Jeff Hoffman on the Passion of Starting a Business

0:05 and to give this a little bit of context um we have posted 275 events the last 17 years we've had about 2,000 speakers on stage over 17 years and Jeff Hoffman is the number one best speaker we've ever had here uh that's why we have him back and we're honored have him back here in the room and you're about to find out why so Jeff is a humanitarian he's a best-selling author um he is a Hollywood film producer he has produced a Grammy winning Jazz album an Emy winning TV show he's been the CEO of public and private companies he's been part of multiple startups whose names You' recognize such as upid priceline.com booking.com and was the original entor of the Airport check-in kiosk um he's also a head of the global entrepreneur Network and we want to do this firesight chat to kind of dig into some of the things he brought up on stage at our last uh the last time he was on stage at our super Summit two years ago you can stream that talk on billionaires. comom for free um he had half of the room same demographic as here in tears I've never

1:25 made someone cry over almost 300 events and uh Jeff's just a great person and we're honored to have him here so Jeff what else would you want to you know Frank all that it's pretty much all downhill now so uh so um can you start out giving a little bit more context on what you're most passionate about of all the things you're doing right now all the things you're excited about just so people can kind of understand your perspective and where you spend most of your time right now yeah so for right now uh the thing that I'm most passionate about is teaching people the mindset and skill set of Entrepreneurship are are nonprofit which I spend the most of my time on the global entrepreneurship Network we're on the ground in 200 countries which is why I'm not usually in this one with a really simple mission statement to teach people everywhere in the world how to help themselves by starting a business uh so that's what I'm passionate about we need to teach people how to help themselves instead of being dependent on governments or anybody else awesome yeah we recently interviewed Tim Draper for 30 minutes and he was he's such a huge supportive entrepreneurs just like you it reminds me remind me of him a bit so last time you spoke on stage you talked about having yellow sticky notes and I think it was something related to traveling to 130 countries and eating with 130 families and and other goals you had related to travel and exploring the world can you talk a little bit about

2:42 visualization affirmations mindset management and uh what you do now but also what was what really propelled you to be so successful related to that sure I I I'll I'll pick one on mindset uh because it was pretty much life-changing for me um as a leader a CEO a Founder whatever as a leader you believe your job is to lead right that means tell people what to do ask any kid what the boss does they tell people what to do the mindset shift for me that was lifechanging when I was when I realized that I need to spend less time leading and more time creating leaders and that was completely different than what I thought so real leaders don't create followers they create other leaders so when I rewrote my own job description and said my job in fact let me tell you a quick story of what it evolved to how it's supposed to look I stopped running everything and I started spending my time scheduling time every week to build leaders around me and there's no way you can scale companies like we did with Priceline booking.com to 190 countries if you don't have a team but really quick I I'll tell you a story what it looks like one day I'm on the road my team calls and they're like hey boss we met this 20-year-old Rockstar kid and I said don't even wait for me you don't need my permission hire the kid so I get back in town and I spend the morning looking at this Ro this genius's work

3:59 this 20 old kid at lunch I go down to the conference room and the kid doesn't know who I am he doesn't know I own the company he doesn't know I'm the CEO and I walk into the conference room and I asked the team when my people work through lunch I never asked them to but if they're working through lunch I buy right so I said can I get you guys anything well the 12-year-old 20-year-old kid who doesn't know who I am turns to me and says yeah I'm kind of busy can you go pick up my laundry well you could hear the air suck out of the room it's like when a soldier this is what went in my brain a soldier just made that click where they're stepped on a landmine and everybody's waiting for them to blow up and everyone's looking at me to see what I'm going to say and I turned to the kid and I said sure where's the ticket and a little bit later I'm outside and my two vice presidents come running out Jeff please he don't fire him he didn't know who you were he doesn't know you on the company he doesn't know you're the CEO I was like guys calm down and they said please don't fire him I said why do you think I'm going to fire him they said because you're so angry and I said why do you guys think I'm so angry and they said because you stormed out of the building and I said I didn't storm out of the building and they said what are you doing in the parking lot I said I'm uh going to pick up that kid's dry cleaning and they said you're the CEO and the owner of the company you're picking up a 20-year-old rookie dry cleaning I said that kid is the single most brilliant designer I've ever seen he will triple our revenues we will win awards for the

