The Rapid Growth of Legal Ops - Eric Laughlin

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00Welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, the show where our guests, and sometimes us, provide best practice recommendations on all things related to contract management. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, our guests are. Uh, today we've got an exciting one for you. It's, uh, uh, somebody from an organization that we work very closely with. Uh, Eric Laughlin, the CEO of Agiloft, is gonna be joining us. And, uh, before we dive into the conversation around, uh, the legal space and all the growth that, uh, it has been experiencing, espec- especially when it comes to technology, I wanted to turn things over to Eric and allow him to give us, um, a bit more information on his background. Uh, so Eric, thanks for joining us, and, uh, we're very excited to have you here. All right. Welcome, Eric. Thanks. Happy to be here. Thanks, Marc. Thanks, Pepe. I, uh, love the name of your podcast, by the way.

1:07To get started, I, um, I think, uh, gave a talk a year and a half or two years ago about, uh, the heroic age of contracts that we're in right now. It's not the golden age, but it's the heroic age, so that, that really resonated with me to see your, uh, your podcast title. Uh, but just to give a little background on myself, uh, so I have been in the legal tech and legal services world for, uh, most of my career, uh, including a, a long stint at Thomson Reuters, uh, and a shorter stint at Ernst & Young. Uh, I've been involved in, in a number of ways, uh, at Thomson Reuters. Obviously it's a, a large content provider, so, uh, thinking about, uh, what content, um, makes sense for in-house counsel, because I've always been focused on in-house counsel. Uh, then I ran the, uh, business that was called Serengeti and is now called Legal Tracker, so e-billing and matter management.

2:00Uh, and later ran an organization, uh, formerly known as Pangea3, so a legal process outsourcing, uh, company. That, that, uh, business ended up moving over into Ernst & Young and becoming, uh, the bedrock of their legal managed services, uh, offering. Um, a year ago, I moved over to Agiloft and, and wow, what a, what a move. Um, I've been thinking about contracts for a long time. I've been working in contracts for a long time on the services side. Uh, and so it's, it's been a real joy to move over onto the technology side and, and just see how much of a difference, uh, that we're making for so many organizations, and I, I think that's what you guys see every day as well. Exactly. There's a lot going on in the, in the leg- well, not just in the legal industry, it's in the whole enterprise wide and, and I think that, uh, what our people and company seeing is that lawyers and the legal department are not just like an independent department that just works and, and writes contract, right? It's a, it's a whole department that is connected to every department on the company, and there's a big, uh...

3:14There's, there's this new term that I think it's, it's, uh, it's, it has come, uh, it's become very popular, which is, like, legal operations, right? Mm-hmm. And so Eric, our first question, so would like, uh, to ask you, like, why do you think that legal ops role exploded in the growth at enterprise level? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think you've seen the momentum building on legal ops for a decade now. Uh, but I agree with you when you say that, you know, it's really exploded, both in terms of, of how many legal operations, you know, folks are out there and, and sort of the teams that they're building at, at so many companies, uh, but also the influence that, that they're having, which I think is, is dramatically expanded. Um, I think back to, you know, 2010 or so, you know, so, you know, over a decade ago and, and when I was working in the e-billing world and there were, you know, a lot of people who were the, essentially the admins for the e-billing software, uh, or for the matter management software, uh, and, and I, in them, you know, they weren't calling themselves legal ops yet, right? But that's essentially- Right... what they were.

4:18They were starting to, and they were building up this sort of, uh, amazing, you know, r- arsenal of data, uh, you know, through the e-billing and through the matter management tool. And I think, you know, you'll probably hear me say this a lot today, but that, that ability to generate data about the legal processes and about the legal outcomes, um, is something that was becoming very empowering to, to that group. Um, not only to allow them to express the value that the legal department was having, or maybe, you know, just express the savings that they were creating. Um, but also to have that data that allows them to, um, say, "We can do better," right? "We can improve this process. Here's the data that shows, you know, the baseline. Here's the data that shows the improvement." Um, and so, you know, you, you saw that a decade ago.

