Decoding Strategic Execution: From Ideas to Impact

Jonathan Morgan  [00:00:03]: 

Welcome back, everybody to another episode of the strategy gap. Another exciting conversation in store. Today, we are joined by Dan Goldstein, he is currently the Director of Strategy and Operations at a Array, but as a career spanning roles across the strategy space. Previous to his time at REI, he spent over eight years as a consultant, working primarily in innovation and incubation, enabling organizations to successfully develop and launch new businesses really from the ground up. He has a passion for mobilizing strategy execution and bringing new ideas to the market. So, Dan, welcome to the show.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:00:36]: 

Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:00:40]: 

Awesome. So, we went through your background a little bit. And certainly, you have an experience in consulting. And that comes up a lot in the strategy space, but kind of in, in my opinion, what I think a lot of people think about with strategy consulting, is like that typical strategy, mold, but I found it interesting from your background, it was a bit different in your time at Accenture, maybe let's kick things off by talking to us about your time and consulting and incubation innovation and how you think that led you to where you are today and strategy.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:01:09]: 

Yeah, absolutely. So, I, to your point, I started within Accenture in our a more traditional consulting type of experience. I worked cross functionally, at first, you know, in different types of projects, I should say cross industry working in different functions, growth strategy, human centered design, operating model, you know, M&A, you name it. In within that, I found myself drawn towards the banking cat markets world. So that's kind of where I would say, phase one of my eccentric career kind of took off was in primarily this banking cat markets world. As time went on, I found myself curious about what other industries look like. And I also found myself going, finding myself interested in earlier in earlier companies, and I thought, What's the best way to, for myself to gain exposure to that, you know, to that size of company, you know, as opposed to working with kind of, you know, your fortune 506 cetera. And I decided to stay within Accenture and join a small team within Accenture that was focused on identifying and incubating new businesses for those larger fortune 500 companies that might have not had the same innovation arm or expertise that a smaller scale startup would have. So, we joined a, we had a really small team within Accenture and the Accenture team that was kind of like a SWAT unit of a team that had different types of expertise. We had technology expertise to be pure strategists, we had folks with a little bit more digital background. And we were able to kind of be the SWAT team going around to different companies and helping them think through how they ultimately create new revenue streams. And think about launching new businesses and ultimately scaling those businesses to be hopefully, the real substantial revenue stream for those companies.

Joe Krause  [00:03:07]: 

Excellent. And with that being said, I mean, the idea of the you're helping organizations that just had an idea in terms of the in terms of the place that you would come in and really help, would it be founders that just had an idea? Or was it folks that were a little bit further along in the process where they maybe had some product? And they wanted some expertise? Like, where was your sweet spot?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:03:26]: 

Yeah, I would say, typically, this question typically would start with, Hey, we told we told the market, we were going to, you know, double over the next five years, we need to figure out how we're going to do that. So, we really came in tip of the spear, and we would start with a blank sheet of paper, right? You know, the companies may have a hunch, oh, we think we want to kind of go into this space. And maybe we want to expand there. But we would start with a blank sheet and really take a objectively Clean Slate look at the market, look at where there were opportunities where they were, where they were, you know, areas to play. And we kind of did that typical strategy assessment, how to play where to win, where to play, how to win. And we would start right from scratch.

Joe Krause  [00:04:10]: 

That makes a lot of sense. And I think as being part of achieve it in the early days, there was a couple of us in a room type of thing. And the idea of roles were a little less important. It was more of like what needs to get done, then we have to get this particular thing done. And it was all hands on deck because there's only a couple sets of hands. So, I guess based on your experience, was there any sort of through line of something that made the people that you work with successful were in that early stage, something needs to be developed? There isn't anybody who's developed that they got to do it, there's no process, there's no background. We've never done it before. What's the type of characteristics that you've seen and those types of leaders that allowed them to succeed in that environment versus the ones that maybe wilted under the pressure? What have you seen?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:04:51]: 

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the art of asking why five times is something that Is often lost. And I think oftentimes when you get into a large company and I will touch on this a little bit later, but you get into a large company, and there's kind of a conventional wisdom, it can be bureaucratic, there's a way of doing things. And the norm is not challenged. And I think something that you're talking about kind of that through line of folks just asking, Well, why do we do things this way? Why, why do we approach the market here? Why? Why has this not worked in the past, and just being curious and understanding, you know, both how things have worked in the past, and why there may be an opportunity somewhere in the future, I think that's a really critical quality, if you will.

