants to own it, because no one’s accountable to it, and therefore it doesn’t get done. It can cause frustration, confusion, it can really halt projects, too. So I like that you included accountability, in one of the skills and attributes.

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, it’s one of the biggest, most common problems that I see, you know, and there’s two sides to it, as you mentioned. First is not knowing who does what, or who should be responsible or held accountable for something. And the second, which is, you know, detrimental to a lot of teams, is people take on other people’s accountabilities. And so they realize, well, they’re not doing what they should, or I could do that better. And so they take that on, instead of letting them drop the ball and then we can identify the problem and solve it. And so they become burnt out, because they’re taking on other people’s accountabilities and responsibilities. And so one of the first things that I do with my clients, and I recommend everyone who’s listening does this, if you haven’t already, is map out a responsibility assignment matrix. It’s also called a RACI matrix, R-A-C-I. And it’s just a grid that lists everyone and all the things you guys have to do – all the activities, and then it maps out these four criteria: if you’re responsible, accountable, consulted, are informed. And you can Google the definitions of those, but basically it makes it very clear and very evident, who’s involved, when and how, and how can we collaborate and who owns what. And that document obviously changes over time as your team grows and changes. But it really makes it so much more clear for everybody to say, this is not my job, that’s your job. You need to keep me informed about this, you’re accountable to deliver that, etc. And it makes it very cut and dry. So there’s no argument or disagreement about who does what.

John Tyreman:  Tim, let me ask you, what are some tools or exercises maybe that teams can go through to help improve the transparency, setting the right expectations or holding team members accountable?

Tim Parkin:  Absolutely. The first, as I mentioned, is the RACI model. Because when you create that, it has to be a collaborative process. You can’t just have leadership, map that out and say, here it is, deal with it. Because people will disagree about what you assign them, and how and where they should interface with each other. So that’s the first step. But there’s a lot of great team building exercises that you can go through. And when I do workshops, or retreats with my clients, you know, we like to map everything out with posted notes, which is typical and classic, right? But having the team communicate, you know, what is their area of ownership, and then discussing the alignment between those. Because its alignment and ownership are the two big domains that the team needs to understand, which is what do I own and what do I not own? And then how can I align my zone of ownership with the others? Because this isn’t so much silos, it’s more like concentric circles, or a Venn diagram, if you will, that there’s overlap between multiple things simultaneously inside of any team, but particularly the marketing team. And so the more you can define those circles, and the more narrow you can make them for everybody to understand, this is what you own, you know, really, truly own it. And then also, what is the overlap, with whom this you can see that and map that out? That’s a really helpful exercise for the team to visualize and discuss how we interact with each other, where we need to interface, what we expect from each other, and then you can get into SLAs in terms of, you know, how do we operate, what’s the timing, what can I expect for deliverables, how are our requests made… I mean, this goes really, really deep if you want to talk about the operation side. But that’s a really helpful exercise to understand conceptually, individually. Who are we as a team? And how do we need to interface?

John Tyreman:  Tim, I’m gonna read a quote to you, and I’d like you to react to it. So “High performance is the result of direction and velocity. In order to achieve both, your teams must be aligned.” Now I’m quoting one of your tweets from your Twitter account. Can you elaborate on this point a little bit?

Tim Parkin:  Absolutely. The problem is that most people forget about the direction component. And they think just about velocity. And they think we need more people, we need to do things faster, we need more budget. And that’s true. But if you don’t have the same direction, you’re all these balls bouncing off the wall in different directions, and you have no real impact. And so this is where alignment really matters and direction, that you have to have a clear strategy, that your direction, but you have to have alignment on that. And that’s why it’s one direction, not multiple directions. And this is probably one of the biggest challenges that teams have is, you know, the PR team thinks we should do this, and digital marketing is over here. And while brand is saying no to everything in this direction, you have to have everyone agree on the direction we’re trying to head toward. And with my clients, I prefer to use OKRs, objectives and key results, which is a framework of objective setting. But that helps align the team to say we all agree this is what we’re trying to accomplish. Now, let’s talk about how we can each contribute toward that accomplishment, toward that objective. And so you have to have that alignment and that direction. The velocity part is the easy part, I think, of the equation. You know, we can get more budget, more people, we can do things faster, we can optimize, but the direction part is strategic and it’s difficult to align people. 

