 Today, I am with Robert Middleton and I'm honored to be with Robert because he's been teaching self-employed professionals how to do marketing for 35 years. And he started his weekly newsletter 22 years ago. So he is really one of the first, if not the first in our industry to start talking about a small business or particularly for self-employed professionals, which of course is a lot of you on how to attract clients. This company is called Action Plan Marketing, so you may have heard of it. And Robert, it's great to have you here. Thank you very much, George. I appreciate you interviewing me. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this. So there's so much we can talk about, but one of the things that you help a lot of self-employed professionals with is getting clients. And one of the things you talk about is how if we can have more conversations, connected conversations, we can have more useful meetings with potential clients. So maybe we can start there is how do we interest people in that conversation with us. Okay. So, you know, some of this is tricky and some of it is very simple and common sense. And but if you really think of it, what happens usually for a self-employed professional before they get a client is they have what I call a selling conversation. And what I mean by a selling conversation, it's not a high pressure thing that I'm trying to convince you that I should work with me. But it's usually a conversation about, tell me about your situation. What are you looking for? What do you need? What results would you like, et cetera, et cetera. So a conversation, a selling conversation happens. But there's usually some, there are things that usually happen before a selling conversation. So people meet you somewhere through networking or they meet you online or they hear about you or, you know, there can be a lot of different ways. But often there's sort of, often there's an initial conversation. Sometimes they call that a pre-selling conversation. So for instance, if you said, Robert, I've heard about you and you sent me a quick email and say, and I wonder if you can help me. Well, I don't do a selling conversation first. I do a pre-selling conversation. I do a short conversation. I phone them up. We figure out a time and said, so you were referred by so-and-so or you heard from me from such and such or you saw me from the website or somebody fills out a form on my website sometimes. And so I had that first conversation. And so there's three purposes for that first conversation. The first purpose is to establish the beginning of a relationship. Like, who are you? What do you do? You know, what are you about? How did you get into your business? A little bit about them. And I'm not, I'm not talking about myself. You know, we often, when we think of selling, we think it's well, I have to have a perfect spiel and a silver tongue and tell people all about what I do and how great it is. And in my experience, effective selling is the exact opposite of that. Completely the opposite. So I'm just, you know, who are you, George, and what's going on? And what are you looking for? So the first is just, you know, start to establish the relationship. The second to see is, are you somebody I can help or not? So we call that qualification. Qualification two ways. So you're a good client for me. Would you be a good client for me? Do you need the, do you have problems, issues, concerns that I've helped people with before? Because sometimes people say, well, I have time management problems and that's not what people hire me for. So you wouldn't be the right guy. So I find out that. And then, and then if that goes well, then the purpose of the pre-selling conversation is to set up a selling conversation. That's how I do it. I found it effective. So I usually say, so based on what you've said, George, I think there's a good chance I can help you, but I really like to have a more in-depth conversation and learn more about you, your business, what you want to accomplish, that kind of thing. And then if it all fits, I'll explain my business in more depth and we'll see if we can work together. How does that sound to you? Most people say that sounds good. Because, see, if I go right into a selling conversation after the initial thing, I haven't really set the groundwork very well. For instance, I like someone to know quite a lot about how I work before I have a selling conversation. So I don't know where they came from. You know, let's say it was referral, but they haven't been on my list for 20 years. Someone's been on my list for 20 years. It's a different conversation than someone that just heard about me yesterday, but whatever. So I usually say, so George, let's set up a time to have that conversation. Okay, sure. And then I'm going to send you to my webpage and you can read about how my one-on-one coaching works or my group program works. And I'd like you to read that in depth before we talk. So you really know a lot going in. And man, does that help? Because when I have the selling conversation, I've let the printed word on a website do a lot of the work for me. You know, this is who I work with and these are the issues they have. And this is what they're trying to achieve. And this is what I've achieved with my clients and here's some examples and here's how I work. And it answers all the questions. And so then in the one-on-one selling conversation, I can get deep in. And the purpose of that selling conversation is to, for me, to really feel that I can help this person or not. I can't help everybody for whatever reason, you know? It can be a lot of different things. But anyway, and with