THE CHALLENGES WITH THE LOGISTICS OF DELIVERING A FLAWLESS SHOW

Hello, this is Les Goldberg and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Today, I have three amazing guests. I have Kellene Morris. She is a technical operations manager with Opus. I have Tim Sauerman. Tim is the director of project management for BrainHub, an ETP company. I have Chris Casey with DMI Consulting. Everybody, welcome to the show. Today's show is dedicated to the subject of all the challenges with logistics and delivering a flawless show. As we return to live, the world we live in, everything seems to be more difficult, harder, and with less resources to go around. I want to get everyone's thoughts on where you all think we are. I'm going to start off with Kellene. What do you think are the greatest challenges for production teams executing live events today in the world that we live on? Great question, Les. I find that some of the greatest challenges that we have in executing live events now, post-pandemic, go with availability, expectation, client expectation, also audience expectation of what they're going to be seeing. I find that there is a great desire just to reset and go back to how it was. Unfortunately, time has progressed. That reset button doesn't necessarily exist. Hotel bookings, we had a cadence in the industry of shows that would be at certain times, certain hotels, and that cadence has completely shifted. I find that all the challenges, I think, is trying to reset and opposed to approaching this in a whole new light. Well, I have to say, I really would want the time machine from Back to the Future, and I would like to go back to 2019 when the good times were rolling and everything was just, it was like the happy factor. We didn't realize how good we had it until we lost it, and then we had to try and figure it out and going down that virtual path for some period of time, and now we kind of got it back, but it is different, and it's really kind of a different experience. So same question to Chris Casey. Chris, could you maybe opine as to your thoughts on what are the greatest challenges, in your opinion, that we're facing? Yeah, I think Kellene's point about, I think cadence is such a great word for why it feels so wrong. I think it's just like we had this system worked out, and I think you hit it on the nail on the head, Kellene. It's just like the cadence is off, and that's terrible. And I think in my world, what I've experienced is it's really, if I had to pick one, it's client timelines. Decision makers in C-suites are rightfully nervous about what's going on with their staff in terms of any exposure risk, what's going on with their budgets in terms of work, and they allocate funds. Do they have to put, just like us, they're putting more money into logistics and sourcing than they've ever had before, so that comes out of T&E, traveling expenses for any of these budgets that are going around. And making those decisions last minute is really then putting us on the back foot of like, okay, well, now we're rigging this thing. How do I find this trust? Well, there's no trust in New England. Who can I go get this from? Everything just really cascades backwards. And I appreciate the difficult position they're in. I mean, they're looking at boards that have responsibilities. They're looking at investors who are looking to just try to stay profitable as we all are and try to continue to survive. Leslie and I spoke yesterday about just survival. That's the mindset that we're all in. But I really think it's these client timelines that are just pushing decisions back, and we can't get that rhythm that we had. We're like, we got it. Two weeks out, I'm locked in with the venue. I'm talking about the next one. We keep rolling. We keep rolling. We keep rolling. Bring up timelines. And I find that interesting, too, because I find that, especially on our side, supporting the productions, clients are turning their shows on very, very late, too. So there's this mad scramble. Absolutely. Because everybody's kind of afraid still a little bit of, gosh, if I turn this on and it fails, and I'm on a whole bunch of money, or we let a client down. But now we're scrambling very last minute to find the labor, to find the transportation, to get people on flights, to get hotels. And that's even a struggle, too, with the supply chain issues we're having in the industries. And it's that rack and a hard place of the clients want this thing. And then Kalini said that audience experience of, we know what we're supposed to deliver when someone hires us to go into a room. We know what we're supposed to do. Just let us do it. And we need that time to give them what they deserve. They're coming back in their first sales meeting. They really need to have that audience experience. You're so right on that one. So I'm throwing the question back to Tim as you started with some of the challenges that we face. And maybe you want to elaborate, Tim, on what you think the greatest challenge for the production team is. Is it the last-minute scheduling of these shows? Or are there other