Joe Krause  [00:05:37]: 

And then last thing before I pass it back to Jonathan, is that we work with a lot of clients, and they'll send over their strategic plan. And sometimes it's industries that the person that we have working on, it isn't super familiar with. And there's an acronym that maybe is used or some concept, and the ones that separated the bit from great that really can do it well are the ones that are uncomfortable not knowing what the acronym means. Either they'll figure it out on their own, or the last the client, or if they're caught flat footed, they'll never have that happen again. And so, your point of that curiosity is something that we definitely test for, for people bringing into our organization is to say what happens when you don't know something is that like, make you feel a certain way where you have to get the answer? And if the answer is yes, it usually leads to pretty decent outcomes. And I'm happy to hear that that's been your experience, as well as curiosity leads to typically decent outcomes, because you want to know a why we're doing it. And that should then lead to you actually doing it. So, I'm happy to be in your experience, too.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:06:27]: 

And I would just add on one thing, going back to the experience at Accenture and thinking about how you really do incubate these new businesses, it wouldn't just be a bunch of people who have never worked in the industry going in and saying, how do we do this? Right? It's about finding that right mix of folks that actually do have industry expertise and can stop you maybe from floating too far beyond, you've asked one too many wise, if you will, with the folks who are, you know, pushing the boundaries of sorts.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:06:52]: 

Yeah, if you go maybe to 789, they might get kicked out of the room, but finding the right balances. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Not helpful at that point. Yeah, we'll continue on the same thread. So certainly, at Accenture, you spent time small companies, large companies, small companies, within large companies, then kind of maybe also then pouring into your time now at a re What differences do you typically see in moving from that strategy space into execution? Like mobilizing teams mobilizing action, based on the size of the organization itself?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:07:26]: 

Yeah, I definitely think it's going to each company is going to be different, right. And I totally, totally appreciate that. But if we were allowed to talk in broad strokes for a second, I someone wants kind of made this metaphor to me about different companies or different sides boats. And you could be working at a huge company, and that's a cruise ship, right? It's slow moving, it's comfortable for the employees, there's a free buffet takes a lot to turn it right. But it's comfortable, right. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you're in like a one person kayak, right? It's all up to you, you're furiously rowing, you get to decide which way you want to go. And there's, you know, row boats and speed boats, and everything, mini yachts, and big yachts and everywhere in between, right. And I think that really holds true. So, if you think about a startup, who is a rowboat, let's call it and you? You may have a million great ideas, right? It's for it's for no shortage of great ideas, and you're coming up with different products. The question is, is how do you? How do you kind of focus those ideas right into something and prioritize those ideas into something that is, is everyone can align on and then how do you go execute? And I think I think you know, in a startup, you're typically a bit quicker to execute right? Less people need to get aligned, you know, there's direction you go, it's more of finding kind of the you know, the focus, right to get you to row in the right direction, you go to a cruise ship, right? Every the path is charted, right, it's not for lack of focus, you know, where you're going, it's more of getting all the crew members and everyone on board to do the thing and to actually execute in the right way. And it takes a long time, sometimes at a larger company. So, you know, in my mind, it's kind of this. I always come back to when I think about, oh, gee, what type of company do I want to be a part of, it's what type of boat do I want to be in? And that actually helped guide me from going from consulting, Accenture, 700,000 person organization at the end of they can be working with different clients to array you know, in the ballpark of 200 people that's, you know, the boat that I want to be part of.

Joe Krause  [00:09:42]: 

