From 63 Pages to One: Marc Mertz's Strategic Planning Journey

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Today we have a fun conversation. We'll be talking about the importance of a chief strategy officer, simplifying your strategic planning process, and ultimately how to focus on the execution components of strategic planning. Joining us today for the conversation is Marc Mertz. Marc has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry across a variety of leadership and strategy roles. He's currently the chief strategy officer at Kaweah Health, where he oversees the creation and execution of the organization's strategic vision, direction and initiatives.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:56]:

He's passionate about improving the performance and outcomes of healthcare organizations and certainly has a lot of insights he's going to be sharing today. So Marc, welcome to the conversation. Thanks for joining us.

Marc Mertz [00:01:06]:

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:08]:

So Marc, in previous conversations on the podcast with The Strategy Gap, we focus on different specific roles and strategy, like a previous one with a chief of staff, but one that we actually haven't focused on directly. Is the role of chief strategy officer certainly very important to you. Each industry and organization might have their own definition for a CSO and what they manage or what they do and don't do. But I want to get your take on how do you define a chief strategy officer?

Marc Mertz [00:01:37]:

Great question. And actually one that comes up quite a bit here, we do a executive rounding where we visit all the various departments and locations within the health system. And as I introduce myself, nine times out of ten someone's going to raise their hand and say, what the heck is the chief strategy officer? What do you do? And so as I explain it to them, and would describe it to you as I see it, a couple major areas of responsibility. One is, and I think you touched on it, is leading the development of our strategic plan, the process of planning, engaging individuals and teams in that planning process, and then managing that plan throughout the year. In addition to that, I really see my role as one of facilitating growth for the organization. As I look around the table at my fellow executives on the leadership team, some of them have 1000 2000 employees. They're responsible for day to day operations. They have to be hyper focused on ensuring that every one of those individuals is delivering safe and effective care to patients.

Marc Mertz [00:02:41]:

They might not have the time and energy to take a step back and think more conceptually about, you know, development of new service lines, opening new locations, market position or market share leakage of patients out of the market. So I really see it as my responsibility on the leadership team to be able to have that time and energy to spend thinking about those opportunities and then helping lead the development of maybe new services or expansion of existing services, whether it's through marketing or recruitment of additional physicians or providers. So I think it's not. Having that operational responsibility frees me up to think much more conceptually and strategically and ultimately drive growth across the organization.

Joe Krause [00:03:20]:

Trey. And that topic that youre bringing up is one that I personally get, just doing various implementations around the country. Its, how do I get people to think that operations, especially in healthcare, is critical, having a high reliability organization, there is no room for error when it comes to patient safety and care. So thats an operational pressure that exists 24 hours a day 365. And then youre also saying, well, we need to also think about the future. And so I always use the analogy of the spinning plates. And if one plate represents operational items and one plate represents the strategic items, and they both start to wobble. I mean, nine, nine times out of 100, the operational plates going to be spun back up.

Joe Krause [00:03:57]:

So do you have in your mind, like a percentage of headspace that you hope to gain from folks that are maybe really operationally pressured to say if theyre thinking about strategy, like 25% of the time, that is a victory for me because maybe it was lower than in the past. Is it half the time, what is a good amount of time that somebody should be thinking a little bit further down the road versus the fire at the door that's currently there. What's your experience? Been there?

Marc Mertz [00:04:19]:

Yeah, that's an excellent question. I think it probably ebbs and flows based on the executive and what their areas responsibility is or are. I think we saw this probably more than ever during the pandemic. You think about a chief nursing officer, it was 15, 16 hours a day just living in the command center, living in the hospital, just trying to make it through that shift. And while obviously we had to do that, but at the same time, as I tried to bring back to that team is we have to be thinking about the end of this pandemic. We have to be thinking about next year, three years from now, because if we don't, this thing will end at some point, we'll come out of it. And if we haven't been planning, we haven't been thinking about the future, it's going to affect us beyond just the COVID pandemic is going to impact us for years or even longer. So I don't know if I could put an exact number on it, but I do want them thinking about strategy, and I do also see my role is to engage them in those conversations.