that, I have a very high closing rate. A lot of people work with me that way because I take it slow. So, you know, once you've learned that basic process of having that conversation, achieving those three things, relationship qualification and setting up a meeting, sending the information and then having an in-depth conversation, after a while, that becomes very easy. There's no pressure. There's no, you know, there's issues sometimes. There's objections. There's this, there's, what, but I won't get into that. But once you've handled that, I find the hardest part for most people is how do I get that in more of those initial conversations? And there's a lot of ways that I'm not going to talk about all the ways. I'm going to talk about really one thing. But I'll mention the other things just to give you sort of a, you know, I've gotten clients from networking, you meet someone in networking and you exchange cards and you ask them some questions and, you know, this might be a good potential client and you follow up and you have a chat. Or I've gotten lots and lots of clients from speaking. I go into a speaking engagement and after the speaking engagement, I say, I have a report for you. If you'd like it, give me your business card. I'll send it to you as a PDF usually. And then I have a dozen or sometimes hundreds of business cards. And all of those people are prospects. So I email them and say, thank you for attending my talk. And I hope you got some good ideas. And hey, I'd love to chat with you a little bit and learn a little bit more about your business. Who knows, there might be some ways I could help you. If you'd like to set up a short conversation, I'm happy to do that. And that's the initial conversation, which sometimes leads somewhere, sometimes doesn't, but it fills my pipe one. And then people find me on the internet. Or I do a webinar which is like a talk, you know, so I do something. But there's sometimes, you know, all of those things, most of those things take a fair amount of time to get rolling. I say to do a whole speaking thing where you get booked for a talk, it's a 27 step process, you know, I have to put together my package and call organization and send stuff and follow up and prepare my talk and give my talk. It's worth it. I've gotten tons of clients that would, and it's worth it for sure. But we miss something that is so obvious and so in front of our face that almost nobody does it. And it's something you can start to do today and get two or three meetings today. So I guess we're out of time, so let me take it. Well, that was great, Robert. Thank you for that. So that was great. Yeah, looking forward to hearing what this method is. So I divide people, potential clients into three categories, category one, two, and three. And category one are people you've worked with before. But maybe you could work with them again. Maybe there's other services you could offer. Category two are people that you have some connection or affiliation with. Through a referral, you belong to the same organization, professional group. You go to the same church, you have some affiliation, you have something in common. And you, but you don't really know that person very well, but you have some connection. I'll give an example in a minute. And the other is that is the third level connection where they're pretty much a stranger, but they'd be a good potential client for you. Those are obviously the hardest people to get meetings with, but there's ways to do that. I just got off the phone with a client and we were talking about stuff like that. For instance, he said, I know this guy who was a famous sportscaster. And we really know each other well and we have dinner every year and we catch up. He says, but you know what? I've never asked him if he knows anybody that I should be talking to about my business. So those are really second level because they're in the network, they're a referral. So there are so many people out there that were connected with closer than we think. People we know that they know, et cetera, et cetera. So first level connections, for instance, I've been getting tons of meetings with first level connections in the last few weeks. And I just, I'm looking at people that have done my past programs. And I just call them, I just send them a really simple email. I mean, this does not take any skill. If you've got a good relationship with them, you did good work with them. They know, like, and trust you already. But maybe you have a new service, like my friend, Al, my client, Al. He's done a lot of leadership coaching, but he wants to offer a new service, which is helping companies implement big projects that often get stalled or don't get buy-in from the employees. He's done that with 11 companies over the year and is 100% success rate. We're talking about big things. And if it doesn't succeed, the company's in trouble. And something like 60% I've heard of company initiatives like this fail because they don't know how to get buy-in from the employees. So he's got a great service. So those are first level connections of people that have been clients with his leadership consulting. So he emailed them and said, hey, I'm doing something new. I'm helping companies do blah, blah, blah. I think you might be interested in knowing a little more. Can we chat? Or the emails that I've sent to my people, I was just thinking of you. I was. You know, when I think of somebody, I jot their name down and then I send them an email and say, hey, I'd like to catch up with you. Some of my best clients, people I really like working with. And I'm not, I'm sort of indirectly, I'm not even trying to sign them