5:07Uh, and, and then I think, you know, fast-forward, um, to many years of that sort of discipline growing and that sort of more data-driven process, you know, process-driven, uh, discipline growing in legal departments and, and all of a sudden you have this emergence of, of CLOC, right? Of, of a group, uh, of, of, you know, in, you know, incredibly talented legal operations leaders getting together and sort of giving a voice to legal operations professionals everywhere, giving them, you know, direction, giving them community. Um, you know, it wasn't, you know, just a few years ago, uh, you know, you guys have probably attended various conferences where you meet lots of legal operations professionals. And, and- Right... you know, just a few years ago, it was not uncommon for me to introduce myself to somebody, they are the head of legal operations for a company you've heard of, and they're there, but they just started their job three weeks ago, and they're asking very basic questions. You know, what i- I know that contracts are important Uh, can you define contract, you know, contract life cycle management for me? Right? Or, or can you ask, you know, what is the first step I should be taking, right?

6:08What are those, those sort of basic questions. And, and that was only a few years ago. Um, uh, I, I think that luckily we had enough run up in the last decade of people getting... You know, understanding what legal operations can be, understanding the power of data, that when the pandemic hit, and I think, you know, it was just a real accelerator for digital transformation and a real accelerator for sort of process driven thinking and sort of, um, you know, alignment o- of processes across legal departments, that the o- legal ops groups were ready, right? They were ready to make a difference, they were ready to jump into action, they were ready to implement new software that made a difference. Um, and so I think, I think it, I really think of it as a story of this like a lot of momentum through a decade, and then a moment hitting where that group was ready to do something, and they did. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think, you know, in our past couple years, you know, working in this space and working with Agiloft, I mean, it's, it's very surprising, I mean, shocking how, how we've seen organizations go from not having somebody in this role to having somebody in this role and, and how willing they are to, to be the manager of not only this data but, but also the, the systems that they're using, you know, in legal. Yeah.

7:18Um, and, and I think that's something similar to what we saw, you know, and, or I guess what I saw a couple years back, right, when I was selling more so into sales in, in that sales ops role. Uh, that was something that I wasn't really too familiar with and, and I, I think that those two roles are very similar. Obviously they're doing similar things. Um, but you know, Eric, I mean, like you said, the, the, the data that these, these systems, whether it be s- you know, CLM or matter management, you know, the, the data that they are able to store in there, um, making sure that you're able to, to set, you know, KPIs and, and perform against that data to make sure that you're on the right track, you're progressing in the right direction, I think that that's something huge that, that also, uh, you know, a lot of organizations don't see the benefit of immediately when they're out there looking for CLM tools. They're just trying to improve their processes, but, but being able to improve that data and, and understand what you're tracking is, is also a massive, uh, thing- Right... that, that CLM allows you to do. Totally agree and, and I think when you, when you look back at the history of what the, what data has been available to legal departments, you know, it, it just wasn't that, there just wasn't that much there.

8:21Uh, but contracts, wow, it really lends itself to data, right? I, I mean, the... Yeah, sure, it's a piece of paper, you know, in the old days. It's a document. But it's really, you know, it is, y- you can easily rip it into its, you know, component data parts and there's so many steps along the process which can be well documented using, you know, using a, a, a good software workflow platform, um, that really there, there just is a lot of data there. And then I think the other thing that, that makes it sort of easy to understand and, and really ready for a data driven approach is that it's, it's so business oriented. Right? We're not talking about- Right... litigation. We're talking about everyday business, right? We're talking about- Money... we're talking about money, yeah. That's a great way of saying it. Like, we got money involved here and so people care, right? And all of a sudden data is way more interesting when there are dollar signs attached to it. Exactly. And how, how do you think like a legal ops manager enable other departments to leverage software inside their in-house legal de- department? Yeah. I mean, it, it's a good question.

9:27I think when you think about, or when I think about software, um, or maybe backing up from software, I, I think the first thing that anybody has to do to have influence, um, whether it's in their department or cross departments is, is get alignment, right? And that alignment is, is pretty difficult. Like we've, I've worked in large organizations where the most challenging thing is making sure that you get aligned on something across various, you know, stakeholders. Um, I think one of the beauties of taking a software approach, um, is actually in the alignment of it. So you can, instead of trying to get alignment, um, on a process through a discussion or through a PowerPoint slide or something, you can really make a process come alive. You can think of software as a canvas really, right? Let's paint this process through this software. Let's all get aligned on this is what it's gonna look like, this is what it's gonna feel like, this is your part in it, and then let's try it.

