It’s the 1st of the Month! Bonus Episode - April 2022

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm at. And we're here today for the April 1 2022, first of the month bonus episode where we give an update on what's going on between pacing that Andy and I are seeing in the markets we work in updates on some events that are coming up upcoming episodes that we have just any interesting things that we think are worth sharing and really just another excuse for Andy and I to get to hang out on a podcast together and chat and have a good time. So welcome, everybody.

Yeah, Alex, I need a hate to start everything off on like a just a big moment. But I've been doing a lot of thinking and you know, visiting with you this week and hanging out in Myrtle Beach and just kind of seeing your world and, and spending time with you and realizing just how good we are together. I just don't think that that can continue to do the podcast this way. What do you mean, I just need to be together. So I think it really is incumbent upon me to pack up and move to Myrtle Beach.

Oh, I love that idea. And you know, we have a real estate arm a condo world so we can probably help find you a house. This is figured you could help me. Oh, gosh, that would be amazing. No, we had the best time this week. It was a very, very quick, quick trip for Andy to come up to Myrtle but we really had a great time we covered a lot of ground literally and physically. But we there was an HSI event, which we'll get to in a little bit. But what were your initial thoughts? And what did you think of Myrtle Beach and been here since? Like the 90s? I

think yeah, I mean, I was so little, I can't even remember it. Certainly, I think in my mind, because in Panama City Beach, Myrtle Beach has always been looked at as a competitor. I would say that we're lucky to compete with a destination like Myrtle Beach. It's immense. I had no idea how large it was. I honestly had no idea. I think Bob, from the the chamber mentioned, there's 165 or 167,000 accommodations in Myrtle Beach. And I just that was that blew me away. I just I really had no idea. But everybody that I met was wonderful. And it was really kind of interesting, because I actually knew a lot more people there than I thought I would know, a lot of Expedia people, a lot of people just from the industry. And then we had a really, really great opportunity to have lunch with the new president or the current president vrma Miller, Hawkins. And what an absolute, just wonderful person to have in this industry. I mean, just a fireball, just a gentleman just really passionate about everything vacation rentals, and I think we had some really good conversations with him. And then he sat on the panel with you with hssmi. And that was great, again, informative, and really speaks volumes of what Myrtle Beach and what you at the chamber and CVB are trying to do to bridge the gap between hotels and vacation rentals and get them to work better together.

Yeah, that's a great point. And I'm so glad that you came up for the event. And I know everybody was so excited to meet you. And I talked about it all the time. And of course, they they say everything we post on the podcast, and everybody always asks who is any, like, where did you find her? How do you guys know each other? So that was great to answer some of those questions. But yeah, meeting with Miller was great as well. And it's funny, I've been in Myrtle Beach for 13 years, and I've known his company Blue Realty, this whole time, but I'd never have met Miller until we were at vrma, this past fall in San Antonio actually. And you know, we really just enjoy talking to him there and to be on this panel with him. There's so many things that he's me. He's very strong on the legislative side. And he's clearly a wonderful leader of his business. Now I've gotten to know him. But it's amazing to think that there are these leaders within a community that you might not even know and I feel like I know everybody here but that getting to spend more time with him clearly shows that I don't but very excited to get more involved with vrma, you know, through his kind of nudging to us and excited to see where that goes. And we're at a point now where, you know, you mentioned, you know, it's a compliment to compete with Myrtle Beach. And that thank you for saying that. And I think really what we all as destinations are looking at is it's less competition within a market between each other and it is more competition between other destinations. And that's not a bad thing at all. I mean, there's everybody's gonna do something differently. Everybody has their own unique appeal to specific visitors and we all have different things that we can, you know, really pride ourselves on for our strengths. But, you know, just just seeing how much it helps to bring these organizations together between our chamber CVB plus Burma, we've got the SC vrma, which obviously Miller was representing both of those at this event. Also our local hospitality Association, I think probably most communities have that in conjunction with their CVB, too. And finally, HSMs. So all these different organizations, really what they are is they're your team of allies. And when there are legislative issues that need to be addressed, it's so much better to have, you know, more people there with you that it's not just one entity that's always banging on the door down. And it just, it builds a coalition. So I'm excited to see that. And I think, as my, you know, so far in my tenure as chair of the board, that's, that's really become something that I'm seeing as an opportunity that will continue to focus on and hopefully, you know, in the content that we're bringing out about destination marketing, that can be something that we share with our listeners, too, because at the end of the day, collaboration is so important. That's how we all grow.

