Start With A Win - How Ken Schmidt Saved Harley-Davidson

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

This episode of Start With a Win dives into the remarkable story of how a motorcycle brand transformed from the brink of collapse to becoming an iconic global powerhouse. Host Adam Contos sits down with Ken Schmidt, the former head of communications at Harley-Davidson, who reveals how shifting focus from simply selling products to creating authentic human connections reshaped the brand’s destiny. Packed with powerful lessons on leadership, loyalty, and the psychology of consumer behavior, this conversation is a masterclass in standing out and building unshakable emotional bonds with customers.Ken Schmidt is one of the business world’s most demanded executive advisors and speakers, driven by the acclaim he earned leading Harley-Davidson Motor Company’s against-all-odds turnaround in the 1990s from the brink of financial ruin to global dominance. He’s the author of Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance, the host of the Tailgating with Geniuses podcast, and co-founder of Torque Sessions Leadership Training. Ken’s success, unconventional business approach, and playful outspokenness led him to consulting assignments with household-name brands and transformed him into a highly requested speaker with more than 1,200 keynotes presented globally to date.00:00 Intro01:52 What is fun about a company at it’s worst point?05:01 What should you be known for to get this?11:36 Can you find glorious discoveries by an accident? 16:08 What are your five pillars?21:01 Great businesspeople never talk about what they sell…   22:06 What is noise of a business?28:10 Is efficiency the key?31:37 What are your three to five words as a leader?    34:40 I do this over coffee… https://kenspeaks.com/https://www.torquesessions.com/===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

I was lucky enough, and I mean that sincerely lucky enough to get involved with Harley-David at its absolute worst point in history. When a business learns how to understand real simple drivers of human behavior and leverage those drivers for competitive advantage, it works because nobody else. Everybody else is too busy trying to sell stuff. Welcome to start with a win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go.

Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With a Win headquarters, it's Adam Contos with Start with a Win. Today we're talking to the man who made it happen, Ken Schmidt, as the former head of communications at Harley Davidson, Ken played a pivotal role in transforming the brand from near bankruptcy

to worldwide dominance by focusing on connection and loyalty rather than just products. He's a sought-after speaker, best-selling author, of Make Some Noise and a leadership expert with a passion for standing out and having fun. Get ready for some unforgettable insights from one of the most unconventional minds in business. Ken, welcome to start with a win.

Adam, thanks for having me, man. It's going to be fun. Yeah, this would be a good time. We have a close association with Harley Davidson and your history, you know, our partnership here at Area 15 Ventures. We've got some Harley dealers. But, I mean, the reality is this is this is a business conversation. about where people get stuck, how to get unstuck.

I love some of the principles that you are deploying. So I really want to get going on this. But take us back to, all right, Harley-Davidson, struggling brand, and Ken is there. What was going on? And where did you take them that leads you to, you know, kind of the business consulting and the help you're providing people now? Yeah.

Well, I was lucky enough. And I mean that sincerely lucky enough to get involved. with Harley Davidson at its absolute worst point in history. And people, well, what would be fun or lucky about that? And my thought at the time, and this never changed was I can be part of something that is dramatic and super cool and take something that's doing very, very poorly and help, you know, be part of the resurgent, turn it around and make it awesome. Or at worst, I can watch, get it up front.

row view of watching a iconic business fail, and there's got to be stuff that you can learn and take away from that. So that was my kind of perspective going in, and I was brought in to help the company, you know, change its image. And, you know, I always have to hold up my little finger quotes when I say that because it just sounds so absurd to say it now, to change the company's image so it could sell more stuff and hopefully get out of the hole that it had dug for itself. So Harley, I mean, when you came in, they had kind of a reputation, their, you know, quality

reputation wasn't exactly all there and a specific customer base. Tell us about, you know, what you saw some of the key points that needed to be right-sized. Yeah, what was two points that way you just said, the outside world, the non-motorcycle world, or I like to refer to as everybody's mother, everybody's mother hated us. And what's a company, and what they believed it represented, which was kind of a Hollywood-fueled stereotype of, you know, guys swinging chains and getting into gang fights and kidnapping teenage girls and, you know, all that kind of ridiculous stuff, which unfortunately the company did nothing to dispel. So he had this black cloud of stereotype