10:19Um, a- and if you, you know, you try something, you get people living in a system and, and working through a process on a system, you know, it's very easy for folks to say, "This is working." It's also very easy for them to say, "It's not working, and here is how," because you have the data or you have a specific step along the process that you can point to and you say, "This is not working. This part is not working." And that was just a lot harder when it wasn't software driven. When it was just people passing emails and it was people talking to each other in the halls, it's a lot harder to say, "The thing that isn't working is this," because that often sounded like you were, you know, frankly throwing someone under the bus. Right. Right? You were talking about a person that is not working. Now you can talk about a process that is not working, and you can point to that process and you can point to it in the software and you can say, "We can, we can all do this a little bit differently. Let's try it this way." I think that that's just, you know, some, it's just that, a little bit of that human element of software as a canvas.

11:15Now you can all point to the software and you can paint together, right, rather than like, you know, putting each other under, throwing each other under the bus when it comes to process improvement. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, uh, when, I think when folks think about, you know, CLM and, and this is something that kind of we discussed in the, the webinar yesterday was, you know, it, it does start in legal, you know, but, but contracts obviously are, are, engulf all departments. It's not like just the legal team is, is getting eyes on contracts or trying to, to work with contracts. I mean, the sales team, HR, procurement, um, you know, and, and obviously the C-suite need to get eyes on, on the data that's inside those contracts probably to approve them. Um, so I think that that's, you know, great and, and being able to take a phased approach when we talk about implementing this type of software is something that's a must, 'cause you gotta make sure you're getting user adoption and, and, uh, keeping folks happy or, or they're just gonna go back to their old ways and start using email again and, and, uh, you know, shared, shared drives. Could, couldn't agree more. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. Um, we... Well, so Agiloft is a end-to-end CLM platform.

12:18Um, you know- Our customers use it for all types of contracts, uh, but most often they, they start with something. They start with a type of contract or a business unit that's, that's really interested. Um, you know, over the course of, you know, most of our history at Agiloft, uh, that's how things started. We see a lot more companies now saying, "We're gonna do it all. We're, we're, we are all in on CLM," uh, probably because they've experimented before or realized that it, it's valuable and they, and they wanna do it. Um, but, you know, you were, you were talking about the sort of diversity of, of contracts and, and sort of processes that, that folks can, um, you know, utilize CLM for, and we did a, a survey recently of our, our, our customers to see what they were using it for, and you're right, right? Sales, uh, obviously sales contracts are, are critically important. Obviously procurement contracts are critically important. Um, but a large, uh, number of our customers were using them for people-driven, you know, HR contracts, talent, talent sort of processes, uh, using them for alliances, right? Everybody uses them for NDAs. Yeah.

13:16Uh, so you, it, it just is a, a wide variety of, of different things that you can do, and, um, you know, there, there's a lot of approaches to how to get to that, you know, um, state where you're using it for everything. Um, a- and, uh, you've probably had, had users on, or, or guests on your, on your podcast that have, have given you very different approaches, so you've probably heard a lot of those, a lot of those. Yeah, I mean, no, no two... You know, as much as, as companies I think that we start working with think that their processes are very similar to other companies that are out there- Yeah... you know, no two implementations are ever the same. And, um, you know, even if you're, you're working in a, a vertical and, and you're working with similar clients, I mean, there's still variations that happen in all their different workflows and the dif- different types of, you know, templates that they wanna, to generate. And, um- Yeah...

14:04you know, I think that's something that we've definitely learned over the past couple of years, is you still need to make sure you're asking all of those pointed questions and really digging into what they want, because if not, you know, it, it's, it's just not going to be, um, a, a fantastic implementation, and that's, you know, what we strive for. Yeah, we, we worked with a, a client recently who, um, you know, they were making a big decision whether to roll out CLM, uh, in, in the US versus, uh, worldwide. Uh, and in the end, I think their decision was, "Let's go worldwide, but let's do it in phases, so we do global... You know, we, we wait on the global, uh, until we've done US so we can say, 'Okay, here's what the US looks like. Let's get it working. Let's get user adoption. Let's show that it works so that when we ask a, you know, somebody outside the US to change what they're doing, we can actually show them that what we're asking them to change to, in fact, works.'" Right? That, that it, that there's a reason. It's not just we have a difference of opinion on the right way to do things. We have actual data that shows that this process works.