components? You mentioned booking the labor and the transport. Gosh, I think I saw the news this that I don't know how many thousands of flights that get canceled. But I know if you can't get your audience to the ballroom, you don't have a show. What are your thoughts? Yeah. And a lot of these flights are canceling, too, because of the supply chain and the supply chain's labor. I'm watching Delta, American, United are canceling all these routes. And they're not canceling routes because of demand. They're canceling routes because they don't have pilots and flight crew. So even as bad as our industry is suffering from massive labor shortages, it's the entire world at this point. It's like, as Kellene said, it's a giant reset button. But what happened? It's like we hit the reset button and a lot of our assets disappeared. For us, a lot of people got out of the industry, found something a lot more stable because this just wasn't for them or COVID made them shift, that kind of stuff. But yeah, the old running joke I would tell clients and some of the sales guys when they turn a show on and they say, what do you mean you can't find a guy that's available tomorrow? And I always used to tell them the guy who's available tomorrow is not the guy you want. You wanted the guy who was available four months from now. But the challenge now is there isn't a guy available tomorrow, regardless of the quality of the person you're going to get. But on top of that, too, you have the same labor pool that we had locals that we could count on, and then they'd move and maybe to the suburbs or maybe to another city. And so that local resource that had done the gig for 10 years is now a travel position. And in the budget, that position has never been traveled before. On top of that, it's trying to explain to the clients why there's more travel in some of these budgets or why that is different. Tim? Your $40,000 travel budget last year is now $140,000 because flights are expensive, gas is expensive, but now we've got to travel twice as many people. So Colleen, how tough is the labor market, in your opinion, for staffing shows? Yeah, that's a great question, too. It's tough. I mean, it's tough out there. I think that shows the cities that had consistent labor before the pandemic. Everything is just so different. Either the skilled labor that we had before that we had worked with for 10 years, like Tim had moved on, got a stable gig, just had to maybe relocate due to the pandemic. And so we're now having to retrain to either less skilled labor or that mentality. And I think that that is a shocking new revelation for the leads that go out on site, right? So now they're like something that they've done over and over and over again, isn't, it's just a different approach, even when you're on site without labor. It sounds like it makes it harder because you have different barriers. Now, I'll throw the same question to Chris, but I'm going to ask you this. This is what I have been told, is that we're trying to pair up very experienced people with maybe some novice people so that you have some, how do I say, smart person in the room who knows the right way and maybe a junior person who might be learning. What are your thoughts, Chris? Yeah. I mean, I think you have to do it that way to have a long-term mindset of our survival of getting ourselves back on track in 36 months, if we're being honest. Where are we going when we can really build those true skilled positions? I mean, people with years of experience that we relied on. But to Tim's point of like, then I have two people doing the same job. And how do I justify that to my client? I would love to be able to send shadows out for every position so I could be training up. When I was internal on a staging company, that was a constant thing years ago of like, how do we keep people training without blowing budgets or just eating these costs of salaries and staffing? And then how do we flip that onto a client if we ask like, hey, I need to put some people here. Please don't ask what they're exactly doing because they're both going to do that thing. But I think to Kellene's point too is like, there were the people we had where you would send a lead out and fly out, but there is the one person. You had Susan and she knows how to run the cable through the drop ceiling tile to get the feeder up to that one panel and she's been doing it for 10 years. Well, Susan went and got an install job doing movie theaters or something. And so she's not here anymore to run that feeder for me. It's like, well, I don't know where that feeder goes. She just figured it out and I never had to think about it. And I think I'm also seeing that staging companies are trying to play a game to protect their profits of keeping it on staff and trying to keep those people moving around. So they're just playing a shell game of who can I put where. And I had a gig just a month ago where I had to get security clearance to get into a building. They needed a 48 hours notice. They could not get names. They're like, I straight up don't know who's going to your show. I