Marc Mertz [00:05:16]:

So as I'm thinking about and looking at the market, identifying a new service that could make sense for us to provide, I think it's my job to help then engage with that leader, to get them into that mindset, to say, let's take a break from operations, let's get together for a couple hours and get the whiteboard out and begin kind of a visioning session for, okay, what could this look like in the future and what are the steps and the barriers that we need to overcome to get there? So I want them thinking about it, but also I think it's my responsibility to help them shift into that mode because it is. I think it's a different way of thinking. Right. You're probably using different parts of your brain as you think about operations versus, again, that more strategic aspect of what we do.

Jonathan Morgan [00:05:55]:

Yeah. And I imagine that also going to ebb and flow, not just based on the person, but through the different aspects of the year and certainly through both your introduction and your definition of chief strategy officer, there's many different things that you're going to be responsible for. Everything from the first ideation of the plan through creation of it, through management, through execution, through revisions. But I'd love to go through each of those pieces as we continue the conversation. And one thing that really stuck out to me when we first connected is that you talked about throughout your journey, one of the transformations that you've help generate is taking, I think, what was always like the old school ways of, hey, there's a 65 page plan that actually is in a binder, that sits on a shelf. And I know in your experience, you helped us simplify that down into a single page, knowing this is a common problem for organizations. What was your approach to really simplifying that strategic planning process through your role as chief strategy officer?

Marc Mertz [00:06:53]:

Yeah, another great question. And I would actually probably suggest that the process of strategic plan may have actually become more complicated or at least more complex and thorough. But the result, the output, the plan itself was probably more simplified. So to your point, I spent 22 years in healthcare consulting, primarily working with health systems on strategy. And inevitably I'd show up in town and they'd want to develop a new plan. So I'd ask for the current plan. They'd be, you know, really proud of it. Again, it was probably in a drawer somewhere.

Joe Krause [00:07:25]:

Where?

Marc Mertz [00:07:26]:

In a binder on a shelf. And, you know, a small team of senior leaders had gone away to a nice resort over the weekend and put it together, and they were very proud of it and thought it was fantastic. But when you ask them about, okay, what do you do about it? How do you know if you're being successful? When do you look at it? When you revisit it? They never really had a good answer. And I say it was similar when it came to Cuia six years ago, actually, I moved into the office of the former director of strategic planning, and I found that 63 page document in his desk drawer. I mean, literally, the plan in the drawer. And it was, the content of the plan was fantastic. All the right components, all the right analysis and information. And the strategies they actually outlined were fantastic.

Marc Mertz [00:08:04]:

But it was a 63 page word document, very verbose. You had to sit down and really digest the thing to understand what was going on. And no one else besides probably him, had it even around. So no one was looking at it or referring to it. So, you know, the first year I was here, I actually redid the entire planning process. So rather than that senior executive team going away for a retreat, we engaged, yes, senior leaders, but also middle management. We had sessions with the staff. We had a session with the board.

Marc Mertz [00:08:34]:

We even invited members of the community to participate in kind of a grassroots, ground up planning process for who are we, where do we want to go, and what are the most important things that we need to do in the next one to three years? So the process itself probably took six months to go through all those different various groups and collate all that information and boil it down and distill it into what ultimately became our plan. But to your point, what we ended up with was essentially a plan on a page, is what we called it, which was an eleven by 14 piece of paper that had our organization's new mission statement. So why do we exist? It had our vision statement, who do we want to become? It had five pillars, which are sort of the foundational things that we want to achieve as an organization, providing excellent health to our community, providing great service to our patients, demonstrating financial strength, those sort of things. But then the heart of it was the strategic plan. We had, I think, at that .6 major areas of focus. And the document just had, what are the most important things we're going to do in the next year to three years in each of those categories? And then what are the very measurable, specific outcomes we want to achieve that indicate that we're being successful. So having that on a page, we could then visit that with senior leadership. I could talk about it at department meetings.

Marc Mertz [00:09:55]:

We put it on our bulletin boards, we put it on our website, we put it on our Internet. It was very easy for people to say, okay, I know exactly where the organization is going. So it took us a little bit to get there. But ultimately, when we got there, it was just much more impactful to have that plan boiled down to a document that people could really understand and make it much more visible than that 63 pages that was in the desk drawer.