and dislike. And then inside the industry with people who do know better, actual motorcycle people weren't pleased with the product that Harley was putting out at the time, the Knox. It's antiquated. There's no innovation. There's no technology that, you know, the stuff's going to fall apart in the wake of, you know, really great stuff coming from Japan and Germany. Right. So the company wasn't, you know, bleeding red ink by this point. It was hemorrhaging. It was about as close to DOA as you could get. And what everybody likes to think. And I'm sure you've heard this Adam with other people on the shelf, because the knee-jerk reaction was, man, if we can just

improve our products, you know, bring the keyword quality back into the forefront and be more efficient while doing it, well, hearts, minds, and dollars will flow right back. And all of the improvement stuff happened and all the efficiencies happened, but the customers coming back in Grove's part did not happen. oh and there's a huge takeaway from that that i think most people in the business world that haven't been exposed to it sooner or later will be and that is if all you're known for is what you do you know making a product selling a product uh you're essentially renting yourself uncompetitive if you're in a market where there are other people who do

that thing too and you know name an industry where that's not happening but everything's commoditize. Everybody's good at what they do now. And if all you're known for what you do, it's really, really hard to gain competitive advantage. That's, I mean, that's a key point. So, I mean, it takes me to by, you know, the obvious question is, what should you be known for that? And the, and the beauty of that, and thanks for asking Adam, is we, let me try to condense us a little bit, is what we learned how to do. And this is by accident, man. This is the kind of stuff that you learn in the trenches when you are struggling to survive, what we learned is that it is infinitely better to be known for who you are than for what you do. Because what we as human

beings do is we humanize everything. If I can attach a human face and human qualities to a business, and these associations are positive. That means I like you. I like this collection of people, even if it's, I'm just imagining what that collection of people might look like. If you've got human qualities attached, people tend to remember you and prefer that. Now you are two steps ahead of the businesses that are simply known for what they do and, you know, have to compete with features and benefits and price and, you know, other things that,

you know, people tend to not understand really, really well. And what we learned to do and what I have been screaming from the mountaintops for the last 30 years is that when a business learns how to understand real simple drivers of human behavior and leverage those drivers for competitive advantage, it works because nobody else does. Everybody else is too busy trying to sell stuff. Right. Right. We learned to trip human triggers, emotional triggers, and fill basic human needs that nobody else was doing or even thinking about. I mean, that's pretty powerful because you're not going from buying a motorcycle. You're going to becoming part of something. Right. And that, again, was not something that we knew at the time.

It was, you know, we were just focused on selling what we made. like most businesses do and not making even thinking about the human equation that's involved here and look you can get oddly scientific and go back to your junior high years when you learned about the what's called the maslow's hierarchy of needs remember there's a triangle that they put up in your social studies class or whatever class it was and talk about every human being needs the same things as every other human being that's ever existed food water and shelter the things at the bottom of the triangle or the pyramid but the stuff at the top was the way harder to attain stuff that's your emotional needs your need for validation to feel

good about yourself to feel part of something to feel recognized and important and what we discovered was man if we're intentionally and very very visibly working to to help people get that validation stand out be recognized be part of something be proud of themselves uh oh they're going to come back for more of that and we did and they did you it's it's fascinating and a business lesson for everybody here watching you know and i can't imagine what the conversations around the table inside harley davis and looked like oh they were they were unbelievable yeah you've got you've got a bunch of A bunch of guys sitting around, maybe women, I don't know, but, you know, everybody's wearing a black t-shirt, says Harley Davidson on it. And people are talking about, hey, you know, we've got these, I mean, legitimate, you know, badasses and outlaws and tough people and stuff like that, riding your bikes and living the Harley Davis and lifestyle as it was known then.

And then you have this, you know, somebody said, hey, let's sell to attorneys and accountants, you know, something like that. I mean, it probably wasn't that quick of a conversation. And there was, we never viewed any segment within the market. We never said, let's target women, for example. And everyone, oh, he's such a great job marketing. No, we, the focus was everybody. If you are enthusiastic, if you're drawn to, you know, great experiences and a great lifestyle, a lot of fun and motorcycling, you know, being the core of that, we're here for you.