up for a new program. I'm looking more for ideas, testimonials, references, resources, stuff like that. Because that can lead to the next thing as well. So I've had these wonderful conversations with people. I had a conversation with someone that said, Robert, someone approached me before I started working you with a $128 program. I said, nah, that's too much for me. Someone offered me a $79 program. That was too much. And then I went and saw you give a talk and saw what you did. And then you were promoting your program. This was 10 years ago. And I said, I don't care how much it costs. I want to talk to that guy. So anyway, she gave me a testimonial to that effect and said it was the best money she had ever spent in her life in her business. She's making hundreds of thousands of dollars now because of our work together. So her name is Sharon and we had a great conversation. And she gave me a lead to something and she gave me a testimonial. And so the first thing that I recommend people do is just connect with people that you know and request something from them. Say, look, I'm looking at getting more clients in this area. And I don't know if it's right for you or not, maybe not. But I'd like to have a conversation with you and just tell you what I'm doing and who my ideal clients are and what I'm looking for and the kind of results I'm doing. And any way you can help me would be greatly appreciated. If you have a few ideas, if you have a resource or two, anything, that would be great with me. And most people will meet with you very willingly. Now, just a few days ago, I read an amazing article that was, you know, it's funny. You know when you focus on something, stuff comes into you that's just totally appropriate for that, like all the time. So I found this article on a social media thing and I went, this might be interesting click. And it was an article called 50 cups of coffee. This is a guy that wrote an article about a strategy for meeting with a lot of people. And the strategy is you work in getting 50 people to meet with you and have a 20 minute cup of coffee with them. Sometimes it'll go longer. I won't get into all the details, but he says, you know, it can be the very best way to get out, to get whatever you're looking for. If you're looking for a mate, if you're looking for a new job, if you're looking for whatever or new clients, just meet with people. And then of course, after you've met with them and said, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm looking for. Number one, some of them might say, I'd like to know more for myself. And then you set up that longer selling conversation. That sounds good. In some cases, I know someone that should know about that or I have an idea or I know a networking group or I know an organization or do you know about this online community? All you gotta do is talk with people and we sit behind our computers, doing social media and email and stuff like that. But we're never having these real conversations. And nowadays with Zoom video, you don't even have to have a cup of coffee. You can have a virtual cup of coffee, a cup of water. It's almost as good as being in person, not quite as good, being in person, there's energy that's there that can't be. That's how I don't go anywhere. All I do is meet with people on Zoom, pretty much. I'm a little po-dunk town at the top of a mountain, hardly anybody lives here. I have no clients here. But anyway, so the number one recommendation is get more meetings, get conversations, talk to people, sit down, tell them what you're doing, tell them what you're working on. And it's a kind of, it's prospecting in a way, but you shouldn't, when we put, you know, the label of prospecting, there's so much pressure and so much whatever. And you're just having a conversation and telling them what you're looking for and asking for some help. I connected with some people I hadn't met in 10 years. And they were so excited to hear from me. Cause everyone else is sitting back, sort of waiting for people to reach out to them. We're so, you don't reach out. People like it when you knock on the screen and say, you know, which we do with you do with email and say, hey, I've been thinking of you. I'd love to catch up with you. And I get enthusiastic responses. I'd love to do that. And then we set up a time and I have a calendar system makes it easier to do. And that leads to stuff. It leads to the next conversation, which leads to the next conversation. And not only that, it leads to new ideas. Like the second guy I talked to, his name is Dan, he gave me two books that I should read. And he said, I know these people that wrote these books. And he told me stories about them and how he meant them and some funny things. And I immediately bought both books. And one of those books is about education and the future of education and teaching adults. And it's like right up my alley. And it's just, and it's giving me ideas. It's expanding my mind and possibilities. I hadn't talked to Dan. I would never have known about those books and read those books. So. Yeah. This is fantastic. I am full in full agreement with you. It's true. This is actually something I've said to my clients as well. Like I use, of course, I'm most familiar with my own example. And I say, well, I know a lot of people. I've had a lot of people on my network, but almost nobody keeps in touch. And so, and I try to, I'd be honest with you, in the years I've been in business, most of the time I haven't been very good about keeping in touch. But kind of more recently, I've started to reconnect and I'm aiming to have this habit of connecting again with people like the