Noob School - Episode 93: Sales Knows No Bounds with Sam Outten

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

New School. All right, well, welcome back to Noob School. I've got a special guest today. I know I always say, you know, I've got an old friend here today, but today I really mean it. This has to be my oldest friend. It's ever been on the podcast, Sam Alton. Sam and I have been friends since we were 12 years old, I believe. And that's, it would have been earlier than that, but I didn't live here until I was 12,

but we immediately met and became buddies at 12 and have been friends. friends ever since. Yes, we have. That's pretty cool. Yes, we have started playing basketball together shortly after that. Yeah, basketball. And eventually you got me into golf, which was really fun. Sam was a, is a great golfer, but was an outstanding high school golfer.

I remember that. And football player. Well, John, we had a very good record as a team in golf. Yeah, yeah, he did. Well, Sam, you know, sometimes we bring people on that aren't that don't call themselves salespeople, right? They call themselves something else. But we like to point out that everybody's in sales. Sam and I actually had that conversation.

He says 30 years ago about everyone's in sales, and he's going to attest to that today. But Sam is a litigator. He takes cases to court. He'll explain more about that, but he's a high-level litigator. done some monster cases, very good at it. And he's going to talk about how sales comes into play, not really out there, not putting himself on a billboard or something, but really more, how do you sell a judge, how do you sell a jury?

You know, what do you do to take care of your clients other than just the legal work? So hopefully they'll come back to you and refer you. So we're going to talk about some of that kind of stuff. And we're going to start with kind of, I know, Sam, I know very well where we went in high school because we were there together, but after our high school, you went to Davidson and you majored in, is it history? I did. I majored in history. Wow. Wow. So when you major in history, that's obviously a lot of reading. Was there any specific like time of history that's more interesting to you than others?

Well, I probably took more European history courses when I was at Davidson than any other time, but that was probably because my advisor taught those classes. It was also because the professor at Davidson who taught American history was a tough grader and I wanted to get in law school. So I only took one or two courses from him because I needed to try to keep my grades up if I could well one of the things I remember about your experience at Davidson

because I came to see you a few times is we all definitely had fun there but the group the fraternity or the dining club whatever what did y'all call it there eating club or something there was a fraternity s a fraternity he joined at Davidson they were real serious

about making sure they had their futures planned and making sure they made good grades and they stayed out of trouble And as long as you did all those things, you were in good standing and yeah, we'd go have some fun. But it wasn't backwards like it is at so many schools where you just have the fun and you give up on these other things. Well, I'll say it this way. I thought it was a lot easier to go to the library and study when all your friends were doing the same thing. Right.

When generally in my fraternity, there were 25 guys in my fraternity. and out of 25, 13 went straight to law school or med school. And so it was, again, much easier to go to the library and study every night than it would have been if everyone was going out. And you were, you know, one of the few going to the library. So they were a good influence on me. I probably could have been influenced easily the other way. But that good influence was very helpful to me.

Well, again, I mean, it was a decision you made. You obviously were attracted to Davidson for a reason. You could look at the graduates from Davidson and see that they were mostly splintering off and doing interesting things, like good professions. I would have been like you if I'd have gone to Davidson. I think I would have fallen right in line there if I'd have gone to, you know, Florida State. Right. Right.

And I, one reason I went to Davidson. is I knew I wanted to go to law school. Yeah. And so I wanted to learn how to study. Right. And frankly, I don't think my study habits before Davidson were very good. And so that was a reason why I wanted to go there. And you did have to learn how to study at Davidson, the reading that you had to do each night

to keep up in history and political science. were significant. And so that required several hours of studying every day. And so I got, as you would expect, I got a little bit better at it as time went on. It was a shock at first, but I learned to do it, I learned to be able to study for three or four hours at a time without, too much trouble. And I don't think I was able to do that when I started. No, me either. Interesting. Well, I think it was a good choice. But I always, the takeaway for me for the Noob School is pretty simple. We've talked about it before. But, you know, that old rule about you become the average of the five people that you hang out with. You know, if you hang out with these great winners, you kind of move in that direction. Losers, you kind of move in that direction. So by going to a Davidson, you know, you really were moving in a good direction and certainly could have gone the other way.