will not know until that morning who I'm sending on that truck. What do I do in that situation? Cross your fingers hope for the best and try to buddy up with the security guards. I will tell you internally in LMG land, we had to staff 1400 positions for the month of May. And it was one of the biggest hills and mountains to climb. It was unbelievable. And you have all those people and the production teams want their names in advance. And then you have to worry about maybe someone either getting injured or sick or COVID. And I want to throw this question to Tim. Tim, we're talking about staffing on shows. And what are your thoughts to what we've had on previous podcasts where people are thinking about having an additional person in a department, even if it's to do something else just as a spare position, one or two, just in like kind of a preventive measure if someone pops up with COVID. What are your thoughts, Tim? I'm going to back up for just a second. You say 1400 positions. It was 1400 positions. We couldn't fill for the month of May. We had 5600 staff positions. Okay. You're correct. I'm sorry. 1400 was like we were 30 days out. We had to fill these positions and every production person wanted, they want their names. And oh my goodness, we went to the turn down. But back to the question at hand, thank you for clarity. What do you think about those extra positions that people are talking about? Because you've got the, as Chris mentioned, the cost as bringing someone on, but it's also an insurance policy. Yeah. It's interesting to see the shift and what the clients will allow too. If we find three people local that we can bring in as extras, they won't really balk at it like they used to. You know, they'll be, one, they look them in his understudy. So as soon as I get a COVID case and on show side, I got two other people I can roll into if I had to, to fill roles. But it's that whole, you know, how much is it going to cost to send these other people? And right now as the industry is trying to get this reset behind us, I think everybody's still looking at the bottom dollar. You know, as much as we need all of these other assets to start training up and beef up our industry and beef up our assets, nobody wants to spend the money on it and that's really difficult. Well, I will tell you, we buy insurance for our cars, we buy it for our homes. You know, the real challenges is that there's not like a pool of talent that's waiting with their bags packed, ready to go fly somewhere if they can even catch the flight. And then you risk the execution and the delivery of your show. I mean, these are really kind of tough issues. So this question is to Kellene, and it's, is COVID still a big issue with crew members getting sick? Have you had that experience? Are you still seeing that or has that kind of gone away? What are your thoughts? Yeah, so I think COVID is unfortunately just gonna be a thing that we're gonna have to deal with within this industry moving forward. I think that it still happens, right? People still get sick, they can't come on site, depending on the client policies on COVID, they have to then be quarantined. And then that exposure to the rest of the crew. I mean, it's a very complicated, sticky matter. And I don't think that we're through that yet. And we might never be through it, but we'll find an acceptable solutions. Like Tim was saying with understudies, etc. And the clients are now becoming trained in a way of how we react to situations and what we can do, and also the impact when these cases happen on site. Isn't, in my opinion, isn't COVID becoming more of like a flu? You know, Les, we're not having to talk about how many, we're talking about deaths, we're talking about people that if you catch the flu and you're on a show site, you immediately leave the site and you get quarantined. But, but I don't know if people are aware that, you know, thousands of people die of the flu every year, you know, and that's been going on for a century. But we didn't, we never thought about it in that way. Anyway, the same question to Chris about the crew and COVID and your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, I think Kellene summarized it nicely is it's, it's a reality we have to face. I think it's, it's certainly still top of mind when planning. I think it's, you know, we still need to be more mindful of safety and sanitation protocols than we ever have been before. I think I've personally have been very lucky between vaccinations and masking that my have stayed safe so far this year. I've had more frustrations and troubles with attendees having exposures. And then, and then how do I protect my crew of like, okay, we're all here. Someone has tested and the client's going to make decisions about what that person does. What do I need to do for my team? You know, I feel like there's a, there's a point where sometimes they're like, Hey, we have to walk. Like we're not doing this. I have not had to have conversation yet with, you know, clients are understanding clients moving, but you know, ultimately we need to protect our crews