Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Welcome everyone with Oh, see I’m already messing up. I’m usually the one that messes up. Typically, we have more chatting before we collect. It’s usually me. It’s seriously me. Krista messed up yesterday and I was giving her a hard time. I’m like, “Finally. Finally, you did it.” Yeah. It’s cuz the person they sent their bio in first person and I I hadn’t. I was bad and didn’t like to read it before we sat down to do the podcast and then it was just like throwing me for a l to give not me.
Michael Franco (Guest): because you’re like if I not I Okay.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Not me. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Take two. Take two. All right. Welcome everyone to today’s episode of the culture profit. We’re very excited for this conversation and let’s jump right into it. With teams now spread across offices, time zones, and languages, clear communication is harder and more critical than ever.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Michael Franco (Guest) of I’m going to make sure I say this right. So, correct me here. Michael Quaca Quaka Hubs. Michael Franco (Guest) of Quaca Hubs joins us to unpack how teams can better connect in the chaos. So, thanks for joining us, Michael.
Michael Franco (Guest): Thank you folks for having me. It’s great to be here.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I just had the pleasure of meeting Michael just now and I also get to introduce him. So Michael Franco (Guest) is an organizational design strategist helping startups build and realign teams for clarity, connection and scale. After consulting for brands like Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo, he now focuses on growing early stage companies. As founder of Quaca Hub, he leads with scalable people strategies focused on communication, alignment, and culture. So, I want to hear a little bit about the name Quaka. Where does that come from?
Michael Franco (Guest): So ironic. It kind of ties into how I became into I guess HR and people strategy. If you can run into the whole thing and the name will come right in the middle, I bet.
Michael Franco (Guest): Is that all right?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): So uh I’ve always been between Chicago and LA all my life.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s perfect.
Michael Franco (Guest): And I worked for Oakley in the beginning and I used to open up their stores in Canada and the US. So I did hiring and firing and training and all the other kinds of stuff. And eventually it didn’t, it just didn’t connect with me. So I was like I need a break. And I was like I’m going to go to Australia. Why not across the world? I went to Australia. I asked to volunteer and they looked at my resume like we need an HR person. Can you do that? And I’m like I got to learn a whole bunch of new laws but yeah I probably can do that. Uh and so I spent two years there. And funny enough I eventually, because of their laws, had to start my own consulting company. And I named it Quaca because there are these cute little creatures uh in Roderdam Island, Roder Island on the west coast and they’re only live there and they’re smiley little fuzzy things that are very communal and I was like this is what team should be like you know working together all happy all the time and so I was like yeah I’ll do that.
Michael Franco (Guest): Um eventually yeah that actually brought me to New Zealand and I headed up the people team over in New Zealand for another company. COVID hit and I moved to the Netherlands to do another thing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh my goodness.
Michael Franco (Guest): Brought me full circle finally back to the States. I partnered in consulting with Wells Fargo and some really neat initiatives they had there. But I really found a passion and what I’m really good at was getting that zero to one starting of the people uh like people strategies. And so I really started to zero in on working with smaller companies or startups even to get those people strategies in place in the beginning. So that when they do explode and grow hopefully that they have these cultures that work and the culture that fits their kind of the way they run the business.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow. That’s very powerful and super cool. All the travel you’ve done. That’s amazing. Yeah. Do you want to go back there or are you happy in the States?
Michael Franco (Guest): I do love Australia. I don’t know getting a visa there is quite tough. Like I was, I was fortunate enough to get one but I think living there is pretty hard.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, interesting. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Interesting. What about New Zealand?
Michael Franco (Guest): New Zealand was a bit cold for me. I don’t I I I was That’s why I I I run away from Chicago all the time because it gets too cold.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): My parents said that, too. They recently did a month-long trip there. Um, and they like to bring all their summer clothes. I They just didn’t know that Arctic uh air, you know, from the south was Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): Nine months of the year.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. They were shocked by it. So, that’s so interesting. So, okay, we want to dive into the return to the office. You mentioned COVID and how that took you to the Netherlands.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah, I think returning to the office is such an interesting thing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Well, a lot of people since then are having to return to work, RTO, and just tell us about those mandates and how it’s impacting companies.
Michael Franco (Guest): There’s nothing wrong with the office, right? Their people really like the community, like the in-person interactions. My biggest thing with returning to the office and I think it’s ultimately set up to fail is that I will bet 99% of people who love being in the office do not want to be there from 9 to5. When I lived in LA it was like an hour and a half drive to the office.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): right?