5:17 product that that kid is building I said so not only am I going to pick up that young kid's dry cleaning but if you guys need me this afternoon I will be out back washing that kid's car um that was the mindset shift that enabled us to really grow when I got out of the way okay so many times I hear from successful people like hey you have to keep your confidence as an entrepreneur you have to have some courage and conviction in what you're doing um you know and you're such a servant leader like supporting people on the team like you just talked about how much of you becoming really successful was having an extreme confidence in yourself or did you already know that you were going to produce so much value in the world it was a matter of time did you you know what was your mindset like before you hit big success many times I I think the answer to that so uh confidence is a requirement arrogance is one of the seven deadly sins the problem is the line between them is really narrow right um confidence for me was about trusting Instinct and I I got to say when when we I I Remember by the way when we did the IPO for Price Line and we kind of looked around the room as a bunch of ENT Tech entrepreneurs and we said uhoh we need adult supervision so we went and hired Wall Street type Executives to come into the company to run it we actually hired the the retired CEO of City Bank came on

6:37 as the CEO of the company but this was a guy that we'd sit down to make a multi-million dollar decision and he would say well we should hire a Mackenzie do a study you know generate reports and we would say ah it doesn't feel right let's not do that and what I what I realize in those moments is trusting your instinct right so is it confidence yes but your instinct just needs to be reach title that should be called your fast intelligence CU your instinct is the sum total of everything you've ever gotten wrong everything you've ever gotten right so for me I tended to trust my instinct which led to confidence when when your instinct was right okay awesome yeah I remember there was a Harvard Business review article that said should you trust your gut and the the conclusion was it depends what your gut is made of right so it uh it's based on your history so what was the the major turning point in your career maybe it was like a strategic asset you acquired or something you learned and then everything went 100 miles per hour faster um I I think that that major turning point wound up being the well wait was that the one about mistake I want to make sure I'm uh I skipped one go back to that we'll go back let me go back to that one but there was a a uh super important learning moment that changed everything too I want to share that

7:54 really for that you and I had talked about it before um and that was realizing that too many people are blinded by their own Brilliance and what I mean by that is you guys know that when people pitch you my idea it's just like we have a film company and every single person brings us their life story and say this is the greatest story in the world that everybody needs to hear and in fact maybe your mom wants to hear it but probably nobody else every pitch we get right is the most brilliant idea ever so a a change point for us was being blinded one of the companies I built that failed was cuz we were so sure that we right and I just want to share a really fast story of how I learned to fix that problem with this mistake so the mistake is you think your idea is brilliant everyone around you thinks it's brilliant and you're plugging forward um I was spending the day with a gentleman in the retail business who' built a retail company that was everybody said would fail and so I asked him every all the experts in your industry said this was a bad idea how did you know it would work why'd you do it anyway when everyone said it was wrong and this gentleman uh said because I didn't listen to The Experts I listened to the farmers and I said you got to tell me the story and he said Jeff he said everybody on Wall Street thought my idea was bad everybody in

9:10 retail thought it was bad but none of those people were shopping in my store he said I'm building a product for Farmers so I said what do you do he said I bought a John Deere hat true story and some overhauls and boots and he said every other Friday I would leave my office sneak out I would change clothes I would go across town and I would sit in the cafe with with the diner with farmers buy them coffee and apple pie and talk about life he said that's how I designed my business that guy just FYI was Sam Walton and I spent the day with Sam and I said everyone said you can't big big build big box retail in smalltown America he said everybody except the farmers and that's the people I listen to last thing about that I after that I started scheduling every other Friday I would change clothes leave my office what I used to do in the early line days was put on jeans tennis shoes and I would go to the grocery store and push a cart around for hours talking to moms about their vacation plans quit being blinded by your own Brilliance spend your day even secretly in the life of your customer and that's the only opinion that matters that was life-changing for us and it's what we learned from failing before that awesome it's the opposite of hiring a consulting company it's recommended by some big CEO or something right great uh and then do