Joe Krause [00:10:17]:

It's actually in a drawer. We always talk about the drawer. You actually open the drawer and it was in there. So that's great. But the idea of making sure that you engaging all the different stakeholder groups that are going to be influential in executing the plan, which is fantastic, and people that can't have every one of their ideas in the plan, otherwise you will have a 63 page plan. They want to hear like they've been heard, right? So they want to make sure that they're part of the process, but where the end up is going to be at the end of the planning process, like that pot of gold, so to speak, that that is different for everybody, right. If you're a staff member, what does that look like if you're a community member? And so how do you paint a vivid picture to say, if we execute the majority of this plan, which is has the right stuff in it, it's taking into account all the different stakeholder groups, we just have to remain focused. How do you then paint the picture of, here's what we're going to look like in a few years and how that's going to benefit you directly? Because if were just being honest, most people want to say whats in it for me.

Joe Krause [00:11:05]:

So how have you been able to toe the line between the different groups? Because the pot of gold looks different for each of them.

Marc Mertz [00:11:10]:

Yeah, no, great question. Thats where you really drive impact and change in an organization is having those conversations. And so I would say a couple of things. One, as I mentioned on that plan on the page, we actually have the vision statement for our organization. And we were very bold in our definition of our vision statement, which was to become a world class organization. And we struggled a lot with the words world class. First of all, what the heck is world class? And then second, is it even realistic for us in an independent health system in central California to believe that we can become world class and ultimately we decided that it was. But I say that because then that's the vision that we articulate to the teams and to the staff.

Marc Mertz [00:11:53]:

Look, this is where we want to go. We realize that we're not there today, but we believe that we can get there and we believe that we should get there. That's what we owe to our community. And so then connecting the specific initiatives, the things that we're doing in the next year to three years, and tie it back to that vision statement, okay, if we do this, it's a step forward towards becoming world class. And then helping that staff member understand their role in achieving those very specific objectives and measures for the year, I think makes it more real for them. And ultimately, hopefully you get them more engaged in the process and the performance so that the entire organization rises and moves towards those objectives you've defined.

Joe Krause [00:12:34]:

Yeah, that's helpful to understand. And I guess the question I still have would be like, okay, so if I'm a staff member, let's say I'm a nurse, and I'm like, I want to become world class. I've bought into that. Do you then spend some time on the fact that when we cross the chasm and we become world class, objectively speaking, we have different rankings that prove that we are. Your job as a nurse will evolve and improve and your life will be different? Like, is that conversation coming to as well? Like just truly going down to that level to say, if we do this, we're going to be able to have these investments made and expansion and gives you an opportunity to grow in your career? Are those conversations happening as well? Or is it more just a broader thing, like, things will be better when we're world class and just kind of leaving it at that? Or is it down to the individual level saying, you will personally benefit if you take this journey with me?

Marc Mertz [00:13:17]:

Yeah, I appreciate the follow up on that. So we definitely have that conversation about what does it mean to them as an individual especially. I go back to the pandemic again. It was a very financially challenging time for us. And so talking about performance improvement and achievement of our goals as it relates to driving financial strength to the organization, that allows us to then provide market competitive salaries. It allows us to enhance the benefits that we offer to our employees to hire more people if we develop new services. We need more staff to work in that department or work in that clinic. And so it's definitely that aspect to it.

Marc Mertz [00:13:55]:

But then also I talk a lot about pride and I talk to staff about the importance of being proud of what you do and where you work. And so thinking about becoming a world class organization, we're taking care of our family, our friends, our neighbors, and you want to be proud of what you do. And when you tell people where you work, you want to say it with pride. And so helping us advance and improve maybe doesn't appeal to everyone's desires, but I think there's a significant number of people on the team who do want that sense of pride, and I think that inspires them.

Jonathan Morgan [00:14:28]:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people, a lot of organizations are now moving to this mindset, right, of getting more of that grassroots campaign that you talked about, getting people involved in the process, but then it gets to actually rolling it out, and the people never hear about it again. You got these people, this peak of excitement, and then all this piece dwindled away. And going back briefly, what you said before is people always talk about it. Simplifying the strategic planning process. To your point, that's probably the wrong term to use. You didn't simplify the process. You actually made the process harder.

