LPRC - (Re-Release) CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 183 Ft. Mike Lamb

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

(Re-Release) SPECIAL GUEST Mike Lamb Joins the LPRC CrimeScience Hosts! On this episode, our hosts have a great discussion with industry leader and NEW LPRC INNOVATE Program Senior Advisor, Mike Lamb. Going through some of the most recent retail issues a sneak peek into Mike Lamb's next steps, and a look at his role with the LPRC moving forward. This is one podcast you won't want to miss! Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series from the LPRC, and I'm joined by our co-host, Tony D'Onofrio, Tom Ians on the road, our producer, Diego Rodriguez, and our special guest, but now a serious leader here at the LPRC as well, and what we're trying to do with innovation, Mike Lamb. Mike in a minute. But I thought what I'd do is start off very quickly and say, you know, Mike, I've looked at and know about, you know, what you've done as a leader at the different levels, whether it was in a store or district region or whatever, but also where you were with Federated, the Home Depot, Walmart, and Kroger Company. And I thought, what's a common ingredient for you?

Because one thing I noticed on your LinkedIn profile was that you've been in that leadership role for roughly four years. And it's kind of interesting, is that mean anything or that's just coincidence or who knows? But Mike, what do you think about being a leader in the organizations? What'd you learn? And what's that equipping you to do now and going forward? Yeah, well, you know, I've been very fortunate, Reed and Tony, with regard to the organizations that I've had the opportunity to work with, with Federated. You know, I would tell you every every stop along the way, you know, you learn. I've always had a rather insatiable appetite to look at technology explore technology in whatever way possible uh to make it easier to get it right versus wrong i worked for a gentleman at uh at walmart who coined that phrase and it has stuck with me ever

since uh you know but part of the reasons for some of the changes and and pivots uh you know right wrong or indifferent my view would be it's a little bit like collegiate football coaching. Rita, I know you're a big University of Florida fan. I'm a big University of Tennessee fan. I like a challenge. I had a wonderful experience at Walmart. I think I had close to a five-year run there. a wonderful experience at Walmart. I think I had a close to a five-year run there.

And we were coming off a really, really solid year of managing all aspects of the AP program and safety program. The Kroger company came calling. And initially, I was very comfortable because at that point, I was getting sort of into the sunset phase of my career and I had intended on finishing out at Walmart and certainly the work is never done and that's the case with Walmart but Kroger was sort of reinventing themselves from an asset protection and loss prevention point of view they were combining two work streams, one that was focused solely on non-malicious shrinkage and waste, and the other that was the more traditional malicious side of the house. And so I saw it as a massive opportunity for me personally and professionally. Personally, it was largely due to the fact that my wife's father at the time was in ailing health, and it was much closer to home for us. So there were a myriad of reasons that it just felt like it was time for me to make that career change. But every stop along the way, what I remember most, Reed, is just the

wonderful people I've had an opportunity to work with and around, both from leadership, the groups that I've reported to, and the teams that I've had the good privilege, great privilege of leading. So, but, you know, technology's always been something that I've just been very inquisitive around. And you know that, Reid, we go back three decades, four decades, when we were talking about the enhanced public view monitor. You know, what can we do with this public view if we stick it on the aisle, you know, at an eight foot level and make it personal versus a large monitor that you see at the entrances and exits. So it's just been a lot of fun. And I'm also into data and the analytics of that data? You know, how does your past history of what's being, what's occurred in your business, how does that past history dictate, you know, what you might do today and then into tomorrow? And then lastly, I would say you're never done, right? It's, it is a journey. It's not a destination. Shrink is an animal, you know, it's uh and you can't declare a victory on it you gotta you gotta stay