10:28 do you want to comment on any strategic choke point or increased momentum uh point where after you did that one thing everything started speeding up for you in one of the companies or in your career overall um I think that uh for that it was a uh the thing that caused that acceleration was an extreme focus on operational efficiency and let me explain that because I witnessed it somewhere else um when you are I don't care what business you're in in this room every single company you have a team of people you are paid people they are doing something with your money during the day and meanwhile you have a set of goals what we were not doing was really refining and streamlining that Focus so here the I'll just share the lesson we learned and challenge you guys to go do this um so step one is to WR on the wall of your office the only reason anybody comes into that office so I'm going to give you the example we went back and we put on the wall sell more hotel rooms and the question is the the point is the only reason you should be in this office anybody is to sell more hotel rooms but we we I started a program and the program was this you're walking down the hall I can stop you and say show me what you're doing right now and tell me how that is going to help us sell more hotel rooms you have two

11:46 choices you can explain it to me or you need to put it down and go do something else but I had another level of that I'm the CEO I come in and I ask him I need you to do something you know what rights I give all my people he can say to me me Jeff I think that's great but I don't see how it's going to sell more hotel rooms so I'm not going to do it they don't have to do what I tell them either our Focus every day is to constantly challenge every it's a time and motion study what are we every person doing every day and not only do we constantly ask each other but it's on the wall so that you never forget there's only one reason to be in this office to sell another hotel room if you're doing anything that isn't helping us sell a hotel room you need to put it down and go do something else and when we started that program I think we became about 40% of the stuff we were doing we could no longer really remember why and we couldn't tie it to the reason we came to business into the office so we became extremely efficient which is what drove the pro the the um profitability up so much we just don't do anything that doesn't get us to the goal sure makes sense got it um so what if someone's sitting here in the room they want to be a top .1% of their field they want to out compete others in their industry or subit what advice would you give them that's really

13:04 helped you besides operational efficiency um all right so we well let me let me go to the end and then I'll back up because it's interesting with investors and startups in this building today right um I I on boards that I serve on I get to the end of the year and we're sitting down so now it's December 31st and I'm with the entrepreneur and the investor and I say so how did the year go and simultaneously the entrepreneur says great the investor says horrible and I'm like aren't you guys in the same company and I asked the investor and they're like I thought this company was going to get a lot more done this year and I ask the founder who says I can't believe how much we got done this year and you sit there and thinking okay what was the expectation so we went back and we came up with a what here's a just a technique every year every January 1 let's say figuratively I took out a this is the first time I did this I took out a sheet of paper and I wrote down on the date December 31st so write down December 31st 2024 and then I drew success as quantifiable but as comprehensively as I can if this were December 31st what conversation should we be Happ having that everyone's going to say wow what a great year I drew it right but then I did something different I turned the

14:22 paper over and I drew the opposite I said if December I said what does failure look like and if December 31st looks like this we fail I don't need to wait till December 31st and so what I do was I had all the stakeholders every year sign both sides of that we all agree that this is what success looks like by the way we had money that was in escro accounts based on tranches and we got an agreement from the investor that if you have this is December you can release the money without my permission it's an escrow account it's automatically released to us on the other hand I made all the employees sign the other s and they said 'what are we doing I said you are pre-firing yourself if it's December 31st and we look like this I should not be walking you out the door your car should be loaded and we should be figuring out something to do and because we met we write it up yearly we measure it quarterly but we track it monthly and it enabled me one time I had no idea this was going to be such a big deal in my young career back when I was building the uh before we built all those airport kiosks I had an idea with a company I wrote failure I wrote success all stakeholders signed the agreement right you might change it during the year and everyone signs off on it but at one point 6 months through the year I said here's where we are here's what we're

15:40 tracking against here's what failure looks like can we do anything to fix it and when we ran out of ideas I called the assistant to the investor and I wired the remaining funds back well I had no idea that was going to be the shot to hurt around the world the investor called me and said' what' you just do I Saidi just wire the rest of the year back he said why and I said because I can already see I'm not going to make it and he said right but here's how investment works you spend all my money then you call me and tell me you need more because you haven't hit the goals I said unless I can see that I'm not going to make it and I'll just give it back to you now that shot I would not believe how many investors would come up to me aren't you are you the guy that wired back the money to the investors before you ran out of it I was like yes because I actually had metrics to define success and failure I think that's how we got to that whatever you said 0.1% right because we were so focused on specific definitions of success and failure that we never lost sight of what we were driving for the good news is not that you won't fail it's that you'll fail faster and cheaper than everybody else we failed but we failed fast we failed cheap and when we succeeded money was already being released because we had already defined what the end goal was got it yeah makes sense um you know related to Investments and dealing with