Right. The vast majority of my fraternity brothers were a lot better, a lot smarter and better students than I want. Yeah. All right, so you had a good situation there and you graduated and you went to South Carolina Law School. I did. And what was that transition like? Well, going to a big university is a lot different from attending a small college, but I enjoyed it. You know, I've been very familiar with Columbia growing up in Greenville, so I didn't think the transition was too difficult. The time you had to devote to studying for your classes was really not that much different. from Davidson, and so that wasn't too much of a transition. The truth of the matter, John, is they try to scare you those first couple of months of law school,

and that was difficult for almost all law students. But, you know, after that first semester is over, you settled in, and it, you know, it wasn't too different again from what I had to do at Davidson. And then you finished law school, and what was your first job? My first job was with the Leatherwood Walker, Todd, and man. The managing partner was David Quattelbaum, the father of our friend, David Quattelbaum, who was a great man and a great leader and a great person to start working for. and also in that firm was Jim Watson, one of the best trial lawyers ever in the state of South Carolina, and John Johnston.

And Leatherwood was full of good lawyers, and I feel very fortunate to, I practiced there for 18 years, and it was a great experience. And so many good lawyers and good clients there, I really enjoyed it. very fortunate to have started my career there. Are they still independent or have they been bought by somebody? No, they've been bought a couple of times. Now it's Fox Rothschild, which is a national firm. And so a lot of the lawyers who were at Leatherwood formed the Fox Rothschild office here, which again is a fine national firm.

And that's sort of the way the market has gone. That happens all the time now with firms. Well, have you noticed at this point in your career, has any selling come into play where you've had to like sell to get the job during the interview or anything popped up yet? Well, you talked about selling to judges and selling to juries. And the truth of the matter is I had a motions hearing on Monday and I was trying to convince the judge that. this particular statute required him to dismiss the case. And is that selling? Yes, in part it is.

Because you need to go about it the right way. You know, when you start the inclination of the judge is going to be to deny your motion. You know that it's an uphill battle to get him to grant the motion because it seems kind of harsh to throw a plaintiff out of court when the case is just beginning. So yes, and a lot of the planning for a hearing like that is trying to present the case in a way that the judge will consider your argument and may grant it. So is that selling? Yes, I think it is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what kind of cases would a young lawyer start off with?

Leatherwood when you started? What kind of were your first cases? Well, the market has changed a lot, John, but when I started, we had a big insurance defense practice. And almost all of my cases were car wrecks or slip and falls at grocery stores. And those were the two kind of cases that I handled for a long time. And they weren't very complicated, but I'm very grateful to have had them because it gave me lots of trial experience. And that's not the way it is now. Now it's rare for a case to be tried to a jury, but it did not used to be. And back then, I might try 10 or 15 cases in a year. Now if I try one, that's about the average now.

So that's how I started. It gave me a lot of interaction with judges, a lot of time before juries, and it was very, very valuable. There's really not all that much difference in a really big case where there are millions of dollars at stake in a small automobile accident where the plaintiff wants $15,000. There are more similarities than differences in those two cases. And so I was really glad to have had the opportunity up until I was about 35 or so to have a big volume of cases, many of which went to trial. And it helps. You talk about selling now when companies have a big case,

and they're trying to decide which. firm, which lawyer to hire, an obvious question is, well, how much trial experience do you have? How many cases have you tried to a jury verdict? Yeah. And so I didn't realize that at the time that I was trying all those small cases, but, you know, the answer is well over 100. Yeah. And that's rare.

Now lawyers coming up because the civil system has changed. so much. Young lawyers just don't have the chance to try those cases like lawyers my age did regularly. So there people are just settling things now. Right. Okay. Right. They're settling things and it used to be that Allstate and State Farm were fine with given a 26-year-old lawyer a big stack of files to handle. And they were fine with young lawyers going over there and picking juries and trying cases. And now they insist that older lawyers do it. And like you just mentioned, they're much more likely to settle cases than they used to.

And so, again, there are something like 20 cases a year tried in Greenville County, 25. And I haven't looked at the statistics, John, but if we look back at 1990 or 1995, I bet the number would be 100. So it's really decreased dramatically, and it's decreased the amount of trial experience that lawyers coming up can get. And it's too bad, in my opinion. Yeah, and so just to make sure I understand and the audience understands, your clients would be car insurance companies or Ingalls or, you know, could be a big manufacturing company that gets sued for something. And then typically are you representing, like, the insurance company of those people? Well, your client is the insured, like the person who is sued in the automobile accident is your client. Okay.