15:03Um, but yeah, again, there, there's many different, um, ways to, to, to go about CLM, uh, that, that- Yeah, exactly... that I've worked with recently. Yeah. There are a lot of different approach, right, on, on how they, they, they can start with a, let, let's call it stage one implementation. But let's think about companies that have, are, are just discovering that these tools called CLM exist, right? And they still have no idea what ca- what kinda, what kind of processes they can automate and, and how they can see value. In your experience, how a company with no good contract management process implemented can take a first step? So, uh, like, we can think about medium- Yeah... small, or big corporations. Yeah. I mean, a, a first step I think is, is taking a, uh, taking a look at your current processes and, and seeing if you can understand them, right?

15:59And, and if they are, um, scattered or if they're, if they're sort of a- aligned already. Um, because I think, I guess I always encourage, uh, people to do a little introspection or organizations do a little introspection before they dive, you know, 100% into a, a, a software approach. So, what is it that, um, you know, of all the things you've read about CLM, what are the one or two things that, you know, you find to be your biggest problems right now and that you want to address with it? So, don't just say, "Well, everybody starts with NDAs 'cause it's easy. I'll start with NDAs." Right. Well, your organization, that might not be important to them, right? You might not have enough high- volume. It might be, you know, a, a silly thing to do. Um, but if the problem is you have a really difficult time, you, you seem to be losing money by missing renewal dates or by sort of, you know, some sort of, missing some sort of deadlines, and that's costing you real hard dollars, well, take a look at those, and let's, let's start there. And s- and, and let's not start with, you know, every single element of CLM. Let's start with the thing that is gonna help you to, you know, meet your obligations and hit your renewal dates, uh, the, the fastest. Mm.

17:00So I, I... You know, the generic answer is make sure that you're doing enough of that homework first to un- to discover your problem, n- not just the industry problems that are being, uh, talked about every day. Um, it, you know, there are many of those, right? So I talked about contract deadlines being one. You know, your problem could be that you're exposed to a lot of, you know, regulatory change or sort of geopolitical risk, and you've dis- you've recently discovered through the pandemic that you didn't have good control of what's in your contracts. And so, right, maybe it's more of a sort of knowledge-seeking that, that you're doing and trying to get proactive discovery, not sort of reactive, you know, firefighting. Uh, and so that, that might be, um, that might be where you start with, um, more of a sort of data-driven a- approach and, and start to do more sort of proactive discovery of your, of your contracts. Um, th- there's many different approaches, but again, they, they all come down, to me, w- to that idea of, of a little bit of, of introspection first- Right... before, uh, before deciding.

17:58And I think, you know, this is where, I mean, sure, I'm gonna do a little bit of an advertisement for Agiloft here. I think this is where Agiloft, you know, really works because there are software tools that you can look to that just, they have an approach to CLM, and that is the approach, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, here's how the, here's how we bring in data, and here's how the workflows are. Um, the amazing thing about Agiloft is that it was, it was born as a no-code workflow platform, right? So it, it's all about sort of business process. Um, any data model that you have, any sort of workflow that you have, any security model that you have, um, Agiloft is sort of, you know, flexible to the extreme to meet the, you know, the needs of, of your contracts, uh, in, in your organization right now. Um, and that allows you to kinda start where you want to start, um, in the right place with, you know, with the right processes. Um, I- What you didn't ask is, you know, okay, so you do something now, you get the first step, what's the reality of the second step?

18:55And I think the reality of the second step is the first step didn't work as well as you wanted it to work. Mm-hmm. And, and, you know, you, we- we're, let's be realists, the first step is hard because you're trying something new. Um, the beauty of a platform that's workflow driven and data driven is that you can now engage the users in, in, in improving the process. So you've taken the one problem you had, you put something into it, you know, put something in and you've tried really hard, you've released it, you're very excited, users starting to adopt it, and then you realize there's a problem because, you know, a third of the users find it to be, you know, find this step not to work, um, so you have to do something about it. The best thing you can do in step two is to show people in your department or in the other department that you're serving that you're responsive to their complaints. Right. That, so that's always step two. It's like set something up, be responsive to complaints, adjust the system. Don't be proud, right?