because I need them tomorrow in a different city. Like we need to keep moving. Um, and there's their health and safety has to be up front, but I feel very lucky. And I think we just need to be mindful. And, and, you know, I think Kellene, your point as well as like training clients of like, this is a reality we need to, we need to just build that into how we're building our shows, how we're doing our budgets, how we're doing our staffing and how we're writing our contingency plans. You know, we have fire egress plans. We have emergency weather plans. Now we need a health and safety plan for, for exposures. Got it. Okay. Next question is to Tim and a near and dear to my heart is how is transportation logistics being affected by the industry? We kind of talked about airplanes being canceled, but what about trucks and getting things delivered on a timely fashion? Um, I wish I can tell you this personally that we're waiting on led from China. That's been on a container boats. And every time I asked for the container is I get another week, but we just need another week. The boat is stocky. Our boat is stuck in Houston right now. We have two separate containers in Houston waiting. They were supposed to be here last week and it's going to be another week, but what are your thoughts, Tim on, and I know you deal with this like on a daily basis of the challenges of getting the truck to site. I mean, just the simplest things. I mean, our, our office in Las Vegas is no more than five or 10 minutes from most of the major hotels, but what a production it is to get a semi to show site. Yeah. You know, and it's, and it goes back into that whole supply chain issues. A lot of these companies that had, you know, two, 300 drivers, they got 80 drivers. Now there's a truck driving training school. That's about a mile from my house that I pass every way on my way into work. And they have signs up that say 18 year olds can get a CDL now. And they're training 18 year olds, you know, and that's, that's just how desperate the industry has gotten where it's like, okay, we want an older individual. That's a little bit more confident and well-versed in the world to now of, Hey, you're out of high school. Come on, man, we got work for you. But you know, it's, so we've got all these trusted companies that we use and they just aren't available. So we're having to go to these, you know, BCD level type trucking companies. So we're having all these challenges of a company that just doesn't understand our industry. When we say the load ends, you're on the dock at 7 00 AM for load in, you know, they expect to be pulling up at a Walmart warehouse just to sit in line, or they're going to go grab coffee. They'll be at the warehouse at eight, nine o'clock. Cause that's how they feel that day, you know, and, and the cool thing about the trucking industry issues we're having is, and a lot of the stuff we're having, you know, all this, all the struggle we're having is building ingenuity of stuff. We never really thought we could do as an industry, which is really helping us expand, you know, the GPS tracking systems that we're using right now, because we can't get our trucking companies to tell us where a truck is. So we developed this GPS tracking system with the company that already tracks our vehicles to help us track the truck. So now we get a truck that's four hours late for loaded, you know, me and the account executive or the client are sitting in front of our laptop and it's like, all right, this guy's at a house like seven hours away. And I'll, you know, just a fun little story about that is we had one that was supposed to load in at 7am in San Diego, could not get ahold of the guy. Dispatcher couldn't get ahold of the guy, me and the account executive logged into the tracking system, found the house that this truck was sitting at for three days. We did a reverse lookup, called the phone number attached to the house. This grumpy lady said, I don't know who you're looking for. I don't want to talk to you and hung up on us. And 10 minutes later, the tracker started moving, you know, but, you know, it's just like the GPS tracking system is something that we've had at our disposal. We never thought we needed as an industry and now look at it. It's, it's commonplace. It goes out on every truck that leaves our office, that goes to a venue that's over a hundred miles away. And there's going to be all kinds of like, you know, all these new things we're going to try with labor, with the way we dispatch gear, with the way we prep gear, the way we package, how we get people to show site, you know, look at tour, look at rock and roll touring, can't find tour buses right now. So people are coming up with these really ingenious ideas of like RVs that sleep six people. It's not ideal for the crew, but it's getting tour buses back in the industry. That's a major lack right now. Okay. This is a new question to clean. We've, we've talked about all the challenges, but let's now take a positive spin on this because we are so excited to go back to ballrooms, convention centers, venues of any