We're going to be exclusive, but inclusive. but your comment about the conversations is really valid for a lot of reasons this was a at that time very much a rust belt business you know Milwaukee Wisconsin business a lot of second and third generation employees you know people working out in the factories that were you know extraordinarily proud of what they did this is what we did you know even then the you know that by the 80s the company was already over 80 years old, so there was a lot of lore and, you know, cool factor to it. And their belief was, you know, this company is famous and beloved and people have tattooed our names under their bodies for decades because of what we do here.

And that's making these really cool bikes. And God bless them. And that's all very, very true, but you have to take a step back and say, hey, Our market share dropped from over 95% to less than 20%. Not only are we not profitable right now, we are in tremendous danger of having to shudder the building. Nobody will loan us money. I mean, it's dead to the outside world.

We have no choice but to start doing things differently. And of course, everybody thought, you know, we'll solve it with product and we'll solve it with marketing, you know, the traditional kind of business 101 stuff, but we made some really what I call glorious discoveries through happy accidents. And I think the biggest one, I think that kind of started the whole sea change

and attitude and mindset started when totally out of desperation, we started allowing people to take test rides on motorcycles. And that was a flat out no-no in the industry because of liability. Right. Something can happen and the whole house of cards stumbles down.

Well, trust me, when you're broke, your attitude about liability changes. So there was this, the thought be, if people could just get on these things and write it

and see for themselves, all the changes that we've made, they'll come back and buy. So we, you know, the company stopped doing any formal marketing and dump what meager marketing dollars had.

to leasing trucks, semis, and loading them up with bikes and taking them out and letting people take them for 15-mile rides. And a couple of things that we discovered was, as soon as somebody'd get off the bike, you know, for the next person to get on, that person would want to say something, give us feedback, which was great. But the problem was, if you were standing there getting a, you know, a litany of suggestions or comments on the person who just got off the bike, that's slowing down the other people that are standing in line that want to take a ride on the bike.

So totally, and again, happy accident, we want to get feedback from people. We just can't have it taking 20 minutes at the expense of other people who want to take the bike out. Let's just ask everyone a real simple question that they can answer quickly. And that question was, what do we need to change on this motorcycle to make you want it? And that, trust me, this is not about product in the end here. What the discovery was for us was, geez, a hundred percent of people that we ask a question to that are standing right in front of us answer the question. They don't answer surveys.

They don't give fee, you know, they're not sending in random letters and notices. We've got a fantastic opportunity here to get in front of people. Ask them what they would like. like to see us do as a business and my god let them see that we're listening to what they're saying because that makes the person that you're asking that question to feel important if they see you're like writing down what they're saying they're thinking oh that must be you know i must have had a good idea i like that nobody else asked me you know my car company's not asking me for input the hotel i stayed in last night didn't ask me for any input so they're seeing an effort

made on their behalf to engage them in a process, make them feel that they're part of a process. And as we're back in Milwaukee, you know, sitting around the table here, how can we capitalize on this? Because something really rich and deep and human happens when we're getting that feedback from people or we're talking with them, you know, hanging around after when the rides are done and there's, you know, 100 people standing around the truck and they're just having these great conversations and offering suggestions. I'd like to see you do this, or I'd like to see you get more into racing or back into racing, do a better job of supporting warranties or make handlebars that are

higher or lower, all the stuff that's eventually getting acted upon. These are, it's damn good ideas. They have way more, you know, thousands of writers have more ideas than, you know, hundreds of employees. Right. I mean, it seems like you guys built the most personalizable. platform on the planet. I mean, it's, you know, it, you look at somebody and they buy a Harley and then they walk

over to the parts department and they buy, you know, another several thousand dollars worth of accessories and customizations and clothing and things like that. I mean, it seems like people, when you started listening, everybody started, I mean, buying more, first of all, but it allowed them to put themselves in the Harley Davidson story instead of just watching it. We had determined that, look, we need to change the vernacular and the positioning of the business so that we're not thought of as what we do, motorcycle manufacture, way too obvious, great products, way too obvious. What do we want people to remember? So we created, you know, essentially what was in a five-word pillar that we wanted to build the business around.