hungry you know i used to say maintain a healthy paranoia about managing in that in that world uh just uh mike first of all great pleasure to be on with you it's such an honor i mean you have such an illustrious career but any memories stand out to you in terms of the you have such an amazing career any favorite memories you can recall oh yeah for sure uh it was a bit of a humorous story at least uh i felt so and so did my team i was into my i guess maybe second or third year as the vp over at walmart and we had had some challenges on shrink, and we'd set a rather aggressive budget ahead of the fiscal year. And, you know, at Walmart, there's a lot of resources and tools, and we took advantage of a broadcast that we did on a monthly basis at the time to

really get the message out to the thousands of AP personnel that sat across all the stores. And Joe Schroeder, who at the time was a senior director on the team, made a comment. Mike, I hear that if we achieve our shrink budget, you're going to shave your head. Well, we've never talked about that at all. We never talked about that at all, Tony. But here we are. And we shot these things live. They weren't taped. So, you know, I said, sure, I here we are. And we shot these things live. They weren't taped. So, you know, I said, sure, I'll do it. Now, secretly, I will tell you that we hadn't made budget in a lot of years. And I was a 50-50 chance, I think, of getting the old head shaved. But we had a remarkable year,

one of the best years in shrink management, I think, that Walmart had experienced in many, many years. So, sure enough, come the national meeting at the end of the fiscal year on stage in front of the 600 people that attended our asset protection meeting, they had a lady come in and shave my head. Now, to be honest, it wasn't a complete bald shave. I didn't look like Tully Savalas for those of us my age that remember him, but I had a lot less hair coming off the stage than I did getting on it. And it was just such a remarkable thing for me and a sense of accomplishment for the entire team. And it was my belief, just based on the noise of the crowd, they got a lot out of it as much as I did. And I think what it speaks to, Tony, is that you can have a little fun while you're working, right? You know, we're not we're not curing cancer.

The safety aspects of retail are very critical. But managing shrink should not be so laborious that you can't you can't laugh on company time. And I have the CD of that somewhere stowed away with this with this head shaving. But it was it just sticks in my mind because I was so proud of that. The AP team actually won a CEO award based on how much profit we had put back to the bottom line for Walmart that year. That's amazing.

Reed, I'll let you ask the next question. Go ahead and I'll pop in. No, thanks. And that's amazing. And of course, not surprising knowing Joe Schroeder, by the way, but that's a great story. And I like that, like you said, it brings to the fore everything, right? It's teamwork. It's you got to have fun. You know, you've got to pull together. And the fact that the top tier, the C-suites actually realize and appreciate, you know, what's going on. But you also teased out something else, right, Mike, during your story. And you talked about, you know, we're not curing some horrific disease, perhaps, but we are dealing with life safety and fear of crime

and things like that. So maybe touch on that. I know that's a passion of yours everywhere you've been. I know that's been a huge priority, if not the priority, wherever you've been. of yours everywhere you've been. I know that's been a huge priority, if not the priority, wherever you've been. Talk a little bit about that and maybe how you changed a place that you went to keeping that in mind. Yeah, you know, that's always been a top of mind and top priority initiative for me and the teams that I've had the good pleasure of being on and leading. And I think now, Reed and Tony, more than ever, particularly over the last, say, three years, three and a half years, post-COVID era, it seems as though the element of violence associated with theft has just reached an epidemic proportion. I saw that at Kroger firsthand.

This sense of entitlement, you know, it's mine, I'm going to take it, and you can't do anything about it attitude. And we've all seen the videos, the very disturbing videos of just filling up garbage bags of product while a security guard stands over this red actor and they just leave without fear of any repercussion. And then, you know, just violence. When you do attempt to make, in many cases, an apprehension or even interact, you know, you're either threatened with a deadly weapon or there is the use of a deadly weapon. And we've seen across too many retailers, tragic stories of how that can end up. So for me, that that remains one of my passions. And I think at the end of the day, it really it really there's an ancillary benefit.