Michael Franco (Guest): I would pay to never have to do that again.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh my gosh. Yeah, that’s brutal.
Michael Franco (Guest): So that and that’s the thing. It ‘s fine with being in the office, but there’s no flexibility for how their top performers are going to perform. You know, maybe some of them are night outs. Maybe some of them are super morning people. They want to be there at 5:00 a.m. They have coffee.
Michael Franco (Guest): They’re the first person to talk to you when you get in. You’re like, “Please don’t. I don’t care about the reports. Like, I need coffee. I need to figure out my day.” So, everybody’s kind of different, but when you’re in that person, you don’t have those boundaries. It’s harder to get those boundaries where you’re like, I can get my best work done right now.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, that totally makes sense. It’s interesting like all the entire workforce essentially and and the corporate world’s kind of had this forced whiplash with co of hey you have to be remote like it’s kind of do or die scenario which forced everyone’s hands and now there’s a lot of oh well we want more control more visibility more um you know making sure that we’re not getting used or abused by employees who are using the software to have their mouse move around and look like they’re um you know working when they’re actually not.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So it’s like h how do we balance that to be able I mean maybe maybe there’s not a perfect answer and it is still messy but I think companies will lose people over this
Michael Franco (Guest): Oh, yeah. It is. People are messy, right? Like it has to be flexible. The answer was not during co Well, I guess for safety, yes. But the answer isn’t one or the other. Not everybody goes remote. You’re not allowed to be out to or everybody be in the office from this amount of time. It’s the flexibility that people want. Even if you want to be in office, again, it’s you’re going to do your best work when you are. Maybe it’s 11 to three and you’re going to crush it and you love being in that office. For bigger companies, I get it. They have a lot of real estate that they need to use, but they can downsize a bit and still give that space to have that in-person culture that people want. And then they need to develop their managers to understand that just because you see someone typing doesn’t mean what they’re typing is good or productive, right?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, we’re productive.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Very true.
Michael Franco (Guest): They could just be doing X the whole time like, “Oh, he’s the hardest worker. Here’s here from 8 to 7 or she’s here from 8 to 7.” They’re just pressing Q all day. That’s all they’re doing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah. No one really can be 100% focused for that many hours, you know. So, yeah, it’s true. And I see the opposite end where there are people who really love, you know, the remote side of things, but I also like, for example, my brother has been fully remote for a really long time. And I think it’d be great for him to have an office to get to sometimes, at least sometimes. You know, he loves flexibility and stuff, but he does miss that kind of social aspect. So yeah, I think a balance and flexibility if employers can afford to give that and customize a little bit, that’s probably the idea. But you know Oh, yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): I almost think it’s in their benefit. Go on. Sorry. Because you said I was like I think they’ll make more money if they do this like
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I know we have some really like there’s a lot to unpack in today’s episode, but I just wanted to ask your opinion on one other thing related to this. Like imagine, you know, we have dynamic pricing technology that helps price, you know, seats of a concert based on demand and things like that. I almost wonder if there’s some type of future scenario where there’s uh dynamic performance evaluations where and that might feel a little bit uh like big brother and maybe it doesn’t work where you’re constantly being monitored to some extent but um if you’re if there’s a way to measure performance dynamically regardless of where you are um then it can be a little bit more fluid and maybe it kind of unlocks tiers of flexibility based on performance tiers where oh, you’ve unlocked this new flexibility tier where you have more control of your schedule or your location.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I I don’t know. I’m just thinking like really large corporations could be more sophisticated.
Michael Franco (Guest): I love the idea.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um I don’t know.
Michael Franco (Guest): It’s customizable and it’s to the person, right? So, I love that because, you know, you put it everybody has to hit 10% or whatever. You know, some people are going to hit 20, some people hit eight. That’s their ability, like or whatever it is. I love that customizable thing. And then you can unlock it like, hey, you proved yourself to us. We’re going to now, you know, you’re going to get something else.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mhm.