size or shape. What areas have improved as we returned to live events? Has anything improved? My attitude has improved. I'll tell you that much. I am happy to be having these challenges and the challenges where we're not loading trucks. No, I, I agree. Maybe it's just our perception of our jobs have changed and that's a positivity. Um, I think one of the areas that has definitely improved within live events is, um, is, is basically our attitude, but client's attitudes as well. What they really want, how they want to, um, express their, uh, events. Right. So we had to pivot and go completely virtual and now these hybrids and, you know, there was a lot of, um, pros in going with virtual, um, having more recorded content, being able to use that recorded content for me for different marketing and media. Um, it was just a different way for clients to think about these and their messaging and branding. And I think having that fresh restart with the clients, um, and being able to really give them an impactful live event and say, what is it that you really want coming out of live event and having those conversations. That's super exciting because that's going to get us to do something new and unique opposed to, all right, we've done the same gig for the last 10 years in the same ballrooms. And you know, it's the press is that approach, right. And having those honest conversations. So that's hashtag fresh what I'm excited about. That's awesome. Um, well, I, I will just add that, you know, we didn't learn or have the same level of, uh, competency on doing virtual events. So if anything good came out of us, we have this competency we can take out and move forward. Chris, what are your thoughts on the, uh, uh, what areas have improved, uh, as we return to events? Um, I think Tim's point about ingenuity was really good. And that's, that's what I've seen. I think, I think attitude as well. A hundred percent. Everyone is, um, is pitching it. And I think in a way that they haven't before when we're on show side of like, Hey, I need something done. Everyone's like, yeah, sure. I'm on it. No worries. There's no like, no, that's not me, man. Um, but I think I'm seeing staging companies show up with equipment that they've had for years. They sound like, Hey, we figured out how to squeeze all of this stuff out of this box. Like I learned things that they, you know, sitting in the warehouse for two years and doing virtual events, they learned to squeeze every bit of production and every bit of clever design out of the equipment they had. And so the things we're able to do with existing equipment without having to reinvent the show is really letting us level up the shows in ways we weren't able to do before. You know, I think, uh, in some of the worlds I ran in, there were, we did a lot of, you know, not super exciting stuff. And now everyone's in, we have the capability to do a lot more 3d animation and lower thirds and different, uh, dynamic graphics packages that we've never been putting in before that now everyone is extremely comfortable with. And they figured out like, yes, I've got this dialed in and they can really squeeze every ounce of performance out of the gear they're sending to site. And there's a deeper understanding, I think of what we can do with things. I think the level of technical engineering that the people who've to fight through the pandemic, um, have, have learned is, is really commendable. I mean, they've become even more experts in, in some of these things. And that, and that expertise really helps us bring those fresh approaches to clients and saying like, Hey, well, we could also do this this year. Like, you know, we have, we have this other thing. It's already here. What if I did this and then especially turning that into recorded content where we can then turn on ongoing stuff is just, um, yeah, it's really been able to, to, to turn that technical expertise around. Tim question to you is, is there enough resources in the current environment to do all the work? It wasn't even a question when I threw that out, you were just like, it wasn't like, well, maybe I'm not so sure, but it was just a straight no. So what are your thoughts when it comes to the resources? And I, I, um, I guess I would say the risk quotient for people who are trying to without resources, man, it's really tough. What are your thoughts? It's yeah. It's, and that's the biggest struggle in my opinion. You know, like Chris said, you know, we're, we're finding, you know, Oh, wow, this box does these other things. Wow. Check this out. And now we can use one item to do 10 things. We never thought it did. And we're, we're finding that the same thing with, you know, I'll go back to the labor, the, the human assets that, that the bread and butter and the pulse of our shows that these human beings that are out there putting out shows. And now we're finding things like, Hey, my son's thinking about breaking into the business or, Hey, I know this friend that, you know, we've never really thought of because he has no experience now let's get them in and get them trained. But it