way you're saying. And which is why you and I, we are sitting here today, right? Well, it's funny that all of a sudden, I'm in this process of making connections and out of the blue, he says, hey, I was thinking of you and I like to interview you again. Yeah. So here we are. Here we are, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I like the categories that you mentioned, previous clients, people you've worked with before, who have worked with you, colleagues and friends, our acquaintances also. So I wanna ask you a little bit about each category here. Sure. So, previous clients, tell us more about how you breach that conversation because I wonder if some people might be concerned that, oh, I don't wanna reach out to previous clients because I don't wanna make it sound like I'm trying to sell them on my services again or tell us about that. Yeah, but if you don't reach out, nothing's gonna happen. So what's the worst that can happen? Yeah. We have a lot of mindsets that stop us. I'm afraid of being rejected. I'm afraid of people feeling un-pushy. I'm afraid of asking for help, whatever it is. And if you really investigate that and look a little deeper, most of it, there's not a lot of validity to it. It's not really very useful. So, you wanna catch up with them. I can't control what they think. You know, but if I sense something, hey, John, we worked a while ago and I have a perfect service for you. It's only a million dollars. Let's talk. No, it's not that. You're not doing that. But you say, I have some ideas for you. I don't know if it's right for you or not, but let's chat. Not everybody will get back to you. Yeah. The other thing is when you ask someone to meet or try to connect with someone, almost nobody tries a second time. Like 80 to 90% of people may be more. Never even try a second time. Whereas- You mean following up? Yeah, it's like if I send an email and try to get a meeting and I don't hear from them, they're too late or say, I didn't hear from you. Maybe you're on vacation or something. Just wanna touch bases again. And, you know, here's the way to do it playfully. Have fun. These are people that you know, like and trust. Have fun. It's not a series. You know, for people that you know, attach a cartoon that's appropriate. You know, if you go online and do cartoon for X, maybe it's their profession and click on images, you will find a thousand cartoons like that. That's a great idea. You can copy them and then paste them into the email. Just something funny. It's a little tricky with someone you don't know. It's like, I don't know what this is, but you know, it's a little trickier, but someone that you know, something a little funny. Like one guy said, you know, I haven't been in touch for a long time. I've been, I know something about cleaning his gutters. You know, his picture, cleaning his gutters and following on or something. And it was just funny. Got right back to him. And it's turning into like a $50,000 project, that follow-up. I mean, really, you never know. And I'm talking to Al, he reached out to 20 people, seven you've set up appointments with already and one he's already got a new client. And that's just in a few weeks. Yeah. So stuff happens. Now, so I don't think they're the easiest one. If you're making that hard, go to a therapist, work it out. I mean, it's really, I'm afraid they'll reject me. I mean, there must be a lot of stuff because people don't, or often people have a lot of people they could reach out. You know, were they really happy with my work before? Well, why didn't you stay in touch? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Just reach out. The worst that can happen is they don't get back to you. The best that can happen is, you know, you can get some new work. Right. Second level connections. Like in the early days of my, of my business, I lived in San Francisco. That's where I started and I belong to the Chamber of Commerce and they had a printed directory back then. Everything's online now. Right. And so I went through the directory and circled all the companies that were small professional service businesses. There was a guy who there's an auto broker. There was a publicity expert consultant. There was a management psychologist. I remember those three right off the top of my head. And I sent a letter to them and said, hey, I'm a Chamber of Commerce member as are you. And I don't know if this is an issue for you, but I help people like you with their marketing and attracting more clients. And maybe it's something that's worth a conversation. And because they're a Chamber of Commerce member, I'm not a stranger. So I sent the letters out and then I followed up by phone. I said I would follow up by phone. See, sending stuff out and waiting for people to get back to you, the response is never high. I promise you. If they get back to you and said, I got this letter, I'm interested. Well, that's obviously a good sign, but better to follow up. It was a small number of letters, maybe 10 letters. I called them all, everybody took my call and everybody, I had a good conversation on it. And some wanted to know more and I had a meeting with them. And four or five or six of them, I can't remember was over 30 years ago, became clients. It was like, it wasn't that hard. I used my affiliation. So, you know, if you belong to, I once gave a talk at a, it was a construction company, professional organization, everyone that belonged owned a construction company. And then I was giving a talk there and I met a woman there, most are men. And I said, what do you do? She says, I'm a financial planner to people who own construction companies. So that's