It is not the priority benefit. But the more that we can do to curtail the violence associated with theft, But the more that we can do to curtail the violence associated with theft, the more obviously we're doing to reduce shrinkage. Because all of those, as you well know, create a loss for the organization. And there's many technologies that we introduced over the years, a couple in particular during my time at Kroger, where we knew there would be a shrink benefit. However, the more important benefit was we felt like it strengthened our threat management program to make Kroger as safe as it could possibly be for our customers and our associates. And that is to credit Kroger, their top priority. They truly walk the walk, talk the talk, and walk the walk on. We care about people, people being our associates, people being our customers. So we introduced quite a bit of technology along those lines that I felt really helped strengthen our efforts to mitigate against that violence and certainly the risks that come along with it.

That's an amazing, I agree with you in terms of some of the changes in the industry, but how do you think that's impacting the function of asset protection, where it's at today and where is it going? I sense just from CEOs and CFOs talking about it, that it's getting elevated, but how do you see the function itself evolving? Well, you know, I think we see it, you know, Reid and I had, I think we see it every day, Tony. It's a great question. When we were at the big show, the NRF show in January, and you look at all the massive demonstrations of the latest and greatest in technology and product and AI, so much of that resonated or connected to safety and security in any environment,

retail or otherwise. I think from a C-suite perspective, it is the one thing that has reached a priority level for the C-suites. This is a public fact, so I'm not sharing anything that's not readily available to the public. But before I retired the first time from Kroger, I was there for roughly four years. I'm rounding. It was probably three years, eight months, or nine months. But during that time, tragically, there were two active assailant events, and that's too, too many to be clear. But neither were mass shootings.

One was just a random attack. Again, senseless and, you know, just horrific events. But I retired from Kroger in November of 2020 and I returned, I think, in April or May in 2022. And there were five that occurred over that time frame. And I think two of those were mass casualties. So it just underscores the safety liability that we see today. And you think of grocery in particular, it has been a target. I know Walmart's a mass merchandising business, but they've had, tragically, events. Topps has had events. Albertsons has had events. Kroger has had events.

I mean, sadly, there's very few retailers that haven't experienced an active assailant event, or there is certainly the threat of that. So if you think about the profit line, managing shrink is important. the profit line, managing shrink is important. Obviously, it helps from a profitability point of view, leverages gross margin, but really what's more critical than the life safety of associates and customers? So I think we're seeing that shift. And I think asset protection departments are being asked more and more to be on the bleeding edge, certainly, if not the bleeding leading edge of looking at any technology, AI or otherwise, that will help us provide a safer work environment in the retail sector. And you can take a lot of those habits and you can take them home with you. So whether you're at the movie theater, whether you're at any large gathering, some of those takeaways stay with you. We were very proud. I think you asked, you know, what were some of the things that took place at Kroger through the leadership of Frank Patter City?

Even prior to Frank joining Kroger, we had stood up and avoid, deny, defend the program with a video, a three-minute, five-minute video that every associate in Kroger was required to watch. There was a requirement for management to also look at the video, but there was also training around the aspects and elements of avoid, deny, defend. Very proud of the fact that the company across every senior leader drove the importance of that. And our compliance with a population of in excess of 400,000 associates was anywhere from 98 to 99% compliance. And then when Frank Patterson came in, who's an expert in this space, we retooled the video and that compliance remained at an extraordinarily high level. So, you know, you can get over a bad shrink number. I used to say this all the time to my team. You can recover from a bad shrink. You can recover from a miscellaneous plan, but when you talk about loss of life, that's a totally separate discussion. So, there's more that needs to be done. Certainly,

there is more being done, and I'm very passionate about being a part of that, and in particular, in the support of the Loss Prevention Research Council, Innovate, because sadly, theft and violence, they kind of go arm in arm. Excellent. And you just can't put too much of a priority on it. And as you said, Mike, you know, at LPRC, we're trying to take that very seriously. I know a decade, over a decade ago, we stood up, the Violent Crime Working group added that to what we call product protection and supply chain protection that were there for the inventory primarily. And I think I remember there was some reluctance on some part. Some of the corporate attorneys, well, I don't know if we should emphasize this. I don't know that we have a problem or we may not even be responsible.