John Tyreman:  Yeah, that really resonated with me. I think maybe it’s because I think in like mathematical terms most of the time, but I’d like likening that to some sort of a physics equation. So that was an interesting perspective.

Tim Parkin:  I’ll add to that, that, you know, I also say that the equation for performance is people plus process equals performance. And you need to have really great people. But if you have great people with terrible process or no process, you’re not going to have high performance. And likewise, if you have okay people, average people and exceptional process, you can have good performance, but not, you know, high performance. And so you really need the right people, exceptional people, you need to be investing in their training, keeping them, you know, cutting edge, but you also need world class process, because marketing is much more of a process than most people realize.

John Tyreman:  People and process is performance. But it sounds like there’s an amplifier of strategy layered on to that. So people and process amplified by your strategy equals performance. Would that be a good way to represent that?

Tim Parkin:  I can see in your mind too, your ability, this math equation. People plus process equals performance to the power of strategy. Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re right. I think that, you know, obviously, you need a strategy, you need a direction that you’re headed. And the reality is, let’s just be honest here, the COVID pandemic has flipped everything upside down. If you had a strategy before, throw it out, it doesn’t apply anymore. And if you’re thinking three, five, ten years in the future, forget that and look a year into the future. Because strategy now looks completely different than it did before. I mean, with the pace of how marketing is changing, and how things like TikTok have disrupted people’s attention spans. So strategy needs to change. And that’s a different conversation, perhaps. But yes, you need the right people, you need exceptional process. And then on top of that, you need to have a strategy guiding both of those, otherwise, you’re going to have high performance toward, you know, what end?

John Tyreman:  And thank you, Tim, for entertaining me as I go down that rabbit hole. And I try to think of things in mathematical terms, which is not always a good idea.

Tim Parkin:  I think it’s a good idea in most cases. I wish more people would. I love it.

John Tyreman:  Well, Tim, I’d like to shift gears a little bit. In your bio, it mentioned a case study where you helped an education company increase website conversions, which led to more student enrollments and revenue. Just last week, I was talking with a client about the higher education industry and creating a full funnel approach to digital marketing. And I learned a lot about the higher education industry just from that one conversation. But that’s an area that we help a lot. So I’m curious, can you walk us through that case story?

Tim Parkin:  Absolutely. Yeah. It’s a really interesting example of something counterintuitive in marketing that I think people can learn a lot from. And so I’ll start with the results and I’ll work backwards from that. Essentially, there was this business and it was a trade school. And they were generating leads, they were, you know, having enrollments, but they wanted to take it to the next level. And so we looked at their website, at their funnel and their performance, and I realized something really interesting, which I’ll talk about just a second, but we made a change. And the change we made was very simple, but it took their conversion rate from five and a half percent to 20% or more. So basically tripled or quadrupled their results by making this one simple change. And the change was adding a page to their website. One single page to their website. And so the process before was, you would come to the homepage, where you can read about the school and see what programs they had, then you would click through to choose a program and you’d end up on one of the program pages where you’re reading about, here’s what the program is, here’s what you’re going to get, here’s how long it is, all that good stuff. And then you would click through that to apply, where you’d apply to talk to someone and you know, learn more about the school and actually apply to enroll. So that was the process before it was these three pages. And in looking at that, I realized that there was a problem. There is something missing. When we interviewed students, and we did some research on the website, we realized that people were not sold that this was the right decision for them to make. And the program page was trying to do two things simultaneously. It was trying to sell them on the program, but it was also trying to convince them that this is the right life decision, if that makes sense. And so once we realized, I realized we had to change something here. And we had to convince people that this is the right decision before we even talk about the program. And the reason I think this is so important for marketers to understand is that it’s not about what you’re selling, you know, the actual item you’re selling or product or service. It’s about the mental decision that people make and the commitment they’re making to themselves. And in stories, there’s a lot of future pacing. And this is what we tried to do with this client example is, we said, how can we convince these people even before they read the details of the program, that this is the right decision at this point in their life, and that if they make this decision, their life is going to be ultimately better. And so that’s what we did is we added a page to the site. And so before the program page, you would go to an industry page, which talked about this industry, and how much it was growing and how much people were being paid. And how successful these people were being, and how much opportunity there was to raise up in their career, if they were to be a part of this industry. That’s all that page did. It didn’t talk about the program, it didn’t talk about the school, it didn’t talk about anything else, it just sold the dream. And by adding that one page, it actually made the funnel longer, you know, from three pages to four pages. So we increased it by 25%. And most people would say, adding a page is a stupid idea. And marketers love to say shorter is better. Get to the point. Less click through. But we added a page. We made the process longer. And by doing so we tripled or quadrupled the conversion rate.