interesting. And so is this been good for you? She says, half the people in this room are my clients. So she networked with those people. And, you know, I have this sort of model, affiliation, connection, familiarity, you get to know them, information, you know, they know more about me, experience. They really have a sense of who I am. You give a talk, you network a lot with people, you develop that no-like trust factor through affiliation, familiarity, information and experience. And I can't remember what she did. Maybe she just met people, they asked her what she did. She stuck out like a sore thumb. She didn't look like anybody else. And well, I help construction companies manage their finances. So, blah, blah, blah. And then she probably followed up with them and got meetings and got them as clients. I mean, it was, so that affiliation through networking, I belong to the Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco. But, you know, if you can find a niche like that, it's even more powerful. I'm thinking also, a lot of those who are watching or listening to this may be part of training programs, you know, online and offline. They've done some kind of training or some kind of, they've gone to a workshop or retreat or taken a course. And that's also an affiliation, right? It's like, oh, we were in the same course together. We were in the same program. Oh, we were both, we're both in Robert's group. Yes. Right? And, right? Yeah. And they may or may not be a prospect, but funny thing, when you talk to people, you'll discover that they know other people. Very rare that they don't know anybody else. You know, so, you know, they say when you're starting a business, you should be spending almost all your time meeting with people and talking to people. And another great thing comes out of that is, like I said, not only do they find out about you and also you get ideas, but you get better at talking about what you do. Like anything, if you practice for a play, you know, if you go into a play as an addition, and they say, okay, we've given you a part, give it to us. And you say, well, I haven't read it yet. They say, bye. We go out and we talk about our business as if, and we're terrible at it. We haven't thought it through. We haven't practiced it. We don't have a good value proposition. We don't make it simple. It takes 20 minutes for them to understand what the hell we're doing. So it makes us, it puts some pressure on us to talk about our services coherently. So I always start with, you know, what I do is I help self-employed people attract more clients with better marketing. Let me give you an example, blah, blah, blah. And people can get it pretty quickly. People struggle to get clients because they don't know how and I show them how to do it. And I coach them and I've worked with thousands of people over the last 35 years. Yeah. And I'm talking to you because I like to let people know what I do. And I don't know if you need my help, but I'd love your help. Who do you know is helped with that? Any ideas that you could give me of how I could connect with people in this community? People love to help people. It's true. People love to help people. And we usually don't give them the opportunity, right? And we don't give them the opportunity. I want to ask you also, you mentioned one of the ways that you really kind of have these conversations as you do speaking. You, and I know some of the people watching this are like, oh, I would love to do some speaking as well. Do you have any words of advice on how do we get more speaking opportunities? Well, I'll tell you a story and I'll tell you what I did. When I moved from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, you know, I've been in the U.S. I'm Canadian citizen. I moved to San Francisco in 1979. I lived in San Francisco for 17 years. Then I moved to Silicon Valley. And my client load kind of started to light. No one was gonna drive an hour and a half to meet with me. I was mostly doing in-person meetings, but I'd given a lot of talks. I have to turn on my speaking marketing machine. And so I did. And this was just on the KIT CUS pre-internet. There was no Google, there was no nothing. There was email. So I went to the library and I got some directories and I found every professional group I could. I came up with a long list of names. Not only that, in the famous Robert Middleton archives, I have a folder that goes back to 1995. And in it, where's my list of all the organizations I reached out to? And I always say it's the easiest call to make because if it's a group that has speakers they're looking for speakers. So why not you? So I found out the person who booked the speakers took a call or two. And I said, I give talks on marketing for self-employed people. Do you think your group might be interested? And some said, no. And some said, maybe. And if it was maybe, then I sent them some stuff and followed up. It's rarely that they'll say, oh my God, I'm so glad you talked, come on over tomorrow. Now that's not gonna happen. So then you have to have some materials to send them. And you have to have a speaker's kit. You have to have a writeup of your talk or talks. You have to have a bio. If you've spoken anywhere, a list of those. You know, these days it's mostly done via PDF. You can get a designer to put together something like that that isn't gonna cost you thousands of bucks. It doesn't have to cost. But it has to be well written, relevant, interesting. You have a cover letter that says, here's what I do, got that done. And then you follow up. And I found it was extraordinarily successful in doing that, you know, just reaching