EPISODE 25

[00:00:11] Luke Sonnen: Hi, I’m Luke Sonnen. Welcome to The COO Roundtable powered by PFI Advisors. Here’s your host, Matt Sonnen.

[00:00:25] Matt Sonnen: Happy New Year everyone. Congratulations to everyone listening, you managed to make it into 2021. We are kicking off the year on a high note with regard to The COO Roundtable, we have two fantastic guests joining us today and we’ve earmarked some great questions for this conversation. I think we’ll bring a lot of value to our listeners today.

Joining me, we have Lisa Cook, the newly appointed COO at Pacific Portfolio Consulting in Seattle and Erica Farber, partner at Balentine headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and they have a second office in Raleigh, North Carolina. Erica was worried she doesn’t have the specific “COO” title but you will soon learn that she is handling all of the job responsibilities of a traditional COO and then some. She’s also got the CCO title as well. She’s perfect for our discussion today. Before I put too much pressure on the two of you and really hype you up, I will just say welcome, Lisa and Erica, and thank you for being here.

[00:01:23] Erica Farber: Thank you so much for having us.

[00:01:24] Matt Sonnen: Erica, I’m going to go to you first, why don’t you give us an overview of Balentine?

[00:01:28] Erica Farber: Sure. We were founded , this go-round,in 2009. That being said, this is the third version of Balentine. I’ve worked with, in many cases the same individuals, since, I don’t know, it’s probably been about 20 years. I refuse to say it’s been any longer than that, until we had the experience of growing in this industry together.

Our current AUM, we call them Assets Under Advisement, is just over $3 billion dollars with 39 employees. Ideal client is such an interesting thing for us to talk about. I would say at present we’re running three distinct business lines with unique ideal clients. First and foremost, from a wealth management standpoint, traditional wealth clients who are looking for a holistic financial planning as well as investment assistance.

We also have a focus on institutional clients, that is specifically for what we call the GAA, the Global Asset Allocation focus and then, we are in the midst of creating a multifamily office. We have grown pretty much in every direction one can grow in the past 10 years. That is an increase in our staff, an increase in our services provided and I would say that our vision is to continue down those lines to really expand the services that we can offer across the board.

 

[00:02:52] Matt Sonnen: That’s fantastic. Lisa, can you tell us a little bit about Pacific Portfolio Consulting?

[00:02:57] Lisa Cook: We were founded in 1992 and we currently have about $3.8 billion in AUM and 17 employees, we run lean and mean. Around our ideal client, really how Pacific Portfolio thought about their businesses is it was building it around major life events for their clients, really think about that ideal clients, those private business owners, entrepreneurs and executives typically are what you see in our book of business.

We have, like what Erica was talking about, a few different channels. We have institutional which is really 401(k) business, we have the wealth management side of our business where we actually have segmented offering where we can take the lower $500,000 children of our high net worth clients via robo offering, then we have an investment only option for that $500 to $2 million and then $2 million-plus really is where you get the full deal of the investment, the financial planning and everything. Then we also have trust services offering as well.

We really can meet our client’s needs. Think about it when we’re in there for a 401(k) on a small privately-owned business, we’re there to help them set up their 401(k), get to know the owners and then as they go through their life events or maybe those who are going to sell their business or start doing estate planning, we’re really there to help that natural fit on the wealth management side.

[00:04:24] Matt Sonnen: Perfect. You both got full-service offerings, that’s great. Erica, you’ve been at Balentine for 11 years, you’ve had a bunch of positions there. You even said that the firm itself is in its third iteration. Even today, as I mentioned, you’re juggling a lot of roles. Prior to Balentine, you were at Wilmington Trust, can you just give us a little bit of your background and how you zigged and zagged to the role you hold today?

[00:04:47] Erica Farber: I can. It’s been a fascinating ride. I did not have very much experience when I got into this industry and so I was very open-minded to what my future could look like. I would say I started to gravitate towards operations pretty early on where I would make deals with my colleagues to say, “If you will call this client and speak to them, then I will handle your HS for you.”

That just continued to, I think, expand. Then one day I had a conversation with my current boss and said, “I really enjoy this, this, and this.” She said, “Why don’t you create a job that does that?” I was shocked but I did and I created an Operations Manager role for myself. That has expanded over time to be operations and now to be compliance which I volunteered for which, you’ll have to ask me questions later as to why I would have done something like that.