John Tyreman:  I like the way you phrased it, you sold the dream, right? And you sold the future version of themselves, the students, and what they can become and the trajectory of their life and how that could turn out based on this one decision. Yes, sometimes shorter is not always better. And I think the reason why in knowing the higher education industry a little bit is because that is a much more considered purchase than some of the other purchases that someone might make, right? If you want to fix a clog in your toilet, you’re gonna go to Google, you’re going to search in plumbers near me, and then you’re going to make a conversion. And someone’s going to come out and take a look at your toilet. When you’re talking about your life and the career you decide, that’s a much more involved decision. So it makes sense that adding a page would maybe slow down that process a little bit and help the students along their journey.

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, it’s… You’re so right, John, it’s interesting, because it’s one of those counterintuitive things where the slower you go, the faster you get there. And I call this the Monkey Bar Method. Because if you remember on the playground as a kid, there were monkey bars you grab on to and swing across. I could never do it as a kid, I was too weak. But it always stuck with me. And what I realized is what marketers tend to do is we have point A and point B, and the distance between those is so large, and I call that the conversion distance. And if that distance is too large, the customer can’t swing across, they can’t reach across because it’s too large of a stretch. And so what we want to do is put many more monkey bars in between there and lower the distance from one bar to the next, step by step. And that’s what we did by adding that one page to the site . They were trying to make this leap from, I just got here is this the right decision to me and here’s the program, to us take them step by step. Let’s lead them through this, their decision process. And that’s where optimization really is not about pages, or you know, the website. It’s really about the thought process and how someone decides and their decision making process. And if you can understand that and optimize and align your marketing to someone’s decision making process, then you can have exponential success, and no one else was really doing this. That’s why it’s so powerful is because customers don’t realize that that’s what they need. And it’s not about giving them what they want. It’s about giving them what they need to make the right decision.

John Tyreman:  Yeah, there’s, there’s a job that they’re trying to get done, right? But then there’s also… they want to create a better version of themselves. And there’s a personal value that they want – or they need to get. They may not necessarily know it right away. And I think you did a great job of illustrating how that industry page, adding friction to a funnel, actually increased conversion. That’s really cool. Well, the education space is just fascinating to me, because it’s been disrupted so much over the past few years. I’m curious, is that an industry that you are deep into? Where do you see that industry in particular, headed?