The LPAP folks were like, this is a good idea. We need to do it. So we continue. In fact, we had over 100 people in Albuquerque last week for the violent crime summit. You know, the latest iteration of the working group itself has its own physical gathering. And it was amazing. I wasn't able to get there because I had another task. there because I had another task, but, you know, there was the New Mexico state law enforcement, all the special agents and leaders. There was, you know, the district attorney and key prosecutors. There was, of course, the county sheriff's office for that county and others around Albuquerque, and then Albuquerque PD, APD, their entire ORC and other teams were there. And then on top of that, we had key solution partners like Axon, you mentioned those guys, LVT and many others working on that. But we had, I think it was 40

something retail chains represented and they took it seriously. And we're thinking, look, there's all these events you can go to, so many wonderful ways to get together in our industry, but that that many people on top of having over 200 people in New York City at kickoff. And I think it was almost 200 at our integrate program, which is really just supposed to be a small, intimate event. So in each case, by the way, violence and aggression were featured in that. So I was going to go to you, Mike, and just take a quick step back. You know, you've been involved with LPRC since the get-go, right? And we were found in that 2000 time frame, and the Home Depot was one of the key groups. You know, Ed Wolfe, Chad McIntosh, and Mike Lamb

were there. But one of my fond memories is through time, you as a board of advisors member, BOA member here at the LPRC, you volunteered incredibly to be the sort of the recruiting chair, if you will. And your first target in your successful landing was Mr. Claude Verville of Lowe's, and he was your keen competitor at the Home Depot. I won't mention I could go through either corporate office and on the screensaver, you might see the other guy's race car not doing so well, maybe even in midair. But anyway, can you talk just a minute about why LPRC, Mike? What attracted you to what we're trying to get done and why do you want to keep going? Well, you know, first of all, it was just the quality and the work product that LPRC produced. And, you know, you can be passionate about something as an individual, as a practitioner such as myself, but you might be passionately wrong. You might be passionately right. But when you apply science and you look at academia and you leverage the resources, Reed, that have sat on the Loss Prevention Research

Council for the many, many years and the extraordinary way in which it's grown today, but even back then, you know, even, you know, you think about the art of selling. I would tell you this. They're really successful asset protection leaders, those men and women. They can market and they can sell. And I would leverage the Loss Prevention Research Council to, one, validate my thinking or my team's thinking that there was an initiative, a technology, or a strategy that would work. But then oftentimes it might require funding. It would certainly require commitment above and beyond just asset protection. Any time that I could walk into the C-suite or to my immediate supervisor, and it was sort of the notion of, well, if you don't believe me, look at this. And it was sort of the notion of, well, if you don't believe me, look at this.

I think about the time, Reed, that you helped me do a study on the efficacy of guards, right? Are they worth it? Because, you know, companies spend a lot of money. And you and your team did an outstanding body of work where you literally had the offender interventions or interviews. literally had the offender interventions or interviews. You came back with the analyses that said, yeah, they work, but they work better, arguably, under these conditions with this equipment and so forth. And so time and time again, we leverage academia, the research scientists that look at it in a very unbiased way to say, we believe this notion of see it, get it, fear it, that you're advocating or that you've worked with the LPRC to propose to your business is going to be effective. And it really helped me as you go to capital committee meetings,

you get in line with all of your other peers, marketing, finance, merchandising, HR that has their initiatives, and not everybody walks away with money. And the power and the effectiveness of saying, we have taken this beyond the boundaries of just our own company, and we've used and leveraged the credibility of the LPRC, oftentimes was the difference between capturing, seizing those dollars that you needed to invest, or perhaps not. So I remember on several occasions when I was at Walmart, Greg Forn was the CEO, and he was the head of the capital committee. So you literally went in front of the CEO when you requested dollars.