And I think that, you know, again, going back to the kind of the different associations that are in a community and how important they are to participate. And we talked about something that happened here in Panama City Beach last weekend. Yeah, it was an event that, you know, I think it has gone awry in almost every community that it's been to. And it's one of those things where you just hope that the next time it's not going to have problems, but we had a lot of bad activity. And I I tend to think that in my experience being a big spring break destination, there is always a tendency in the various elements of follows an event, there's always somebody there on the fringe that wants to cause a problem. And that's exactly what happened with us. And so it does have the community up in arms, but it does take all of the different associations and the activities, or the the activeness of everyone in the community, not only from the residents, to the actual businesses to try to find solutions to prevent these things from happening there, you're never going to prevent all bad things. But one, I think I think is relevant is Bob mentioned on the panel about something that had happened in another market, I believe he was talking about Virginia Beach, or maybe Hampton up where he's from, something had happened there. And it was along the lines of some shootings, and he said it was all over the news within that community. But he asked the room, you know, who heard about it. And he said, You know, that's we have to keep that in mind that sometimes what's going on right in front of you isn't necessarily out there in the spotlight in other communities, you know, the, the travelers aren't necessarily seeing information on it. So from a community standpoint, a tourism standpoint, a marketing standpoint, when things happen, we need to sit back and take a breath, and understand what allows that this to happen and try to put things in place, but not be not having knee jerk reactions, not get out there and just make decisions rationally to prevent other people from wanting to come to the market, and also maybe shedding a larger spotlight on something that might not have been out there in the you know, in the greater the world of tourism.

Exactly. That's such a good point, too. I think we're all you know, especially in the in the age of everything being online, you know, we feel like, it's very easy for things to get really blown out of proportion. But I think it's important to not overreact, but not under react. And as a destination. That's there's so many different things that you have to be thinking about in those crisis situations. And there are a lot of stakeholders, and you have to make sure that you get the communication on it, right. And there's really no, there's no editing, in those situations, you have to get it right. And that's that's happened to us here in Myrtle Beach in the past that if there's been violence or shooting or something like that, that, you know, all of us here, we all feel like the whole world is talking about it. But really, you know, and this relates back to just your own, you know, personal understanding and thinking that you know, what's going on in your life is happening and everyone else's, no one's worried about you, they're worried about themselves, they've got their own things going on. And you know, we did a very comprehensive branding study and destination master plan for Myrtle Beach a few years ago and we hired MMG y which is that company is like the leading agency within tourism marketing. And they came in and they interviewed all of our, all of our stakeholders, elected officials, business leaders, locals and then from top to bottom, and really figure out where people see, you know, the pain points for Myrtle Beach and where we can improve. And at the end of it with they found out they came back they said, you know, one of the problems that you have is that there's you have a local problem that the own the the way that local see Myrtle Beach is worse than how the outside world sees it. And it's like you know, if you're constantly telling yourself that oh, we're not this we're not that and we don't have this then eventually that becomes true right and it's it's sad to think that some people they just you know, you can get really down on things but it's like we have so much going on in our destination like you said we we get that comment all the time that never realized how you know, big and expansive and nice and how much more we had to offer. And as locals I think You know, there's always some people that are going to be crazy on social media and then just go, you know, all the way up the ladder on it that say, you know, they're going to bring any type of type of news and make it seem like it's way worse than it is and just always be negative. But it's really important as a destination to come together and realize you're all we're all in this together, no matter where you live, and you do need to be working together. And what you put out there to the world is it's not good. I mean, you hit you want to be positive, you want to be realistic, but try and work together. Also be mindful, the fact that it's what's happening in your destination is not as widely known, as you probably imagined. So take some time to think through what that responses and you know, look at the bigger picture.

Yeah, and I do think I do think just, you know, I can speak for living in a in our destination. Over the years, the amount of local pushback that there was on advancement, you know, are getting a new airport building pier Park, a lot of the things that people just I always call him the gunners, they just have to show up in a meeting and again, and again, have an issue and, and complain about something, but they just didn't want progress to happen. And and I get, you know, you don't want things to change, and people are reticent to have change, and especially when they're maybe they've retired here, or they've moved here from a big city and are looking for quiet life. And that's great and wonderful, but you don't move to a state where one of the largest driver and you know, drivers of the economy is tourism and the complaint about tourism, that's just not fair, you need to be an active participant and find a way to balance it out. And I think over time, that has become much better in our community, our current CVB president Dan row, he has done a phenomenal job bridging that gap and getting all the stakeholders to the table and really listening and he's a big listener, and wanting to understand how to make people who are just living here and living their life and raising their children and, and doing all the things that they want to do with their life. In you know, in concert with tourism, you know, the the the crowds at malls go up and down based on when the seasonality is and whenever there's events. And again, you're going to have events that are going to be spectacular and loved and never have a problem. And you're going to have some that are just going to call it wreaks havoc, and you can learn from it. But it takes everybody whether you're actually in tourism or not to be an active participant in the conversation.