Jonathan Morgan [00:15:01]:

But the goal is to simplify execution and ultimately to achieve the outcomes that you hope. As we move into this execution portion, as you talk about getting your people involved and getting them motivated and how they can be a part of the vision, how do you then focus, or how have you focused on the execution piece to continue that momentum throughout the planning cycle?

Marc Mertz [00:15:21]:

Yeah, and that's really the important part. Right. You can have the best plan in the world, but if you're not doing anything about it, it was kind of an academic process that didn't really do much for you. So we spent a lot of time, energy on exactly that. So for. We segment our plan into major initiatives. This year, we have five major initiatives. There's an executive team member who's the sponsor for that.

Marc Mertz [00:15:44]:

Excuse me, that initiative. They might not own all the operational aspects of the work that's being done there, but they're responsible for keeping score on how we're doing and then maintaining visibility for the work that's being done. Every single month, a component of the strategic plan comes first to the executive team, where we look at, okay, how are we doing based on what we set out to do this year? Are we accomplishing the goals? Are we delivering on a strategy? Are we achieving the different tactics that we want to do from there? We actually take that same information to our entire leadership team, which is probably about 250 executive directors, managers, and supervisors. We have the same conversation. Here's how we're doing. Here's the gaps. Here's where we're falling behind. Here's where we need to focus more of energies on the achieving.

Marc Mertz [00:16:28]:

And then that all goes to the board. So our board meets every month. Every single board agenda has a component of the strategic plan on it, where we spend time talking to the board about the same things. What are we doing? How are we doing? What are the outcomes? And so that visibility of it. If you're that executive who's sponsoring that area, you're darn sure that we're making progress, that people are doing what they need to do. They're rowing in the right direction. Because I have to go stand in front of the board of directors and talk about it. Well, I have to stand in front of my peers on the leadership team, the executive team, and talk about what's doing.

Marc Mertz [00:16:59]:

So that constant visibility, that cadence of revisiting those components of the plan, actually twice a year they go to the board, I think gives that visibility and the accountability to individuals and to the organization.

Joe Krause [00:17:10]:

Preston, your comments bring up. Being from New Jersey, Thomas Edison's a bit of a hometown here. Strategy without execution is hallucination. The idea of just because you come up with a plan and if you don't actually do anything with it, it doesn't really mean anything. So I think that your, your comments resonate there. What you're really pointing to is visibility around the plan, but also social pressure in terms of, uh, behavior change. Nobody wants to go in front of a group and look unprepared, especially if it comes down to something that they easily could have done. Cause we always, with the achievement platform, there's ways to see who didn't make their updates on time.

Joe Krause [00:17:41]:

And I always tell people, like, that's the only one you really have control over. Like if your item is a green, yellow, or red, you hope you're doing your best, but some items are going to go yellow or redden based on a variety of factors. Sometimes you don't have complete control over due dates, but you do have complete control over making your update before the meeting. So that idea of just making sure that they know the spotlights coming on on August 15, you know you're ready or not. And most people, if they get caught in a situation where they're not prepared, they don't do it again. But have you had any situations where you've been able to kind of leverage that sort of pressure to maybe get a detractor on board where they finally, they put up all the walls they really maybe weren't participating as well. But finally, given that visibility, they became on board. How have you moved a detractor to maybe somebody who's not a full promoter, but is at least not detracting anymore, they're more neutral.

Joe Krause [00:18:27]:

How have you worked through that?

Marc Mertz [00:18:29]:

Yeah, accountability is one of my favorite words, so I use it a lot around here. And so you talk about the tool, achieve its tool and the ability to email out requests for updates. We found that to be extremely powerful and beneficial. Whereas in the past you're out chasing people down for information, it's easy for them to ignore an email or two or to not answer the phone call. But because you can track it within achieve it, you can see who's responded, who's not. And we actually have created reports that show who's not filling in their information on a monthly basis. And so to your point, that happens one month, maybe two months, but it doesn't happen after that because it is being looked at and is being held very seriously by the leaders of their organization. And so I think there's just not wanting to be on the naughty list aspect of it.

Marc Mertz [00:19:15]:

But then, to your point, people who maybe were pessimistic or skeptical of the plan and the work that we were doing, as they see us actually doing what we said we were going to do on a consistent basis with the right cadence, and then seeing the actual results and seeing things improve, I think turns people, turns people around a bit and gets them on board with the work that we're doing, where they might not have believed it at first. Actions and results speak pretty loudly.