all folds back to the same issues we talked about. All of us talked about early on is how do we talk someone into letting us bring someone who's untrained? Do they understand that we're going to be training them on site? Can we bring an extra person? You know, how do we get them there? That kind of stuff. It's, I think the one thing that's going to continue to be a struggle for us, that's going to be the hardest hurdle to get around is the labor, you know, finding that, that great talent that we've all known and loved for years that we trust and rely on. And, you know, and that turns into we're tight turning gear from one show to another, because there isn't enough. And we're doing the same thing with the people and we're creating a lot of burnout in the industry too, which is also going to be probably the next big COVID we hear about is burnout. Okay. All right. All right. So this question is to Kellene and it's, what is the situation with stagehands? I have heard not good stories in most venues, cities around the world that stagehands either they left town, they don't exist, but they're not willing to unload trucks. What are your thoughts with stagehands? Right. Yeah. No stagehands. That is completely true. I think pre-pandemic we've all mentioned it, right? We, we got into these easy key kit, the cadences. We knew a job was coming. We had our teams that we like, you know, and it was like, you might fold in one extra new individual to that environment and see, because we're like, we're, we're show families, right? You know, a lot of it is how we interact. And so with stagehands, it was the same thing. You would have, you'd go to your local or you would call the same labor broker for that area and be like, Hey, I want these 10 guys. I've had them every time. I know I can work with them. I know their attitude. They're not there. They're just not there. Right. I mean, it is, it is really it's really difficult right now on finding the good labor. And like Chris had said before, we are expected to be able to provide names of who's going to be in these facilities or also that been vaccinated. And that's super hard too, to be able to say, Hey, we now have extra requirements. Not only do we want somebody who is skilled, not only do we want somebody that's been doing this for years, not only do we want to be with a good attitude, we also want them to be vaccinated because we have to fill out this, you know, this for our clients. And that's a huge challenge. Right. Um, so it stagehands, I think with time, obviously this will get better because we will training those that are coming in that are fresh and new, um, people that have that same passion for what we do will stay. And then those that are just looking for something different will weed away, but it's going to take years to get back to having that call your 10 favorite guys, right. For this show, it's just going to take time. Uh, well, this question is to Chris, we talked about a lot of issues, logistics, air transport, um, you know, labor, uh, challenges and getting in venues. When will most of these issues get better? We discussed a lot. And I think you mentioned earlier three years, but I mean, it's not the number I can look back at this podcast and 36 months and say, Chris Casey, you know, he opined that in June of 2025, this problems are not going to exist. Or maybe you could give us your thought on when, when will most of this get better? Uh, if I had that kind of crystal ball, I think I'd get out of events again to finance. Um, I go to Vegas and just figure something out. Um, I, if I could say, I, I, I don't know. Uh, I think what I'm seeing trending is I'm hoping my hopes are that by maybe early next year, a lot of the vendors and staging companies have sort of learned to adapt to whatever this new timeline is that they have to work on. And I've put some systems in place to let them, it's not going to get better by January, but maybe they'll be able to react differently or frame the conversations differently, or just have enough experience over these eight months of running this year that, Hey, we know what we need, the questions we need to be asking when we need to ask them. And maybe that'll smooth out some of the transition. I do think it's going to take years to get trained labor back in. I mean, that, that experience didn't come, didn't come cheap and it didn't come overnight. You know, having a person, an extra person on a for one show, isn't going to get them to be your spider op for the next one. Um, you know, we're not going to start seeing really good, uh, led technicians show up overnight. Um, it's, it's years of experience to get that back, but my hope is, you know, processes by early next year. And then I don't know, Les, if you got some port contacts that can just start moving containers through, I think that would free a lot of stuff up. So you're saying maybe transition a little bit aside from our core business to become a transportation company. Um, I'm not so good at speaking, uh, Mandarin, but, uh, from the manufacturers in China, but we can work on that program. I think