Recorded at Pest World 2024 in Denver, a conversation between Paul Giannamore (Managing Director of The Potomac Company, an M&A advisor in the service industry) and Rob Greer (COO of Rove Pest Control). Topics include balancing people and systems in business processes, leadership's role in shaping company culture, the impact of AI on marketing, customer service, and robotics, multi-modal growth strategies (door-to-door sales, acquisitions, digital shift), M&A challenges, and residential pest control market maturation trends. # Channel Identity Observations: Potomac TV (Paul Giannamore) ## Explicit Self-Description - **Channel name and host identity**: Paul introduces himself on-camera: > "Hi, I'm Paul Jana Mar [Giannamore]. I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel." The channel is identified as **Potomac TV** in his sign-off framing: "Again, thanks for joining us here at Potomac TV." - **Stated historical scope**: > "Historically Potomac TV has been focused on business and operational information and interviews for residential and commercial services business owners." - **Stated scope expansion (M&A content)**: Citing demand after the sell-side M&A Masterclass, he announces: > "Dylan and I will be sitting down filming more extensive M&A Masterclasses both focusing on the sell-side as well as the buy-side… M&A psychology… as well as extensive buy-side practice, approach, and due diligence." ## Intended Audience - **Primary audience**: Residential and commercial services **business owners**, per the direct quote above. - **Secondary, newer audience segment**: Viewers requesting M&A education content via LinkedIn: > "After the publication of the sell-side M&A Masterclass last month, my LinkedIn inbox has been inundated with a variety of different requests." - **Implied professional context**: The interview occurs at **PestWorld 2024** (title metadata; on-site references to "Pesco" and "the pest control space"), indicating the pest control / home services industry is a core vertical. ## Observable Presentation Patterns (Demonstrated, Not Claimed) - **Expert-to-expert interview format**: A conversational dialogue with Rob Greer (COO-type operator in pest control) covering culture, systems vs. people, M&A due diligence, AI, and marketing — demonstrating an **operator-advisory conversation style** rather than beginner tutorial content. - **Host positions himself as M&A/finance authority**: Paul frames analysis around "the mergers and acquisitions game," "financial sponsor" incentive structures, and recurring-revenue fundamentals: > "There's probably at least half the companies here are not doing the basics right." - **Audience-responsive production claim**: > "This channel is largely driven by you, the viewer, and what you want to see from us" — a creator claim about content direction, accompanied by calls to subscribe, join an email list, and comment. ## Cross-References to Adjacent Channel Properties - Reference to another show/series: "Since we caught up with you on the **Boardroom Buzz**" — indicating a related interview series within or adjacent to the channel's output. - Reference to **YPO forum** participation by the host, presented as personal context. ## Notes on Evidence Boundaries - The channel description ("business and operational information and interviews") is a **creator claim**; the video demonstrates the interview half of that scope directly, with M&A and operational topics substantively discussed. - No private motivations were stated or inferred beyond the quoted audience-demand rationale for new M&A content. # Delivery Observation: Paul Giannamore & Rob Greer — PestWorld 2024 ## Format Overview This is a **two-person conversational interview**, not a lecture. Paul Giannamore hosts and asks questions; Rob Greer gives extended answers. The video opens with a **cold-open teaser** — an acquisition anecdote — before Paul's scripted channel welcome: > "Hi, I'm Paul Jana Mar. I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel." *(Note: transcript rendering of the name appears garbled; the spoken name is presumably "Paul Giannamore.")* --- ## Tone & Register - **Collegial and informal** throughout, with humor punctuating serious business discussion. Paul opens with warmth and a joke setup: > "I actually say this with all sincerity, you're one of my favorite people to talk to... you're probably the only person I've talked to today, but you're definitely my favorite on any other day as well." - **Deadpan humor from Paul** appears repeatedly — a stable pattern: - > "Large cash prize as well?" - > "A whole pile of no cash." - Comparing Rob's newsletter favorably against "a publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics." - The Google Translate joke: > "translate it back to the English and have like a picture of the Mexican read by Franco." - Rob matches with **self-deprecating humor**: > "I'm kind of in squirrel chasing nuts mode." --- ## Question & Framing Habits (Paul) - **Opens topics with conversational lead-ins**: "So, has anything interesting happened since you published that book? Anything in the world?" - **Reframes guest answers back as questions** to advance the dialogue: - "Are you going to be in the documentary?" - "What do you see on the AI front?" - **Defers to the guest's expertise** while adding his own framework, e.g., breaking a business into components: > "You've got strategy, you've got people, you've got the architecture of the business, kind of the incentive structures within. You've got the routines... Then of course you have culture." - **Uses analogies** to explain concepts — a repeated habit: - Culture as a prenuptial agreement: > "everyone has a prenuptial agreement. The question is did you write it or did the state write it" - The Kyoto/Hiroshima story from *Fluke* to illustrate randomness. --- ## Answer Style (Rob) - **Extended, layered answers** — often 30+ seconds with multiple examples. He answers the surface question, then adds a concrete illustration: - On systems vs. people, he offers the **spiral staircase visual**: > "I envision it being like a spiral staircase where both sides are feeding into each other" - Then grounds it in specifics: Minneapolis vs. St. Paul vs. Massachusetts branches. - **Uses concrete anecdotes**: the aborted acquisition ("10, 11 months into it... less than a week away from closing"), the *Guess Who* game with his daughter, blurry customer photos in the newsletter. - **Hedges and epistemic humility** — a recurring verbal pattern: - > "I and I could be totally wrong on this" - > "Obviously, I can't run the counterfactual and guarantee that" - > "I I have no clue how that's going to impact" - **Filler-heavy, additive speech**: frequent "um," "you know," "so," and trailing constructions — consistent with unscripted spontaneous delivery. - **Restates and builds on the guest's points**, visibly revising his views mid-conversation: > "I guess I hadn't really given it much thought, but you're right. We are on three continents." This **on-air updating** happens at least twice (also after Paul's point about decentralized team culture). --- ## Shared Communication Patterns - **Socratic ping-pong**: Rob frequently ends answers by turning the topic back: > "What have you what's been your experience how do you respond to that?" and later asks Paul structured multi-part questions about M&A and culture. - **Both cite reading material** (*Fluke*, *Determined*, "the books like who I love them," Sapolsky) — evidence of a book-referencing conversational norm. - **Both qualify statistical reasoning**: Paul's "August to August" comparison point; Rob's daughter's statistics-then-gut strategy. --- ## Recurring Vocabulary & Themes - **Business jargon** used naturally and repeatedly: "due diligence," "counterfactual," "availability heuristic," "recurring revenue," "zero-sum game," "agency problem." - **Recurring concept words across both speakers**: *culture* (extremely frequent), *systems*, *co-evolution*, *fluke/luck/randomness*, *customers*. - The word **"fluke"** becomes a running motif in the second half, transitioning from book title to shared analytical shorthand. --- ## Uncertainty Notes - Speaker attribution in a few rapid exchanges (e.g., around the Chilean culture discussion, timestamps [1349]–[1416]) is ambiguous in the transcript; some interjections cannot be confidently assigned. - The transcript contains OCR/ASR artifacts ("Paul Jana Mar," "the Mexican was involved," "Pesco," "town of McComb") that may distort exact wording; quoted examples above avoid where possible relying solely on garbled passages, though some (e.g., "the Mexican read by Franco") are included as-is with that caveat. # Position Extraction: Paul Giannamore & Rob Greer — PestWorld 2024 ## Speakers - **Paul Giannamore** — host, Potomac TV; M&A/investment banking perspective - **Rob Greer** — guest; COO of a pest control company (multiple branches across US markets); recent author --- ## Opening Segment (Paul Giannamore) - Announces expanded M&A Masterclass content (sell-side and buy-side) following demand after the sell-side Masterclass publication. - Announces a near-miss acquisition anecdote (repeated later by Rob): a deal ~1 week from closing was paused over a "small problem" that, on inspection, revealed a bad fit. ## Rob Greer: Book, Award, Documentary - Received the **Quilly Award** from the National Society of Bestsellers for his book; describes it as recognition for bestseller status that otherwise "disappears behind you." - All book proceeds went to charity per a pre-agreement. - A **documentary** based on the book, featuring Chris Voss, is expected on Amazon in **early 2025**. - Post-publication effects on company culture: some team members embraced deeper customer connection; others used empathy language transactionally — Rob calls this "the toddler perspective." - A second book is possible but not rushed; currently in exploratory "squirrel chasing nuts mode," with the business as top priority. ## Business Performance (Rob) - Mild northern winters enabled a quick season start; extended pest season; growth returned, with some branches **doubling or tripling goals** after a below-target prior year. ## People vs. Systems — Co-evolution Thesis (Rob) - Rejects framing as "people OR systems" or even "both"; proposes **co-evolution**, visualized as a **spiral staircase**. - People shape systems; systems must evolve per local culture — e.g., a Minneapolis system vs. Massachusetts branch "after 4 years they better not look like each other." - **Sports analogy**: a "garbage quarterback in one system" can be an all-star in another; cautions that books like *Who* isolate one principle, not the whole picture, and the incoming person also forces the system (e.g., wide receivers) to adapt. - Current experiments: assessing a 6-week inventory system's behavioral effects, hiring values, making weekly communications interactive, replicating recurring "bright spots." ### Internal Newsletter (Rob) - Industry-relevant education via storytelling; includes customer-submitted photos for humor; highlights detailed client reviews that mirror company values — evidence culture isn't only top-down. - Paul quips it should avoid resembling "a publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics." ### Paul's Counterpoint on His Own Firm - Admits Potomac does internal communication "poorly": quarterly mini-retreats, annual retreat (Tokyo, 5 days), small-team game nights, but no newsletter. - His firm is **decentralized across three continents**; local teams set their own perks and gatherings — not corporate mandates. ### Rob's Caution Back to Paul - A good idea at another company doesn't mean you should adopt it; copying can disrupt cohesion and increase reliance on the leader. Paul concedes the point. ## Culture (Paul) - Framework for a business: **strategy, people, architecture/incentives, routines (processes), culture**. - Culture is largely set by the **founder and senior management**; staff model the owner's behavior. - Distinguishes **high-performance vs. low-performance cultures** (office "buzz" vs. donuts/magazines). - Prenuptial analogy: > "Everyone has a prenuptial agreement. The question is did you write it or did the state write it?" — every business has a culture; the question is whether it was designed or drifted rudderless. - Culture as **beliefs**: contrasts US optimism (improving one's lot through work — which he thinks is unfortunately changing) with Italy, where he says people expect the government to care for them. - **Incentives shape culture**: individual incentives foster self-reliance but limit cooperation; group incentives create a **freeloader problem**. - Claims Americans "on the whole are typically not envious" and celebrate others' success, while in some European countries success is viewed as **zero-sum**. ### Rob's Nuance - Warns against the COO trap of *imposing* culture rather than co-evolving it with the team — "probably difficult to balance." - Rob suggests the zero-sum/shared-success issue may sit on an **optimism / scarcity-vs-abundance spectrum**, not just individualism vs. collectivism. Paul: "It may be." ### Chilean Culture (Rob, from master's in Santiago) - Sharp economic disparities post-transition from communist to democratic government; culture very **status-conscious**; "very frank" like German culture; acceptable to state judgments (light/dark, pretty/ugly) directly. ## Sales & Marketing Modalities (Rob) - Rejects single-modality dogma (door-to-door, Angie's, etc.): overconfidence in "what worked for me yesterday" lacks humility. - Door-to-door: high cost/risk, can harm customer culture if scaled too fast, but "no better tool" for density and switch-flip growth. - **Near-collapsed acquisition**: 10–11 months of diligence, <1 week to close, small problem surfaced; team paused instead of sweeping it aside; deeper digging showed bad fit. Painful but "probably the best thing" — Rob explicitly notes he **can't run the counterfactual and guarantee that**. Another opportunity in the same area later emerged. - Digital marketing: heavy AI-driven strategy churn; what worked in 2018 is "a train wreck now"; refuses to set current programs on autopilot. ## AI (Rob) - Focal points: marketing/communications, customer service and sales automation with **human handoff switch points**; trend detection for digital investment. - Skeptical of explainable AI: asking AI to show its reasoning is "a fruitless concept" because it processes "millions of data points" beyond human cognition. - Follows daily AI newsletters; tests new tools in controlled environments; some "blow up." - **Revised view on robotics**: six months ago he said AI wouldn't touch the service side; recent robotics advances plus existing mechanization (trap monitoring, misting systems) make it plausibly viable in specific circumstances. ### Paul on AI/Robotics - Notes **regulation** as the constraint: technology will "dramatically outpace the regulatory regimes" — especially regulators permitting robots to apply pesticides. ## Reading: *Fluke* and Jane Franklin (Rob & Paul) - Rob read *Fluke* ("everything's out of your control and everything you do matters") and *The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin*. - Core claim: successes and failures are often flukes; he wonders whether successful people are "aware of the cigarette butts that led to their success." - **Jane Franklin** angle: Benjamin and Jane started nearly identically; divergence owed largely to her being a woman in the 17th century; her letters were discarded. Rob poses the counterfactual — with one fluke changed, she might have been the Benjamin Franklin; we hear "the one," not "the nine." - Paul connects to **YPO availability heuristic**: forums full of successful risk-takers breed overconfidence because the failed counterparts aren't in the room. - Paul's Kyoto anecdote from *Fluke*: the Secretary of War's fondness for Kyoto (honeymoon/vacation) led him to successfully appeal to spare it; Hiroshima and Nagasaki were consequently hit — emotional drivers and weather as flukes costing hundreds of thousands of lives. ## Luck, Fundamentals, and Deal-Making - Rob asks how to separate fluke-driven success from skill in M&A targets. Paul: you can't plan for luck, but you can **"put yourself in the best position"** — get the fundamentals right (recurring revenue, good pricing, core cash-flow principles). He estimates "at least half the companies here are not doing the basics right." - Rob's framing: the target to seek is "the person that not only stumbles across the cigarette butt, but knows what to do with it." ## Hot Hand vs. Statistics (Rob's Guess Who anecdote) - Rob plays statistically optimal *Guess Who*; his daughter plays two statistical questions then goes with gut — and wins 9 of 10; family bets on her. - Question: should acquirers play the statistical game or bet the hot hand? ### Paul's Answer - In financial sponsors, **incentive structures skew risk/reward**: investing others' money means high upside, limited personal downside — "you're rewarded sometimes to take the hot hand approach." - Notes this is largely from the corporate/PE perspective; the private-company side would need more thought. Rob adds that risk tolerance varies with capital base. ## Residential Demand Outlook ### Rob - Tracks monthly search volume and market data; several months showed **year-over-year declines** in matched months, controlling for weather. - **Hypothesis (explicitly hedged: "I could be totally wrong")**: the industry is **maturing**; customer acquisition costs are rising, so firms are investing in **retention** rather than new-customer buying, shrinking perceivable market churn. Pest control has moved from novelty to commodity in some markets. - Additional factor raised mid-conversation: new construction skews toward multi-family units, which carry lower per-capita spend than single-family residential — shifting the commercial/residential balance. ### Paul - Growth curve "still sloping upward, but upward at a decelerating rate." - Uncertainty about the cause: COVID boom subsiding, rising **penetration rate**, or consumer health — pest control "has gotten expensive," raising the question of demand elasticity. - Verdict: **"too early to tell,"** though the last 90 days show changes. --- ## Unresolved Tensions / Qualifications Preserved - Rob cannot confirm the abandoned acquisition was the right call (no counterfactual available). - Rob's industry-maturation demand thesis is self-flagged as possibly wrong. - Paul's hot-hand/incentive analysis is explicitly limited to the institutional/PE perspective. - Whether zero-sum attitudes reflect individualism-collectivism or scarcity-abundance is left open ("It may be"). - Cause of demand deceleration remains undetermined for both speakers. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record **Video:** Paul Giannamore & Rob Greer Discuss AI, Business Growth, and Leadership Strategies | #PestWorld2024 ## Speakers & Roles - **Paul Giannamore** — **Creator / host** - Opens the video with a channel welcome (self-identifies: "Hi, I'm Paul Jana Mar [Giannamore]"), promoting Potomac TV and upcoming M&A Masterclass content. - Conducts the interview; positions himself as principal of a firm ("Pesco" referenced in-house) operating across North America, Europe, and Asia ("we're on three continents"). - References doing his master's degree in Santiago, Chile. - **Rob Greer** — **Guest / Interviewee** - Identified in title; described in conversation as COO of a pest control business. - Discusses his book, the Quilly Award, an upcoming Amazon documentary, internal newsletter experiments, marketing channels, AI adoption, and his reading list. - Colleague of "Lenny McKay" ("door-to-door millionaire"), referenced by the host. - **Named third parties mentioned (not speakers):** - **Dylan** — mentioned by Paul as future Masterclass filming partner. - **Lenny McKay** — Rob's business associate; author with an upcoming audiobook introduction Paul owes him. - **Chris Voss** — named as a documentary participant. - **Nick Nanton** — credited by Rob as creator of the Quilly Award. - **"The Mexican"** — a Pesco team member referenced in an anecdote. ## Promotional Segments (Flagged) - **Channel intro (Paul, pre-interview):** - Promotion of **Potomac TV** channel and **subscription** ("click below and subscribe"). - Promotion of **email distribution list** signup ("link here in the description"). - Promotion of upcoming **sell-side and buy-side M&A Masterclass** content with Dylan. - Solicitation of **viewer comments** for topic requests; comments explicitly **available** and invited. - **Guest's promotional mentions:** - Rob's **book** (published prior year), the **Quilly Award**, and the **documentary coming to Amazon in early 2025** — book/documentary promotion flagged. ## Referenced Sources & Third-Party Claims - **Books discussed:** - *Fluke* (subtitle recalled as "why everything's out of your control and why everything you do matters") — read by Rob. - *The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin* — read by Rob. - *Determined* — mentioned by Rob as covering similar concepts. - Rob Sapolsky's writing — cited by Rob as an influence. - A sports/"who" book genre ("the books like who") — generically referenced in the systems-vs-people discussion. - Lenny McKay's book (audiobook pending). - **Organizations/awards:** National Society of Bestsellers (Quilly Award); YPO (Paul references a forum debate); Amazon (documentary platform). - **Data/anecdotes:** - Rob cites his own monthly residential market search-volume data showing year-over-year declines in some months — **self-reported, unverified**. - Paul cites M&A market observation: growth still upward but at a decelerating rate — **anecdotal, unverified**. - Rob's anecdote about a near-closing acquisition withdrawal (~10–11 months invested) — **first-person account, unverified**. - Historical claims (WWII bombing target selection, Kyoto, Hiroshima/Nagasaki) — attributed to Rob's reading of *Fluke*; one detail Paul says he can't remember precisely ("It may have been his honeymoon, I don't remember"). - Paul's Kyoto/Secretary of War account is flagged in-transcript as uncertain detail. ## Availability & Uncertainty Notes - Speaker "Paul Jana Mar" is a transcript rendering of Paul Giannamore (per title). - No curated metadata was supplied beyond the title; no timestamps available in transcript. - Rob's book title is **not named** in the transcript. - Comment availability: **comments open/invited** per Paul's intro. - No third-party fact-checking or cited external datasets appear; all market data is speaker-reported. it's a pretty recent one where we put 10, 11 months into it and we were going through the due diligence and it was less than a week away from closing and a small problem came up and it would have been easy to just sweep it under the rug and say "Hey, acquisitions have worked in the past. This looks like most of the other ones. I'm sure this is fine. It'll pan out." Um and we ended up pausing on that and diving in and the more we looked into that individual problem, the more we realized that it was going to be a bad fit. Hi, I'm Paul Jana Mar. I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel. You know, historically Potomac TV has been focused on business and operational information and interviews for residential and commercial services business owners. But after the publication of the sell-side M&A Masterclass last month, my LinkedIn inbox has been inundated with a variety of different requests. So, Dylan and I will be sitting down filming more extensive M&A Masterclasses both focusing on the sell-side as well as the buy-side. I intend to talk about the choice of process, delving deep into M&A psychology, uh as well as extensive buy-side practice, approach, and due diligence. For those of you who have not subscribed, you can click below and subscribe to the channel. Furthermore, we've provided a link here in the description where you can get on our email distribution list. And if you do that, you'll receive an email right in your inbox with our latest publications. Feel free to put a comment below on the types of things you want to see. I mean, this channel is largely driven by you, the viewer, and what you want to see from us. Again, thanks for joining us here at Potomac TV. Robert, it's great to have you. I'm good to be here. Thanks. Appreciate you showing up here. I I actually say this with all sincerity, you're one of my favorite people to talk to. Well, thanks. You're uh probably the only person I've talked to today, but you're definitely my favorite on any other day as well. Awesome. I thought I'd begin the session by congratulating you. You just got an award, and I want to talk about that. Cool. Well, thank you. Yeah, just received the Quilly Award for my book that got published last year. It's been a fun piece to have. Had a lot of commentary. It's had some interesting shifts in the business, and yeah, it's been fun. What is a Quilly? It's an award from the National Society of Bestsellers, and I think Nick Nanton put it together years ago just because it's one of those things where you know, you publish a book, and then you achieve some kind of bestseller element somewhere, and then it just kind of disappears behind you, and there really isn't any way to capture that. And so, that's the main goal there is to give some kind of element of recognition that can be shown, and referenced, and shared. Large cash prize as well? We actually put all of the money that came from it to charity. So, that was the deal going into it is none of us were going to make a penny off of the book. So, yeah. A whole pile of no cash. Well, in in it in addition to the book, do you have anything else coming down the pipe? Yeah. The book did so well, and we had a lot of, you know, not just sales from it, but a lot of good conversation in our industry and just business in general. And so, we decided to use that as a springboard into a different platform. So, we put together a documentary that dives deeper into the themes and topics of there, especially some of the stories that just in that small chapter I really couldn't get into a lot of depth. So, there's a documentary coming out. It's going to be on Amazon. I think it's going to be hitting early 2025. That is the next piece from that. Are you going to be in the documentary? I am in the documentary. Chris Voss is in there. Um, some of the more popular uh, contributors to that first project are highlighted in this. So, has anything interesting happened since you published that book? Anything in the world? There's so much interesting that's happened since then. guess what I'm saying like anything directly related to the publishing of that book. Yeah, I've had a lot of people reach out to me, people that I wouldn't expect. Um, some from within the industry, some from without. But I think what has really been the most interesting to me is how it's affected our customer culture from new customers coming in to customers that have been with us for 20 years, as well as how different team members have interpreted the messages from that book. Some of them you can see them really take it and embrace it and they've taken on a whole new level of trying to really connect with the customer, really find out what they need, and help them to see a larger perspective rather than just trying to get in and out. And then of course you're going to have the flip side of that where people are like, well, this is what I want. Won't you be empathetic and give me what I want? And And then you realize like, yeah, that's like the toddler perspective. the point, right? Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Well, sounds like uh, it sounds like you enjoyed the process. Sounds like there's some interesting good stuff coming out of it. Do you uh, suspect you'll write another book at some point? I really would like to. Um, I started working on a couple of just starter concepts and then I got sidetracked with the documentary and then um, as always like the business is the number one focus. So when there's time, that's something I'll work on, but definitely no rush and I think right now I'm kind of in squirrel chasing nuts mode and I get a cool idea here and I'll flesh it out a little bit and then I'll hit a dead end, but um, I mean that's kind of the fun of that realm is just exploring different ideas and concepts and finding people that I can bounce those ideas off of and get good feedback and figure out the next place. And if it's a dead end, it's a dead end, and eventually one will come out. So, since we caught up with you on the Boardroom Buzz, I guess was that about a year ago? Is that right? Probably about that, yeah. Yeah. How's everything been on the business front? Business front has been really good. Um you know, in our northern markets, we had some really mild winters that allowed for a quick start to the season, and then we've had the pest season extend. Uh our growth has been back where we want it to be. We had, you know, last year we were a little bit lower than we wanted to, and we've spiked up and in some of our branches been able to double and triple what our goals were. So, that's been really exciting to see. You know, in in in the service industry, like in residential commercial services, you know, I think there's a lot of There's a lot of brainwaves spent on thinking about people versus systems and processes within a business. And I, you know, you're a pretty deep thinker, and I would imagine you probably toyed with this yourself. But Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that topic, and it's also one of my pet peeves cuz I feel like most people are arguing either for systems or for people, or they'll say they're both. But I don't feel like even the both concepts captures really what it is. It really needs to be viewed as a co-evolution where you know, if you need something to put as some kind of visual object to it, I envision it being like a spiral staircase where both sides are feeding into each other because the people that you bring in are inherently going to impact the systems that are already in place and how those systems have to evolve if you're in more than one market even again Minnesota we've got a big difference between Minneapolis and St. Paul and how some of that culture just from the people that you pick up from there impact your systems and then you look even bigger stretches like our Massachusetts branch that's a very different culture and so a system that I put in place in Minneapolis in 2020 and in Boston in 2020 after 4 years they better not look like each other they have to evolve independently to coincide with that culture and they're going to keep impacting each other back and forth. So that's kind of how I've been seeing it and trying to treat it over the last you know several years. What have you what's been your experience how do you respond to that? Well I mean I there was a raging debate here at Pesco I remember a few days ago even the Mexican was involved in the discussion people were talking about people versus systems you end up with garbage people you end up with garbage processes anyways cuz those are the people that are creating them right? Yeah but I mean but look at like you can look at really easy examples like sports where you can see somebody who was a garbage quarterback in one system he gets picked up by the other system and then he's an all-star so Correct. the you know the books like who I love them they give really good principles but they're intended to focus on one principle not make it the only principle and so if you don't really consider how changing that system around that person changed what you could get out of them it didn't entirely change that person and also as soon as that quarterback goes into the system those wide receivers are having to change and adapt and so that change is inherently affecting that system as well. How have you you know in your present business right now, what sort of things are you thinking about with regard to this whole process versus people? I think there's a lot to think about and every day I'm trying to look at it from a different angle cuz it's really easy to get sucked into just focusing on one point and saying like, "Oh, this is the magic bullet or if I perfect this element, then everything's going to be fixed." But, some of the pieces I'm playing with right now are breaking down systems that we've had in place for, you know, maybe it's a short trial system, that, you know, a new inventory system we put in. It's been running for 6 weeks. How is that in fact impacting the behavior of our team members? Um and then also looking at our hiring processes, who's in there, um what kind of attitudes and values are we bringing in and how are those being shaped and evolved? So, one thing I'm really looking at right now is my weekly communication with our team members and trying to get feedback on that and having that be an interactive element where it doesn't just feel like a corporate stencil piece that's going out the same every time and actually creating engagement and then constantly looking at our you know, even the main systems that our trainers are implementing out in the field and seeing what's working, what recurring issues are we running into and what recurring bright spots are we having that we can try and replicate in other places. You were talking about that earlier before we got on the show today. You were talking about a a new like an internal newsletter or something to that effect that you toyed with internally. Yeah. Yeah, I I've had several different iterations of it and played around with the content and it's it's got several pieces that I want to keep all linked together, and that is being relevant to the industry we're in so that there can be small education points and small reminders that go out through the medium of story. So, they're simple, fun, engaging stories that can enforce a value or a principle from our company. Um some things that I've added to it are including pictures that team members send in. So, this might be something that a customer sends someone in our call center, and they're supposed to identify it, and it's blurry as can be, and we can get a laugh out of it. Um it can be something that a technician finds that they're working on identifying or some problem they solved for someone. So, those kind of pieces are fun. And then I've been looking, especially on the last couple of weeks, trying to focus on reviews that are coming in from our clients, and especially the reviews where there's some good detail. Either they share a story or they'll highlight a value that we embody as a team, and they're like, "Hey, look, we're doing this so well that our customers have it in their regular vocabulary now, and um I think those kind of things help reinforce that it isn't just a top-down message, but it's something that the team is generating and disseminating out to everybody else. That sounds great. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're going to be able to keep it from looking like a publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, perhaps. All right. That's your That's your That's your goal. What do you do in your company as far as trying to keep everybody aligned and have a communication piece where you can have that real connection and and maintain that? Yeah, I mean that's actually one thing that we I think we've done poorly. Um you know, in our firm, we try to do kind of quarterly mini retreats for a couple of days out of the office. Have a business meeting, but also do a little bit of team building, and then we have an annual retreat once a year. This year we're doing at next month we're go doing it in Tokyo. So, we're taking the team to Tokyo. Um and that'll be like a 5-day affair. And um so, we haven't been great on, you know, we haven't done the newsletter thing. We haven't in our business we have a bunch of small teams and the the teams do set up like game nights and other things that they do, but no, we we haven't have been great with that. As you're talking about it makes me think about what we should be doing. It's interesting and you know, your comment about not doing great. Like if you hop into a team, do you feel cohesion? Do you feel like there's a connectiveness? Yes. So, and and maybe that's the thing that I think about a lot as I listen to some of these shows is it's easy to hear a good idea that somebody else has and think should I be doing that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that you should be doing that. Yeah. Right. It can throw your whole culture off and then instead of them being supporting each other in those groups, maybe they're more reliant on you and it it increases the burden on something that you're not actually able to achieve cuz you can't be there in person with them. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we're pretty distributed. We're in multiple countries and I think I've I've really tried to make it decentralized. Like the local folks really kind of determine what they want to do, what sort of special perks they want. Um you know, they set up their own you know, they've got one day a month they get together and do things. And and that's not a corporate edict, right? That's not a mandate from above. That's them saying this is what we want to do. So, I guess you're right as I think about it. Yeah, and that's I think that's an interesting thing to look at from a culture perspective because as an international business, you're very different from a lot of the pest control companies that we're meeting with here. Like if you're in two towns in one state, the cultural variance just from the people and where they live is on a whole different scale, orders of magnitude off of what you are where you're talking about, you know, maybe a Filipino culture versus a Puerto Rican culture versus a US culture and we're going to Tokyo. So, Yes. That's a lot to blend and if you try and blend too much, you end up with just a white wash nothing. Yeah, I guess I hadn't really given it much thought, but you're right. We are on three continents. We're in North America, we're in Europe, we're in Asia, and and it's very different culturally. And they kind of run it all independently. Yeah, that's cool. So, Although, I do think if I were to do a corporate newsletter, I would probably I would probably Like write it in English, then put it into like Google Translate, translate into another language, then translate it back to the English and have like a picture of the Mexican read by Franco. Yeah. Sorry. that would be perfect. Yes. Be the humor column in there. Yes. What were you going to say? Yeah, I was going to ask like you have a lot of experience with culture. I know you've done a lot of studying and reading on it. Yep. And you also deal with a lot of different companies in going in, especially in our space in the pest control space. Like you've seen tons of different elements. So, balancing what you've done with your team and your company and what you've seen in other places, what are the aspects of is it and and maybe I don't even know how to ask a question, you might know better, but is it more culture, systems, or people? When you're going into companies, you're not just all telling all of them that they're 100% great and everything is peachy keen and ready to go, but there's probably a lot of companies where you give them advice and say, "Hey, you need to do this." And I'm assuming there's probably some companies where they take that and run with it and good things happen and there's probably others where they stumble and fall and end up same level 12 months later or maybe a little bit worse. What are What are the differences there? Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of isn't all one thing. You know, when I think about using when I think about a business, I tend to break it down and uh You know, I I think about a business from the standpoint of okay, what's You've got strategy, you've got people, you've got the architecture of the business, kind of the incentive structures within. You've got the routines, which is basically the processes that kind of run the low-level stuff. Then of course you have culture. And if I take my business out of it for a second and I look at you know, these residential commercial service businesses across the spectrum, I've learned a few things. Number one, you know, culture really is established in a lot of ways by the founder and the senior management team. Team members are going to model what they see the owner doing, you know, what is acceptable behavior? Well, how does the owner act? How do we talk to each other? Well, how does the owner, the founder, how has he done that? I think there really is such a thing as like high-performance cultures versus not so high-performance. I think you can walk into an office and kind of get a sense of, you know, is everyone kind of sitting around eating donuts, not doing a whole lot, magazines spewing around versus going into an office that's clean, there's some buzz. So you can kind of get a feel for you know, culture is really like kind of what's the deal between the company and me and how do we interact within this organization? And in a lot of ways the owner set it. And so I I I think it's ex- I think it's extremely important and and I think, you know, I last time you and I were talking about it, I I said it's it's kind of like marriage, right? Like everyone has a prenuptial agreement. The question is did you write it or did the state write it, right? And it's the same thing with culture. Like every business has a culture. But, was it deliberately imposed as designed or did it just something that happened over time and it's kind of rudderless? Um And so, I think it's for me personally, I think it's a very, very important discussion for business owners to have first with themselves. Like, what sort of culture do I want to have here? And then also bring their teams in and kind of determine what's acceptable behavior. Like, what are we striving for? How do we treat each other? You know, what is the culture? What what are our norms? How do we operate here? Yeah, you hit on a really fine nuance that I think gets overlooked by just everyday business owners and operators as well as some people that are experts in that realm of culture and there there are a lot of good discussions on intentionality and how much you want to sculpt and shape that culture, but as you were explaining it, you mentioned getting involved with the team and having them draw that culture out and having them build it. And I think it's really easy to fall into that trap of me thinking that, you know, as a COO that I need to create the culture and I'm going to make this and impose it on all the teams and tell them this is our culture and this is what you're going to become rather than interacting with them and have it be a co-evolution with that team. Um I think that's a really interesting point to consider and probably difficult to balance. Yeah, I mean, for me culture is a lot about you know, beliefs in general. Like, if you think about a cultural difference between the United States and Italy, for example. You know, I mean, the US is a relatively optimistic country. You know, people do believe that they can typically improve their lot in life if they work hard. Now, unfortunately, I think that's changing. But, you go to a you know, you go to a lot of European countries, you go to Italy, for example. People don't really expect to be able to do a whole lot, right? They don't expect if they work really hard that they're going to actually be in much better shape than anyone else. In fact, they expect the government to take care of them. And so, when I think about culture, it's like almost like what sort of beliefs do we have here? Like, you're a part of this organization, what's the future look like for you? Like, where do you want to be? And are we a group of people that are striving collectively to prove our lot in life, to help each other? And