Jonathan Morgan [00:19:40]:

Yeah. And it seems like to use a school reference, you've got two options for people to motivate them. Either they can go to the principal's office or they can get up on a stage and get a certificate. It seems like you definitely have to balance both of those. Those are going to be used for different types of people in different sorts of situations. You can't use the principal's office every single month, but eventually you can curb that behavior and more and more promote those that are doing really well, the work that they're doing really well, and that hopefully will shift the tides of the rest of the organization as well.

Marc Mertz [00:20:12]:

And part of this cultural, I mean, we as an organization have embraced the strategic planning process and the strategic plan as vital to what we do. I think a majority of people here see it as an honor to be involved in the process and take it very seriously. That role that weve asked them to play in the work thats being done, the reporting of the strategic plan. And so continuing to remind people how important this work is, maybe the carrot as opposed to the stick.

Jonathan Morgan [00:20:43]:

Trey.

Joe Krause [00:20:43]:

Yeah, I think most people, even the most jaded folks that maybe arent like, well, yeah, heres another planning process. He said things are going to be different. But then when you finally actually see consistency in the difference because, yeah, you could be different for a month or even two months, but if youre consistently different six, seven, eight months a year, then all of a sudden even the most jaded detractor in the world will then say, okay, this truly is different and I'm on board. So there is something to that. And it's the best advice I've ever received in my career, in life, and even in college. It was just like, just be consistent, show up, do what you're supposed to do. If you say you're going to do something, do it. And then also make it a point to announce that it happened.

Joe Krause [00:21:16]:

Because sometimes the idea of like, oh, I don't want to toot my own horn, but if you don't have those conversations and don't put it out there, no ones going to assume it was done. Theyre going to assume it probably wasnt done. Most people go to that, well, I havent seen anything. So therefore probably nothings happening. So it sounds like you have a good communication cycle in place that people can just rely upon it. They know that once a month theyre going to receive x amount of readout and its going to come in the same format and they can rely upon it. Theres no skipped months. And thats one of the big bits of advice I give to different leadership teams that I work with is you cant skip a month.

Joe Krause [00:21:47]:

I know. I understand. All August, we have so many vacations, we probably should skip the strategic planning meeting. And it's like you do that once. The odds of it happening again is very high. So the idea of keeping that consistency, so what advice would you give to our listeners around ensuring that the consistency is there? There's a communication plan. Are you creating a calendar? Are you creating, what are you doing to ensure that people can rely upon what you say you're going to do and they come to expect it?

Marc Mertz [00:22:13]:

Yeah. As soon as our strategic plan is approved. And so our fiscal year starts July 1, we usually aim to have our plan approved by March, April at the latest because it then informs our budget process. But as soon as my plan is approved by the board, I sit down with the board clerk. I define that calendar exactly as you talked about. So each of those initiatives, they're scheduled for all three of those presentations for the whole year. So they know when they're going to the executive team, they know when they're going to leadership, and they know when they're going to the board. And your point? We don't skip any of them.

Marc Mertz [00:22:45]:

Sometimes, like you said, schedules get tight, people are on vacation, doesn't matter. It's set in stone. We're going that month. It's not being missed. And the other thing we do is celebrating successes. I mean, you talk about letting people know what's happened. I mean, there's nothing more powerful than celebrating a success associated with a strategic plan where this clinic was opened on time and we're exceeding our budgeted visits for the month, three months in that, again, it reinforces the planning process, the fact that we're working towards these goals, and everyone loves success when things are going well.

Jonathan Morgan [00:23:17]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Marc, one other topic I want to touch on briefly before we close out here is often organizations, they get to the end of the year or the end of their planning period, and they're trying to think, okay, we've learned all this stuff, we've tracked everything, we've had our meetings, but now we need to adjust. Sometimes it's the annual planning process. I think in the case of your organization, sounds like it's some part annual, some part multi year. How do you combine a multi year plan within an annual process so that you're not just waiting until the end of this entire period to rework everything each time?

