Brett Keirstead | Navigating the Future of Sales

Tracy (00:06.833) Welcome to Path to Growth. I'm Tracy Young, co -founder and CEO of TigerEye. Today we are joined by Brett Kirstead with Chief Outsiders. As Chief Sales Officer, Brett helps CEOs and leaders assess the needs of their sales function, develop strategies to accelerate growth and help implement and oversee core initiatives. Brett also recently published a book titled, We Are All Sales People, Five Steps to Fulfilling Relationships and Improved Communication at Home, School and Work. Brett, welcome. Brett Keirstead (00:38.121) Thank you, thanks for having me. Tracy (00:41.265) So tell me about growing up. Tell me about what you've learned from mom and dad. Brett Keirstead (00:45.513) Yeah. I, my mother and my birth father got divorced when I was five years old. My father did not fulfill his obligations as a father. I'll leave it at that. And, my mom found herself as a single mom with two young boys at I was five. My brother was two and, you know, going through that resiliency and the, the grits and all that was required from that and the realization that, you know, even on early in life, you sometimes have to put others in front of yourself. And she certainly did that for us. Fortunately, she got remarried to my father, what I consider my father at seven years old and was the diametric opposite. You know, my birth father was very personable, very outgoing, very whatever that side of me, I guess the sales side. And my father was a police officer, very soft spoken, very formal. Tracy (01:19.121) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (01:42.185) just very reliable, predictable, stable, and was an amazing father. So I kind of got to see as both sides of that, you know, the original leadership that you get exposed to is that throughout my life. And, you know, I, despite that, what quote would be adversity, I had a great childhood. I learned a lot. I learned hard work. I learned public service. You know, I learned commitment. I learned, you know, work rates. I learned. Tracy (02:00.753) Yeah. Tracy (02:08.881) you. Brett Keirstead (02:09.417) sacrifice that my parents went through and it's served me personally and professionally ever since. Tracy (02:15.761) It's so clear to me how much you admire and love your mom and dad and how much you appreciated your mom for being there for both of you guys. I mean, it's crazy. I have a five and two year old and I think just, you know, your biological father really missed out. I feel. Brett Keirstead (02:20.201) Yeah. Brett Keirstead (02:34.313) Yeah. Yeah. We could, we could do a whole podcast on both sides of that, but, you know, obviously it's very close to father's day. We were just a couple of days since that. So, it's near and dear to my heart about how important that role is as a, as a parent. And it's the one thing you can never walk away from, right? And, you know, you can. Tracy (02:47.665) Yeah. Tracy (02:51.921) Yeah, I'm really glad you had good role models there too. So how do you describe your job to a five -year -old? Brett Keirstead (02:54.505) Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So I, the, the best thing I would say is, I work with people that are in need, you know, people that are have goals and they have ambitions for either themselves or their business and they're struggling and they need help. So I think of it as a helper job. I'm a, I'm a helper to other people like me that have dreams and ambitions, in their lives and they're struggling with how to do it. So I'm like a nice guy with a lot of good ideas. Tracy (03:25.265) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. For companies that have maybe the CEO still leading sales or their sales team is growing and they just don't have the sales leader in the building yet, what are the pros and cons of having a fractional CRO in the building? Brett Keirstead (03:43.625) Yeah, it's funny. Fractional has been around for a long time and obviously not as much in sales, more in other functions. A lot of times people have a, they've had a CMO or CTO or other roles in the business or consultants, if you think of it that way. And sales has always been, well, it's the function that you need to hire. You need a full -time person and. the challenge is that economically for a lot of businesses, that doesn't make sense. You know, a fully burdened experience CRO that has all of the level of expertise and decision -making is expensive, you know, and if you're a couple million dollar business, you know, you're trying to invest in areas. It doesn't make sense for you to go all in and get ahead of the cost curve on that side, but you need the experience, you know, you need the advice and the access. And so. Tracy (04:29.233) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (04:33.993) The CSO, a fractional CSO position has been one that allows growth businesses that want and need that level of experience and advice, but can't afford the investment to get both. So I have a client or for example, where they have two salespeople, they're a growing business. I can do it in eight hours a week. I do my one -on -ones, I do all the sales function, I do everything you would think, I participate in the executive L10 meetings. Tracy (04:55.505) Thank you. Brett Keirstead (05:01.961) I just do it in eight hours. And so they get a very experienced resource that fits within the economics of the business. That's probably item number one, far and away is it's just a good alignment there. Tracy (05:08.529) Mm -hmm. Tracy (05:14.417) You know, as we were thinking about what we would build for our next startup, TigerEye, we really