It's interesting, unless you've seen each boat and taking the ride on each of them. It's hard to know. That's why it's funny, you mentioned getting people that actually have done it before actually operating is important because sometimes you'll get advice from people that have never really done it before and haven't been in their trench or been in the boat, I should say. So, it's life is sometimes about finding what you'd like to do and what you don't like to do and it's Some people might do a stint at the startup and say I loved it my time there. But I'll never do that, again, I want to do something bigger. Because like I mentioned in the pre interview, I worked at a large pharmaceutical company, to your point, 100,000 employees, we had everything all kind of laid out. And the work was important, but it was very, this is the way we do things. And depending on the year in the in the race nail gets hammered down, that doesn't necessarily always apply to people's mentality, some people like to make a change. And so, but to draw back to what you mentioned before, which really resonated with me, and I think our listeners would know is the biggest problem I see with strategic plans that we get from our clients is that they're too big. And your comment, comment around putting all the good ideas into the mix. And then you know, ultimately, the best ideas will come to the to come to light. But we don't have all unlimited time, energy, and capital to do that. So how have you managed the conversations internally with teams you've either been a part of or teams that you've consulted with, to have them feel comfortable saying no to each other, because there's sometimes that fear of offending the coworker that you're working with, because their idea is maybe good, but not from a timing perspective? How have you successfully navigated those? What could be difficult conversations to get the plan down to a reasonable size?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:11:11]: 

Yeah, and look, I guess my perspective is, is, you know, at some point, someone coined the phrase and ideas worth a million bucks, but like, it's, it's really not, it's a matter of getting that you have a lot of million dollar ideas, in theory, it's a matter of how you prioritize and execute them. And I think it's, you know, to your point, it's not about whose idea is whose I think you need to kind of come up with an objective framework of sorts to put all the ideas into the a black box, right? And then kind of see what makes the most sense coming out of the black box. It's not it's not Joe's idea here, it's you know, it's or John's idea there, it's, you know, what's ultimately going to, you know, resonate with our customers most provides the most business value be operationally, you know, possible to do right like that. It's, it's more about the objective levers than the person's idea.

Joe Krause  [00:12:00]: 

Makes a lot of sense. And a quick aside before I give it back to Jonathan, his entrepreneurial entrepreneurship class in business school, I went to Rutgers here for our records, alum, but we had one of the class and there's always one in every cohort, one gentleman that says, I'm not going to share my idea in this class, unless you all sign an NDA. And the professor just completely eviscerated. The gentleman said, Listen, your ideas, if you had a great idea, let's say you had the best idea. Have you ever told I ever heard I give you 100 bucks right now. But that's about it. It's not worth millions, we're not signing NDAs. It's the idea that's like, literally the ground floor of what it takes to be successful. And so, everybody really learned from that. And the gentleman changes to pretty quick.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:12:39]: 

And I think to that point, like half the battle is getting ready to go back to the boat metaphor. It's getting the right people in the boat, right? Like,

Joe Krause  [00:12:49]: 

Get away from the boat, this guy was special guy.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:12:49]: 

Yeah, exactly. How do you get the people that are not going to be? This is my idea. This is your idea. And it's about how do we collectively road to the same location? Right? So, I think that's as much as you know, who's in the boat? What are you prioritizing you're doing in the boat? And how do you ultimately get there? Like, I think those three are equally you know, that's a three legged stool, in my opinion.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:13:10]: 

Yeah, I definitely want to go into that prioritization in a second. But before we go there, I want to talk a little bit more about those people on the boat. And I know you talked a bit earlier about, you know, array, you look at the size of the boat that you want to be in, and array fit that mold. And what does that process look like for you? How do you decide? Not only what is the right size, but for you? But what are the right type of people to bring into the boat with you?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:13:35]: 

Yeah, I think it's interesting going through any type of job hunt. And I'm sure y'all this would resonate with you all and other folks listening? You don't you never get the full picture. Right? I think you; you always hope to get the full picture. And you can ask as many questions and talk to as many people, but you never get the full picture. So, it's an art and a science, right at the end of the day of knowing who you're getting into the boat with. But I think that's probably the most important one of the most important factors in choosing where you want to go. I mean, some of these people, I think, on how much you work, you might be spending more time with your coworkers than your partner, right? So, you really want to make sure that you're vetting those people. For me personally, the process was, you know, not being shy about asking for more conversations, not being shy about understanding org structure. Not being shy about, you know, asking questions that might be off limits in other areas, seeing how folks handle them. Not being shy about getting references as well. I think that's also an area where people often fall short is they kind of take the word, you know, the words that are coming out of folk’s mouth as opposed to engaging with people that maybe you know, are recommended by those people who you're talking to or doing your own due diligence and research and trying to find other points of contact that they've worked with in the past. I think that's a really important part of the equation.