Also running our operating committee in the firm and technology committee, managing I would say even more than 50% of the employees and I got a seat at the management table. How I got here, I think the best way to summarize is that I had people who helped me find and understand my options and just a great deal of mentoring from our senior leadership team.

[00:06:21] Matt Sonnen: I love it. We wrote an article not too long ago about how to get into RIA ownership through the operations track and one of the main things in talking to several people on this podcast, you have to be willing to raise your hand because that’s not the traditional track in our industry. It’s always the advisors that hold the leadership positions at RIAs. I love that, you raised your hand and they said, “Go ahead and create the job.” That’s fantastic.

Lisa, as we mentioned, you recently joined Pacific Portfolio with a ton of industry experience. You were in Oppenheimer for seven years, you were at Freestone for six, that’s another big name in the RIA space, and then you got caught up in merger mania which a lot of us have done throughout our careers in this industry.

You were at SNW Asset Management, which then sold to Oppenheimer, which then sold to Invesco. You had a lot of logo changes on your business cards during that stretch but if you could, walk us through your background.

[00:07:13] Lisa Cook: Absolutely right, the logos, I’d barely get my new business card printed in the last few years and I’ve been like, “I’d have to get a new one.” Really how I got into the industry is silly, but I was a business administrative marketing major from Western Washington University. I moved to the city and had no intent to be in finance, but it was during the dot-com time and I didn’t really know what stock options were, a lot of the firms were offering a low base salary for stock options and I figured that wouldn’t pay my rent so I had to look at other options. My first job was at Prudential Financial Services because they were paying $10,000 more on the base then the dot-com. That’s how I got into the industry and I never really left.

That was almost 25 years ago. And I started over on the BD side with Paine Webber after Prudential, that was before UBS. I’m really dating myself now. That’s before UBS spot then moved over to Oppenheimer Funds where I really worked with a group of advisors and I was really more of the senior client service associates.

Then once we left the broker-dealer side I left with that team and went over into the RIA space which was a whole new world for me coming from the BD where everything’s a little bit more built out, you have the robust New York headquarters operations teams and the cage and all of that stuff. At RIA, it was completely different and I found that I really loved it and that’s really where I just thrived.

I’m more entrepreneurial in nature, much like what Erica said, I just raised my hand at anything that needed to be done because in the RIA world, you just wear so many hats. I did a lot of growth at Freestone just being able to take on so many different areas from operations to service, to training, to recruiting. Then I transitioned over to SNW Asset Management after about six years at Freestone, wanted ownership, wanted to be a partner, and they were a great fixed-income money manager, local RIA shop that brought me on as partner. Shortly after Oppenheimer Funds, by shortly I mean a little over a year, Oppenheimer Funds came to us and asked if we wanted to be acquired or be part of their firm and so we worked through that process. I was there about just under two years and then they sold to Mass Mutual, their parent company sold to Invesco and so I had to go through another integration process.

Through all of that, I picked up a lot of the COO because you are wearing so many hats and again, that’s really what a COO is in my mindset and so really just picked up more and more from the operations to technology to day-to-day to HR to culture, especially going through those integrations.

[00:10:03] Matt Sonnen: You say “wearing a lot of hats”. I always joke and say the COO job description is “Do everything around here that’s not being done today.” That’s pretty much the job description. Yes, I love it.

I mentioned you just went through the interview process, Lisa, and having had many discussions, I’m sure, about how exactly you were going to be brought into the organization, what areas of the firm that you were going to impact, Erica, you and I have had some really great conversations.

I know you’re very well connected with a lot of COOs across the industry and operations folks. You always have a fresh perspective on the impact COOs have at their firms. I want to have a high-level discussion with both of you today, about the role of the COO and how RIAs can leverage this position to its fullest extent.

With that backdrop, one of my favorite topics that we talked about on this podcast is culture. Obviously, culture is set at the very top of the organization. It starts with the owner or the owners, and then it trickles down from there, but in our industry, the owners of RIAs are most often advisors themselves and they are most focused on clients and prospective clients.

The vast majority of the time they are not in the office, they are out, in a non-pandemic world, they are out of the office, focused on building the business one client at a time. That means that the employees that are in the office all day long with the COO, they’re looking for a person to set the tone of the organization. Lisa, in your new role, what do you anticipate your impact will be on the culture at Pacific Portfolio?