that's where for me personally, I've seen the problem with incentives. You know, incentives can change a culture because you have, you know, the difference between an individual incentive and a group incentive, right? You have a lot of individual incentives, you can kind of mold culture to be more independent, self-reliant, and so on and so forth, but that can also limit cooperation amongst the team. And then you, on the flip side of that, you get more group incentive type setup, and then you got the free free loader problem, and why should I worry about it? So, I think it's I think it's important for people when they think about culture not only to think about beliefs and how we're going to interact and the behavior we're going to accept, but also, you know, when you talk about the culture of a country, what are you typically talking about, right? Let me ask you that. Like, so what's the culture of, I don't know, the French? What do you think? The French? Yes. Boy, that's Or or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Where did you do Where did you do your masters? Uh Santiago, Chile. Chile. Okay. Tell me about Chile Chilean culture. Um Chilean culture, it's it's an interesting one. I think the quickest way to sum it up is there's a very big focus on status and what you can quick grab as your status as what part you belong to cuz they had a pretty dramatic shift from a communist government to a democratic one, and there's a huge disparities in the economic system there, where there's places you can go where it feels like the ritziest part of the US, and you go 5 minutes the other direction, and it's poorer stuff than you're going to find anywhere in the US. And to see those people interact in the same Yep. area, um they'll find different things, and so it's they they have the light versus dark, that's pretty or ugly, and it's very acceptable to just state that and throw it out there. It's um very related to like a German culture in that regard, just very very frank, but Yeah. Yeah, it was that was a big thing to adapt to when I was down there. Well, I mean, look, if you start to think about the cultures of different countries, then you can start to see the possibilities of how culture would live in particular organization from the terms of beliefs, I believe. I mean, you know, there's a lot of places you're in Europe in general. Um I think one of the big differences between Europe and the United States is like in the US, people on the whole are typically not envious. I mean, I think Americans by and large celebrate success, and we celebrate the success of others. In certain European countries, the success of one individual, it's almost like it's a zero-sum game. Your success is my failure, and so it's not celebrated. Um so, how do we celebrate success within the company? Those sorts of things. So. Yeah. It's you can go really deep in this whole cultural topic. Oh, yeah, for sure. On on that aspect with the shared, you know, the zero-sum or the shared success, do you feel that's on that continuum of like an individualistic versus collectivist culture, or do you think that's another dimension in that? It may be. It may also be on an optimism spectrum with regard to, you know, having a mindset of scarcity versus one of optionality and abundance. Yeah. Right? if you see it as scarce and there's only so many to be had, then it doesn't matter if you're individual or collective, there's still a lot to be had. Right. Yeah. So. Like I said, I didn't really think about it. That popped into my mind, but Yeah, no. That was cool. So, Rob, you effectively grew up with Lenny Mckay, so to speak, from a business perspective. And we all know Lenny is the door-to-door millionaire. Um I don't know how often he actually knocks doors nowadays, but I do know he's floating out there, doing his thing. As a matter of fact, I I know I owe him the introduction to his book in audible format. I was supposed to do that before Pest World recorded, but uh I didn't do that. Um But you guys come from a business that has kind of gyrated over the years to, you know, just the business originally started on the doors. Um Got off the doors, did some door-to-door, made some acquisitions, grew geographically. Um I've known Lenny Mckay for a long time, actually longer than I've known you. But I know that you're not, um and I think this is correct, you're not a you're not really big on just one modality of sales and marketing. Yeah. Very correct. And I think that I hear a lot of discussions and a lot of arguments over, especially door-to-door, um whether it's good or it's bad. And then you'll hear other things where people are talking about this method like it's all you know, Angie is where it's at and that's where they built all their stuff and I think there's some overconfidence or lack of humility in that to say I figured it out and because this worked for me yesterday or last year, it's going to be the tool that's going to continue to work in the future. As I'm going through, I'm constantly running returns on every different arm of marketing that we have and trying to be super vigilant to see when those swings come because like there's times at door-to-door where it can be an absolute nightmare and just really change the valuation of a company. It can really change the customer culture if you put on too many all at once. Um there's a lot of high costs and risks in there, but man, if you want to add some density, if you want to specifically grow with the flip of a switch, like there's no better tool than that. And so being able to identify it as a more complex part of a more complex tool bag is going to yield much better results than anything else. And it's not just that with, you know, some of the acquisitions we've been doing, we've had some that have been great, some that we learned a lot from, and then we had one where it's a pretty recent one where we put 10, 11 months into it and we were going through the diligence and it was less than a week away from closing and a small problem came up and it would have been easy to just sweep it under the rug and say, "Hey, acquisitions have worked in the past. This looks like most of the other ones. I'm sure this is fine. It'll pan out." Um and we ended up pausing on that and diving in and the more we looked into that individual problem, the more we realized that it was going to be a bad fit. And so uh it broke a lot of hearts for people that had vested interest and a lot of time spent in that with no reward or payoff or achievement in it, but pulling out of that was probably the best thing that we could have done. Obviously, I can't run the counterfactual and guarantee that, but but it seems like that's that's the case, especially after we saw how much that small pinpoint of a problem ballooned into something else. Um and then right around the corner another one turns up that we lost on before and it didn't work out on that end, and so now we get another shot at it. So, it constantly trying to adjust on that game and not get too high or too low is important. Um right now with the digital marketing, that's a really interesting space. There's so much going on with AI and I I have no clue how that's going to impact all of the search and all of the different aspects of that, but I know that every month I'm seeing differences in strategies that are coming out across the board. And if everybody jumps on and follows the same AI strategy, it's going to be an interesting outcome. You know, is then it going to favor the person who can peel back from that and apply their own brain to it? I don't know, but but even within that space, there's so many different options. There's probably a thousand different ways that you can run a marketing program through the digital sphere and what worked for me last year, well, what worked for me in 2018 is a train wreck now and I had to completely revamp it. Um and what we have going this year is going great. Um but I'm not confident that I can just set it on autopilot and let it go. Yeah, the topic of AI, I mean, how have you been thinking about that because you know, this is one that I've been thinking a lot about lately. And I'm exploring all aspects of how it'll impact our business, but I'm curious about what you're thinking in your business. Yeah, I think the most the biggest focal point for me right now is how it's affecting marketing and communications, but we're playing around with it right now as far as um being involved in customer service and sales and automating some of those processes, especially the ones that just really don't need human interaction and then trying to have those switch points where it's beyond the current AI capabilities and it gets switched over seamlessly to a person. So, that's been one area. Um using it to find trends and pick up on where we should focus