Yeah, I totally agree on that. And I think that's the the New Age rule of CVB within a market is is really embracing that. And knowing that this is as much about the residents and the locals as it is about the tourists and education is so important that you know they love these new restaurants that we have and all the great attractions we have. But who pays for that tourism. You have to have a little bit of patience when it comes to in the summertime that there's traffic and that it's going to take longer to get you know, meals at restaurants and things like that. So the education part of it is definitely a big a big part. And I know our Myrtle Beach CVB is working really hard to make sure that we are addressing the needs of residents and but also informing them on all the amazing things that are going on that help better the enjoyment that they have living in this community. Yeah.

So not to belabor points I think we can we could talk about we want to look at you know, how are things pacing in the markets? What are what is the rest of the rest of the spring look like? What is summer looking like? What are we looking like going into fall for me and the partners that I have spring got a little slower than people anticipated again, Easter's late so that always just kind of dilutes the demand and spreads it out over a longer periods of time. That's part of it. And then again, we had such a tremendous April last year, because kids weren't in school and people were traveling more. So I think we're starting to see things get back to a little normalcy in terms of demand and booking patterns, rates are still high, I do have a lot of partners that their rates are 2535 40% higher than they were last year. So we've started inching back on that. But instead of just dropping rate, we're just running promotions to kind of play the algorithms on the channel, get the call outs you know, make people have the warm fuzzy that they're getting a deal. So doing a lot of that summer looks good. I do think again, gas prices are preventing people from booking too far because they just don't know that we talked about this the beginning of March and all of this stuff in the Ukraine is devastating as it isn't, you know, it's it just impacts everybody globally. So people are going to sit back and wait, I think the summer will still be strong, but it'll just be kind of keeping up with that last minute demand filling in the gaps. What are you saying?

Yep, very, very similar. And actually I was on vacation the second week in March and really trying to just not check my phone not look at sales just kind of just chill out for a week and of course on the way home. I'm going back through my phone and I'm looking at our daily sales and they took a sharp decline while I was gone. And you know the let the previous first of the month episode or the one before that we're just singing just raises about how but your uh, your daily bookings monthly weekly are just through the roof. And all of a sudden, they just went completely the other direction. And so first my knee jerk reaction is you know what's wrong with the website what happened like, everything is like a monetary laugh. It was the marketers worst nightmare. It's like you already feel guilt going away but it's like, I swear like our marketing is like way more tuned in sometimes when I'm not here because I try and make sure nothing can go wrong. But we had everything planned and there's no problems with the website. But what of course, that was really wasn't even a problem in the first place. But what was is this is it was right around March 4, we started to see year over year daily sales now dipping underneath what 2021 was. And up until that point every day was above, above, above. But this time last year, that's when the vaccines were really coming out strong. And people started to now feel like okay, we are going to be able to travel because for the first few months of the year, it was still kind of questionable. They were the people that they were going to go no matter what. But the people that were on the fence, which was the large majority, they were still hedging their bets. So once that shift changed, you know that that that has changed things for us. But that's the great part about data and using tools like key data and our own, you know, property management system tools to really look back and see what was going on and just feel good that we're still in a great place for a rate perspective. And still a mix of booking windows, you've got some booking windows that are really far out that are coming for, you know, an end of the year, and then some that are still just very last minute. And with weather weather, it's kind of been up in the air for us. I think it has for you guys to end so that that definitely is gonna deter some of these spring stays most recently. But overall, we're still very optimistic with how the years gonna turn out. So knock on wood. Everything is still good. Yeah, no,

I think I think that's good. And I think that kind of dovetails nicely into your trip to kartha hain. Yeah, so that was quite an adventure.