[00:11:29] Lisa Cook: Well, I hope a positive impact. That’s the goal, but really this is a hard environment to come into a new firm and really impact employees the way that I’m used to. I’ve had to be a bit creative. I made sure I spoke with every employee on video meetings, really paying attention to not only professionally what they do and their impact, but also trying to connect with them personally, just to help build that rapport that unfortunately I’m missing stepping into a new firm without that face-to-face engagement.

I’m reminding them that I’m here to support them, remove the obstacles in their way. Some people are unsure of what a COO role really does. Really it’s building different performance reviews, performance systems that really highlight the firm goals, the team goals, and then also how each of their individual goals support their team and firm.

At Pacific Portfolio, they really view the entire, all 17 employees, as a team working for the clients. No one advisor owns that client per se, we always talk about it as a team. Coming in, that was my first priority, understanding the current culture, understanding where maybe I can help, or if there was some ambiguity on how your function impacts those team goals that you aligned to and then also the firm goals was really important.

[00:12:56] Matt Sonnen: You said some of the employees are still trying to figure out what a COO does. Are you first COO at the firm? Have they not had that specific role before?

[00:13:02] Lisa Cook: I am the first COO at the firm.

[00:13:05] Matt Sonnen: Wow. First of the firm, and trying to do this in a remote environment. So you’ve definitely have your work cut out for you.

[00:13:13] Lisa Cook: I do, but I can tell you that it’s been great. I say, you just got to be creative and always be learning. That’s what I tell myself, surely its tested me at this job transition with the pandemic.

[00:13:25] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Erica, talk to us about the culture at Balentine and how you’ve impacted it at the firm.

[00:13:31] Eric Farber: This question always makes me giggle because we’ve gone through several stages with our culture. We had a cultural vision statement for the firm, I would say eight years ago. It included things like “We like to have fun” or “We believe in work-life balance”. Finally, really our employees said, “Yeah, that’s not actually our culture at all.”

The leadership team turned over the development of our cultural vision and cultural goals to the actual employees and they worked with management to put together, I would say, the truth about Balentine in a very positive way. The fact is we are hardcore. We go full speed at all points in time. We value and promote excellence in everything that we do.

I would say that that changed with the first step of establishing what I think is a very authentic culture. On the flip side of that we have, and I’m a participant in this as well, really focused on behaviors. Not just what do you believe as an organization, but really how do you behave with your coworkers. As the person who is inside, in the office while many other people are out, I get the really good opportunity to probably help people get through some conflict and to transition that from a stressful experience to a learning experience. I also have the benefit of having done almost every job here. I have an enormous respect for and I’m informed of the different aspects at each role.

I think that that combination of things really brings me to the level that I care about. I want to be a coach. And I don’t necessarily want to just be a manager, or to just be the COO, or the CCO, or any of those other titles. Ultimately, I feel my responsibility is to help people develop across whatever capacity that happens to be technologically speaking from a company standpoint, all of those things.

In terms of driving culture, yes, I do. And I take great pride in that. I’ve learned more about myself through that process than I have necessarily about other people.

[00:16:10] Matt Sonnen: I love that you say you want to be a coach. I think that was early in my COO life. I thought, “Oh, I’m the COO. My job is to do everything.” It took me a while to figure out that “coach” aspect of it. That’s fantastic.

You mentioned how they turned over the formation of the culture to the employees. Another question I love to ask is “what are the owners of the businesses done to empower you as the true operators and leaders of the business?”

When David Canter was on the podcast, we talked about the failure rate for COOs at RIAs is something like 50%. Not because the COO can’t do the job but because the owners oftentimes don’t empower the COO and the staff learns pretty quickly they can go around that person, go right to the owner and get the answer that they’re looking for, and then things break down very quickly from there.

Lisa, I know you’re brand new, but how has the firm set you up for success in this new role as COO?

[00:17:09] Lisa Cook: When I was looking to make the transition and it goes back to the previous question too, culture is key. That’s the most important as I get more advanced in my career. I want to be around people I like.

During the interview process right out of the gate, I know it was nine interviews, I think it was in total, that was one of the first things I started asking each of the executive leaders express the need and excitement to have this role. I immediately could see they were all so humble and honest about what they really needed in Pacific Portfolio and what that I can bring that maybe they were lacking. Some of that was management, managing the day-to-day.