out, getting meetings, getting conversations and then getting booked. And then I put together a presentation and I practiced it out loud several times. And, you know, it wasn't new at it at that point. I'd been in business for 1995. I'd been in business for more than 10 years. I'd given a fair number of talks. You know, there's, despite the fact that so much is online these days, there are still professional groups that get together and speaking is still a huge industry. And these were free talks. Every once in a while, I'd give a pay talk at a conference but I never really pushed that as a business. I don't like to travel too much. I want to be in my office because I have client meetings all the time. And if you travel, it's a day there, a day back, et cetera. Not the kind of lifestyle I like, but I love giving talks. So I gave talks to writers groups and consulting groups and technical groups and human resource groups and anything that would have self-employed professionals, organizers, national association of professional organizers. And, you know, they're all on my list here, association of national association of accountants. Actually, the one group that doesn't seem to understand marketing as accountants. I talked to this one group of five times and I didn't know what I was talking about. So market for accountants, why would they need to do that? We don't understand this one. And then some people, you know, it's perfect for them. Career action center, chambers of commerce. Things like that. So with a little research, these days, you can go to Google, put in professional groups in your area and you'll find a lot of stuff and look on their websites and see if they have speakers and see if there's a phone number or email and try to reach that person. Yeah, and sometimes they do webinars, right? And you don't even have to go anywhere. You could just do the Zoom webinar for their group too. I really like that you've kind of shared these ideas from a spirit of it's kind of very, you're bringing it down to the basics and it's very human. It removes the anxiety of marketing. I like that you're- I never had any anxiety marketing, ha ha. I had to do a lot of stuff to finally get over the anxiety. You know, I rehearsed what I was gonna say. I, you know, I'd pick up the phone, I'd break into a cold sweat. I mean, you know, you go through that. But I haven't found that anyone that has died from prospecting, getting meetings with people. It's like, yes, one out of three people you meet with will kill you. I mean, it's okay, you'll survive. It'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah, you'll do it bad to begin with. You get better. I'm still terrible at some things. Yeah. Well, maybe we could end on this little topic. It could be a big topic, but- I'll give it your- How do you, yeah, how do you deal with failure or that necessity of practice in order to become better at, for example, reaching out to people? Okay, three words. Deep spiritual work. Yeah. So what do I mean by deep spiritual work? Well, you know, I've done a lot of things. I've done a lot of things and read a lot of things. I've studied Byron Katie. I've worked with spiritual teachers. I've worked with non-duality teachers, all this stuff. But you know what it really comes down to? Accepting that whatever is happening right now is okay. I'm reading, I started reading a new book today by Joan Tollison. Have you ever read her? No, I haven't. She's the book called? It's, I don't have it in front of me. It's about, I probably have it on my iPad here. It's called Death. I say death and then I laugh, right? Death, the end of self-improvement. Okay. And she's one of the best writers on non-duality. And she talks about, you know, we are gonna die. Our bodies are gonna break down. Things are not always gonna be perfect. And yet, you know, we can have joy in the moment. Whatever is happening. Cause you know, everything bad is gonna happen to us. A lot of good things are gonna happen to us too. And it's like, you know, you try to read someone and they won't get through them, whatever. It's like, oh, well, I think I'll survive that. It'll be okay. Doesn't mean anything about me. People are crazy busy. I mean, you know, that stuff just bounces off me now. Before it was a lot harder, but it's sort of like whatever happens must be what's supposed to happen because it just happened. And it's too late to change it. It just happened. It's over. Yes. So on with the next, you know? I love that. That's a very good way for us to kind of close that conversation because that is, that's it. And I think if we can reconnect with the source of our eternal security, you know, then we can make experiments and reach out. Well, Robert, how can those watching this learn more about you? Is there anything you want to offer us? Tell us more. Well, I just wrote a report called Get More Meetings, Landmore Clients. And it's what we talked about today in more, you know, all about that. So if you just go to my website, it's obvious there's a form right there and you can get it. And then you'll be added to my e-list. If you don't want to be on the e-list after you get it, you can unsubscribe right away. But don't you dare. But you get the report and you go to actionplan.club.com, C-L-U-B, actionplan.club. And I actually have actionplan.com but I have different stuff on that site. So that's what to do. And then we'll give you some good ideas. I will be sure to put the link in the notes of this video. So look for the notes here. Sometimes it's above, sometimes below. And thank you, Robert. Thanks for this very helpful conversation. Thanks, it was fun. Thank you. Yeah, thanks.