Yeah, it was definitely an adventure. So funny. I've ran into so many people, and they had followed my adventures on Facebook and pictures and they say Why Carta? haina? And after seeing the pictures, my response back is why not? Did Yeah, it was awful it was and really, you know, my husband and I, we go to Mexico and Jamaica and the Caribbean in fairly often. And we've been to a lot of the places and it's just it's getting a little boring. So we want to try something different. And we've never done a European vacation that we're going to do that this time but wanted to do, you know, an urban slash beach destination somewhere we have been and actually one of our vendors that does our pay per click in our E commerce fine. He had just gotten back from Colombia, they were more inland but he had posted pictures and they were so beautiful. And I asked him I said, you know, do people is that really a big vacation spot? And he said absolutely. kartha Hain is a wonderful vacation spot. It's big tourist location. And I looked into it, and we booked it and definitely glad that we did it. It was an experience. And it was definitely very different than any other trip we've ever done. But my gosh, and the city is absolutely stunning. The architecture, the history, the food, everything was wonderful. And everything's wonderful. The people there were great one one thing that was a challenge at the Colombian Spanish is a little bit different, actually a lot more than the Spanish that I know. So when poquito Espanol normally goes pretty far in Mexico, circles and understanding. So that was that was a bit of a challenge. But pretty much everywhere we went there was at least one person that spoke some English and decent English. Or they were so helpful that people were so nice that they would get out their phone and they would use a translator. So it really it wasn't it wasn't a bad thing at all. But so I did the worst thing ever over there or just in the planning process. And I think this came down to it was just a kind of a last minute I knew I wanted to travel that week they hadn't booked anything and just pulled the trigger. But I I did the thing that we don't want our guests to do, I did not book direct and not only did I not book direct, but I got hit over the wrist for it to buy just all the things that went wrong. So basically, I had booked the trip was at the Hyatt for the first part of the trip on Expedia and booked the hotel and air and I did look at booking just directly with the Hyatt for the hotel stay. But it was significantly more than to get the flight so for sure it's fine. So I do that. And then in the meantime, as we're leading up to the trip we found it's called the Rosario islands which is an hour boat ride from carta haina that this is where the water is just absolutely beautiful. The water and Cardenas just kind of regular ocean water. It's not really a beautiful beach. But the Rosario islands is where it's just this beautiful, beautiful turquoise blue and there's awesome places to stay and these bungalows and so he said, Okay, we're gonna spend two days over there. And I did the chat with Expedia. And I asked I said if I want to Take two nights off of this day, can you handle that? They said no, because they said, you're better off to just tell the hotel when you get there on Sunday, if you're not leaving till Thursday, just tell him on Sunday, and they'll take the two nights off because Expedia would have to rebook my reservation, if they were going to modify it, and the rate was a lot higher. So the good thing is experience, chat support was actually pretty good. And at least gives you a documentation of everything that you reported and asked. So we get to the highest that day, and I tell them, and maybe the language barrier was part of the problem. But I told them that we were going to be leaving two days early. And and he's Oh, no, you gotta have Expedia has to do that. So call Expedia. I literally I went back and forth between calling and texting Expedia and then going, they would say, No, you have to talk to the Hyatt they have to authorize this. It was awful. Really, I mean, my husband was just like, I can't believe you want people I know, realize the importance of book director like you're messing up this trip right now. So of course, I felt awful about that. But I can only imagine, you know, it definitely gives you a different level of empathy and understanding for guests. And it's tough, because I mean, really, whoever has the money should be the one that can make the decisions. Right. So Expedia had the money, they we paid Expedia in full and so they paid higher, but it's I guess, it's it doesn't depend on like the timeline of that, because they were and you might, you would know this better than I would any. They were for the beginning part of the trip, the Hyatt kept saying, talk to Expedia. But then they said, experienceable, once you depart, it's going to be easier for us to help you. And this still really doesn't matter. But in theory, is that what your experience of how it should work?