Tim Parkin:  Yeah, for this one, in particular, it’s around trade schools. And there’s a lot of need for that, because it has to do with infrastructure of the country. And so there’s, it’s just exploding right now. But I think when you look at traditional colleges ,state or otherwise, you know, there’s definitely a lot of disruption there. And it’s funny, because I’m a huge antagonist of education and formalized education. I actually dropped out of, well I wanted to drop out of high school, but my parents wouldn’t let me. So I said, I’d get my GED, and they would let me do that. So I skipped 12th grade. And then after I did that, they said, you have to go to college. I said, absolutely not. So they said, pick anywhere, and we’ll help you go there. And so I went to a school that was only 14 months, accelerated degree, graduated from that. And they said, you really need your bachelor’s degree, so you’re going back to college. So I went through so much school that I hated and didn’t want to go through. But I kid that, you know, I met my wife at my final school, so it was all worth it at the end. But I hated every minute of it. So I’m very much against the formalized school system.

John Tyreman:  It seems like the skills required in the job market today, just… those are changing so fast and the higher education space just can’t really keep up with how to train the next generation on how to use those skills. So it’s like it’s changing in a way where more niche certification courses are becoming more popular and that’s the route that it seems, at least from my perspective, I see the industry headed.

Tim Parkin:  That’s interesting. I never thought about it this much, John. But you’re right. And maybe we’ll go back to the old model of apprenticeship, where you kind of work with someone on the job to learn the job. Because even now, you read a job description, and you know, I help my clients hire people time and write these job descriptions. And it’s like, we all know this is fake, right? Like, the person you hire is not going to do any of this stuff because by the time you hire them, there’ll be new demands and new challenges and new things for them to take on. So even job descriptions now don’t really matter and apply. And I think the whole idea of resumes as well, is antiquated. So I don’t know. We’ll see. It’s definitely gonna be disrupted, and it’s already being disrupted. So a space to watch for sure.

John Tyreman:  I could talk all day about specific industries and the direction they’re headed. Well, Tim, there’s one other topic that I wanted to explore with you. And I know that we’re running close to our time now. But you contend that most marketers suck at testing. Why do you think that is? And how would you fix it?

Tim Parkin:  There’s two big problems that marketers have with testing, maybe more, but the first is, they don’t do testing at all. So I mean, you’re terrible at something if you don’t do it. So start testing all of you. Because the key to success, to growth, is to test. No one knows what will work. I tell my clients this all the time. They don’t know what’s gonna work, I don’t know what’s gonna work, nobody knows what’s gonna work, you only know by testing. And so if you’re not testing, then you’re failing, in my opinion. And there’s an epidemic of copying other people that, you know, you’re in these conversations about campaigns or creative. Well, what’s our competitor doing? Look up there, let’s copy that. That may work for them, it may not work for them, you have no way of knowing. So don’t copy them, figure out what works for you. And the way to do that is through testing. So that’s the first problem, is if you’re not testing, you need to be testing. But the second problem, which perhaps is more prevalent, is that anybody who’s trying to do testing is learning about testing from these blogs, and articles and YouTube videos that are telling them to test a blue button versus a red button, and to do stupid stuff like that, you know, that will have no impact on what you’re doing. And most people don’t have a statistical background to evaluate, you know, the efficacy of their testing. So testing is a lot more complicated than people realize. But it’s actually a lot simpler than people realize, too, the essence that you need to be strategic with your testing. And what I mean by that is, I remember being a kid in the doctor’s office, you’d have that magazine, and have two identical pictures and it would say spot the differences. And you’d have to like hunt and find, you know, these minute differences. That’s how most people approach testing – is their testing these things you can barely notice. And let me tell you, if you can barely notice it, then your customers are not even going to see it at all. So the key to testing that marketers need to realize, is you have to have radical differences in your testing. Don’t test a different headline. Test an entirely different layout on the page. Don’t test the different page, test entirely different funnel. You have to be extremely different in order to have any kind of movement here, particularly if you have low volume and low traffic.

John Tyreman:  I see your perspective on you have to be radical with the tests. And to me, it sounds like there’s also another dimension, and it’s time, right? So at the onset, you may want to test things that are radically different, right? To kind of give you directional feedback on how you should change maybe messaging or like the key points that you lead with versus those that you don’t. But then over time, and as you accumulate data, and you get a little bit closer, you narrow in your focus, that’s when you can start testing those little things, like maybe slight variations in copy or button color or, or things like that. Do I have that right?