And many, many times we walked out with capital funding on projects and the merchandising teams would walk out without it and they'd look at me and say, what are you doing? Tell me how you're accomplishing this. And a lot of that was the reinforcement with the critical data, the data analysis, the scientific survey, the offender interviews that the Loss Prevention Research Council engages in. So I've been a longtime fan. It's like the men's hair club, right? I've been a longtime fan. Now I'm a member. And so there's, I have nothing but complimentary remarks about how the LPRC has contributed to our industry over the years, and even more so today.

Mike, that's great input. You really have had an exceptional career across multiple industry sectors, which is A, unusual, and B, you've done a good job in all of them, but DIY, discount, grocery. Do you see any differences between those sectors in terms of loss prevention and asset protection? Any commonalities? What do you see? I mean, how do you jump from one to the other? It's interesting to me how you did that. Yeah, I would say, Tony, well, first of all, great question and thank you for it. I would I would say there's more similarities and dissimilarities. I would say there's more similarities than dissimilarities. One of the similarities I saw, for example, between Walmart, Kroger, and the Home Depot was its culture. Steep culture, long history, long tenure of associates, mid-level management, upper management.

They all sort of had, by and large, the same principles. Be fast, right, for the customer, be friendly, and be in stock. And it didn't matter if it was a carton of cereal on the shelf or it was a cordless power saw, you know, have a knowledgeable associate, have the product in stock, and be capable of getting the customer in and out. So those were a lot of the similarities. I've worked in a retail accounting environment where, you know, retail or where shrink is measured on retail accounting where you have, you know, the markup markdown process, which either inflates or deflates your inventory valuation. I've worked in cost accounting like in Kroger. But one of the mantras I've always held to, Tony, and I didn't make up this line, but I so believe in it,

and it's seek to understand before you seek to be understood. So in each one of these companies that I went in, I relied on really quality people in the organization to help me understand the ins and outs and to help me understand how I would put together a strategy that I felt would be effective in the business. But, you know, managing shrink is largely very similar. You got to be able to sell. You can't walk away on the first no to an idea or an initiative. You have to be aggressive. Right. Can be a wallflower. You have to insert yourself. Trust me, they're not going to invite you to the dance. You go to the dance and you surround yourself with people smarter than you are. And, you know, that's not hard for me to do, Tony. and you know that's not hard for me to do tony but and i would tell you this you know there's some leaders that go into organizations at any level right ceo or all the way down to the vp of

an asset protection team and they just summarily eradicate the team and they bring in their own people i don't i've never done that right i. I'm going to, again, seek to understand before I seek to be understood. I'm going to evaluate the team, the quality of the team. Everybody leaves a little differently. But the one thing that I look for that's a must is you must have a burning desire to win. You don't have a burning desire to win and you're not willing to dedicate yourself to winning. to win and you're not willing to dedicate yourself to winning, then you probably aren't going to have a, not to be crass, but you're not going to have a long career under my leadership. You know, this is, you know, what's the old cliche? You're in it to win it. And I've met wonderfully talented people that today are vice presidents on their own.

Andy Stefanik, vice president over floor and decor who worked on my own. Andy Stefanik, Vice President over Floor & Decor, who worked on my team. Kristen Keith, now the VP of Asset Protection for Walmart US. Joe Schroeder, who now runs all of operations for Canada. And there's others in the moment. Paul Jekyll worked with me at Walmart. He's now the VP, of course, as everyone knows, over at Meijer. So very proud of the fact I learned a lot from all those people. And the other thing I would say finally is you never stop learning. I don't care how old you are or how many years you've been at it. It changes so much.