16:57 investors um being CEO of publicly traded company before what's your number one strategy tip suggestion when trying to you know build a relationship with a new investor or close a big deal is there any go-to strategy or any lesson that's so obvious to you and when you speak around globally you just find that most entrepreneurs mess this one absolutely I will tell you um the two words that don't exist in way too many entrepreneurs see I've been lucky that I spent my whole life on one the first half of my life on one side of the table and the second half of my life on the other side of the table so I I've been uh the guy begging for money raising hundreds of millions in my career now I'm sitting on the other side listening to pitches um and there are two words it's a thing it's an industry it's a job called ir and entrepreneurs don't even know what it means investor relations are something that I am woefully disappointed in um investors when I ask entrepreneurs Founders business owners uh investors are people you call when you need money right so that's the only time they call typically if they have bad news they avoid you they have good news they want to talk to you but what they're missing is the constant communication of investor relations so I managed always and I I'm amazed right I I managed invest in relations I would frequently one time I just showed up at

18:16 a polo match believe me I don't know what the hell Polo is it looks scary and dangerous but it's because my lead investor that was his favorite sport I saw it on his Facebook page I showed up there one day and he's like what are you doing here I said just spending a day with you and he saidwhat do you want I said nothing and at the end of the day he said wait you don't even like Polo you spend a day with me because you know I like it you didn't ask me for anything I said I just want you to know how much this relationship means to me and how much I appreciate you investor relationship management is the piece that Founders don't do they don't manage relationships when they don't need something it's a relationship and you have to build it over time your Facebook page might get a few hits today I think right see what see what sports you like uh so yeah I appreciate you you mentioning that that is something that we hear quite often from our investors the followup and consistency of communication after the close um you know the other thing I wanted to ask you about is last time we spoke on stage we were talking out in the hallway about this you gave the example of finding one of your employees who had grown up like in a trailer park or an RV uh the mother still lived in RV and the employees goal was to buy their mom a house and you figure that out and you said okay well if we get all this done we'll go and buy your mom house and you told the story about how that made that employee super motivated since hearing that you know it's hard for me to take

19:33 that and implement it in my business and find such an impactful story but can you share what you told me out in the hallway about how do you make that practical and do that often in your business maybe sure and and you know how that came guys I was a CEO building a company and I got a call from someone that said I need to hire a CEO can I interview you and I started to say no I have my own startup but I was like I want to see how people do interviews so I went to an interview just to get better at interviewing and when the interview was over I said let me get this straight you want me to work my ass off around the clock so one day you can buy a bigger boat and he's like I didn't say that I said you kind of did right and then I got in the car and I was like uhoh how do we interview people we tell them our mission statement our vision statement our company's goals our dreams that is you as a Founder that is your dream that is not the employees Dream It's not motivating at all the employee we say here's a job description if you do this stuff I'll pay you if you don't you're fired and then some I'm going to get a big boat cuz I own the company you might get a little something not motivating so I changed my technique for interviewing and I started asking people and the first question I ask is why what's the what's something in your life right now at this moment that's most important to you the question is this why do you come into this office every day and I started looking around and I

20:49 realized I'll ask you guys do you know the real reason the people that work for you come in the office it's not to make your company successful that's a byproduct they don't wake up every day wanting you to get richer or wanting your company to succeed that's your dream but they do wake up every day the story I told last time I was here worrying about getting their mother out of a rusted trailer and moving her into a house so I went and asked everybody that works for me can you tell me why you come into this office every day what matters to you and I posted pictures if you come to my office there's photos all over the walls that look random they're not random I know why everybody that works for me comes into the office every day that's actually my job my job is to make sure his mom gets a house everybody that your career with me generates the life that you wish you had the only way to find that out is to ask them so the answer to your question is sometimes it's big like when we sold that company we bought Chris's mom a house which was one of my f best days in my life however a lot of times it's not that big it might be it it might be something that I had one person that she said to me I want to move out of engineering into marketing I want to learn it I want to learn international business because I had that picture on the wall I was leaving for a trip to Asia one day and I said hey I said can you get a babysitter