Larry Hood, our CEO, he’s the owner, he’s the chairman of the board, he’s a senior advisor who needs that right hand and super, super supportive, like I said, all through the interview process. From day one, he was asking my opinion on items, pulling me into conversations, looking for advice and bouncing ideas off of me.

What I explained to them in the interview process as well is, “Yes, you’re bringing in somebody that hopefully can alleviate and take over some of the management items and the day-to-day stuff, but what I really need, I can’t do it by myself. It has to be supported by the executive leadership team. We have to have come out with a strong message, support our employees and get their buy-in, and get their trust as well.” It’s been a good experience so far.

[00:18:39] Matt Sonnen: Yes. That’s great. Then Erica, how have you avoided this scenario in your role at Balentine?

[00:18:47] Erica Farber: I’m not sure if I’ve avoided it, but I’ve worked through it and it’s in a really good way. When you talk about culture and behaviors and all of those things, feedback is incredibly important to help someone grow and develop. Now I report directly to the CEO and we started, I would say, our relationship with some pretty rigorous honesty, that was really, I think, delivered in the best possible way.

He said, “Erica, you do a lot of work around here, but you don’t get any credit for it. The reason you don’t get credit for it is that you don’t talk about what you do. If you want to add fewer obstacles to moving things forward, it’s time for you to be more communicative about how much you’re handling and how you are handling it.”

He also let me know that I had some communication challenges that I needed to overcome to eliminate those obstacles. I’ll share that for y’all, you can probably all relate to it. I tend to say things once and people can’t possibly hear those things once. Now I’ve learned how to communicate often, even though it may appear redundant and can do so in various forms in a meeting, in an email, follow up materials, all of those things.

I would say it really was a “help me, help you” conversation. Without that honesty from my CEO to tell me exactly what it is I needed to change to remove those obstacles, then I wouldn’t be on the path to make that change. Now every day I would say that I see massive improvement in that area.

[00:20:38] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. If we go through these questions chronologically, what we’ve just talked about, you’ve been empowered, you’re helping shape the culture and now the big question is how do you affect change within your organizations? Whether it’s a new technology that’s being introduced or it’s a new workflow or a process. How do you both get buy-in from the employees and get adoption for the new ways in which the firm needs to operate? Erica, I’ll go to you first on this one.

[00:21:04] Erica Farber: Adoption has been a challenge for us. Training has been a challenge, continuity of service when we experienced turnover has been a challenge. I started my planning or my approach by going back to my elementary education classes in college, where we focused on how people learn and how people change.

I’ve really embedded that philosophy and everything that we’re doing at this point. That includes things like not just to roll out every feature of new technology at once, but instead to break it up into manageable bite size pieces, and that is the best way to ensure adoption. We’ve also made some pretty substantial changes to our training platform and that will continue to grow.

Yes, I would say that has been a challenge for us to manage those changes, that adoption. Most certainly what the best thing I did though, was to not try to recreate the wheel. It was to go back to educators and find out what it is that they do to handle these types of everyday scenarios. It was fascinating and information that’s been incredibly valuable.

[00:22:28] Matt Sonnen: I’m laughing, Erica, because as I said, at the beginning of this, you were worried, “I don’t know if I’m the right person for this podcast.” You’ve given three fantastic answers in a row around communication and coaching and elementary education. You are the perfect person for this podcast. I just want to point that out.

[00:22:47] Erica Farber: Thank you, Matt.

[00:22:48] Matt Sonnen: Lisa, it’s obviously way too early in your tenure at Pacific Portfolio to address this question in the past tense, but I’m sure you have a roadmap in front of you that has quite a bit of change coming to the organization. What are your plans to achieve adoption and keep everyone sane during that transition process?

[00:23:04] Lisa Cook: If you think about it, we laughed a little bit about the acquisition after acquisition. I got really, really good at change management because you’re moving into different cultures, different systems you’re bringing your team to be enrolled into. It was a 20-person team into a 2,000-person team and then into a 7,000-person firm. Really being thoughtful, I learned probably the most about my employees about change and comfort zones and through both of those acquisitions.

I think going into Pacific Portfolio and really how I look at things, let’s start with processes. If there’s a new process and need, first it’s always what’s not working and that’s what I did when I was going through the interview, when I was speaking with each of the employees about those obstacles.

Really, I take a look and I’m like okay. I basically asked four questions and it’s to the people that it’s going to impact the most. That are either whether it’s a system or a process, it’s the users. What is the issue? What if we did this or this, what would be ideal? Then what works and what works means what’s it may not be the full ideal. It may not be the Ferrari because our resources aren’t — we don’t have quite that deep of pockets, but it might be the Honda for the process.