You never get it all figured out. You've always got to work on it. You know, Mike, I had another one I kind of covered, and thanks for that. I'm scribbling down some of the sayings because I know that's part of your reputation in a good way. But what I want to do now is we talked, okay, YLP, YLPRC. I think now we're here to talk about innovate for a minute and why LPRC innovate the program and I mean I think about the way we came up with it was going back 20 years ago with LPRC the byword was innovate collaborate evaluate of course, it was around the scientific piece, can we more rigorously evaluate options and impact, right, for the ROI, thanks for you all, so what, but I think the

innovate part wasn't neglected, but it wasn't formalized in any way, and again, Centromatic saying, look, we're going to get you guys set up here, you're, you know, you walk, you're working out of a, you know, out of a mannequin closet at the Sears store in Gainesville, look, we're going to get you guys set up here. You're working out of a mannequin closet at the Sears store in Gainesville, Florida, and listen to Christmas music 12 months out of the year. Let's see if we can change that dynamic. I bet you'll be more productive and we can start going. So that was kind of the genesis of everything. But innovate. So here we are. We're trying to move forward. I mentioned 36 retailers and 17 solution partners working together month in and month out in labs, in the fields,

in the field, and so on at different initiatives. You know, what's your vision now as you come in? We're going to spend some quality time with you, you know, starting May 1, which is only a few days away, to kind of really help you feel comfortable. But just off the top of your head, coming out of the field, coming out of the corporate office, coming off the road from events, what do you see? What are some of the things you'd like to prioritize? Well, to me, this notion, Reid, of an interconnected ecosystem, read of an interconnected ecosystem, or if you think about all the solution providers that are out there every day, and Tony leads one of the most significant ones in our industry, how do we take the individual value of these technologies and how do we weave and knit

them together in such a way that it becomes a force multiplier. I'm fascinated by that notion. We were working on it when I retired from Kroger. I think Kroger is still working on it. We dubbed it the ecosystem. I think Mark Stinde may have initially used that term, either he or I, which is less important than the fact that, you know, how do you take these disparate solutions? Again, they're valuable, but how do you take disparate solutions and you integrate them in such a way that it makes it easier for our retail partners to operate day to day? You know, accelerate their capacity to investigate, accelerate their capacity to provide a safer store and never losing sight of the fact that people will always be at the epicenter of that. But there are so many retail solutions that are out there today across the many, many solution providers.

I thought I heard you say in your total LPRC, there's 128 or so. How do we bring them along with us? Because there is a whiffing for them. If you think about what's in it for me, I think if you look at a lot of these solutions and the retailers that are leveraging these solutions, when you say, look, I'm going to add three things or five things that will only serve to increase the value of your solution, then your solution as a solution provider becomes much more marketable. So I'm intrigued by that. I'm fascinated by that. And then I'm fascinated to learn where the journey has taken the Innovate group thus far, right? So I know that you and I have not yet sat down to have a more detailed dialogue about where you've been, where you are, and where you want to go, but I'm terribly excited about being a part of where you want to go. And just like I said,

with anything that's new, I will seek to understand before I seek to be understood. I will seek to understand before I seek to be understood. But I think more and more today, this term ecosystem is used everywhere I go, Reed. I mean, even in Miami ecosystem, you go to NRF ecosystem, you go to Rela ecosystem, you go to FMI ecosystem, you go to NRF ecosystem. bringing it truly to life because it's I think obviously in its genesis stage I think has a means to really be a game changer for retailing. I totally agree with what you just said Mike I agree with you it's a total game changer in terms of what it does in the industry and putting together an ecosystem and I'm actually passionate about that in my new role in terms of helping that out. So I'm looking forward to the next steps of that. But I got a little side question for you.