But you were hired by the insurance company, and you're paid by the insurance company. Okay. Now, my grocery store client was Bilo, and I loved representing Bilo. Back then, their risk management department was a lot of fun to work for, and it's interesting. I tried a lot of those slip-and-fall cases and had a lot of success. And I'm not sure that the success was a result of how good a job I did, because one time I heard a juror say after the case was over and the jury had been dismissed that I'm not going to award that. enough any money, the price of my groceries might go up. Yeah.

Right. So they said that and I thought, hmm, maybe that's why we're having success with these slip and fall cases. But I tried a lot of cases for Bailo, for Allstate, for state farm through those years and really enjoyed it. And so as you transition after 18 years, you went to Womble. I did. I went to Womble Carlisle.

And by this time, are you working bigger deals? At that time, I had almost completely transitioned to commercial litigation. And I also did some legal malpractice work. And it's interesting. I had not done any legal malpractice work. And a company who regularly used our friend Tom Wamsley in a company. Atlanta said, we really need somebody new in South Carolina to help us with these cases. And so Tom Wansley kindly recommended that they call me, and that's how I got my start in

legal malpractice defense. That professional liability carrier called me, and I started working for them, and I still do some legal malpractice defense work, but it started way back in 94 or so. when Tom Wonsley recommended that they call me. That's great. That's great. Now Womsey didn't go to Davidson, but he knew Burton. That's kind of how we knew him, right? Wamsley grew up on Hilton Head, and I knew him then.

He went to Vanderbilt undergrad. And then when I was at South Carolina Law School, I saw him, and I hadn't seen him in a long time. He was a year behind me, and we sort of reunited in law school. Yes. He's a good one. Well, that's one thing, you know, just as a side note, we talk about with the Noob School a lot, is to, you know, to build your professional network over time. And Wamsley, you know, you can't take too much credit for him because he was a childhood friend, right?

And I've got those two. But in terms of, like, if you were to meet, like, one new person a week, and you started when you were 20 years old, in your profession, you know, or people who, that's 500 people every 10 years. So 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 people, in addition to the Wamsley's of the world that we already know, it's amazing. You get those kind of referrals. Well, it is, John. And young lawyers at my firm often ask about, you know, I'm young now, but as I get older,

I will be expected to bring in work for the firm, which is true. And I tell them exactly what you just said, and that is stay in touch with your friends in high school regularly. Stay in touch with your friends from college and your friends in law school. And as you say, build your referral network. And I think it's a matter of just contacting them, you know, once or you're a way. quarter, you know, I don't have any particular insight about the frequency, but staying in touch with all those people, and your referral network only grows. And you never know when you're going to go to an event and meet someone and, you know, get

their information, stay in touch with them, and they may have a legal matter that they need help with or their next door neighbor, or you just never know. But it is, I think, a critical part for lawyers to continuously build that network. I have a good friend that you met. Do you remember Matt Taylor? His older brother is a seal. And we played golf with him at Riverside. Do you remember him?

Kind of. And I mentioned Matt only because he has a tremendous book. of business and it's because he went to Georgetown Law School, stayed in touch with lots of the folks at Georgetown Law School, and two or three or four of them became in-house counsel for these big companies. And because Matt had stayed in touch with him, good friends, you know, they send the business to him. And it's really not all that complicated, but that's what, if you ask Matt, that's what he

would say that he just stayed in touch with these lawyers that he went to law school with. And just fortunately, they were in a position to really help him. Yeah. And Sam put it so well, it doesn't have to be that complicated. It could literally be an email a few times a year. Sure. Hopefully it's more. But I mean, just how's it going, checking in, what's going on, what's new, how can I help?

Anything. Merry Christmas, you know, it could be anything, just as long as they don't forget you. So when something comes up, they're like, Sam, he's in South Carolina. do that for us? Right. And just think how much you see on LinkedIn, for example. And you see someone that you know just got an award or just took a new position or whatever. Just send them a quick text or email that says, you know, I saw this, that you took

this new position, congratulations, all the best or whatever. Those simple things, it doesn't need to be complicated, but you want to be on their mind if if they have a need for a lawyer or a firm in South Carolina. Right. And people might push back and say, well, it's all about the work. Well, I think the work, I know you do great work, but there's other people who do great work, right? I mean, there's more than one good litigator, great litigator in town.