Michael Franco (Guest): It’s incentivized uh productivity, I guess.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): I can definitely see bigger companies maybe piloting this. And I’ve not heard that idea yet, but I like it. I’m definitely going to think about it a lot, especially performance reviews and such.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, it could be interesting. Maybe that’s another uh business idea. I don’t know.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But yeah, it’s an interesting topic. And what’s your opinion? So, we really want to communicate here. So, yeah. As well, but what’s your thoughts on the future of remote and hybrid? I mean, we’ve kind of touched on that a little bit. Do you see some companies there, some companies that are 100% remote? Do you feel like that kind of has its place in the ecosystem of of work or
Michael Franco (Guest): foot the nineto5 will be gone. I would be so surprised if it’s still here after three years. Hybrid and remote are the best. Some people have the best, you know, hey, I need to be remote. I love the little off sites we do once a year. That’s great. That’s all I need. And other people, hey, I need that interaction. You can have those offices that are relatively close to home or the uh what do you satellite offices and such uh or co-working budgets and stuff like that.
Michael Franco (Guest): It’s the future. I mean you want people to do the best then you need to give them the best opportunity to do that and that comes with flexibility. You know you can’t rigidly say you need to drive here at this place and sit at this desk for this amount of time and I expect you to know 120%. Even though it’s not your best time to do that.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’d be really interesting to me if we could somehow go like take a a company in our day and age and compare it to one like back in the 1960s or something and see how the performance compare compares because back in that time there was like it was like kind of a sit in your seat and do your work and and you know leave home at home like don’t for he heaven forbid bringing your life to
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): work you know and and I I just really it’s not something we can do but be really interesting to see if the comparison of productivity of this.
Michael Franco (Guest): wouldn’t love it.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, definitely. And I guess kind of jumping into the next one here. So, in this environment of different working locations, like we’ve talked about how, you know, people are messy, the work environment is messy. There’s so many complexities here. Um, you’ve got different working locations, you’ve got asynchronous projects, you’ve got multi- language workforces. And in a lot of cases, how do you improve communication in such a complex environment?
Michael Franco (Guest): It has to be centered around clarity, right? If we’re all speaking different languages and different time zones , we have to have a very clearly aligned goal for all of us and understand each aspect that we bring to meet that goal. Uh most of the I mean I really only work with global companies and most global companies are remote because there’s no way you’re going to put an office in like eight different places. Uh I h I mean I have an example if you want me to go into that of like so I just work with this wonderful uh uh marketing and uh content agency uh based out of the US.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah. Yes, please.
Michael Franco (Guest): However, their team is in England, West Africa, Mexico and like not even just the US like you have Florida and then you have California. So we have time zones everywhere. And I was brought in because they wanted to build the culture. They’re scaling and they want to have a good culture and I want good communication. I feel like our communication is not doing too well. So, I always set up a pulse check or an employee experience, employee engagement pulse check, just asking basic questions on how this communication’s going. And it did score lower than, you know, most people would want. Uh there there are always more things to fix, but always focus on one. And communication is the biggest thing you can do when you have these environments that are spread across time zones and cultures and everything. So the first thing when I’m saying clarity, you have to align where the communication is. So you if you have like a slack channel and then you have your project management, then you have your CRM and everybody’s working in different systems and wasting all this different time looking at different things, you’re losing productivity,
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Hallelujah.
Michael Franco (Guest): you’re losing their engagement and everything. So the first thing I did was work for ClickUp. Everything goes in ClickUp. ClickUp was actually a really great tool that I didn’t know, but ClickUp chats there. You can do a CRM out of it. You can do project management. like you can you can integrate everything and I was like there you go. So when people need to look at something they look at one browser and it has everything they need to do and everywhere they can communicate because you can tag them from every separate thing. Um so to the clarity point really we did this over one quarter and from that quarter we saw and I have the numbers for you exactly the team connection which is one thing I check on the team connection improved by 12.6%. Leadership communication improved by 18.1%. And the work life balance improved by 29.8%.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whoa.
Michael Franco (Guest): So huge jumps. And it’s really just fixing one thing, hey, I need this information.
Michael Franco (Guest): I work at a different time. I need it when I get up or I need it whenever. And now they have one spot where everybody’s able to clarify what they need and talk with ease, including leadership, which was a big jump, too. Now they know their expectations. They know it. It makes such a difference when you get people aligned. And nine times out of 10, it starts with communication.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s very powerful. Yeah. And you know, just so everyone here is listening that um we don’t have a paid ad spot from ClickUp. This is genuine genuine from Michael right here.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah, sorry.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So real quick, no, you’re totally good.
Michael Franco (Guest): There are other great tools out there. I just happened to use that one recently.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): No, that’s great. That’s fantastic. I love it. So those numbers were those quantified from the poll surveys then or Okay.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah. So what the poll survey does is I check on nine different things like autonomy, work empowerment and I have all those numbers if you want them like recognition, all the kind of things that you think would bring culture
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s awesome.