Like you, I don't think I'll ever retire. I'm enjoying life too much in this continuous learning journey, but you're working on a next phase. So what does that next phase look like for you? phase. So what does that next phase look like for you? Well, you know, I jokingly say, if you've been in the industry for as long as I have, when you walk away stone cold, it's like you're driving your car at 65 miles an hour and you come to an abrupt halt, probably going to throw you through the windshield. So even if you do have a seatbelt on. So I want to I want to enjoy retirement, Tony. I don't want what I'm doing now to consume my every day, but it's impossible for me to let go of it entirely. I just have too much of a passion for it. I mean, my wife would tell you I'm a bit of a restless dude. You know, I got to I got to be involved in doing something.

dude, you know, I got to be involved in doing something. And there's nothing that I'm more passionate about in this industry. And all the great things it's provided to me and my family for me just to say, well, I'm done, I'm retired, I'm just going to fish off my boat or go for my daily walks. I might intend to do that, but not as often as perhaps I would otherwise, because I want to stay engaged in what I'm doing. You know, I do have a little consulting business, but I don't market it. Right. I don't go out and say, hey, here I am. Please hire me. But I'm supporting a number of of entities, if you will, since I have retired and I'm enjoying every minute of it. You know, sometimes the laborious corporate life and the corporate grind.

You know, these meetings that are scheduled for an hour seem like they're a day and a half. Every time I get on calls like this or I'm talking to a solution provider or whoever I'm helping in whatever way I can, it seems like the hours go by like minutes. And I think that more than anything is a testament that I just really enjoy doing this. And I'm going to keep doing it until I decide I'm not. And I don't know when that's going to be. Much like yourself, that may not be any time in the near term. That's certainly for sure. Well, I'm going to put some words in my mouth because we talk a lot about that. That's going to be one word, grandbaby. That's going to be taking up some time and becoming another incredible passion. Well, you know, you hit the nail on the head. And maybe we should have opened with that comment, Reed,

because to me nothing is more important than my family. It certainly sets above my career. Listen, I love my career. I love what I've done. And I am so fortunate because of it. But family to me is tip of spear. That is the priority. And my son, who I'm extraordinarily proud of, Zachary Lamb, and my lovely daughter-in-law, Mary Kate Lamb, are due in August, August the 19th, with a grandbaby girl. So my wife's already, I think she's got a lot of these shops working third shift just as she's buying outfits for this

young lady that's soon to be. So, and I know Reed, I've kind of lived vicariously this grandfather role through you with Lily and the pictures of the girls. And so, yeah, I might slow down a little bit on the career stuff during that initial phase. We actually, my son works in New York and we were up there recently and we're going to probably get an apartment to go up to visit a good bit. So, yeah, we're going to spoil that grandbaby for sure. Yeah, I got to do this if you're frustrated. yeah, we're going to spoil that grandbaby for sure. Yeah. I got to do this. If you're frustrated, just all of a sudden here comes another video of the little things being silly and yeah, puts everything in perspective. And, you know,

you think about what keeps you up at night, what gets you up in the morning and what gets me up in the morning anyways. All right. We got to create some safer places and hold the line here with all these young people coming up. We don't want to leave them something that's uh more distressing than what we've got right now uh and certainly than what we had so i just want to thank you mike for your time obviously your career and service and the the impact and the impacts that you've

made throughout the years and just style but mostly substance and um and Tony, I want to thank you for your questions and Diego for what he puts up with to try and edit out me and others' ums and so on and tighten things up. But I want to thank everybody out there for your listening. We need to know what you need more of, less of, or what we can do better, lpresearch.org. But if you're not a member of the LPRC and you're a retailer, you're law enforcement, you're certainly a solution partner that can make a difference, you know, reach out to us and let's go. We got to do things together. You heard Mike talk about an ecosystem, and I'm not aware of any retailer in the world, certainly not an AP or LP department, that can create that ecosystem without the technologies of solution partners.

And with groups, I think, hopefully like LPRC, they're helping work on the protocols as well. It's not enough to have the thing. It's really a system, and it's going to fit into an ecosystem, and we've got to figure out how to do all that and sustain all that. So thanks to everybody out there. Stay safe and stay in touch. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for

informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.