22:07 next week she said why and I said I know what your goal is and I'm going to take you with me at my expense on a trip to Asia to help you achieve your goal of learning international business finding out what they come into your office for every day and making that your mission and by the way I reverse engineer all that engineered all that because I sold a company to a Fortune 500 company company and I was told that day they said in all the years from the day you started the company to the day you sold it Jeff no one that works for you has ever quit and I was like okay that's the coolest thing I've ever done and I don't know how I did that so I started calling people I'm like why don't you guys quit and they're like dude you want us to quit is this a problem I said no I just want to understand why everybody wants to work here your job is to build the company where all the best people in your industry all want to work for you and then make sure they never leave that's a job assignment that wasn't in my job description now it is awesome yeah I love that answer and um what I like about it is uh let's give him a round of applause that was great what I like about it is immediately it intuitively makes sense you're going to have a much more loyal team if you do that it also plays to it's like you're being generous by caring about their needs but by taking good care of them it selfishly makes your company more valuable too right

23:23 it's like everybody wins in the process and I think the media loves to make anyone successful Moder day and Society look evil right um and so one thing you said on stage last time that I won't ever forget is that there's nothing wrong with making a lot of money it's just wrong if you don't do anything good with it right and so I thought that was a really impactful statement that you made and by the way on top of interviewing um 100 billionaires for billionaires. comom we're also reading the 240 billionaire books and one book that I tried to finish before Jeff got on stage but I'm on chapter n uh is called scale uh and Jeff Hoffman co-wrote that you know with David finle and you can grab that on Audible like I did if you're liking this interview then you should grab that audible book and learn more about some of the operational efficiency systems that Jeff talks about in that book so make sure and and check that out um are there any other Publications or resources just while we're on that topic that people should check out if they want to learn more from you in general well I only ever written that one book just just to answer the question three of the companies I was involved with turned were startups that turned into multi-billion dollar companies and people kept asking the question you guys must have done something right uh so went backwards and said what are all the things we actually did that worked right I I I didn't sit on a stage I didn't write a book I didn't do any of this until I've actually built the stuff I'm

24:40 telling you because I've been to too many things where people were giving me advice that it and they had never done that thing so afterwards I went back and said how did we turn these companies the market cap of the company is like 120 billion dollar now we started it on a folding table so people say how do you start with a folding table and how handful of people no money and create a company like that and turns out there were answers to that so reverse engineer those wrote those down that's what scales about and I just made a giving back pledge saying I'm just going to share everything I've ever learned with as many people as I can awesome um so you've been interviewed hundreds of times every time I go on LinkedIn you're given a talk in Dubai or Singapore or Sydney or somewhere right um and so out of all the hundreds of talks hundreds of times you've been interviewed what's the smartest question that no one ever asks you and they really should be asking to get the most out of the interview okay so I'm going to turn that a different direction go for it and Lily you told me you were going to ask me that um because it's not the question people should ask an interview it's just the smartest question anybody asked ever asked me and I'm doing that because when you asked me that the answer came immediately into my head and I just talked to you about R trusting your gut so the smartest question anybody ever ask me I am and a lot of people in this room can relate so I have my daughter I take her to lunch

25:59 one day and the goal of lunch is to apologize that I work so much and I sit down with my daughter and I said look I'm really sorry I've been so busy the company's really you know I used to tell people in the early internet days at the launch of Price Line If you ever seen the rodeo and they have to stay on the bull ride the bll for eight seconds and you're like eight seconds how can anybody not do it and then nobody makes it past 4 seconds and you're like that must be way harder than it looks well people said what was it like launching an internet company then at that at that growth rate and I said it was like that but we were on the bull for 3 weeks there was no 8 seconds we could not let go that time so I'm talking to my daughter and I said look I just want to apologize for how busy I am and the amount of time the things that time that I've missed with you and she said Dad I need to ask you a question a couple of questions and these were the questions that came to mind when you said that I said okay she said what's my favorite color and I told her she said what's my favorite book and I told her and she said what song do I need to hear when I'm sad and I told her and she said what story makes me happy and I told her and I said can I ask where we're going with this and she said I'm going to try not to get emotional she said being here doesn't make you a good father being