Tim Parkin:  I think you’re right, yes, I would argue that the time that it takes to get to that point is pretty massive. And so most of my clients are, you know, their web traffic is pretty substantial. And so we can run a lot of tests and in parallel, and even they are not yet at that point, and it takes, you know, a while to get there. But you hit on another really key item of testing, which is you have to capture the results of what you test. Whether it’s successful or not, you need to document to remember that you did it and learn from that and apply it next time. Too often people test something, and it’s not successful, or they don’t have a positive result, and then they say, okay, let’s test something else. And they don’t learn from that. And so you really have to pay attention to what happens and learn from that. And I recommend everyone takes all of those insights, positive and negative and puts them into a central repository that I call the book of knowledge, which then grows outside of just testing, but it’s a place to store everything we know about our marketing, everything we’ve done, historically, everything we’ve learned, what are our best practices, not just the general industry best practices, you know, what are our benchmarks, etc. So, learning what you’re doing and applying that and documenting is so critical.

John Tyreman:  Yeah, that is so true. I like that, I like how you coined the book of knowledge, the book of marketing knowledge, right? Every company should have one.

Tim Parkin:  They should. It becomes a really invaluable document. But you’re absolutely right about direction that, you know, the key to testing is to start with the broad strokes, just like how you paint, you know, if you watch Bob Ross paint, he’s not painting the leaves on the trees in the beginning, he makes these really big, broad strokes. And that’s what we need to do in testing is figure out which direction, which road, we need to go down. And then we can refine it and tweak it. You know, the same thing with targeting, or creative or landing pages or funnels or anything you’re testing, it can all be figured out. But you have to start with the big bold, broad changes, because that’s how you get traction. Otherwise, we’ll just spend, you know, months and months and months testing stuff with no result.

John Tyreman:  Well, and to take it full circle here too, to tie it back to teams, you also need the right people with the right skills and the right feedback loops in place. Right? So my mind immediately goes to like, let’s say you’re running a paid media campaign. And let’s say you’re testing between, let’s use a stark difference, let’s say you’re testing photography elements versus illustrations. That’s a fair enough difference. Would you say? 

Tim Parkin:  Yes, absolutely. 

John Tyreman:  So in order to test the efficacy of that, or the difference between those two, you need the right analytical skills on the team. But you also need the right creative skills on the team to know what photos to use, what illustrations to use. So if you don’t have that team chemistry, that transparent, direct, honest communication, and then the creative team, being able to receive that communication and change what they do, you’d be stuck, you wouldn’t be able to do testing.

Tim Parkin:  Absolutely. And to make sure that it’s executed properly, to your point that the messaging is the same, that they go to the same destination page, that we’re only testing that the imagery is different. There’s so many components there that you’re unraveling here. And it requires that collaboration, that operational excellence, that process among the team. So absolutely. And also, as you mentioned, the knowledge and the skills of the team, to know what to do and how to do it and how to approach it and measure it. So there’s so much behind the scenes that we’re not talking about. And that often we don’t realize or pay attention to, that if we want to see real success, real growth, this is why it’s really about marketing inside-out. We have to get our teams on the right page and performing well so that we can reach our customers and serve them well. But it starts with us.

John Tyreman:  Tim, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show today. If folks want to connect with you and learn more, where can they find you?

Tim Parkin:  On my LinkedIn is the easiest place. You can search for Tim Parkin. My last name is parking you without the G. Or you can check out my website, timparkin.com. But also you know, for your listeners here, I have what I call my vault, which is a collection of all my intellectual property:  videos, webinars, templates, ebooks, all sorts of stuff. It’s all free. There’s no sales pitch, and you can get access to that if you just text the word GROW to 844-311-3200.

John Tyreman:  Well, Tim, thank you so much for your time and insights. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. 

Tim Parkin:  Likewise. Thanks so much, John.