Latest / Exit Algorithms / How to Build a Marketing Engine That Drives Revenue with Alan Gonsenhauser (#72)
Transcript
- Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, and today I'm joined by Alan Gossenhauser. He's an 11-time chief marketing officer with over 25 years of experience driving growth in PE-backed B2B SaaS companies. He's also the founder of Demand Revenue. where he serves as a fractional and interim CMO helping growth stage companies build revenue engines that scale. also advises CMOs and has a wealth of industry experience. I'm super excited to have you on the show today, Alan. Welcome to the podcast. Alan Gonsenhauser: Thank you, Pete. And thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, same here. ⁓ Definitely excited. I always do a good amount of research on my guests and really, ⁓ really excited to dive in. Do you mind sharing, starting off, can you share a bit about your background, business journey, career path, and yeah, and what led you to founding Demand Revenue? Alan Gonsenhauser: So I'm, well, as I said, I've been a ⁓ chief marketing officer 11 times. So seven full-time companies and four since I started demand revenue five, four interim CMO roles since I started demand revenue five years ago. But I started ⁓ a little different than most marketing people. I started in finance. So I got my master's in finance. I started in finance at the beginning of my journey. And then from there consulting and market research and then product marketing and. channel marketing, and then I got some sales experience, and then I moved to higher level ⁓ marketing positions, and then eventually CMO in a number of companies, ⁓ mainly in health technology, medical and dental device, SaaS software, enterprise software type companies. And then I spent six years at a company that was called Serious Decisions. Serious Decisions was a go-to-market advisory firm for the ⁓ revenue functions, marketing, sales, product, and customer success. And there I mentored over 100 chief marketing officers and marketing leaders. In my six years there, really enjoyed that. ⁓ And I helped them grow their global presence in all the healthcare segments. ⁓ And then we were acquired by Forrester. And after Forrester acquired us, I stayed on two years. But the culture was a bit different. wanted analysts, I'm very entrepreneurial and social and extroverted and they wanted analysts primarily to generate content, write content. And I did some of that, but it wasn't my main interest. So I left almost exactly five years ago, February of 2021. I started demand revenue and right away I started working with some ⁓ private equity held, companies, portfolio companies. ⁓ Coincidentally, the first two companies I worked with ⁓ came from different parts of my network, but they were owned by the same PE firm. So now I've worked with six portfolio companies that PE firm. So I basically do three things. ⁓ I coach and mentor CMOs and marketing leaders. In the last decade, I've coached and mentored over 150 of them. ⁓ I come on as an interim. or fractional CMO, more often interim. So interim CMO is when there's a gap in leadership and a private equity investor wants to make sure that their portfolio company doesn't have gaps and loses momentum. So I'll come on, that's generally three to four days a week. I join the executive leadership team and operate just as a CMO for private equity portfolio companies. Or I've done fractional where it's been one day a week, but that's less frequently I do that, but I can do that as well. And then I'm also a go-to-market advisor. So I come on and help with go-to-market transformations, getting marketing sales and product on the same page. ⁓ Looking at the revenue function all the way from figuring out your ideal customer profile to which products to push, acquiring new customers, onboarding, retaining, ⁓ upsell, cross-sell, having consistent metrics. And I use a go-to-market operating system. So. I'm busy with a bunch of stuff, that's the kind of short version of what I do in my history. Hope that helps. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, awesome. No, I appreciate it. It sounds like having that financial background really helps you, you know, in the marketing side of things, have a more holistic view and plan, right, for each business. Alan Gonsenhauser: It helps and I always have good conversations with CFOs. I always enjoy my conversations with CFOs. ⁓ And a lot of them tell me, I've never heard a marketing person talk like that. It helps. mean, you it helps when you speak the same language. And ⁓ my sales experience has also helped, you know, that I've carried a bag in my background. ⁓ And I've been a P &L general manager a few times as well. So I've had responsibility for all the go-to-market functions, but you know, That translation and speaking the language of the C-suite and the board and the CFO really helps explain the value of marketing and what marketing can do for organizations. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, what are some of the talking points you usually have? Maybe some of the KPIs that you ⁓ target ⁓ and sell the fact that marketing is worth the budget. Alan Gonsenhauser: You know, a lot of it comes down to how the buying process works today versus how it worked in 2013, let's say. In the past, you know, marketing would generate leads, marketing qualified leads and give them to sales. And hopefully the leads were qualified and, you know, they would, they would call clients and people would actually pick up the phone and want to talk to a salesperson. Where now most of that journey is done. before a potential buyer ever speaks to a company. what companies are doing, ⁓ only let's say a third or less of your ideal customer profile is in market to buy something at any given time, but they're researching. different solutions and vendors. And they're creating a short list of four to five vendors that they will consider when they do go in market. So if you're not educating the market early about why you matter and making them aware and giving them preference on your value proposition, you may never get net bad. Because when they come in market, they've got a short list of four to five vendors they've looked at and 95 % of the time the winner will be on that short list. So if you don't have brand gravity, you're not even gonna get an ad-bat. So, you know, a lot of organizations are focused on the current quarter, you know? Pipeline in the current quarter. ⁓ And a lot of unnatural things can happen too. If you are so focused just on the current quarter all the time, and you don't have a clearly defined ideal customer profile. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: And if you bring on customers that churn, you're not buying long-term growth. You make it short-term growth in the quarter. You're not buying long-term growth. You're buying debt. You're buying churn. And that's a short versus long-term conversation that I often have with CFOs that, know, yeah, the current quarter is important in understanding that, how to drive it, but do you want business next quarter, next year? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: Do you wanna retain the customers you bring on? Do you wanna grow them? So it's all connected and I think the purpose and the value of marketing more than ever is to create brand gravity because brand seeds demand. I don't even call it demand anymore. I call it demand capture. Cause you're capturing maybe the 5 % of folks that are almost ready to buy something and market now. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: And if you're just trying to call them now and they don't know who you are and you're not on that short list, you're too late. So that, I'm having a lot of conversations on short versus long-termism on building businesses, if that makes sense. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think that's incredible. I've heard an analogy of ⁓ a business is a plane, right? And the engines, there's two engines, one sales and one is marketing. ⁓ It goes to your point, you got to balance the short term with the long term. Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah. Ultimately, you know, the most important metric to PE firms is multiples on invested capital. And you get that during a five to seven year hold period. you know, you want to build your long-term financial viability and you do that with your customer base. mean, you know, companies go through different ⁓ phases. I don't know if it would make sense to mention those if that's relevant. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, yeah, but here, yeah, different strategies for different growth phases. Alan Gonsenhauser: your audience. Absolutely. So the first is when a company is a startup and when they're a startup, they need to get problem market fit. You need to identify problems that you can solve, hopefully uniquely, but that you can solve and people are willing to pay for. And when you're in that mode as a startup, you're doing a lot of experimentation. You don't know your ICP yet, your ideal customer profile yet. You're trying to figure it out. So you're ⁓ experimenting with a lot of things, trying a lot of things, and hopefully failing fast and quickly and learning from it and finding the right path and the right way you can uniquely solve customer problems. Because people don't care about you or I, they care about the jobs they're trying to get done and the problems they have and how to do it better, faster, more cost-effectively, et cetera, more reliably. So that's the first... Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: That's the first phase companies go in, know, start when they're a startup. If they're successful there, the next phase is product market fit. And when you go through that, the questions change again, because now you want to build a scalable infrastructure. So you want to build processes, people, process, technology, data, analytics, pricing. brand gravity as I mentioned, but you're trying to sell your products and people don't wanna see product selfies. What they wanna see are solutions to their problems. So hopefully you've built some products that do that. So the questions there are different. And then if you're successful there, you get into the last phase, which is platform market fit. That's where you have a set of solutions. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: and a set of products that can be built into a platform to provide more value. And there, most likely the lion's share of your business is gonna be retaining and growing existing customers. So customer satisfaction, not just using NPS or Net Promoter Score as a vanity metric, but as a vehicle to improve customer. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: satisfaction and create a remarkable and differentiated customer experience where you can drive better retention, upsell, cross-sell, and that's the key to your future long-term financial success. All these things are financial. know, also, you many times if a CMO says, we should invest in brand and we need more money for brand, a CFO will ask why, you know. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Alan Gonsenhauser: because they have to in their own frame of mind understand why it's important. And so I'd like to, and you asked about metrics. So lifetime value to customer acquisition cost is one metric. Win-loss ratio on the front end, gross revenue retention of the customers you have, how many do you keep? And net revenue retention that adds, you know, with the add-ons. So companies that are really healthy have a net revenue retention of 120 % or more. ⁓ and a gross revenue retention close to 100%. So, they're really looking at whether they have any churn if they do what the causes are. And there can be a lot of causes for churn, a lot of causes for controllable churn. So those are some of the conversations that I'm Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah, fascinating. ⁓ Man, there's a lot of different tangents we could go on. ⁓ I love, no, it's all good. It's all great information. ⁓ I would love to double click on ⁓ brand gravity and how can businesses start to build that? Alan Gonsenhauser: I know. Sorry, maybe it was too much. by being present, by narrowing down on a niche that they can uniquely solve, and by understanding the problems their target audiences and ICPs are having, how they can solve those problems and generating content to educate the market on who they are, why they're different, and why they can solve these problems. Even if nobody responds to you. Because when companies are in education mode, they're generally not gonna respond to BDRs. ⁓ Doesn't mean they don't look at the content they're getting. But you need to see the market in different vehicles with education about the problems that they're dealing with and why your products are a great solution to those problems. Even if you don't hear back from people, they're consuming content. And you won't hear back until they're in the latter stages of their buying mode. That's how the buying process has changed over the years. In the past, BDRs would call someone, they'd get ahold of people and they'd call again and again and again. And people wanted to be contacted. Now people do not wanna be contacted until they're ready after they've done their research, especially with bigger deals. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Alan Gonsenhauser: and buying committees, which is how a lot of B2B buying is done today. It's changed a lot. But companies have generally not recognized that change. They still use all these old tactics that don't work anymore. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, yeah, interesting. Hmm. Yeah. And you mentioned content. I think that's a lot of that's an area a lot of businesses are trying to develop. ⁓ Is there a ⁓ kind of a protocol you would recommend for let's say, let's say growth stage company. we're in the would be in the product market fit, I believe, right? The second stage. ⁓ Is there a cadence that you found is effective? Like how many times per week? Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: And yeah, what type of content is working. Alan Gonsenhauser: Look, I'm a solopreneur and I post multiple times per week. And I think any company that has resources can do that too, especially using AI trained well. You have to train it well to generate content and you have to check it very well also, but it can be really productive. The other thing I would say is with the growth of LLMs, more and more people are researching the questions they want answered on LLMs, whether it's ChatGPT or Claude or, know, Perplexity or you name it, Google. So websites need to be designed for LLMs, not humans anymore, because what's happening is humans are researching on LLMs and they're a lot more qualified when they contact you after they've researched you on an LLM. So if your website is not configured to maximize your LLM exposure, you're gonna be not in the mix a lot of times you wanna be in the mix. So that's something else companies can do. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. What are some of the differences, you know, between just optimizing for a search engine, Google versus now an AI model? Alan Gonsenhauser: Q and A, a lot of Q and A. When you put blogs out, ⁓ have a short description at the top, a summary of the blog, and then at the bottom have extensive Q and A. It loves Q and A. The LLMs love Q and A. The site structure has gotta be there. Vendors that just look at structure and all of that. ⁓ trying to think of the name now, but I just saw a vendor at, went to a healthcare show a few weeks ago, great vendor in Toronto that, you know, focus on just the site mapping that you have to make it easier for LLMs to consume the content and categorize what your content is. But because humans, are researching on LLMs and they're looking a lot more at the results they're getting from LLMs, because it's their exact questions than just, you know, if you show up on the front page, ⁓ that's huge. That's huge. And it's gonna become more and more significant as time goes on. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, 100%. No, it makes sense. I think I saw a statistic out there. There's a more than 50 % drop in people actually clicking on websites now because of AI, right? Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah, yeah. That's just gonna, I mean, that's not gonna change. It's gonna get more, more and more. Cause when you think about it you want an answer to something, you're gonna get a more complete and comprehensive answer to your question if you ask an LLM versus getting a search result and then sifting through a bunch of websites. Let it sift through the websites for you. It's a lot easier. And you know. a lot faster, saves a lot of time. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, makes sense. Yep. it, yeah. Yeah, crazy. it, yeah, and it affects how you, how you organize your marketing campaign, right? Alan Gonsenhauser: to new paradise. It does. mean, I live on Claude Cowork. I mean, it's amazing. My two best girlfriends are Claude and Claudette. I work a lot. And my IT department is perplexity. Whenever something doesn't work, hardware is software. I go into perplexity and it shows me how to fix it. It's amazing. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, crazy. Yeah, we're gonna touch on AI if we have time here. ⁓ Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah, I'm sorry. You can't have a conversation today without AI. My apologies for bringing it up even. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: It's okay. Yeah, no, and that's a that's a theme of the show. I think it's ⁓ it's critical right now to talk about it ⁓ But yeah, I'd love to if you don't mind sharing a bit about we can go further into ⁓ revenue engine and the You know, how do you build a revenue engine like when you when you consult with a company? What are some of the first things you look at? menu Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah, it kinda is. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: you know, identify in a company that you might want to fix. Alan Gonsenhauser: So first thing I look at, first thing I ask a lot of questions and I ask people what they're most proud of and where they think the gaps are and I give everybody three magic wishes and that's the C-suite and the marketing department, excuse me. So I don't come on like I have the answers. I come on to learn at the beginning. I think that's really important, developing relationships and listening to what the company is proud of and what they think is working before we start talking about the gaps. So I look at people, process, technology, data, analytics, pricing, brand gravity, those types of things, all infrastructure types of things. ⁓ Some of the things I look for specifically, because I've seen this problem over and over, is does a company have churn? Do they have customers that leave? What's the level of churn they have? What's their gross and net revenue retention? Are there issues around that? And if there are, what are the controllable issues? And the other thing I like to hit on early is has the company defined their ideal customer profiles? And has it been a cross-functional effort where everyone from the CEO and every department agrees on what the ICP or ICPs are? And even if they've done that, have they put governance around it? So when there's pressure to... Succeed in the current quarter. Do they bring on non ICP? Clients to make the quarter that ultimately churn that they can't retain and grow That's one of the causes of churn is is miss targeting. So, know, it's amazing you would think it's so obvious But so many companies still have issues with that and the other thing I see a lot ⁓ Pete is lack of alignment, you know marketing sales product Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: customer success, doing different things, silos. When I was with Sirius Decisions, they did a study of 400 B2B companies and found that companies that were well aligned and stayed aligned grew 19 % faster and were 15 % more profitable. And that's as true today as it ever was. mean, a lot of times the enemy is not external, the enemy is us, and we've got to get on the same page. So I spend time doing that as well. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: When I first started companies, those are some of the things I look at. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah, what are some things companies are doing to prevent those silos to encourage open communication between different functions of the company? Alan Gonsenhauser: have ⁓ cross-functional meetings on a regular basis like monthly, CMOs developing relationships with their functional peers, the CSO, the CFO, CHRO, CPO, having good relationships there and making sure that teams work together and have a cadence of meetings, ⁓ creating metrics that go across functions that define what good looks like in a consistent way. Having an integrated planning process and by that I'm thinking three years strategic plan but also the annual plan where when the plans are put together it's in reaction to corporate goals and then the plans are reviewed for consistency between them. A lot of things like that, yeah, can really help. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, ⁓ great. ⁓ Awesome, yeah, those are things I think a lot of companies can implement. ⁓ Besides the silo issue, ⁓ what are some other things like businesses go wrong when trying to implement a marketing plan? Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah. trying to do too many things at once. I coach a lot of CMOs with that, pick three things that you wanna hit out of the park when the year is over. Yes, you'll still do 10 things, but pick the three that you really wanna make headway on and make sure you resource and prioritize them. One of the most, I think the most popular planning document that I share with CMOs is something called the marketing will slash will not list. that they get cross-functional consensus on. Look, marketing can't do everything and we wanna be strategic and proactive and not reactive. So one thing I coach CMOs on is picking a few things you're gonna really hit the ball out of the park that are gonna move the needle. And the other is speaking the language of the C-suite and the board. So, for example, when they're talking about brand gravity, the things that brand gravity will influence are the number of at-bats that will actually be in the mix on the short list because we communicated and educated early. Win-loss ratio will be much higher when you have brand gravity. Pricing power will be much higher and your future pipeline and at-bats in subsequent quarters. When people do... go in market will be much higher. All of those things I just mentioned are financial. They're all financial. you know, your sales and profitability are in the rear view mirror. Your future sales and profitability ⁓ is dependent on your ability to satisfy, retain and grow customers. Comes down to that. Once you have customers. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: Obviously, if you're in the problem market, you're experimenting trying to figure that out, but yeah, depending on where you are as a business. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. ⁓ great. Thank you for that. That's huge. ⁓ I love to talk a little bit more given your experience with private equity, first being acquired by Forrester and then consulting with private equity backed companies. ⁓ How does the marketing campaign and strategy change when a The acquisition happens. Alan Gonsenhauser: It depends on the private equity firm. I've seen some firms that really care about marketing, want to invest in marketing, ⁓ often want to change the name and the brand and invest a lot to make that happen. ⁓ But want marketing to be a business partner and proactively ⁓ manage the budget. Cut the budget where things aren't working and be very judicial with the investments and the budget that they are entrusted with. ⁓ The way I describe it is, private equity looks for CMOs not to be the manager of a department, but to act like a P &L general manager. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mmm. Alan Gonsenhauser: Think of the organization first and how you're implementing it short and long term, if that makes sense. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, no, it definitely does. Have you seen the marketing campaigns or just strategy and online presence, brand gravity affect a company's valuation when they're gearing up to sell? Alan Gonsenhauser: I'm Absolutely. mean, ⁓ brand equity financially is an asset on the balance sheet. There's value there. And if you can show that you have a continuous pipeline and recurring revenue of existing customers and have an annuity of recurring revenue because of the quality of your customer relationships, that greatly increases the value of your company. Yes, so, yes. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, no, great. I figured, you of course, ⁓ and it helps in, like we were saying earlier, the short term and the long term, getting and retaining customers, but also when you get up to sell, it's gonna add value to your company as well. Alan Gonsenhauser: Absolutely. Yeah. It's going to make you more profitable too. mean, you know, it's, it's going to improve your EBITDA, your, you know, multiple zoned invested capital, LTV to CAC, you know, our lifetime value to customer acquisition cost, all of those things. See, but, to do that, you have to have the right ICP, you have to narrow down and you have to make sure you don't have a lot of churn. And if you do, you know, fix the causes. So you have a well. functioning organization. So those are the, some of the conversations and help I provide clients, whether it's a corporate client or a CMO, I'm coaching or VP of marketing. Yeah. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Very insightful, yeah. And we touched on it a little bit. I know we're coming close on time here, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, how are you leveraging AI today the most and how do you see it affecting your industry? Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah. ⁓ my God, as a solo printer, I leverage AI all the time. As I said, I live on Claude, a cowork. I'm leveraging it to who do I reach out to? What do I say? Analyzing my content. I've given it all my, I have a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn called the Private Equity CMO Advisor. And it analyzes all of my written language. And then I have... I've been a podcast guest and I had like about 200 videos. So I fed that in, got all the transcripts. So Claude knows my speaking voice in addition to my writing voice. And I can kind of dial that when I create content, always look at it very carefully to make sure it's what I wanna say and make changes to it. But it's very good for content generations, helped me a lot. ⁓ And analyze my business. You know, where should I move my business? Here, where are the revenue sources? You know, my content engine. I mean, you know, I feel like I have a staff of analysts helping me relatively free. I mean, it's amazing. I would never be able to do this if it wasn't for AI in my business. And some ways I'm helping customers. I'll give you a couple of examples, a couple of CMOs, relatively new CMOs. I have a tool that was created by my thought partner, someone I work with a lot. and it's a virtual panel. And so I've set up a couple of new CMOs. I said, give me the LinkedIn profiles of all your board members. So we set up a panel of their board of directors and you can ask them questions and the board, virtually will come back, they'll talk with each other. You can give it a PowerPoint, you can give it content that you're thinking of presenting at the board meeting and the virtual panel will opine. and tell you what they like, what they don't like, to get ready for the board meeting, which is amazing. Amazing. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Wow. Incredible. Yeah, that's a really unique, that's an interesting use case. Alan Gonsenhauser: That's part of my, it's become part of my coaching. Yeah. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, awesome. create your own panel, basically. Alan Gonsenhauser: Yeah, so you can create one for the board, one for the C-suite, one for the marketing department, know, whatever you want. it's uncanny how good it is. I mean, you have to check everything, but it's really, really good. Yeah. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, it probably comes up with insights that you might not be able to think of yourself. Alan Gonsenhauser: Absolutely, and immediately. know how long would take you to think through all that? I mean, ⁓ it's an incredible disruptive tool. I've been into disruptive technologies for many, many years. I'm a big student of Joseph Schumpeter, who was a 19th century economist who came out with the theory called creative destruction, how ⁓ new innovations and Clayton Christensen from Harvard. came out with disruptive versus sustaining innovations and what companies go through and this is a big one. This is a really big one. So people need to get on. ⁓ It's not going anywhere. It's just gonna get better and better. yeah, embrace it, use it as a tool. But I see a lot of people misusing it. They think they're using it the easy way to generate lousy content that is... or trying to substitute for strategy, but you need people to work smartly with, you know, so yeah, it has its problems too, but you have to know how to wield it right, like any tool. Yeah. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Like any tool, yeah. Yeah, well said. ⁓ awesome. Well, last question here, Alan. What is one practical tip for business owners who want to build a marketing function that actually drives revenue? Alan Gonsenhauser: narrow down and understand the problems of your target audience. and don't transmit product selfies, talk about the problems they're dealing with and how you can make their lives better. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: said. Wow, I love it. Thank you. Yeah, that has been an incredible conversation. So many good insights. Where can listeners find you and learn more? Alan Gonsenhauser: ⁓ Because I have a difficult last name, you don't have to remember it. You can email me at alan at demand revenue.com or ag at demand revenue.com. It's just how it sounds. And that's my website. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, I'll leave that in the show notes and your LinkedIn as well. I know you put out a lot of good content there Alan Gonsenhauser: Thank you. Thank you, Pete. It was really a pleasure joining you today. I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for inviting me. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Likewise, it's been an absolute pleasure, Alan. Thanks for coming on. Alan Gonsenhauser: Okay, take care.