looked at all the enterprise categories of CRM, ERP, HRS. And my co -founder and I settled on CRM, mostly because we think sales leaders are also very interesting and we wanted to build great software for them, but also because we started the company shortly after the pandemic and it felt like the entire world changed. Brett Keirstead (05:21.097) Yeah. Tracy (05:43.729) And yet CFOs, users of ERP and HR leaders, users of HRS, really their jobs didn't change even when the world changed. But overnight, as you recall, you know, we went into shelter in place, we went into lockdown and we went from an in -person selling motion overnight to a remote selling motion. And it just was so obvious to us that sales is... Brett Keirstead (06:06.537) Yeah. Tracy (06:12.721) dynamic, it's ever -changing, and it's also the most vulnerable category out of all enterprise software. So my question to you is, having been doing this for a long time, how do you think sales has changed in the last five years? Brett Keirstead (06:27.721) Well, I will say it's it's I mean, my gosh, what an awesome question. My brain just exploded trying to answer it. So first of all, the engagement and the relationship between the seller and the buyer has been changing for years. Right. The the the knowledge base sellers always were keepers of lots of knowledge that a buyer needed in order to make an informed decision. And that equation, that relationship has been changing for a long time, even predating the COVID, that arrangement. So that issue now has been accelerated even more and more to a point now where the relationship is, as a salesperson, is often facilitator more than seller. And what COVID did and what that change in the relationship did was it took away a lot of the personal one -on -one communication and trust building that goes on when I'm looking for somebody in a trust environment. You know, when we see somebody face to face, as I wrote in my book, you know, you, you, as humans, we observe all these interactions. We make personal connections with people beyond just their words that they say. And so when we lost that as a sales person, Many salespeople have struggled because they've lost a primary mechanism of communication, which is just personal engagement, you know, the body language, the laughing, the hand gestures, the other things that seem silly, but they're such a part of interpersonal communication. So now we've kind of morphed into becoming almost a utility in the process as opposed to some, you know, dynamic skills. So what I think's happened a lot, Tracy, which I actually think in some ways it's a good thing is it's opened up selling to a whole nother set of personality. Somebody who may be more analytical or more introverted or more of a consultant type that doesn't have to rely on like, God forbid I have to go be somewhere or I don't have to travel now so I can have a better work life balance yet still be a professional salesperson. So. Brett Keirstead (08:45.801) Yes, a lot of kind of traditional techniques change, but I think on the bright side, it's opened up this profession to a lot of people that might've been scared off by travel or, I don't want to be in person or I don't like that dynamic. I think it's in many ways it's been a blessing, but it has absolutely been a change in that regard. Tracy (09:07.873) Interesting. Let's talk about over -assignment. So I had no concept or understanding of over -assignment early on in my founder CEO career. And I wish I knew what it meant earlier because I really believe it defines sales culture. Over -assignment being what's assigned to each individual rep in the field and then what is assigned to their rep and then what's assigned to maybe the director or VP above that at every hierarchy level. What's your advice to new founders and new sales leaders on over -assignment? Brett Keirstead (09:45.673) Yeah, so as Tracy's articulating, this is something that I learned very, very early on when I first, this is back in 1994. So some of the, what's old is new and what's, you know, remains the same, but over assignment is the process as a sales organization. You know, whether you're the CEO or whether you're an actual sales, you know, that's your specific function is how do you assign out the quota to the team, your sales organization, your team members that, supports the overall objectives of the business. So I'll just give you a simple example. If your quota was $1 million and you assigned 1 .1 million, you would have 10 % over assignment, right? Your goal is a million. You signed 1 .1, so average rep, you know, however many reps you have, you allocate the quota out, voila, you've got a 10 % over assignment. And so that's the logic behind it. When I was young, I never, like, I didn't know a lot about it. And my, one of my first mentors told me, that over assignment is very, very important. And it's a science because it allows you to account for potential turnover. So if I only assign 100 % and I lose somebody, now all of a sudden I've got a gap in performance in my allocation. If I way, way over assign, I just make up a number, well, nobody can achieve it. And then sometimes I end up setting unrealistic quotas or depending on my comp structure, I may have to pay out at a higher rate, right? If overachievement equals higher payment, it's great, but then my budget gets killed, right? So there's a lot of things that go into it. But the logic was saying, if I need to produce a million dollars worth of net new sales over, let's just say a one year period, and I have five salespeople, I give myself that cushion by saying, okay, each month I'm gonna have five salespeople, Tracy (11:22.641) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (11:43.049) Maybe in month six, I plan to lose a salesperson. So I kind of map this out and I say at the end of the year, based on normal projections, the monthly quotas of people that I have on plan will roll up to this buffer. And that gives you as the CEO or the sales leader, this little buffer in there so that if the average rep across the board achieves 80 to 90%, right? The average rep doesn't make their goal. You're still covered. So there's a lot of calculation that goes into it and there's a lot of complexity that goes into it. But I suggest for any sales manager when they do quote assignments, whether you're a CEO or what have you, that you spend a lot of time thinking about this. I know it's a long answer, but to add to it, it also helps you figure out how many reps do I need, right? So if your cost structure is such that you need $600 ,000 in sales and, you need to allocate out 10 % over that, say 660, and you need the average salesperson sells 120 ,000, you know how many reps you need. So that is really a useful mechanism for planning, for budgeting, for sanity, for security, for expectation setting all along the way. Tracy (13:03.889) The office I am in right now is having a fake fire drill. So I'm going to ask you another question and then I'm going to go on mute. Most of us are closing out Q2 right now. And as we enter Q3 and Q4, we're going to start thinking about new fiscal year planning. So I would love your thoughts on just go to market planning in general and like lessons learned and what you've seen work or not work. Brett Keirstead (13:10.793) Okay. Brett Keirstead (13:16.457) Yeah. Brett Keirstead (13:27.625) Yeah, this is a good one because, you know, depending on the nature of the way your business is structured, this is all over the board. I've worked for organizations with fresh capital from private equity that have massive expectations that are totally driven by a top -down objective. So I might say, well, we need to grow this business 50 % next year. So put a plan together to grow the business at 50 % and then we create quotas and objectives and plans for each quarter. daily, weekly, monthly objectives based on some top -down plan. That can be right, but often that gets misleading. What I like to start from is what I would consider to be, call it bottom -up, okay? And let me give you a good rule of thumb for everybody. It's my number one go -to metric. My number one go -to metric that I use for planning is what's called per rep, per month productivity. So what per rep, per month productivity means is, the average salesperson over a period of time. Let's say for the last year, when there was a button, a seat, somebody on quota, what did they sell on average? So let's say the average salesperson sold $50 ,000 a month, okay? For the last 12 months, all things blended in and you have five salespeople and on average they sell $50 ,000 a month. Okay, you with me? So it's reasonable to expect over the next 90 days, the average salesperson is gonna sell about $50 ,000 a month, right? It counts for turnover, somebody kicks butt in a month, you have somebody has a bad month, but it blends itself out. What the problem is, is when you take that number, a lot of times there's a mismatch between that number and what the business wants. The business wants, what the investors want or what the CEO thinks or we've got this wonderful new product and all these amazing things. None of that is based in... or at least grounded with practical reality. I'll ask you this Tracy, and this is for your sales leaders to consider. From day to day, month to month, you yourself, how much more productive do you think you can be month after month? Like, do you think all of a sudden you're gonna be 100 % more productive next month? I mean, the odds are in general, most organizations don't have quantum leaps of productivity from a person by person basis, unless there's some, Brett Keirstead (15:52.073) magical product or some new release or something material, you're not going to get massive sustained or massive short -term growth purely by rep productivity. So why advice to everybody as they're looking at Q2, Q3, Q4 moving forward is number one, start with your aspirational goals as the business. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that, but look at what realistic, consistent over time productivity has been at a per rep level. and then figure out what's realistic in the middle. You want aspirational goals, but you also have to be grounded in the reality that the machine only pumps out 10 widgets at a time just because you want it to pump out 20 the next month, that doesn't mean it's gonna. And so I think for CEOs and for folks like that, they just have to make sure that any aspirations they have are grounded in reality. If I want 200 widgets and I have a hundred, I need more people. I need more machines to produce the widgets. I can't just say, we'll go now just because I want you to. Why don't you just go and double your productivity? Tracy (16:59.985) I totally agree. That's really helpful. Let's switch gears to hiring. How do you hire for immediate needs and also scaling for growth? And then also what are the characteristics of teammates you look for? Brett Keirstead (17:16.169) So let's start with the characteristic side. I admit as much as I was a math guy and a finance major, I am also, especially as I've gotten on, realize culture matters so much. Now granted, in a remote work environment, there's a little less of it because you are a little bit more on your own, but I've still found if you put a bad culture