Joe Krause  [00:15:02]: 

The interview process is something that we spent some time on the on the podcast talking about, because to your point, anybody can say what they want during an interview, but you're de risking the process of finding the right person to put in the boat by doing what your reference have mentioned, which is calling references and doing a lot of hypotheticals and maybe seeing proof of work in the past, like, Oh, I was in charge of this, well, let me see that work. If you can write, those are great. And they know that they're here to achieve it, we definitely have usually some sort of presentation element to the end of the interview process. So, there's the normal, telling me about a time interviews and meeting different stakeholders. But if we're hiring strategy consultants, we typically give them a plan that's kind of scrub with all information and ask them to present that plan to us and say what recommendations they would make, what's worked, what didn't work. And it's a really amazing moment where the during the interview process, they might have done well, and you might have hired them. But then you give them a chance to audition for the role in a very small kind of way. And some people rise to the occasion, and it validates the decision to hire, or you completely retreat because they, they bombed it. I mean to be perfectly blunt, sometimes they go through it, and it's not what you expect it, and it really sheds a light. So, the idea of picking your boat mates properly, there are some ways I've seen here out there where you're putting them to the test, you present all day, you say, Okay, then let's do a nice 15 minute presentation for the group here. And if that's a challenge, that makes you think that maybe there was some overstating of experience.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:16:27]: 

Sure. Just to just to flip that as well, I think I get it depends on the job market and the macro, the macro environment and whatnot. But I think what's often underrated is, you know, have value in yourself, you are interviewing the company at the same point. So just as a person who you know, put in a presentation, you know, situation or mock presentations or might not perform well. Ask the company challenging questions, see, push them, see how they respond when, you know, something uncomfortable, maybe brought up, you know, like, you know, a lot of competitors out there, right. Oh, you know, it seems as though that, you know, there's been less funding in this type of area, right? Talk to, you know, push them, see how they respond. And the company's leaders respond in those types of scenarios. And I think you'll learn a little bit more about their true colors as well.

Joe Krause  [00:17:17]: 

Like asking how much runway they have, especially for early stage. That's a question I get nervous, you probably should run for the hills, right. So that's one of those questions that people shy away from. But if you're talking about you have a four month runway, we've heard plenty of stories of people joining an organization, and then quickly then being asked to leave because the funding has been cut. So that idea of it's a two way street is really important. And you're testing out the boat you're about to jump into and then who's going to be in that boat with you. That's a really good point that you just made.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:17:45]: 

Yeah, yeah, we'll continue to see how many times we can mention boats in this episode. But let's assume were you ever everyone's in the boats. We're going back now, going back to prioritization, right. We're trying to decide which direction are we going to go? You know, certainly it's going to be pretty straightforward, large, large boat, large company is pretty straightforward course. But in a smaller situation, smaller organization, where you have all these different directions you can go, how do you focus on prioritization? Is some aspect of product market fit? Is it some aspect of the team that you have available? Kind of what's your recommendation for working through that?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:18:21]: 

Yeah. That's fine. Just talking about boats. I don't even like boats. I'm more of a land based creature. But to your question. I think there are a million different frameworks out there, right, in terms of how folks prioritize. There's a million you can google, and you could find 20 off the bat. I think the one that has resonated most with me, it's called it's a DVF framework. It's not something I made up I'm pretty sure it was popularized by IDEO in the 90s. Of sorts, and something Accenture used. But I do think it's, it's, it's very helpful in trying to think through Joe, to your point of how you make it less about Joe's idea of John's idea, and more just about the idea. So, the DVR framework is desirability viability, feasibility, and it ultimately helps drive I think the right conversations and accompany about what what's our differentiator, it forces you to think more holistically about the ideas that you have than just, you know, you know, an idea at the surface level. So, desirability forces you to think from the client or consumers lens, right, depending on if your b2b or b2c company forces you to think about will the client actually want this? Does the client actually need this? Viability forces you to think about the financial side to it. What's the economic you know, opportunity here, both from a revenue and from a profitability perspective? What's the ROI and then and then feasibility helps you think through operational and technical considerations that could be a play with this idea. So, you know, you may have a great idea. Or Joe may have a great idea that customers are saying they want right and clamoring for and again, there's a whole say do gap thing to be aware of, but they're clamoring for. But it will take your engineers, by the way, you need a higher, higher six more engineers against taking nine months to build, does that make sense for you in the company at that time to do it, even though the, you know, the, the customers are clamoring for it? Oh, and by the way, it's completely not viable, you're not going to break even for another seven years. So it's a nice way to look at ideas and problems, kind of through multiple lenses and help, you know, stack rank, prioritize, kind of at least map out how these different ideas fall, you know, I wouldn't be an extra consultant, if I didn't say you ultimately, you know, can think of this as you know, a rating score, and you put it on a two by two, and you look at the top right, and you know, all that good stuff. At the end of the day, any prioritization framework you use is going to be an art and a science, right? It's going to be, it's going to be quantitative, it's gonna be qualitative, there's going to be some gut involved. This is just the quantitative, right quantitative way to try to put some color around these different ideas, and ultimately, how you can ultimately how you can kind of stack rank them and start having good conversation around which ideas should be prioritized. Yeah.