And the word of the top is lifestyle. We want to be seen as a lifestyle business. okay uh we want to promote the idea of freedom no matter how you define that personal freedom getting out with your friends going where you want to go um camaraderie that's uh being part of something getting together with other people having a network of friends the opposite end of camaraderie is individuality how do you express yourself how do you stand out we can help you do that and at the bottom was rebellion which is not you know that's rebel against the man let's rebel against the industry let's stop doing what everybody else does and do it our way and to your

point the individuality is what drives the all of the bike customization that you see somebody buying a perfectly awesome motorcycle and then immediately removing half the parts and replacing them with others that cost more look different but allow that rider to express their individuality to stand out because again, that's going, that's a basic human need. We want that. When somebody looks at you when you're on your bike and they're staring at you, dopamine is squirting in your brain. Someone's paying attention to me.

I like that. Bingo, we're winning. Awesome. And speaking as somebody who in the mid-90s spent two years working at a custom motorcycle shop on the side, you know, riding my custom Harley that looked nothing like when I bought it off the showroom floor after I was done with it. It, you know, that was really an appealing aspect to my life. And I was proud of it.

I mean, you know, it gave me, it was, you know, one of those alter ego moments. You know, it was a lot of fun. The camaraderie was amazing. I was in a motorcycle club, things like that. It kept perpetuating on itself. And I lost track of the fact that I was, you know, a Harley-Davidson loyalist. And I just became a lifestyle loyalist at that point. it's amazing how that happens and so much of that is driven by other people like like you're

surrounded by you know like minded people and you're having fun and you're enjoying it and you're having like conversation it's not just about motorcycles but about your life and your family things that ordinarily wouldn't be happening because you didn't have that conduit to bring people together and a really interesting point that uh basically said said minute ago that it sounds almost too good to be true right but when somebody me you sitting at a red light or a stop sign on our Harley and we rev our engine as we've done forever very loud and the reason that we're doing this is ultimately what is going to trip triggers inside our brains in the company that's going to help us change the mindset of the business

When somebody's revving the engine, what they're doing is saying, look at me. Over here, look at me. And when somebody looks and somebody always does, always does, dopamine scorts in our brain. Just a little bit. I'm being validated. I'm being looked at it. I'm being noticed. I like this.

Go up to the next stop sign and do it again. And what this is is the proof, it's the science of loyalty. And what loyalty is, is that what loyalty dictates is that people, that's us, will seek out and return to anything in our life that delights us, that makes us feel good, until it fails to do that. We seek out and return to that which delights us. That's loyalty. So we ask ourselves at the business, and that's us back in Milwaukee sitting at the table. What are we here to do? and it's government oh you know to provide great motorcycles and you know great service and

yeah that's what we have to do but what what what's the umbrella above that and what the umbrella above that has you be is we need to be a source of delight for human beings because if we do that do it well they will keep coming back and then they'll bring their friends with them and this whole thing starts to to take off driven by this shift in mindset and other business people and you would ask this question if i didn't if i didn't jump in here they say well yeah but you know my business doesn't sell cool stuff like motorcycles and believe me i i hear this every single day everywhere you know we sell insurance we sell something invisible or we sell ball bearings and i say at no point do i ever talk about what's being sold it's people and

people either like you based on what you're doing for them or they don't or we're they have no opinion whatsoever right no matter what's being sold is if if i like you if i like your if i like the people that i see in my mind when i think about your business that means i prefer you and if i prefer you i'm going to seek you out and choose you over all the other you know competitors in the market that essentially are doing the exact same thing that's very profound and you've i mean you've really capitalized on what harley did as well as adding to the, you know, let's call it the culture, attitude, values, whatever of these different businesses.

And you've coined this term, make some noise. Yeah. Tell us, I can clearly see having sat there and done this on my Harley, you know, at the red light, the stop sign, usually under an overpass someplace, under the highway where the noise reverberates you, you know, give it a little extra on the throttle. I mean, it just, it's, it really makes you feel present in the moment with that machine that you're sitting on and the people around you going, whoa, that guy. I wonder, you know, is he a badass or is he an accountant or what is he, something like that? But, but ultimately, you know,

the, the noise concept is really, really powerful in business. But you did mention, you know, maybe it's not a very noisy business. How, how do we drop that into, the insurance or a real estate agent or you know other entrepreneurial endeavors to display how proud we are sure well let's let's let's first for for my perspective first let's talk define what noise means and what i mean noise is what uh people say about you when you're not there i mean noise is reputation of your business and the effort that you're making to generate that noise. And your noise in the marketplace is, you know, memorable and distinct and instantly identifiable, like that Harley noise, or to stay in the motorcycle vein, it's that