The ones that are going to have the better careers are the ones who are going to do some networking and on-purpose selling work. Absolutely, John. Look, there are a lot of really great lawyers out there in Greenville, in South Carolina, generally. And so competition for good work is stiff. And so, yeah, the staying in touch and keeping your name in front of potential referral sources is very important. Because like you said, there are a whole lot of good lawyers out there. Yeah. I think you're the best one, but there's others that are in the good category, I would say. So do you have like, when you're at Womble, do you have any, like, monster case you can tell us about? What can you talk about?

The case that I worked on at Womble that I remember the most is Synthi's three. spine company made spinal implants and they had several salesmen leave. Some in Philadelphia where they were based. Some in Atlanta and some in Charleston. I was hired to defend the case that Synthes brought trying to enforce their non-compete against the salesman in Charleston. And what happened was those cases all were consolidated in one case in Philadelphia. And we were scheduled to go to trial.

We reached an agreement with the other side on Sunday night at 10 o'clock. We had our settlement agreement incorporated into an order of the court. A few months later, sent these lawyers filed a motion asking that we be sanctioned for violating that agreement. And the new company was Globus Medical Products, which is now a publicly traded company and doing very well. And we tried. that case before Judge LaGrome Davis in Philadelphia, plaintiffs, Cynthia's represented by Blank Rome, and we were fortunate enough to have a very good outcome. But it was fun being in Philadelphia and federal court with all these great lawyers, and

I really liked the folks that I was working for. And so that's probably my most memorable case working for Womble. It was fun seeing the new company start to grow. And what they had to do, John, was get past this litigation in order to get out and sell their product. And so that trial was sort of the last obstacle that we had to get past or that they had to get past to get their new company going. And as I said, I haven't checked, but I think they're doing very, very well. Cool. That's cool. It must have been fun being up in Philly for that. Probably trials might

work a little different up there, I would think. Well, they do. I, I, I was fortunate that Judge Davis grew up in Alabama. So I told him, I said, well, I'm from South Carolina, Judge. And so if you can't understand what I'm saying because of my accent, let me know. And he said, oh, no problem, Mr. Alton, I'm from Alabama. So we had a good start, John. We had a good start. And I enjoyed being in his courtroom.

The lawyers I worked with in Philadelphia are still friends of mine. and I still am in touch with them. Frank Emmerich, Jack Guernsey, these lawyers, who were co-counsel with me, and we had a lot of fun with that case. That's great. Well, so you had a good run at Womble, which is your second firm,

and then you went to Nelson Mullins. I did. And you've been there how long now? Ten years. Ten years. Wow. Wow. Tell us.

about what's going on there and, you know, any sales stories or things you've noticed in the last 10 years? Well, John, I started there because I had so many friends there that I wanted to practice with. Marvin Quattelbaum, who's now a Fourth Circuit judge. Yeah. Tim Madden, who's now a family court judge. Lane Davis.

I just, I liked the firm and I liked that office. When I joined Nelson Mullins, I think we had 450 lawyers maybe. The firm has grown tremendously. We now have 1,000 lawyers, over 30 offices, and it has been really exciting to be part of a firm that is growing like that. The opportunities that we have grow every day. And I really attribute that to the great leadership that our firm has.

You know, John, you don't go from 450 lawyers to 1,000 in that short a time without some very effective leadership, which we have. And I don't know what the next step and the development of Nelson Moe will be, but I really enjoyed being there. Really not a week goes by somebody calling me from Chicago or from Dallas or from Miami to say, listen, I've got something in South Carolina that I want you to look at. And so it really has been a very exciting time to be at Nelson Mullins. And I think the firm will continue to grow like it has.

Yeah. Well, I think it's a great firm, too. I've done a lot of work with them, as you know, and with you. Let's talk about, before we get into that subject, what would you tell a young, like a new lawyer? I know you mentor a lot of the new lawyers that come into the firm. If they ask you about how to build a book of business, you know, what do we do we actually do any selling in in law what what would you tell that the young lawyer

well I've actually done this I've been asked this question so I've had to answer and John I would go back to what we talked about earlier about building your referral network you know you need to it's so easy now to collect information yeah and so I would say go back and have a a group that you are constantly staying in touch with and build your referral network and constantly be aware of opportunities. And we talked about this a little bit. If you go to a bar event and you meet lawyers that you haven't ever met before and they practice in a different area, they could certainly be a referral source.