our investment on digital materials is a really good piece. I am super curious about like right now there's conversations going on about whether we can get AI to tell us how it's getting to the point and how we can fact-check it. And I just I don't think that that's feasible. Like even if we ask it to tell us how it came up with it, it's gathering millions of data points and that's why it exists is cuz it does something that we can't do. So, to ask it to translate a process we can't run in our own brain, I think is a fruitless concept. Right. So, I yeah, things I'm doing to keep up on it. There's uh a couple of daily newsletters that I'm following to try and just in a quick snapshot even just try and wrap my brain around what's going on and see what pieces are coming out that we can try. We're constantly trying out new pieces. Sometimes they work, sometimes they blow up, but we put them in really controlled environments. Um I do think with some of the more recent advances in robotics, I can actually see I you know, if you would ask me 6 months ago, I would have said it's not going to impact the service side of it. But if you look at some of the different mechanical pieces that have been involved in pest control from trap monitoring to mistaway systems to you know, plugins for homes it it really could be a piece where that's a viable element and could have in very specific circumstances especially be the best possible solution for a company. What do you see on the AI front? I mean, you you pretty much covered it from I mean, I'm basically struggling with the same things. You know, as far as the you know, the service space, there's been a lot of debate about like the robotics, whether that'll actually be, you know, of course, you've got the regulatory body. Um when it comes down to allowing robots to apply pesticides, right? So, this is a technology will likely dramatically outpace the regulatory regimes' ability to So, so there's a lot of, you know, technology will probably get there way before the regulators will allow it. So, that's a lot of open questions on that, but you know, I'm thinking about what you're saying here made me think about you and educating yourself, and I know you do a reading a lot of reading. What have you focused on lately? What sort of interesting things have you read? So, there's two books that I really didn't expect them to coincide, but um earlier this year I read a book a book called Fluke. Um I can't remember the subtitle. It's basically why everything's out of your control and why everything you do matters. Um and then I just got done reading The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. I don't know if you've heard of it, but um are you familiar with Fluke? Let's start there. It's a book that I've read the first chapter of. It's sitting on the stack of other half-read books. But yes, I do It was interesting. It was an interesting intro. Yeah. Um yeah, the general concept I like how the story's put together where he's there's some really good books out that cover some of the same concepts like Determined, and it's a really sciency approach to it, and if you're into that, it's really cool. Um Fluke does a good job of giving specific stories that you can follow, and you can see these things play out like how a dropped cigarette changed the course of World War II. And really minor things that are completely out of our control and you know, I think this ties really nicely to some of the starting topics we were on where where it's culture um where it's trends in marketing uh different tools that you're using. We only have so much that we can decide and determine. There's a lot that's outside of our control and how we respond to those things is going to impact it. Like we're going to have an influence on it as it influences us. Um and I think the interesting part of it to me is how many successes and failures are both complete flukes. Like there was nothing that you know, say you had a business and a tidal wave knocked out your business. Like you really you know, maybe you could have built it in a different spot, but something else could have happened. Those are difficult things and so I think about that a lot as I'm hearing advice from other companies or I'm hearing somebody talk about how they were successful and I wonder if they're even aware of the cigarette butts that led to their success or if they're aware of things that are just down the road that they can't predict and how much of it is just us filling ourselves full of fluff saying, "Yeah, I'm successful because of X." But just a really lucky guy. I'm curious, what's the intersection between Fluke and the other book you referenced? So, The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin Benjamin Franklin is your we love that story because he's a bootstrap character. He's the youngest son of the youngest son of the youngest son of the youngest son. So, his inheritance was a halfpenny, right? It was nothing. Um but he rose up to just be this incredible figure that had so much impact on us today. And so we can really celebrate and revere him. His younger sister was worse off than him, but only slightly. She was the youngest daughter of that line. But they started from the same point. And where they diverge really has a lot to do with the fact that she was a woman born in the 17th century. And there were things that she couldn't influence, and so to to see the letters go back and forth between them, and even the fact that we only have Benjamin's letters. We don't have Jane's. Okay. Cuz they got tossed, cuz she was a woman it wasn't important. Well, it's a reminder to me of just some fluke things. Like maybe her dad gets pregnant half a second later and she's a guy, and maybe she would have been the Benjamin Franklin, but but it's that question of how many stories untold are there out there that have the exact same formula, exact same recipe, but a different fluke element, and we don't hear the nine, we only hear the one. It's the exact same thing I debated in a YPO forum last week where, you know, I was talking to some of my forum members about the fact that YPO to a certain degree can breed overconfidence from the standpoint that, you know, there's the the availability of in you know, look, we're we're with a bunch of very successful people that have taken a lot of risks. So we kind of look around and we're like, oh, this guy did this, this guy did that, these things all worked, that's great. But it's just it's the availab we're seeing those guys that have actually done something, been successful, didn't fail at it. There's many more that probably had done the same thing that we're not seeing because they're not in that group, because they can't be in that group because they didn't succeed, right? And so you've got that availability heuristic, so to speak. Um And and the debate kind of quickly moved into like how much of success or any wins individual success in life, however they define that is related to luck versus, you know, it's the whole like do you make your own luck or But I clearly I I you know, the the book Fluke I I think attempts to take a look at chaos theory to a certain degree and how much, you know, really how much randomness exists, right? How how how we are the result in some things that have happened from, you know, not because of what you did, but because you were in the right place at the right time, so to speak. Yeah. It's It's very true. You know, you look at you know, you look across businesses and um I can 100% say when I see, you know, 100 different companies, there is fluke things going on, right? Because you could arguably say, "Well, the CEO is far more capable than this guy and you you can create a a variety of different lists, but this guy's over here killing it. Oh, but this is why cuz this is what happened." So how do you guide people? Like especially from the mergers and acquisitions space because essentially we're looking at all these possible companies and they could all be Well, they're all inherently including flukes in their process. Like it it's inevitable. There is some chaos in there. But what you're looking for is the person that not only stumbles across the cigarette butt, but knows what to do with it. Yeah. So how do you look for or guide people in that process or what advice would you have for us to be able to identify and separate the flukes from the others? Like, what are those pieces? See, I don't know that you can necessarily I haven't finished reading that book yet and I'll let you know when I do, but I I don't know if that you can necessarily plan for that, but I do think that you can actually put yourself in the best position, meaning you know, what I've tried to do on the buzz and all the things that we do is try to distill down some of the core principles that you should