it's that noise that everybody hears, but you can't identify what it is. Well, that's a motorcycle, but I don't know who made it. You know, it came from Japan or whatever. And what businesses tend to do, I think more by accident or acquiescence than design is say and do the exact same things that all their competitors say and do. Right. And you look at their, if you're getting in the market to buy something, you Google it and you look at different companies' websites, you're looking for a plumber, you're looking for

to buy a new carpeting, whatever that is. And you look at five, six, ten websites, you start to see, hey, you know what, everybody's saying the, they're pushing the same buttons. It's quality, it's price, it's, you know, a press. member of the community, whatever those things are, and what everybody is saying the same thing and find an industry where that's not happening, nobody listens anymore. We reached the conclusion that everyone's the same. Therefore, I might as well just pick whatever's cheapest or most convenient. So what I say is, look, if you're going to make noise, you have to make this

a concerted, you have to determine as a business or as a leader within the business, what are want to be known for when someone's talking about us what do we want them to say and i mean specifically what do we want them to say not oh they're realtors uh they're that's a plumbing company now that's simply defining what the business does if you want the business to be known for who you are it's okay what what human qualities can we touch this like we said with hardly not a motorcycle but it's a lifestyle business lifestyle implies humans doing things whatever those are and you start to see a face or face is even if you don't know anybody there human qualities and if you can focus on that and focus on as an organization if our first instinct

when we're meeting a prospect or answering the phone is to ask ourselves what do I want this person to remember and repeat remember and tell somebody else about us so that's the as simple as the tonality of the person that's answering the phone you know instead of a please hold uh if i'm hearing passion in that voice if i'm hearing somebody who's making an attempt to be interested in me by asking me you know some questions about myself oh that's that that's crack to a human being that's more more you keep focusing on me i like this nobody else does it i'm going to remember you for this that it's incumbent on the leaders of a business and i ask this to leaders all the time i say if someone your most important investor your biggest

customer is out talking to somebody who would become the new biggest customer somebody you've never been able to get a meeting with uh someone who would represent the greatest customer the greatest whale you've ever had what would you want that person who knows you to say about you and 100% of the time Adam the answer always starts with well I guess and I said but you guess I just told you this is the most important conversation that's ever going to happen that defines and describes your business and who you are you have to guess at that if you have to guess at that and you have a thousand employees that's a thousand employees who also have to guess at that you have a thousand dealers that's a thousand dealers or suppliers that have to guess at it is man you've got to have

concrete carved in stone definition behind that what are the words we want people to use this is going to be our language this is our vernacular if we don't do that it's really really hard to create that that memorability and that differentiation in the marketplace and that requires no capital to do that just requires sitting down and say what do i want people saying about the leaders saying what do I want my employees saying about me? Not that I'm smart or brilliant or, you know, a leader, but, you know, hey, she's cool. She listens. She's awesome.

I love her. Well, what do I have to do? What is the language I need to use? What is the behavior I need to exhibit in front of people so that they see that and remember it? So that when they're talking about me, that's how I'm being spoken of. That's incredible. Ken, you do a lot of work with different businesses helping to bring. this philosophy out from them and help them establish themselves is somebody who's making

noise in the marketplace in whatever their space is. Tell us a little bit about your seminars and your consulting you're doing with businesses. It's always fun because what most people think of when they think of improving their business and they're running to do it all the time, especially with either manufacturing type companies or companies that sell stuff that other people make is the overriding mindset, the directive is efficiency. How do we mine all of this data that we're collecting from a zillion different places and scour it to get, you know, and make whatever it is we make a tiny bit faster, the suck cost out of it so that we can generate more profit.

Everybody does that. I say, well, see, the problem with that is, yes, you have to be efficient, obviously. You have to take advantage of all the tools available to do what you do. But look at the business from the outside in. Nobody cares about that. They just, I don't care what it cost you to make it. I see what your cost. Charging to sell it to me.