I engage with the employees that really would be the heavy users of the new process or the new system and get them to start helping to build out new processes. Then I work with them, I’ll help to get resources or have to be the naysayer at times. That’s really my approach of how I look at things.

Adoption rate. Erica, I’m with you. New technology is probably one of the hardest things to get to high adoption rates on, right now with our CRM, it’s really getting people to utilize it. There’s so much there and you have to stage in. If you’re going to make changes and tweak things, you really have to stage it in so you don’t drive your employees crazy and make their job harder for the next few months while they learn the new systems and processes.

[00:25:05] Matt Sonnen: You mentioned knowing the comfort zones of each individual employee is so important. I see that all the time. Some employees can handle a lot of change in the smallest little thing will set them off. “I can’t use this new system.” “Well, what’s wrong with the new system?” “Well, the clock used to be in the bottom left and now it’s in the bottom right” and it’s just like, “I can’t use it. I’m not going to use it.” Understanding who can handle change, how much change, I love that you brought that up, the comfort zones. It’s very important.

I have a big question for both of you. I had an interesting conversation with an advisor recently. He called me up and he says, “Okay, Mr. Sonnen, I’ve been told you’re the COO whisperer in our industry. Tell me, how should I be rating my COO? How do I know if he or she is doing a good job?” I immediately said, “Well, how much of your time, Mr. Advisor, is freed up to focus on clients and prospects? How often are you being pulled into the day-to-day minutia of running the business?”

I said, “If you aren’t being forced to deal with HR related issues or technology related issues then your COO is doing a great job, but if you feel you still don’t have enough time dedicated to growing the business through client acquisition or referrals from your existing clients, then your COO needs to step up and take more off your plate.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer, but he was quiet for a little bit and then he said, “That is ridiculous.” He says, “I need concrete metrics by which to rate my COO. If I’m looking at an advisor, I know exactly what are the net new assets that this advisor brought in. What are the satisfaction scores that he or she has received from existing clients? I know exactly how that person’s doing. How do I rate my COO?”

I obviously failed at answering his question. I’m going to turn it over to you two and see if you can come up with it with a better way. Lisa, I’ll go to you first. What are your thoughts on this being that you just joined the firm? How have you mapped out what success will look like in your role?

[00:27:02] Lisa Cook: Well, first off, I honestly believe your answer is pretty accurate for the COO role but the COO plays a different part in almost every RIA. We all probably do something a little bit different. We could be the au pair, we could be the right hand, we could be the coach for the young CEO type thing. It’s hard to say what metrics across the board you’ve used for a COO, especially for that, that quantitative piece in it.

It was funny, I had just had a conversation the other day with our CEO and he said, “You’re the only role that doesn’t touch the client at all.” That is actually accurate in our firm right now, but I’m alleviating a lot of that — the day-to-day stuff, the obstacle removers, problem-solvers that employee HR items working on the culture, attracting new employees, alleviating headaches for the CEO.

How we’ve determined at Pacific Portfolio to rate us is I’m involved in a lot of the strategic initiatives, the marketing, the branding. We’re trying to attract new advisers next year. Really, it’s going to be around some of those metrics and we haven’t fully identified what they are, but it will be from the board perspective and from the business. Are we attracting advisors and less of the new clients that is our branding and marketing plans working and that kind of stuff.

[00:28:29] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Erica, how do you think a COO should be measured for success?

[00:28:35] Erica Farber: I think, ultimately, my role is intended to increase profitability. Now granted not in the same manner as selling or garnering clients per se but the more efficient I can make our various business lines and operations, the more money we can all make. That’s a really great incentive across the board.

How do you achieve that? It’s taken me some time to recognize that you’ve got to be able to provide some factual analytics and data to be used to evaluate your progress. That is probably one of the largest reasons we have invested so much in our new CRM. It is not just to have a place, a hub for all client information, but it’s also built to give us really key metrics in terms of efficiency, profitability, how are our new account paperwork times comparing to a month ago, a quarter ago, two years ago.

Having that data at your fingertips is really the only way that you can start to design what it is you think you should be held accountable for. This will be a very exciting year for us, 2021. Anything could be better than 2020, and that is specifically to make sure we’ve got some data so that we can then hold ourselves accountable for achieving those results.