fit or a cancer of a business, even in a remote environment, they can have such a detrimental effect on productivity across the board. So what I look for is cultural fit, examples of teamwork, examples of participation, the way people communicate, the way they behave and act, even within the flow of a sales process. I know that's harder because it's not as quantifiable in terms of what they've done, but absolutely it's amazing how much cultural fit makes a difference. The second skill that I... have to manage to, and again, part of this is due to the new work arrangements is the ability for somebody to produce work independently. You know, I grew up in a bullpen environment. I love the energy. It's probably the least favorite thing in my job now is I'm always at home. Like I miss being in the action, but if that's the type of salesperson you're hiring, meaning somebody that's going to have to work independently, that skill is super important. And there's everything from. Can they stay organized? Can they stay motivated? Can they work without supervision? How well do they work when you're not looking at them? Are they a self learner? Some of those skills now got prioritized. I mean, we've always wanted those in people, but now they just become a priority, especially in a remote work environment. So cultural fit self starter is almost more important than I spent two years as a SaaS salesperson. Right. if I've got those personal attributes of somebody that's willing to learn and they're a good fit and they're a good team player, and they work within our environment and they can work independently. It's a lot easier to teach them some of the discipline of how we sell and what our framework is. And obviously using tools like yours, I can provide some remote guidance and coaching around the numbers and the economics as well as probably some of their. Brett Keirstead (19:37.673) performance and things like that. So it's less important for me to be face to face in that environment because of tools like yours and the way the world is if I have somebody that is professional, organized and independent. So I would say that's what I look for more than anything fit wise in terms of an individual. Tracy (19:58.929) What about for scaling? I think hiring for now is very obvious. You look at what you need to get done and you hire the best person to do it. But then there's, you know, you want this person to be able to stay in the building for the next three, four years. So how do you balance that? And, you know, what do you look for? Brett Keirstead (20:16.489) Well, I mean, I think, you know, first of all, if you look at, you know, just obviously the issue, what people are saying, the reason why is if you look at sales rep productivity, the difference between first year, second year, third year is not in every single case, but almost in any large study shows you get massive productivity increases in year two and year three. And then after that, it's a debate. So certainly there's a window of time, which you want to increase that productivity. I would tend to want my experience on what I'm looking for is people that come in with a, a plan. So if I asked them about why are they coming here, what's their plan that they articulate their career development and their contribution to our business over a longer period of time. In other words, they're coming in with the mindset that they're going to be a long -term consistent producer. And you can tell in people when. their stories are things that are flash in the pan stories. You know, they seem to be somebody that has peaked in a certain situation maybe, or I'd say got lucky, because look, you always have to be good to get lucky, but I tend to look for stories from people that show sustained success. Even if it meant, hey, I struggled through this in the beginning, but then I did this, then I set up a plan and year two I did this, so. You're really looking for people, even in the interview process, that talk in terms of longer term. They're not always talking about their short term wins or near term productivity or individual wins, but I tend to like to ask questions that say, hey, I'm looking for you to build a career here over multiple years. How would you go about doing that? How would you go about building a successful career over multiple years? Tracy (22:07.729) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (22:11.209) and just see what they say. And if they don't have a plan and they haven't experienced it or they don't have stories about it, it raises a red flag. It doesn't mean they're not a good fit. I'm just saying there's questions you could ask to start assessing whether people are thinking about this as that, or they just want to be a free agent, come in and sell and then move on to the next hot product. Tracy (22:29.105) Yeah, I totally agree. And an easy way to tell that on LinkedIn is, you know, it's, it always almost never works when you see this like profile who's really good at selling themselves during the interview process, but you look at LinkedIn and they haven't ever been at a place for more than a year. You know, it's like the five jobs. It's always a red flag for us. Brett Keirstead (22:44.201) Yeah. But once, one subtle point on that though, there, there are, I mean, think about like, I'll use a sports analogy for those to do it. There are some people that travel around leagues, the NBA, we just finished the NBA tour, right? There are some people that travel around from team to team and provide an instant spark. Maybe they're just a one year rental. You know, you see at the baseball, at the trade deadline, Hey, they brought in this