Bing, the rest of that is invisible to me. That's not how you're being judged. So we have to look at the business, any business from the outside in and what people remember or don't remember. every time that they are in contact with you in any way they see a product somewhere what's the picture that forms in their mind they see you online they they they talk to you somewhere but 99 times out of 100 people say low we want people to think about the quality of our products and and you know the fact that you know our people make the difference and we're committed

to customer satisfaction all that's great but everybody everybody stands for that everybody says that. You set the trap and then he walked right into it. I am spewing to you what you expect to hear and what everybody in my industry says, but I want you to somehow see us as being different and more desirable. I can't, right? Because you did nothing, you said nothing different than anybody else. You behaved the way I expected you to. And if you're a leader in a business, you always have to remember that employees, you know, human beings model behavior of their elders of the people above them and they have since our species evolved so if they see the leaders of the business uh or their boss even being super predictable using that kind of dull

lifeless expected business language or seeing nothing no representation of leadership other than charts and graphs on walls with you know quotas and things that scare people they say well i guess that's what we're about here and the leadership wonders why they can't keep employees because they don't feel like they're partisan they're always being judged by their productivity or their you know their output instead of who they are that you can put a human face and attach human qualities to a business that's job number one of leaders and they always well how can I do that and you know what what should I do? What could I immediately start doing differently? And whether it's a five-person business or a 500,000-person business, I always start with the three to five words. Give me three to five. Give me three to five words that you want

to be known for. You as a person, you as a leader. And then we say, all right, now, once they do that, oh, you know, awesome and kind and whatever. So, first of all, now we're going to do it again. but you can't give me a single word that you'd use to describe any of your competitors or any of the other people here what it means you have to get out of the habit of being predictable and giving the knee jerk is give me something else give me something i'm going to remember that they can't own give me like a freedom word or an awesome i'm the best looking when people say that they'll say that and they laugh go with that go with that as Keep going.

It's like, now you're already, now you're attaching like some human quality to yourself. Like come up with a word for that. Even if it's funny, just being silly, it's a good exercise to get you out of thinking about, you know, good leadership skills. No, it's focus on being human because we can't make the organization more human. We can't get them to follow your lead in terms of being more creative and lifelike and people focused if you're not doing it. You sort of have to learn some easy steps to get past that. predictability of saying what people expect to hear hump. I love that.

Ken Schmidt, I mean, you're putting the life into businesses instead of this commoditized mindset that so many people walk around with. If you're looking to find Ken, go to Ken Speaks.com. Also, you can check out his torque sessions, torque sessions.com where Ken really gets into the workshopping of how to truly bring out the spirit of your business in order to to rejuvenate it in the marketplace like he did with Harley-Davidson. Again, this has been an incredible conversation. I've learned a lot.

And it's really made me take a look at, you know, the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs when it comes to how our business connects with the customers. I mean, it's just so super important. And businesses that think about it, Adam, and you're thinking about it right now. If that's bouncing around in your brain, the next time somebody calls you on the phone, you're not just thinking, how quickly can I answer this person? questions and send them on their way it's what can i say to this person that's going to make him feel good about themselves so if they'll come back for more of this that they'll like me that i

just made an effort to be human especially if you're talking to it for the first or second time oh everybody notices and come back for more i love that and we want our customers to come back for more that's for sure amen the loyalties did no it's not it absolutely is not that's right and i mean It's not often you have a tattoo-worthy brand that you can point to in order to accomplish these things. So, Ken, this has been incredible. I have a question, and I ask all the great leaders on Start with a Win. And that's, how do you start your day with a wind? I start my, it just sounds a bit goofy, but I do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, every morning over coffee.

It's going to kick my brain into gear. I'm going to ignore my email for a while. That's my time. It's also brain time. And I get odd feelings of accomplishment every time I finish it in ink. And literally, I get out of bed in the morning. I can't wait to get out of it. Good.

That's awesome. I mean, there's nothing like getting the brain going. And frankly, a nice shot of caffeine with a good cup of coffee. Oh, it's the best. Oh, yeah. Ken, thanks for all you do. Thanks for what you've done for Harley-Davidson as a Harley-Davidson fan. lover here, you know, and also somebody closely tied to your brand through dealerships.

So you can find Ken at Ken at Ken Speaks.com. Make sure you check them out. He's got a lot of great information out there, great ways to help your business. Ken, you're a great man for all you're doing to help us lead our business as better. And thanks for starting with a win. Well, thanks for having me, yeah. Thank you.