Joe Krause  [00:21:23]: 

As I was saying, with the viability aspect of things, right, the market is shifted now where it's not growth of all cost, it's how do you find it? How are you going to basically be self-sufficient and not constantly have to go back to the tap of free money that's been turned off. So that concept is probably changed a lot of discussion around execution, where you don't have as much leeway with a failure of execution, you have less time than you probably had in the past, and you actually have less resources, because you just can't go raise another round if you didn't show success. So, does that concept of being really lean and mean, require a different type of team and folks that are working there? Or is it just the same leaders? But with a different mindset? I guess is there are the leaders from the last 10 years is going to be different than leaders of the next 10 years? Where it's maybe a little bit leaner? How have you seen that play out in terms of mindset, because if you're thinking big, big thoughts, you might not have enough money to actually get to that point, you know, to the point where you're actually viable, you might run out of money and be out of business before you even actually see anything that resembles your idea. It's doesn't mean it's a bad idea. But you don't you can't think as maybe as big as you used to. How have you been seeing that play out in the market?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:22:33]: 

Yeah, I think it's more about leaders, you know, a willingness and adaptability. Right, and their will, I should say, their willingness to change and being adaptable to the market. I think, I think where you're seeing some challenges are folks that are, you know, just kind of staying the course. Right. Like even though even though the broader environment all around you is totally different, just kind of staying the course I think I think that's where you run into some challenges. But I think, I think that the good, the good companies and good leaders in those companies are finding ways to say, hey, we need to, you know, in the past, you might have put less weight on the V, right, you put more weight on the D and the F, but you're saying okay, maybe it's not, you know, 20% v at this point, we need to make it 60% v, right. Like our, our goal right now needs to be defined to decrease our burn rate and find more profitability, right? And then you can help stack rank ideas a little bit more in saying what are the initiatives that are going to force that as opposed to the ideas that are going to take six months to build that might not be profitable, etc., etc. I think what's interesting is if you look objectively, at companies that we know, right across the board, each of them do this, like inherent prior to like they do different weightings. Right. If you look at them, right, so like, Apple, right, Apple, I think their brand is just so consumer and design focused and brilliantly. So right, they put such a weight on creating products that are just so magnificent to use. And I think and I think obviously, it's easy to do that when you have so many zeros in your bank account, right? But like that, that is what they are known for. If you if you look at a Costco, for example, Costco has, has said, if the V is fixed, we are only taking a gross margin of 15%. That is where we live, we are going to differentiate in other areas. It's interesting when you start looking at companies and what their strategy is, I think you can really kind of anchor it to where they're prioritizing the DDB or the Athens.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:24:34]: 

Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting concept there. I think, originally, what I was hearing you talk about is that the DVF has test to change, right? As you go through maturation as an organization as a team through the market, you have to change that. But I think another important point that you mentioned is that you need to define for your organization like what does your DVF model look like? In your experience for someone that's maybe listening and says, You know what, this is great. I've been struggling prioritization, I would implement this now, how do you map out what that balance should look like within an organization? How do you decide what's 20%? What's 80%? And build that initial structure to then work off of?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:25:13]: 

I think there's I think everyone needs to rally towards a framework, right, a framework and an equation. And it's not to say again, and I think I think an important thing here to realize it's not whatever goes into the box and comes out of the box is what we're doing. This is just a, a mechanism, and a tool to drive conversation. And I think if you're able to kind of get that level of commitment among a core group of people, and say, hey, look, we're throwing spaghetti at the wall. Right now, we're wasting money left and right, we need to find a way some way in which we can have a little bit more focus as an organization, what we work on. That's step one, right and getting the right people in the room to feel good about that. The next question is, and I truly think this is, the framework shouldn't matter that what matters is the output and driving focus, right? So, find the framework that works for your company, that might be DVF, that might be some other prioritization matrix. But find the framework that works for the right, you know, those people in the room so that ultimately, the most important thing is the output, the output of driving focus. Think about that not what framework you're going to use.