So the first thing I would tell them is to be. build your referral network. The next thing I would tell them is that the quality of your work is essential to building your practice. If you don't provide quality services, then the clients are not going to come by. And so it is essential that you constantly look for ways to exceed the clients. expectations when you're doing whatever the project may be for them. Not just getting it done and not just, you know, finishing it so you can tell the client, well, we've got this work

finished, but doing it in a way where the client will go out and say, you know what, I used this lawyer, this young lawyer at Nelson Mullins, and she did. such a great job, you ought to consider her. So those are the two things I would say. Concentrated on your referral network and then concentrate on the quality of the services you provide. Now then the next step is once you start getting clients, then you need to pay attention to them. Too many lawyers and maybe salespeople take for granted the customers that they already have or for lawyers, their clients they already have, and they're constantly looking for the new customer, right?

Exactly. It's more exciting. A new customer is more exciting than the one you already service, right? I think that's the wrong attitude. If you continue to take very good care of the clients that you have, you will continue to get more work. Clients often have litigation, corporate work, regulatory, etc. And the more you work to take very good care of them, then that relationship will grow.

Now, getting new clients is exciting. I know that. But the first step is to take care of the clients you have to make sure that you continue to build that relationship. So that's what I would tell. Those are great. That's great advice. I totally agree. I totally agree.

The only thing I would add is you can get contact management systems on the web for free. So if you had 80 people in your group to be contacted, you could make it automatic that it would remind you, every quarter, every half year, whatever, to reach out to them. Because it's easy to forget if you don't have it in the system. Right. That's the only thing I would add to that, but that's great. Well, I would add this too. They're all kind of legal associations, South Carolina Bar, South Carolina defense lawyers,

their national defense organizations, international association of defense counsel, Defense Research Institute. And I have been an active member of the South Carolina defense lawyers since I was about 28 years old. And I have been an active member of Idaho. ADC since I was about 35 years old. And those two organizations have been essential parts of my referral network. The best way to meet lawyers from other parts of the state

is to go to the South Carolina Defense Lawyers' meetings. And at the annual meeting we have, the judges are there. So, you know, getting out and meeting them is really important. And then, of course, for the national organizations, you go to those meetings and meet lawyers from all over the country. And staying in touch with them is important for the obvious reason that if the

person is from Las Vegas and they don't know anybody in South Carolina except you that if their client has an issue in South Carolina, they'll call you. So I, it has really helped me. and everyone does it differently, right? Everyone goes about building their referral network and sales differently, but I would say at least consider being active in those organizations because that is a part of building your referral network. Yeah, okay. I think it's good.

All good advice. I hope they're listening to you. Well, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's get to my favorite part here. Well, we're going to talk about AI a little bit. We talked a little bit earlier about chat GPT and AI. What have you seen so far in the legal world in terms of AI in your business? Now, John, I haven't seen much.

I have read a couple of articles about a firm that submitted a brief that apparently they ask AI to write the brief and it was full of errors and cited cases that don't exist. Apparently they submitted it without reading it or at least without reading it carefully. And they were sanctioned and the judge was fair upset with them based on the articles that I read. So that leads me to conclude that AI hasn't developed to the point. point yet where you can use it to write a brief. I think you may be able to use it to get information citations to help you write a brief. But I don't think it's developed to the point where you can just say, here's what I need a brief on. I know that some of the firms in

New York are starting practice areas, senator around AI. And they're obviously trying to get ahead of it. And I don't know exactly what they're doing. But I've seen that there are several of the Wall Street firms who have started that. I wonder when or if we're going to get to the point where AI can write briefs. And you just need to give enough information instruction about what you want. And the brief is written.

Could you, I mean, could you, like, I assume now you get a paralegal or lower level lawyer to give you a draft of a brief and then you edit it where you want it? Right. A young lawyer would come in my office and I'd say that we need to write a brief and here are the issues that we need to cover in the brief. and really it's brand new lawyers, but lawyers who've been out several years as well. And yes, then they would give me the brief and I would edit it before we filed it.