guy to be a, to help them. win the league this year. And they don't even necessarily intend to sign him or her long -term. So they're not always bad to have somebody with a short -term emphasis because look, sometimes they can bring you a burst of energy that your business needs. Sometimes they can be disruptive in a good way. I'm not a hundred percent advocating against that, but don't mix the two, right? If you want somebody with a long -term, if that's the culture you want, and that's what you want to hire, than to your point, don't hire somebody with all short -term examples. If you're like, look, I just need a depth charge here of somebody with experience and I'm gonna let him or her kind of change the trajectory. And if I get three years, great. But if I just get one good year to help boost my sales, that might be okay. It's not a universal no. And I think that's, I mean, again, if you're trying to build a long -term culture for sure, but it isn't always bad. I guess that's my... Tracy (24:13.521) really depends on the needs of the company. But I also agree with you. I like seeing high potential and good trajectory, right? The projects they've finished in a company. And I think another profile that you can see that just from the resume is they've just taken on bigger roles and just more scope within a company. Brett Keirstead (24:13.737) Subtle point there. Brett Keirstead (24:37.481) Yeah. The other one other question just I'll mention to you that I really do like to decipher in sales interviews is to try and decipher people's general business acumen. You know, salespeople, I think sometimes, and I talk about this, I do a lot of mentorship with women and a lot of times that are looking to aspire into sales roles. And I find that a lot of them, just haven't ever been exposed to or taken an interest in like business and financial acumen. And because they're great at motivation, they're great at leadership, they're great at selling skills, great at follow -up, great at networking relationships, you know, and they just haven't unfortunately either been given or taken advantage of or been mentored, whatever the reason is to get into some of those situations where business acumen, how does the P &L work? How does the business make money? What is the impact of discounting and profitability and how do we forecast and what do we use that for? So some of those harder aspects of sales management and leadership, the non -personal side, when you find people that have been exposed to that, they're generally people that come into an organization and understand how they impact the business and they tend to take a longer view. They understand the impact of the business. If they're just a hired gun of sales, You know, and you sniff that out, you're like, you know what, they're just going to be here until they don't think it's cool anymore. And then they're going to move on. And it's like, they didn't really understand why we were hiring, what the impact they have on the business, how it impacts turnover. All of those things are areas that I think if you can sniff that out, you're also more likely to have somebody that has sustainability and career progression potentially in your business. Tracy (26:18.993) Mm -hmm. Tracy (26:23.409) So give me a teaser on the book you just written. How do I create fulfilling relationships and improve communications at home and at work? Brett Keirstead (26:34.217) Yeah. So the impetus behind it was, you know, this was back in, you know, a few years ago, you know, we had a, and I think, I think everybody generally knows that, like we said before, human interpersonal communication has been going through a big transition. You know, we can tweet at somebody, we can text somebody, we, we don't have to engage with people eye contact wise. We don't meet people, meet people face to face. Everything gets short. There's a lot of anonymity online that we could say bad things to people and I mean, it's just, it's very, very different. And, you know, we're allowed to, I don't know, allowed to, we get away with things communication wise in an online world that we really wouldn't be able to get away with person to person if we were trying to build a relationship. Like, again, I would say if you disagree with somebody on Twitter, you can flame them. You know what I mean? But if you know you're married, you have kids, if you disagree with your spouse, you can't yell at them. And similarly in a sales situation, if you get an objection from a buyer, you can't yell at them. So if I say to you, your price is too high, I can't go, well, you're an idiot. It's not too high. I could do that on Twitter. You know, I can do that on social media. I can do it in a text, but I can't do it as a salesperson. So I started to realize that the skills that we have as sales professionals, we learn to know our product and ourselves. We learn to... care about other people and ask them questions and learn. And we have to handle objections and disagreements in a diplomatic manner. And when we don't get our way, we have to learn to negotiate, right? You know, we can't just be like, you're okay, forget it. If it's not my way, you can't buy, right? These are things that happen a lot that ruin relationships, right? Interpersonal, I only care about me. I don't listen to you. Or I only do what's good for me and not good for you. Or... I disagree, so I shut you out. Those skills that make a salesperson great also make relationships great. So I wrote the book, We Are All Sales People, because the skills, the five skills of being a professional salesperson are communicatable. Know yourself, know others, create mutually