Michael Franco (Guest): Together like your big culture drivers and I look at the one that’s pro and communication is always the one I worry about the most because if you can’t communicate that you’re going to get recognized, you’re not going to get recognized, right? If you can’t communicate, you’re going to be worried about your compensation. So, um, yeah, that’s what I did in the very beginning, right before I even started working with any company. I’m like, “Here’s your baseline. If I don’t improve anything, then I definitely wasn’t worth it. You don’t ever need to work with me again or talk to me again. I’m sorry.” Like, but almost always when you’re having these communications whenever in any kind of culture, the first thing if you strengthen communication, you’re going to see a bump.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): It might not be as extreme as 30% work life balance, but you’re going to see a bump in your team. You’re going to see a bump in your productivity. And that productivity is going to drive revenue.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So implementing ClickUp and do you have other specific ways that you tackle that communication?
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah. When you have to make that again I go back to clarity but like clarity and communication they have to like a team spread out. If you have a communication channel that everybody sees and everybody checks normally you can do fun things without having to have meetings. Some company cultures are not like hey let’s hang out on a video call and have drinks or whatever. No, some people are like, “Let me just do my job. I want to do my job and I like you. You’re cool.” Um, you can do these really like we do . I did a fun thing of putting emojis in the chat and people have to guess what movie those three emojis are and you’ll get a lot of engagement throughout the whole day. Um, because people are like, “What is it? What is it?” And then finally the next day when they come clock in, whenever that is for everybody else, they get the answer.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): There’s like little things that help people make those small connections with their team. Silly as that is, it is a connection where we were like, “Man, that was a good one.” Like Sally killed it today with that. Uh like I’ve done we’ve done actually when we have because everybody usually has an in-person video meeting. We did MTV cribs. I don’t know if everybody’s always going to remember that, but we did an MTV workplace edition where we kind of just showed what our desk is because like I have Legos at my desk. I love Legos.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Fantastic.
Michael Franco (Guest): Other people have like, you know, stuffed animals, Pokemon.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, that’s awesome.
Michael Franco (Guest): So, it’s kind of fun to see like this is what you stare at all day when we’re having these conversations. It’s a nice way to let them peek into your life.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, that’s such a great idea. Yeah. And like the idea that you know when you’re doing a platform like that and the communication’s on there and then you have people coming in different time zones and everything that’s that’s not like an in-person or even virtual meeting where you know someone can’t make it and they wanted to be there but they couldn’t or something.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And it’s something that people can kind of pick and choose how involved they want to be in that and you know and and how engaged they want to be in that and continue their work simultaneously.
Michael Franco (Guest): and if they have the time. Exactly. Like if you’re working on something, you see that you’re like, I’ll get to it later.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): And there’s no pressure for you to get to it at that moment. If you’re in your focus mode and that’s your blocked out time to do it, you’re good to go.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): You know, you can hop in and Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And you didn’t miss out. You didn’t miss out. It’s still there. Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yeah. And you can laugh at the comments still and be like, “Oh, that was a good one.” Like, you know, there’s fun ways to keep that connection when people are ready for that connection.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, I really love that. And thinking about, you know, the work critical stuff is asynchronous and you’ve got this clarity around your centralized communication and product project management tool like ClickUp or another tool.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, but then having the fun stuff being asynchronous as well that helps drive that human connection, that’s genius. I mean, one of my favorite quotes is creativity loves constraints. So, you look at the things that can’t be done and then you work within those constraints.
Michael Franco (Guest): That’s awesome.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s like um I almost think having an idea in the box can sometimes be better than having an idea out of the box because an idea out of the box may not be realistic or hit the goals. But when you have when you build those lines around like we have to be able to achieve these things, what can we do within that? I think that’s where um not only can you make more money because it can be more realistic, but you can still be, you know, drive happiness through things that you can actually execute on. Do you have any more fun ideas of things that you’ve seen done as far as, you know, the emoji to movie guessing and the show your desk? What other fun things have you seen um for connecting teams?
Michael Franco (Guest): If you lead it as a manager, like let’s say you’re managing a team or whatever, you can ask everybody to send a baby photo and then you guess the baby, like guess who it is.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, wow.