keep in mind as you're building a business, right? At the end of the day, you're building a stream of cash flow. And so, you got to break down those into all the various different elements and, you know, that includes strategy and then you can further break it down into pest control. It's like, okay, well, you're selling a recurring revenue product, right? So, you want to have recurring revenue. You want to actually have good pricing. Like, there's all these kind of basic things. So, I think, you know, you can probably nudge yourself down in the path of success by just doing a lot of things that most of the people in here are doing. There's there's probably at least half the companies here are not doing the basics right. So, like, if you're at least doing the fundamentals right, like, you're you're pretty much ahead of the game or at least you're above average. Yeah. But I don't know how to, you know, I mean, when I read the the first chapter of Fluke, it talked about the Secretary of War going to Japan with his wife, I think in the 1920s. They stayed in Kyoto, they loved it. So, in the 40s, when the US was preparing to drop the town of McComb, Kyoto was number one on slated number one on the list and the war secretary appealed to the president multiple times and said, "Let's spare Kyoto." And he did that because he vacationed there and it was a city that he It may have been his honeymoon, I don't remember. Um I think it was. But, unfortunately for the people of Hiroshima, they weren't supposed to be on the list, right? And then I think it was Nagasaki ended up getting nailed because of inclement weather. The bomber couldn't get one way, so it needed to go another way, and yeah, those are fluke events that cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives, right? Yeah, and it's interesting that the key determiner in there was an emotional element. It was an emotional driver that caused the letters to be written, and then it was the ability of that emotion to be shared with people. And so, I'm going to link in a uh not so related story, but see what you come up with. So, I My daughter loves to play Guess Who with me. And it's this game where you flip down the characters, and you have to say, "Does your character have this characteristic?" So, I always play statistics. I always ask a question that eliminates 50% of people. And I beat any of my kids except for my daughter, and she does statistics twice, and then she goes off her gut, and will take a high-risk one. And she wins nine times out of 10. So, when my family's betting on her versus me, they bet on her because of the track record. And I think also because of some of the emotion that gets involved in that gets translated. So, what I'm curious about is in what you see in the mergers and acquisitions game, how much are, you know, maybe strategics or those PE groups or some of the smaller acquirers like us that are out there, to what extent are they able to peel back and just run the statistical game versus allow themselves to get caught up on betting on the hot hand? And and do you think it's better to stay with that statistic game or to reach out? Cuz clearly for my daughter, but she wins more by going out with a hot hand, and that's your YPO guys right there. They ended up way ahead versus the safe guy. Well, I you know, a lot of it, I think on the institutional side comes from kind of the agency problem where or maybe not so much the agency problem, but like it's like the risk rewards are skewed, meaning if if you are part of a financial sponsor, um you're investing somebody else's money. So, you've got relatively high potential upside, but your potential downside is quite limited, right? So, you're actually rewarded instead of you're rewarded to you're rewarded sometimes to take the hot hand approach, I think. Just due to the incentive structure's set up. And and I'm thinking about this again largely from the corporate perspective. Um but I would have to give a little more thought to that on the on the private company side. Yeah, cuz we're yeah yeah. If you have millions or billions of dollars to play with, you can your risk tolerance is going to vary quite a bit where if you need to stay within very tight margins and not blow it. Yeah. Yeah. So, did you enjoy the book Fluke? I did. I thought it was a really good read. Um I I think I really appreciate the deep dives. I really like uh Robert Sapolsky and how he writes and I love those scientific connections as to how it works. Um but I like to balance things out where I get that story element and have more applicable things and I think part of it really just helps me connect and share those ideas with other people because if I read too many of the scientific books, I start droning on to people they just get that blank stare like, "You lost me." But with Fluke, I have shareable stories and we can relate with just the mention of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you and I know where we're at and so it's a quicker reference point than to talk about synapses and how they're connecting. Indeed. Now, let me ask you what you're seeing now. You know, there's a lot of debate here as to where the general condition of the residential customer. Do you have any, whether it be data ba- data driven or otherwise anecdotal feel for the North American customer with in pest control? Like, are you seeing demand decelerate? So, I think that's a really interesting question because every month I'm pulling data on just the market for residential and I'm looking at that from how much search volume is in there, what's the reported size of the industry. I'm trying to look at it from several different aspects. And there've been several months this year where there's been a year-over-year decline in the same month. And I'm obviously not dumb enough to compare like August to February. I'm looking at August to August and I go back and I look at some of the weather and how that might have impacted it. And on months that are perceptibly the same, there's been a decline. And kind of the analysis I've been running through on it is what's causing that search volume decline or the purchase decline. And I think and I could be totally wrong on this, but I think what's happening is the pest control industry as a whole is maturing. And companies are wising up to the fact that it's getting more and more expensive to buy a new customer. So, rather than go out and buy, I'm going to invest in keeping my customers. And by doing that, the perceivable market is shrinking because people aren't leaving their companies and they're staying on for longer and so maybe they're not seeing the price increases that would go with annual acquisitions of new customers. and so I you know one side of me sees I can go in especially in some of the markets we're in where pest control was a novelty, and now it's more of a commodity. It's expected. Everybody has it. So, I know that pest control is far deeper into you know, the workings of the economy and the the country and all of that. But, I think the maturation of the industry is impacting how that customer flow is occurring, and I think it's going to continue to move in that direction. So, I mean, that's just what I've seen. You've got a lot different perspective. What would you amend or add to that? No, I mean, look, I think we're seeing it in the numbers. We're seeing we still have a I mean, the the growth curve is still sloping upward, but upward at a decelerating rate. Yeah. And you know, it's hard to to tangle whether that's kind of the COVID boom subsiding, whether it's what you're saying about um penetration rate, so to speak. Um or if it's just the overall health of the consumer. I mean, pest control's gotten expensive, right? Yeah. And you know, at some point you got to wonder how much elasticity of demand really exists in this space. So, I think it's too early to tell, but over the last 90 days we're seeing some changes. Yeah. And it's It's interesting as you were talking, you made me think of another factor that I hadn't really looked at, but just driving into this conference center, there's a lot of new construction here, and it's not a lot of single-family homes. There's a lot more units, whether it's quad or eight-plexes or apartment buildings go up, and we're seeing a lot of that um in my hometown where I live right now. And so, as you're getting that, if you compare a residential customer to you know, the per capita value of an apartment complex, I think there's a higher per person spend on residential. And so, the more we shift to block communities, that's going to impact the overall demand and going to shift that balance between commercial and residential, as well. Agreed. Well, listen, Rob. I appreciate you joining me here today. Yeah, thank you very much. It's always fun chatting with you.