you just need to get the rubber stamp that says cleared. Oh, the clearing process. Okay. This is my last question. I'm going to start with Tim and go around the horn here. Um, we're back at live events and even though it's a bumpy road, it's still, we're back doing what we love to do. This is what we live for to create spectacle and to have that audience reaction and create those special moments. Um, what are you most excited about? Even about all the challenges we talked about, about being back at live, what, what, what makes you the happiest being back at live? For me, it's, you know, all these people we work with their family, you know, all these different clients, all these different technicians, all these different venue contacts that we've had for 20 years. It's like going out and seeing family again. It's nice. To be out doing the work, you know, it sucks. We're doing 16, 18 hour days over and over again. But you know, you're doing it with a smile on your face because you're there back with your family. I mean, and that's. So it's like a reunion. Yes, it's great. Your immediate family and you have your show fam, right? Yes. And sometimes you spend more time with one or the other based on whatever the circumstances are. You know, I'll bring up Beth Forbes for a moment. And she, her and I were work spouses for the longest time and I haven't had a chance to see her. And then I ended up starting to work with another client that he made a joke about. All right, now we're married. I said, hang on a second. I called Beth up and said, hey, I'm cheating on you. I have a new work wife. Okay, well, I saw Beth at a show a couple of weeks ago. She seems to be doing great. Happy to be back at it. Kellene, what makes you the happiest that we're back at deploying, loading trucks, going to ballrooms, having a ballroom carpet? Oh, I 100% agree with Tim. I mean, it's family, right? Getting back out there and having that family experience and seeing everybody again and getting to that cathartic feeling, right? When you can actually load out a show and you're done. There is nothing cathartic about just turning off the computer and waddling into the kitchen for another cup of coffee, right? You know, like, oh man, that was such a great event. Oh, I gotta go change out that laundry. There's something very pleasing, right? About having a great show, clients happy, audiences happy, you're there, you feel the energy and you see your team, everything goes down, goes back in boxes, goes into the truck and you're back with that empty ballroom. It is a sense of completion. It's that full circle. And that is, it is just something that cannot be replicated in the virtual world. Do you know there is, when you walk into an empty ballroom and you create something by putting all the assets in the room and you hear the applause, it's very fulfilling. And it looked what we took from nothing and made something. And I completely agree with you. And what I think I hear from the audiences is that they're so happy to be back together, that that sense of camaraderie and networking and people that haven't seen in person other than on a flat screen in a box, at one of the types of interactive calls. And people are so happy to be back together. And that happiness is something that leadership at these companies, I think they feel incumbent to put people together because they're trying to rebuild teams, whether they've changed teams, indoctrinate new people to those teams. And ultimately they wanna make sure their culture is distributed among their entire sales force or workforce and what have you. Chris, take us home. What is the most exciting thing about being back at live events? So we're gonna end on a very positive note. All the challenges we have, it's all good. We're gonna work through it. Life will move on. What are your thoughts? I think I can only echo what Tim and Kellene said. I think the feeling of catharsis is, and being together is so valuable. And I think I'll add that as technical directors, we love control and we love organization. So there is nothing better than being able to grab a presenter, grab them by the collar and shove them on stage when you need them versus going, hey, are you there? Wait, can you hear us? No. If you're within my four walls, I can make sure this happens. And that's what's the best part about being back live. Chris, hashtag shove them on stage, hashtag see them in person. I think that is awesome. I wanna thank Kellene, Chris and Tim. You all are amazing. I'm so happy that we get to work together in some former fashion on shows in real live ballrooms. And we get to enjoy all of the things that bring us happiness for the industry we're in. And what a great positive way to end a podcast. Again, you all are consummate professionals. I look forward to things that we can see each other in living color in ballrooms and not over on screens like we do sometimes. Anyway, this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Everyone, great job and thank you so much. Thank you, Les. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much, Les.