I’m also really excited about utilizing that data to perhaps, this is going to shock everyone, higher before you need to. We don’t have any way currently to assess how many clients can a team manage, how much revenue can a team handle. I think this year we realized that it’s not nearly as cut and dry as we would like for it to be. It’s not a dollar amount and it’s not a client amount. Instead, it’s a complexity, it’s a factor of complexity.

Also with our new CRM, we’re going to start really monitoring client complexity, number of touchpoints, number of entities and new accounts. The things that really impact the stability of the team to continue to provide really great service. That’s something that we can be measured by, which is how are you documenting and really designing the firm to have the information it needs to make better decisions across the board.

[00:31:19] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. I think you both hit on topics that, it’s really the whole reason I started this podcast was, Lisa, you said, and you hear this in a lot of firms, “Well, I don’t know, I’m very confused by the COO role because you’re not directly touching client relationships. I don’t understand the value.” And then Erica, you brought up, which again, these terms, aren’t again, it’s not just where’s the next client coming from, but efficiency and profitability aren’t always valued as highly as they should.

“It’s just I can see whether where the new client came from, but the other stuff is a little bit nebulous.” You both hit on reasons why I started this podcast was I’m trying to bring these topics to the forefront and really shine a light on all the work that you are doing on a day-to-day basis. Both of you did fantastic with that answer, better than I did. That was great. Thank you.

Lastly, I’ll bring up 2020, even in the middle of a pandemic set records yet again for M&A activity in our industry. I spoke with an investment banker just this morning, someone focused on the RIA industry and they said their firm completed more transactions this year than any other time in their 10-plus year history and she said they have five more deals that are closing between now and January 31st of next year. Just the first month of the year.

I don’t know how much M&A either of your firms have done so far, but I’d love to get your thoughts on how best to position your firms for success in this M&A area. Lisa, I’ll go to you first on this one.

[00:32:46] Lisa Cook: Sure. It’s one of our 2021 goals to bring on an advisor with a book, as well as 2022, and really how to position our firm is something that we work on. We are currently working on last year just going through a rebranding and marketing, ensuring all our employees understand really what we want to do for our clients, what our expected service models are, ensuring you have scale and efficiencies, everything is running pretty tight ship without losing that boutique feel of an RIA, that’s important.

This year, like I said, we really focused on our brand and our image and getting it out there so that people know who we are, what we do and what we can do for our clients. Hopefully, that’ll set us up for success. Of course, you always got to look at your bottom lines and keep your budget type, but that’s really what we’ve done going into 2021.

[00:33:42] Matt Sonnen: Perfect. Erica, what are your thoughts around M&A readiness?

[00:33:46] Erica Farber: Well, you have certainly taken on advisors with a book before, but I would say in the next year, we’re going to be poised to expand that to perhaps take in another firm or to merge or meld with some similar firm who may not necessarily have had a transition plan and someone’s ready to retire and doesn’t necessarily have any plans for their clients. I could see that this is going to be a big opportunity for us this year.

It’s ironic, Matt, that you started with culture because it all comes down to that first and foremost. We will make sure that anyone we add to our team or a firm that we are merged with is a cultural match, because otherwise there’s no amount of money or new clients that can smooth over a bad cultural fit. That’s number one.

Number two, I would take a huge part of what we’re doing this year is you’ve got to have well documented, easy to follow processes and procedures that can be applied across the firm and across locations. We’re not there yet but we are getting close. My goal is really to start putting foam on the runway, understanding that the planes are definitely going to come soon.

[00:35:11] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. I put a lot of pressure on the two of you, the top of this conversation, but both of you delivered above and beyond my high expectations. Thank you both for sharing your thoughts today. This was fun and very insightful. Happy new year to both of you and thank you again for being here.

[00:35:28] Erica Farber: It was our pleasure. I am sure and that I will add one thing. I’m just so glad that someone’s asking these questions. We’re thrilled to participate. It’s in part because I don’t think we’ve had the forum to discuss these things as much in then in the past. Bring it to the forefront, I love it.

[00:35:49] Matt Sonnen: Awesome. Thank you.

[00:35:49] Lisa Cook: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Erica, I agree 100% having these types of forums to talk through these, the COO role. It’s been fun.

[00:35:59] Matt Sonnen: Great. For all of our listeners, thank you for tuning into another episode, we will talk to everyone soon.