Michael Franco (Guest): We’ve done guest the pet. Like me I have a teeny little Chihuahua that I always dress up with like sunglasses and a jean jacket. So I think it’s just fun. Then nobody knew. Everybody’s like, “You have a dog?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t really bring him around, but like they had no idea it was mine.” And other people I didn’t know had like three dogs and a duck. I was like, “You have a duck? Like that’s weird.” But now you have that new connection with that person of like, “Oh yeah, like Chris has a duck. Did you know that?” like
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That is crazy. That sounds like activities I did in elementary school, and I love it. I would love to bring back elementary school.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s show and tell like hyped up to this level. Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): It’s just supposed to be fun, right? Because you don’t know a lot about your co-workers and in an office you don’t know a lot about your co-workers. But it’s also a free way to make a connection with people where you get a little bit of insight on their life.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know this topic is applicable to everyone, even if they’re more in the nine-to-5 right now. This this is so applicable to everybody. And I just wonder, do you have any other I don’t know piece of it pieces of advice for HR leaders who are trying to bring teams together? Where would you have them start first? I mean, communication um maybe finding that project management site that they that’s going to work for them. Any other things that you would advise them?
Michael Franco (Guest): I it’s again you get the alignment, clarity, and communication. That’s like the big focus. And like you were saying with that box, which I actually love that quote.
Michael Franco (Guest): I’m going to write it down once we’re done with this. Is that you have this box and now you know what you need to fix. Then you probably have a budget and you probably have some other limitations there as well. So, and I’m going to lose my train of thought right when that happens, of course. Um, so you have those three boxes. Yeah, I lost my train of thought.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): No, you’re totally, you’re totally good working within those constraints.
Michael Franco (Guest): You ask that question one more time because I was thinking I was trying to remember the quote and then I was like, okay, I lost it.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Creative creativity loves constraints and you’re Yeah.
Michael Franco (Guest): And then you wanted to give me my advice. I’d get to Oh yeah to HR folks. So you have that box. You have to work in those three. You have to understand that everybody on your team is different. So, you can’t just come up with like, hey, this game is gonna crush it with everybody because I tell you right now, not everybody loved that emoji game.
Michael Franco (Guest): May sound cool to us, but there’s somebody in there who was like, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. So, you have to create a bunch of things in those boxes because not one thing that one person loves to make that connection now made a connection between two, but these two didn’t connect.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): done.
Michael Franco (Guest): So you have to find a new thing to make these many connections throughout everybody by doing unique things on whatever that is uh within your limitations of budget and location and tools.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Done. Yeah, that really makes sense. Yeah, that’s it’s kind of like uh mapping out the different relationship dynamics, but it’s more it’s not just like reporting relationships, but just different interests, different uh passions. I think that’s why some larger companies, you know, have their um employee resource groups for different things where people kind of self- select to feel connected to a certain group.
Michael Franco (Guest): Yes.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um that that can be something that works. And obviously there’s differences for different company sizes and industries of things that are realistic.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so you really like to everybody listening, you have to go back and kind of have an audit with yourself about, you know, what are the constraints that your business is working within and then start to kind of work backwards of what things are are possible and realistic and um kind of understanding some interests of your team.
Michael Franco (Guest): Exactly.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So that’s great. Well, this is a great conversation and I think so so many things that people can pull specifically and and more generally just this the way to tackle this and so thank you so much James or for everything Michael
Michael Franco (Guest): James Franco.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): why she did it again James Franco oh no that’s an actor cut a brother actor James Franco and it’s like the guy on Spider-Man The That’s the brother of the guy and and Oz, isn’t that?
Michael Franco (Guest): That’s probably why. And they’re like, “Yeah. Not my brother. No relation. Yeah. I Yeah. Ironically, my brother’s Dave Franco, which is not the famous Dave Franco, just another Dave Franco.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, really?
Michael Franco (Guest): So, Yeah, I don’t know why, but you look like Thank you.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Well, she may have a reason. When I do that, I just mess up because I’m dumb. I just mess up all the time. I have certain people that I just call them different names every time. And Trista always makes fun of me. I mean, you kind of look like them, too. You’ll have to look him up, but for sure.
Michael Franco (Guest): I’m gonna try to get them as brothers because I definitely would love to take part in their mansions and such. It’d be fun.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, join him. Anyways, thank you, Michael. This was a great conversation. And to all our listeners, go check out his LinkedIn profile and start tackling this customizability, flexibility, and get your teams to collaborate. This is going to be great. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
Michael Franco (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. Absolute pleasure being on here.