27:16 engaged makes you a good father she said I have friends who are fathers are home 9 to5 they're there every day and they could not answer one of those questions that's the smartest question ever but anyone ever asked me thank you she said if I have to choose she said I'll take as much time as I can get but she said if I and she's this High she said if I have to choose between quantity and quality she said you're always so engaged with me that I wouldn't change a thing that when she said to me tell me what song makes me happy when I'm sad and I'm like why are you going ask me that that was actually the smartest question anyone's ever asked me awesome thank you um that was great so you know related to that most of the times when I study billionaires they work very hard and very smart it's like someone saying what's what's better for chess AI chess player or a human it's actually a human that uses AI right so like there's been one or two exceptions out of 100 plus billionaires I've studied so in your experience is it very obvious that you have to work very very hard and try to always be working smarter on how you're working hard or when you look back do you think if I just would have been smarter about things and read books hours a day like Warren maybe I wouldn't have had to work so hard like what's your opinion on that so I'm so glad you asked that because there's all this

28:34 social media now about all these people that say grind grind grind if you're not up every I saw somebody yesterday he said I'm successful because I get up at 2:30 every morning I'm like I'm tired because I get up early in the morning um and so this grind culture focuses on activity not results I don't agree with that at all do you want to know what people say I'm an entrepreneur it's I work Round the Clock like it's a badge of honor it's a badge of inefficiency do you know what I told my team I sat him down one day and I said I want you to figure out how we can do in two days what every other company takes a whole week to do that is your objective so work hard when you have to we had a time when we were launching actually I literally remember the the official launch of priceline.com I think we slept on the floor of the office three straight days nobody went home for three days because we were launching something so work hard is absolutely a requirement but to work hard arbitrarily so you can brag about grinding is just stupid right that's time you should have been with your daughter working smart is the key figure out how to do in two days what everyone else takes a week but if it breaks one day then you need to be willing to to go three nights without sleep to fix it it's a combination of both but I hate the messaging that's out

29:52 there now that if you ain't grinding you ain't trying and my answer to them is I ain't grinding cuz I automated that whole thing and I'm on the beach while you're still at your company yeah great awesome so uh let's end with the global entrepreneur network uh tell us a little bit more about uh what you're doing there what your goal is how people in the room here could support you with resources introductions you know Capital if it's nonprofit Etc like how can how can the people in the room here just appreciated all the advice you just gave them support you in your mission there thanks I I'll I'll do two things real quick here um so again the the goal was to uh give back by teaching everything we know I only know one thing entrepreneurship but I do know how to start turn ideas into companies and we've been doing that for a while right well we we were blessed enough when I launch a music company that I want a Grammy we launch a TV company I want a couple Emmys something somewhere we figured out so what I said was we will share that with everybody but I don't I actually don't like the word entrepreneurship anymore even though our our nonprofit is called the global entrepreneurship Network and it's because entrepreneurship is intimidating people think you have to know Tech they think it's about money and business I would personally rather call it self-determination what we want people to do is own their future and design it especially youth I just came from an event uh in Europe I just got back from where we bought Creative Kids from all

31:09 over the world we flew them all in and gave them a stage to show their creative skills the way athletes get a stage because the athletes are stars in school and the Creative Kids are Outcast we're teaching people how to use their skill sets to design their future and other people's future so that's what we do at the global entrepreneurs ship Network I am proud to say I'm the I'm the chairman of it we're on the ground in 200 countries now teaching people how to help themselves it's literally as simple as that um don't be dependent on anybody we'll teach you the skills and the attitude you need to be able to take care of yourself but I will say because sometimes people ask me how to help um we're good there we're we're uh we we have really good sponsors and funders for that I also have a uh children's charity uh called World youth Horizons and it's literally World youth horizons.com uh that's my personal Foundation um with a really simple goal we are going to find the children in the world that have no chance at a better life it's our job to give them a chance at a better life a quick example after the Civil War in Uganda the parents killed each other the kids were left in the jungles to die we rounded them all up I bought land I built buildings we don't call them orphanages youth homes we built Farms taught the kids how to raise animals and feed themselves we planted crops we send them all to school sometimes we have to

32:27 build the school so my personal Foundation is to give kids that don't have a shot at a better life it's our responsibility in this room with our success to give the kids who can't help themselves a way to help themselves and sometimes people ask if they can help if they want to do something they're more than welcome to help us at World youth horizons.com awesome great well I think uh Jeff is a great example just like kid Newman who's on stage earlier of like what we're trying to do in this investor club and create a Perpetual learning machine and all become better smarter hard more effective people because of you know Keynotes and Fireside Chats and panelists you know such as Jeff Hoffman so I'm sure everyone in the room agrees with me they got a ton of value out of that and so we'd love to Happ you here let's give Jeff a big round of applause thank thank you