Joe Krause  [00:26:23]: 

It's an important point to be made because you're talking about the framework for the overall business. And we talk a lot we deal with a lot of strategic planning conversations here. And the question for people that are starting out sometimes with their strategic plan is, well, what framework should I use? There's balanced scorecard, and oh, GSM and OKRs. And all that. And I, we I really explained it as there's no, there's no perfect way to do it. It's just you want something that's already kind of formed. And there's thought leadership around it, like balanced scorecard has been around for a long time, you can argue about the benefits of it, the downsides to it, but for better or for worse, it is a framework. The question is, will that work for your organization and fit your needs, and most of the time, it's a little borrowing a little bit cafeteria style, borrowing this one, that one and making it your own, I think your point is well taken. Because sometimes people just want like, tell me what to do. That's why like the book traction and ELS model is so popular because it gives them here's how you run your meeting. Here's what your report is going to look like. Like some people need that others, they want to maybe be a little bit more freeform. So, what you just mentioned is what we have conversations with on a daily basis. And to give them the consulting answer we give it depends. And, and all we really can do is make sure we make a deal style, give them three doors, explain them what's behind each door. And hopefully, the client then will choose the one that's best for them. But it has to be their choice, not ours. And that I think that's the other piece too. We can't make the decision for you. We can tell you and advise you, but you have to be okay with the choice because as consultants, we usually then evaporate into the mist. You got to be comfortable with whatever you chose, and right. seems simple, but it's something that people agonize over.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:27:59]: 

I agree with you. And it's it's important to, you know, consider your options. It's not worth agonizing over. The other thing I would say is more often than not whether you're in a consulting, you know, wearing your consulting hat or you're wearing your strategy and operations hat. Oftentimes, if you're having this conversation, it's because someone hasn't thought of this before. And more times than not, if the biggest challenge is just bringing it to the table, bringing a framework to the table, know that it's going to get beat up know that it's going to change know that people's opinions are going to vary on this, but have a starting point. That's half the battle is just having a starting point. And you know, as long as the person who brings the starting point to the table isn't precious about what was actually taking place there. I think I think that's a really important first step.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:28:44]: 

Yeah, definitely, definitely have to get going. If not, it's you know, analysis paralysis, and you never make a decision, and then you're repeating it every year, every year. Well, perfect, Dan, certainly we appreciate the time today. Before we wrap, we have one last question. And it's a question that we asked all of our guests. So, if you were to think back about not only everything you've talked about today, but all the different techniques and insights that you've learned throughout your career, and you went back to a young Dan's starting off in his first strategy consulting role and had to give yourself one piece of advice, what would that advice be?

Daniel Goldstein  [00:29:19]: 

That's a great question. And I've heard you ask this on other podcasts, and I did not have it prepared. I have a prepared thought here. I think I think it depends on the person, but I would, I would encourage you this this advice depends on the person, but I would encourage folks to take to take risks. And I think whether that be personally or professionally I'm talking about it mostly in a professional sense. I think you always feel like it's too late to take a risk or you are you know, inherently when you take a risk you are giving something up Right. And I think it always feels like the later and later you get your career, the more and more you're giving up. I also think the thing that people lose sight of, and our people are a little bit short term career is probably going to be 4040 years or 40 or 50 years. And, you know, objectively, I'm relatively early in that journey, right? And the risk is only going to get bigger as you go on. And I think there's something to be said for not being afraid to take those risks, not being afraid to bet on yourself not being afraid to bet on your conviction. And, yeah, that's what I would say.

Jonathan Morgan  [00:30:39]: 

No, absolutely love it. Well, Dan, we appreciate the time. I know our listeners have learned a lot from our conversation today and look forward to continuing the conversation into the future.

Daniel Goldstein  [00:30:48]: 

I really appreciate it guys. Love the dialogue and hope to talk soon.

Joe Krause  [00:30:53]:

Thanks, Dan.