19:46You can only, you, you can be proud of the system you put in, but not so proud that you don't change it, uh, when you get that feedback. Um, and so, so step two to me is, is always, um, you know, again, it's introspection, but it's how did it go? Is it working? How can I make it better? And again, a little advertisement for Agiloft, like this is why Agiloft really works because it's not, there's no custom code in, in, in Agiloft. Like, you, it can do everything through the browser. So an admin or your consultant or whoever's working with you can quickly change that process on your behalf. Yeah. Yeah, no, and I, and I think we see that even during implementations, you know? Things are, are laid out one way at the beginning of a, of a project and then, you know, halfway through we're, we're already switching gears because we found a better way and, and the team has found a better way that they wanna do things. So, um, you know, it's, it's always nice to have that flexibility, especially, um, with, you know, a lot of the companies that we work with are, are smaller companies and, and they're growing quickly and their processes are changing and, and they're gonna need maybe at, at, you know, at, right outta the gate, they don't need all of the, the functionality that, um, uh, Agiloft even offers.

20:49But, but knowing that it's there and they have the ability to grow with it is, is something that I think is invaluable. Yeah. That continuous improvement mindset, I think is, is just required. Yep. And I think that, I think that's actually one of the things that's been so great about the rise of legal operations is you have people who have, who have that mindset. Um, it's not just, you know, build it and, and sort of, you know, you will do it. Um, it's a real business mindset, and then that requires that improvement. Right. And they don't necessarily need to be lawyers. It's, it's even better when you have engineers that have, like, this kind of, of, um, mentality on how processes can work and how to make them way more efficient. And, uh, and I, and, and I think that this flexibility that Agiloft can provide to their customers is very important. Like Marc said, every implementation is different. Maybe it's, it's not that a company, it's new on contract management, everybody has a contract management in process.

21:44The thing is that maybe it's not a good one, and you have to be aware on your whole process, even pr- prior signature and post signature, right? Because the prior signature is how you, how you get all the contract requests. What is the information that you need? What are the contract templates? How do you manage all those contract templates in order to make, uh, the, a platform to do that work for you so you're not spending hours and hours just trying to figure out how Microsoft Word works, but how you can put them all inside a platform. And then once you have all your processes there, so what information do you wanna track? Because it's not only turnover time, like how long it took the legal team to send a document for signature. There's a lot of things that you also need to have, uh, in, in mind because I think we, we have also seen that with our customers.

22:37When they see that you can have access to information using dashboards, interactive dashboards, when you ask them, "Which kind of information do you wanna see?" I don't know. Maybe, like, how long it take us to, to, to set a contract, but there's a lot of information that, that you can put in inside a platform. Like, who's, who's sending you the most, uh, valuable, uh, contract requests, how, how much the sales team, uh, is, uh, uh, it's selling and, and without numbers, you can start to put priorities on your processes. And like Marc said, like, this is an ongoing process. You, if this is your first time taking a first step with, uh, with a, with a, with a contract management, you need to have, um, uh, you, you, you need to have all these processes very well defined. And then once you start adopting the platform, you will see that there are some other things that can be improved.

23:35And when, when you think about, I love the question of sort of what data do you need? Um, because you're right there, there's, you know, you sort of let your imagination flow when you get that question. Um, what I think is interesting to ask, uh, folks as well is, is not what information you need, but no, go to your business partners and see what information they need. So, you know, you're working with the legal department, um, they want to have, sure they wanna have the data to improve their own processes, but you know, the reality is if, if, if they're on the sell side and they're, and they're working with commercial contracts and the sales team, what does the sales team need to, to know to do better? And, and, and what is it that information that the legal team can all of a sudden provide to the sales team that they couldn't before? Um, or how can they show the sales team that what they're doing is, is actually helping them? Um, maybe they've made an improvement on the way they negotiate limits of liability and now they can like, you know, they can actually show the sales team that they're getting to contract faster and they're, they're taking certain types of risks.

24:33Um, and, and maybe they can actually help the sales team think about what the selling process can be and how they can set themselves up for the negotiation better based on the result of, of, of how these negotiations are going. So there's, there's lots of different things they can do, but I, but you know, I do think it's interesting to, to- Bring their, their business partners in and, and sort of users of the contracts and have them, um, say, "What would, what would I like to know about my contracts?" And start from that. And, you know, Marc, you worked on the sales side a lot, so you, you see that, you know, there's, there's the sales ops folks, um, are looking for data and, and some of that data is coming through the contracting process. Yeah. No, I think a lot of it does. Um, you know, I mean, even the stuff that they're po- you know, they're pulling out of Salesforce or, or other tools like that, I mean, it's, it's all contract-driven at the end of the day. Um- Yeah... so I, I think it's a lot of the, you know, the same, same type of data that, um, that everybody in each of the departments is looking for, just kind of manipulated in a different direction. Um- Yeah... and, you know, and, and to kind of build on that, I mean, you know, we're talking about numbers here. I mean, I, I think at the end of the day, right, there's tangible and there's non-tangible ways to calculate, you know, ROI.