Marc Mertz [00:23:49]:

Yeah, great question. I feel like in the past people might have put together five year strategic plans or even longer. And at least in healthcare those days are gone. Who knows what's going to be here five years from now or what the pressures are. So I describe our plan as a three year plan with annual revisions. Each year we go through maybe a shortened or abbreviated version of that long six month strategic planning process that I described, where we really revisit those major components of the plan from the previous year. And maybe we achieved everything we set out to do and so that one can fall off. Or maybe we just need to tweak the goals but keep the core fundamental work that we're doing.

Marc Mertz [00:24:29]:

So it's really just taking a temperature check for what we're doing and how we're measuring that and making tweaks to it each year. But its really that one to three year vision that were really looking towards because some of these things are honestly hard and a lot of work and youre never going to get it done in twelve months. So I would say the work might be consistent or last over three years, but maybe the way were measuring it, maybe in the first year its more of a process measure that were going to open a clinic. But then in year two, weve got volume measures and targets were trying to hit. Weve got quality measures were trying to hit. Its really just revisiting and modifying the plan as we go along.

Joe Krause [00:25:05]:

Thats a very consistent thing that we see with our clients. Is that the idea of when I started ten years ago, five year plans, ten year plans, 20 year plans sometimes were all the rage. To your point, though, theres no way you can see a year. The contrast is just too fuzzy. So the idea of having heres where we should be in three years and having a one year plan revisited year over year to either add or take away is something that I can definitely validate, is happening across all industries, which is a good thing because ultimately its people realizing that just the way that things used to be. And I think generally speaking, if people are honest with themselves, even back then, they werent able to look five years into the future. Its just not a thing. It sounded good, though.

Marc Mertz [00:25:41]:

I would say that we hold pretty fast to the one year plan. We take very seriously any deviations from that plan because we spent a lot of time and had a lot of people provide input into that plan. We all decided that's the most important work we're going to do this year. And in a lot of ways, it's what are we not going to do? Right? The strategic plan defines what you're going to do, but it also defines what you're not going to do. If it wasn't important enough to go through that process and make it into the plan, then we just don't have the resources, the money, the bandwidth, the people, the time to do it. This year, it's going to have to wait. But we don't deviate from that plan during that year without very serious consideration and conversation. It's something that the executive team would have to say.

Marc Mertz [00:26:19]:

Something significant came up that we can no longer pursue that or the market changed dramatically. So that's nothing, don't no longer make sense, and then it's even a conversation with the board to change it. So while we pivot kind of annually during that year, we stay pretty true to what we set out to do.

Joe Krause [00:26:34]:

It makes sense. And for listeners of the podcast, they know that we espouse the same virtue, which is the fact that your plan is equal parts what made it and what didn't make it. And sometimes that didn't make it doesn't get as much glamour. It's just like, no, we thought about doing this and here are the reasons why we're not doing it. People need to hear those things. Otherwise they're going to make the assumption that you didn't even think about it. These fools didn't even think about this. And it's like, no, no, we did.

Joe Krause [00:26:54]:

Here's why. Here's what's up. And so that's a very good advice across all industries, but especially in healthcare.

Marc Mertz [00:27:00]:

Yeah, let's knock these ten things out this year and those other things that you talked about are vital and they're important, but we're going to do them next year or the year after. But you can't do it all this year. Let's. What's most important this year and then we'll get to the other stuff.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:11]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Marc, it's been a great conversation. We covered a lot of things, everything from chief strategy officer, to creating a plan, to managing it, to revising it. As we close out, one final question that we ask all of our guests is that if you were to think about your journey as a healthcare leader, as a strategy leader, and go back to talk to yourself as you were first entering your strategy role, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Marc Mertz [00:27:35]:

Oh, man, that's a good question. So what advice would I give myself my first year in this role? Huh? It is probably what I just talked about is that you can't do everything at once. I think I have to check myself sometimes and practice patience. You know, I like to move fast. I like to get everything done. And so sometimes I have to take a step back and really focus in on what are those most important things we're gonna do right now. We'll get to the other stuff, but we can't. We can't do it all at once.

Marc Mertz [00:28:04]:

And so that's probably the advice I would go back and give myself.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:07]:

Perfect, great advice. And again, we thank you for the time today. A lot of great insights that I'm sure our listeners will love, and we look forward to future conversations. So thanks for joining us.

Marc Mertz [00:28:17]:

No, thanks for having me. It was a good time.