I would like to say it's an there's a normal experience and like one that is the same across the board, but it does seem to be kind of subject to who you get on the chat, which channel you're working with, in which brand if you're working with a brand or accommodation. So I think the area, you know, to your point is who's got the money. So if you paid Expedia, then they Yes, they have the money, but they've released it, they released it to the property the day you checked in. So then that's when it all comes into well, they need to make a decision to be able to say yes, you can leave, it also goes down to what is their cancellation policy, are you allowed? Yeah, stay, there's so many gray areas in there. And I know from lexicon standpoint, that is one thing that we really, really drill home with our partners is that, you know, we may not be working with 27 channels, we may not have 37 Different PMS is and all these different services. But what we do offer is a team that's going to help you navigate the noise that is the channels the the channels are very difficult to work with. They're right, and they serve a purpose. But it's hard to get to people and even we internally have a hard time getting through to people, but we will liaise between the property manager and the channel to help when there's a guest issue. Now, do we liaise with the guest No, that's that's that's a different point. But there is just a lot of a lot of things that happen that are just there's so many variables at play. And each one of them tries to have their own rules. And when you can't get a person that makes it even more frustrating. It really is yeah, it's done a better job, yeah, with their chat than most. But that's something that the channels need to figure out. Because I think that while people certainly want the convenience of booking online, they like the automation of some of the things, when there's a problem, they need to know they can have a voice on the other end of the phone where they can actually talk to a person and not have to take it out on this poor desk clerk who has no no role in play of the rules or regulations or the contracting or any of this stuff. So people need to keep that in mind to the front desk has no ability to really do anything for you, they're going to do their best, but they're just following the rules that were set in front of them. So, you know, having a good channel manager, if you are you doing distribution that will help you with that is really important. If you don't want to take it all on yourself from the channel perspective, from the guest perspective, it is a little harder, because you do have to make sure you read the fine print. And that's where I think a lot of people get tripped up is they don't read. And I'm not certainly not saying you didn't. But that that's something that I see all the time seals and I was told well you weren't told because you didn't talk to anybody you just did. Exactly. You weren't you didn't read so therefore, you weren't told so yeah, it's tough. I hated that happen for you. It is it is tough.

Well but it's a good learning experience right I think your explanation of how you lexicon handles that was spot on and such a benefit to what what you do and you know, you're you work with the property manager and the channel and then as condo world you know, I can say a similar thing for how we handle those situations that when we are the channel for our partner properties, not our manage ones if if a guest books at Paradise resort, for example, and they have an issue and they call us we work in the middle to to help what as needed. I mean, if it makes more sense for him to talk to the property directly about it, then we you know, it's almost like we're kind of like counselors in the middle trying to make navigate that one middle step to make sure they go in the right direction. And that way really helps. And it makes a big difference that the guest knows or in your case that the property manager knows they have somebody to help navigate this. And it just it creates a completely different guest experience on our side. And I think for your site, it creates a different business relationship there. And, you know, obviously kinda world and lexicon we are not Expedia. But we both offer a lot of that same white glove kind of service that, you know, I don't know that it can be duplicated to an insane amount of scale like those ones can. But at the level that we offer it for the partners that we all work with. It makes a big difference and seeing the opposite side of that, it makes me appreciate it even more.

Yeah, I think everybody should have to just kind of like what you we've talked about before is like if you're a vacation rental manager, it behooves you to stay in your properties.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. That's a really.

So I think everybody needs to have that experience once or twice to keep your mind open to what you know, who needs to be changed. What what can be added as far as a service is to understand what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes, because it's very easy to get complacent when you're not experiencing it yourself.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But other other otherwise, besides that epidemic there and we had a great stay in Cartagena. And I definitely recommend if anybody's thinking about going there, we felt very safe the whole time. The city was very safe, there was a lot of lawns, law enforcement and just didn't have any of the worries that people were saying we wouldn't we got there. So that would

be contrary to my poor dad who was worried about

your dad. My dad. Oh, good.

Wasn't my dad, the policeman trying to be worried about everything?

Yeah, yeah. No, it was it was great, though. I'm happy to share any information about the trip, if anybody's curious, cuz I know it is kind of a different place to go. But it was great. And now looking forward to the spring. Oh, my gosh, we've got more travel coming up. We leave for vrma. And you're going there a few days early, right? Yes, I'm

gonna play tourists with my husband. I'm very excited about that. I've never done Chicago before the weather doesn't look great. But you will make the best of it. It'll just be nice to see another city and do some fun things. And then where you and I are going to schedule some Alex and Ed meetings around to all the other vacation rental stuff that's going on. And I think it kind of kicks off the show season like with all the shows that Amy Hi notes put together this year, we've got a pretty pretty big calendar of shows and vacation rentals. I'm excited.