25:36A, a year from, uh, the, your implementation is done, you're going live, you know, a year from that date, um, I mean, what are, what are some of the takeaways that folks should be looking for, maybe whether it's processes or hard numbers, um, you know, when it comes to actual ROI of, of a, a CLM tool? Yeah. Certainly some, some, like you said very well, there's, there's some hard sort of measures and there's some, some softer sort of measures. Um, you know, I think the, the sort of ones that if you, if you do a quick search on how you, what the ROI for, you know, CLM is, like you're going to get to the sort of revenue leakage and sort of renewal, you know, contract, you know, am I making my contract deadlines, um, expense leakage, stuff like that. Um, hate that word leakage, but, but it's a, it is a good way to capture sort of the, the, the errors that are coming out of sort of missing deadlines and, and that to me is sort of level one of, of ROI. Um, very easy to measure.

26:28Um, I think, you know, I think it gets more interesting or, or just as interesting to talk about speed to contract, um, because it, there's a, there's, you know, I think an old adage in sales which is that time kills deals. Uh, right? Yeah. I mean, the further, the longer a deal takes to get done, the more likely it is to fall apart. Uh, and so there is a, a real tangible benefit to, um, not to how long did it take us to get the contract together, speed to contract, speed to deal, speed to get it to locking it in because that's, that's tangible value for the sales team. Um, and then I think, I think, you know, th- there's a, there's a whole nother set of, of metrics around ROI, which, uh, you know, you ask somebody, they'll say it's tangible, somebody they say it's too soft, uh, which is s- is, um, essentially how good am I to do business with? Right? So what do my customers give me strong marks on, uh, I like to do business with this company? Uh, or do they give us, uh, poor marks on that? And that is a big part of customer satisfaction, right?

27:28Uh, there's a huge chunk of customer satisfaction, which is do I like using the product? Uh, and there's another huge part of it, which is did I like the process of becoming a customer with them? Uh, and often that first taste of did I like becoming a customer with them, uh, th- that feeds th- their perspective on the rest of the relationship with the company. Uh, and so anytime a, a company is measuring net promoter scores, um, the thing that the, that the answerer is thinking about is the contracting process. Um, and so, you know, that is I think, again, harder to put a dollar sign to, um, but I think a real core metric for any company and one that the contracting team should be thinking a lot about. Um, so it, again, there, there's a sort of a wide variety of those, those ROIs, but, or, or different sort of measures they take, but that's, that's a, those are a couple of them I think are, are pretty important. Yeah. No, I think those are, those are great and, and I think, you know, um, typically we ask a last question, but I think that I, I want that to be the takeaway here.

28:26You know, if anybody's out there looking for a CLM tool or, or has implemented one and, and isn't really sure, you know, the boss is asking us how, how do we measure ROI? I think that those are the, the, the points that, you know, they need to be looking at and, and understanding. Um, so Eric, I, this has been a great conversation. Um, you know, I, I think, uh, a lot of folks are gonna learn from just getting an understanding of, of where they are and where they could go and, and what a CLM tool is. So, uh, we appreciate you coming on and, and having a chat with us. Absolutely. Great to be here and, uh, hope to talk to some of your, uh, your listeners at some point here and, uh, see what I can do to support them and, and, and you guys in your endeavors. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, uh- Happy to be here... you know, if somebody does wanna connect with you and, and, uh, maybe have a conversation, where, uh, where's the best place to do that? I mean, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn every day and, and easy to get a hold of. So, um, so that's, that's probably the easiest way. Not much of a Twitter guy, so, uh- ... find me on LinkedIn. All right. Great, great to talk to you, have a great talk to you, Marc. Great talking with you, Eric. Thanks a lot, Eric. All right. Thanks, everybody. This is another episode of Contract Heroes. We hope to have you back here soon.

29:31And we've got a lot of episodes coming out and, and if you made it this far, you know there's something new we're, that we're trying here, go ahead and subscribe or, uh, pass these along to somebody else that you know that you think might be interested. So chat soon.