I wonder if AI gets to the point where the brief can be written without much input, then I wonder, what that does to that service, as you point out, generally provided by young lawyers. I don't know. Yeah. Well, if it's any like my world, you know, like you, I would get a younger person to draft something for me.

Like, I want a PowerPoint. I want it to be 20 slides. I want to cover these things. And then they would go off and do it and bring it to me. And I would say, not that one, this one, you know, and you edit it a little bit. And now I do that same thing with. chat GPT. I don't need the person anymore. It comes like that. I tell it what I want and it's just all of a sudden there it is and then I can start editing it. So it's, you know,

you'll have a good time with it. It's very interesting what's happening with it. Heck, it might even lead to some legal work, right? And maybe someone screws up because of AI. I don't know. Oh, there's no doubt that there'll be litigation over AI. You know, John, it's interesting on Saturday. I was getting ready to play off and saw a friend who was a software developer. And he said that AI has completely changed his industry. And that software development has become a matter of giving the information necessary to AI and have them write it for you. Just amazing. Yeah, and the other thing that's happening, that again, I've read about this too, is on our phone, we have all these apps.

You know, we've got 50 apps on the phone to do various things. And what I'm reading is it's going to turn into a situation where there's not going to be any apps at all. You're just going to tell the search engine or the chat GPT what you want. You can say, I want a spreadsheet, and I want these cells here and these cells in this column, or I want to listen to this. song or I want to write a poem that's got this many lines and it will go out and grab whatever it needs you know they've got every app ever made it's just amazing and then bring back you what you want so anyway it's worth i think you it's worth spending a little bit of time on every day because it is happening it's very interesting yeah there are a lot of people who i respect who say it's going to change the

world significantly. Yeah. And in the near future, not 20 years down the road, but within the next maybe five years. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've had, in our lifetimes, the big changes were the, you know, the PC, then the internet, then the phone, you know, and now this one. Right.

So we'll see. We'll see. All right. So let's go with the favorites now. Now, what's your favorite all-time book? The rise and fall of the Roman Empire. That's a good one. I don't want to read that right now.

It's a very long one. You know, it comes in six parts and a very long one. But the thing that to me is so fascinating about it, of the parallels between how Rome developed and with its political and legal system and how it started to decline and fail and the parallels, unfortunately, to the United States. Yeah. And it is really quite remarkable, the similarity.

So there's, the rise and fall of the empire took how long? Do you remember? Like a thousand years or something? I would have said 800 years. And so in our case, it's just happening much faster. Because where are we on that thousand-year arc right now? Where would you say we are? You know, I don't know.

I'm concerned. Yeah. I hope that we're a long way from the beginning of the decline. For our children's sake, I hope we're a long way from that. but I don't know. Well, maybe I'll listen to it. I've got a road trip coming up. Maybe I'll listen to it.

On a brighter note, favorite band? The Rolling Stones. Of course. Favorite word? Responsibility. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. All right, Sam.

What would you like to promote today? I would like to promote a good. golf tournament, which is the primary sponsor is Bridgeworks, the beneficiary of it is Miracle Hill. Yep. And this year's tournament is in honor of Joe Pasden, who was a great guy. Yeah. He and I were together. Remember he was with us at Christchurch?

He went to Clemson. Yep. He was a founder of an outstanding architectural firm. He's a great head, his wife, Jenny, wonderful children, community leader. So I think that Miracle Hill is a great beneficiary of the money we're going to raise. they do so much good in our community. And I think honoring a wonderful person like Joe Pashton is great and fitting. Yeah.

And so it's September the 14th. September the 14th. At the embassy suites. At Verde, yes. And I think people could participate either in the golf tournament or they can come afterwards to the auction. That's exactly right. I think that Rocky Thomason has been the major force behind this and has done an incredible job. I think all the teams are sold out, but like you say, you can come to the silent auction and participate that way.

And I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a great event. Good. Me too. I'll be there. I'll be there. Well, Sam, thank you so much for coming out here to the podcast. I know roughly what your hourly rate is, so I appreciate you giving it up for an hour.

But thank you so much, and thanks for being such a wonderful lifelong friend. John, listen, thank you for being such a wonderful friend, and I really enjoyed being here. The time went by very fast. I know. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. All right.