Yeah, me too. I'm just kind of playing it by ear with some of the other ones. But definitely going to this one definitely will be going to DARM and August. And then of course, Vermont International, in the fall in Vegas. So really excited about all of that and excited to be in Chicago just a couple of weeks and see everybody again, I've never been to Chicago. So that's gonna be exciting. Beyond that we've got for the month of April, we've got some great episodes coming up. Actually, just today, we launched our episode with Greg Fisher from trip shock, who was CEO and founder and really great episode, Greg's a good friend of mine and he tells us all about you know, building the trip Shaka is a is an online marketplace for tours and activities. And he built it literally from an idea into this incredible, massive empire of a company and continues to grow and expanded to software and blockchain and all these different things. He's got the smarts and entrepreneurial mind and passionate drive to fulfill. So that's a good episode to listen to. And then coming up next week we've got and I'm gonna say her name correctly in past episodes. For alley, Alley, Cam Campbell Edie direct to AMS two L's two T's complicated data as well, Alex cavaletti. And she comes to talk to us about all things personal growth, development, leadership resiliency, within a company and on your own, it was just really inspiring episodes, I think our listeners will really like that. And then finally, we've got Leo from Super hog.

He was my very first podcast that I write. And he really kind of made me see that like, our idea, maybe it wasn't so crazy, like we could do this. So I think I give him a lot of credit for giving me that spark. But yeah, Leo Leo's a lot of fun. And he's had a really interesting career and talking about what they do, it's super hard to kind of help again, going back to what we talked about, in the very beginning, had some of these peace of mind and using super hog, we might have caught some of these people, because they do vet guests for property managers and help to make sure that we're getting guests that don't have criminal records are not out there Wanted by the FBI and yeah, things that like might not be on the up and up. And so Leo tells us about how that has come to be and how important that is, in today's world of, again, no touch service, you know, you're checking in guests blindly a lot of times and you don't actually get to see them. So you don't know you know, are they really who they say they are and so Elio sheds a light on that. And it's really fascinating.

Yeah, and I think as we continue down that quest of learning more about that technology, it just seems like it's becoming more and more of a necessity in these destinations, because it really ties in with some of the destination, advocacy and legislative things that we've talked about, too, that all these restrictions that are being placed, maybe they don't need to be placed, if everybody starts adopting some of the some of the technology, right. So it's, and that's a challenge, because if you don't think that it's necessary, then you don't want to spend that extra money for it. But it's, you know, some of these things, I feel like they have to be adopted destination wide in order to really have that impact. And in order to prevent the restrictions that are coming down the line. And I think we'll hear a lot about both of those sides at vrma. This year, there's a lot going on, and advocacy and restrictions and just different things that we all need to be cautious of. Because just because you live in a tornado tourism destination now doesn't mean it will be if you don't do the right things to keep it that way. And that's a really important lesson for everybody to be thinking about or thing thing to be thinking about. So that's gonna be good. And then also, we've been thinking about and I think this we're going to do, we would like to do some more series kind of topic driven episodes, we had Pete DeMaio, from travel boom marketing on last month, and he did the top five things that vacation rentals can learn from hotels, which that episode did really well, I think people enjoyed hearing from a different side of the industry. But we want to bring on some more people kind of like Pete and bring Pete back to dive into real like specific topics within marketing that we feel that our audience will be interested in. And then some other different sides of things. So leadership and personal development is something that our people have said they enjoy our episodes that talk to that point. And we like to have Amber hurdle come back. And we've got some other ones in mind that just from the outside perspective of the industry that just can help all of us grow, as you know better and more self aware people and employees and friends and husbands and wives. And I

think we you know, go back to Greg Fisher, he tried to give us kind of the 411 on NF Ts and I think I walked away more confused than I was before. But I think having some of this stuff that it's just non tangible thing. I don't get that. And I know we need to have a conversation about it. But I think again, there's just so many things going on in the industry, that it's not just about the people, but it's about things that are happening and how we can better understand them. And so I think bringing Pete and Amber and all these other people that have different touch points outside of our industry to help us all like you said, be better people more self aware and learn about things that we don't understand. Or maybe you know, maybe maybe we are the only ones that don't understand and everybody else is fine. I don't know. But yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting. And I think we've got a lot of really good ideas. So I would say if you are listening and there is a topic that you would like us to dive into, we are not afraid of reaching out and finding a person who is a subject matter experts. Yeah, as I was on it, we love to learn so let us know send us a message. Make sure you're writing us reviews follow us. Yeah, if

you're if you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear from you. And really, it helps us be able to to grow and be able to reach more audiences and be able to you know, do more with this show. So we love hearing from everybody you can leave us a review on Apple podcasts or whatever podcast tool or program you listen to. You can also go to our website, Alex and any podcast COMM And you can see all of our episodes there or you can also leave a review right from there. So a lot of good information. You can contact us, follow us on social media, all the good things but until Chicago, we appreciate everybody. We'll see you soon and thank you so much for supporting us and tuning in for another first of the month episode.

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