positive outcomes, learn to negotiate, and know how to close. Those skills are life skills. Tracy (28:39.313) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (28:59.241) And I tried to write the book to bridge the two. What's interesting was when I released it, it was COVID time. So all the wonderful things I had planned to speak and present and train and become a thought leader all vanished in a thin air. But interestingly, what I found is the predominant user group have become college students and early stage professionals. Tracy (29:03.633) Mm -hmm. Brett Keirstead (29:29.129) young people and parents. So it isn't even salespeople reading it, it's people saying, I've been struggling with connecting with my child and I need a better way to talk. Or I'm fighting with my spouse and we can't seem to get through a disagreement. Well, how do salespeople do it? Well, there's a method to it. So it's really been a life skill. Relationships at home, school, communication, how you interview, how you do things are based on the ability. Tracy (29:33.137) Mm -hmm. Tracy (29:40.433) Right. Brett Keirstead (29:58.601) the fundamental skills that make a salesperson successful. That's how it came about. It's been really, really, really fun. Because I really feel like I've helped people that I didn't think I would from a communication standpoint. Tracy (30:01.713) Mm -hmm. Tracy (30:08.433) Yeah. Yeah, as you were talking, I have three young kids who are getting really good at negotiating. So I'm a bit worried as they get smarter and older and wiser. As you were talking, I was like, man, this would probably help me negotiate better with them. Brett Keirstead (30:17.577) Yes! Sure, sure. Brett Keirstead (30:26.921) Yeah, well, I use the analogy like, you know, think about this parent situation, your kids downstairs playing video games and you want them to come up and do their homework, right? And so that there's a sale situation. You have something that you want. They have something they want to do. And, you know, you're going to part with their time and you're going to get them to do what you want. So you have to persuade them. You have to sell them on it. And they're going to go 10 more minutes, mom. And you're like, okay, 10 minutes. And then 10 minutes go by. and they're like, let me just finish this one level of my game. And you're like, you said 10 minutes and they're like, five more minutes, right? And then this is tension building, right? It's tension building for you as the mother, it's tension building for them. And the negotiation of how that ends is very important because it doesn't wanna turn into you yelling at them. And turning into this negative experience, right? Where now there's anger involved or there's hierarchy and now there's resentment, right? To get through that, you negotiate, which guess what? Is like a fundamental skill of selling. So the book is full of like inner life situations like that, that tie back to a selling skill that you'd be surprised how often you're experiencing it all day, every day as a parent, teacher, youth sports coach. mentor, sales manager, boss, it doesn't matter. You're always in those situations. Tracy (31:51.985) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Tracy (31:57.649) I've really enjoyed this conversation, Brett. One last question for you. What advice would you give Brett in 1994? Brett Keirstead (32:07.505) Hmm. buy Apple stock. No, I'm just kidding. well, no, yes. I mean, I would give him that advice. I think, I think the advice that, that I would give is to try, try to keep the long view into perspective. meaning things that seem like dramatic crisis is in the moment generally with a positive attitude and the right approach tend to work themselves out over time. Tracy (32:11.537) Yeah. Brett Keirstead (32:37.641) you know, I have three children too. My daughters are both successful CPAs. My son's a college and I was thinking about what's the advice that I gave them at the time that I wish I had. And one of them was to, to realize the moment that you're in as to feel the emotions of the moment that you're in and, and, but recognize that they will, they will go away, you know, a bad breakup, a bad sports coach, a bad employee, a bad experience that those are. building blocks that will serve you well in the future. My favorite book that I read every year in January is called The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. And the premise on behind it is that adversity and adverse moments are really the core to building a life of happiness. Like you have to go through those experiences in order to understand what joy is. And if you don't, you'll never get to a point where you feel wise and educated and satisfied. And so I would tell my youth self to relax, you know, experience the emotions of the moment, but don't worry, you know, it'll be okay. Tracy (33:49.873) Mm -hmm. Keep your eyes on the prize on the long term. Yeah. Brett, thank you so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed chatting with you. Brett Keirstead (33:52.681) That's right. That's right. Brett Keirstead (33:57.385) Sure, love it. And listen, congratulations on the success of your business. I know it's an exciting time. I know it's not easy. I'm sure you have many moments of self joy, self doubt, self worry, but I think what you're doing and the product you're doing is the right thing. It's the right time. And the way you've built your business is excellent. So can't wait to watch it grow. Tracy (34:19.057) Well, that means a lot coming from a sales expert. So thank you. Brett Keirstead (34:22.473) Have a good one. Thanks Tracy. Thanks for having me.