#290: Mariam Naficy, Founder and Chairman, Minted – See the possibilities in people

21:44So she was working on this. By day, she was working on building out the website. And by night, I was thinking, I still am really drawn to crowdsourcing from independence. I think I'll go to Rent-A-Coder. Have you heard of Rent-A-Coder, David? It's a website, which is just called Rent-A-Coder. And you can just go find an anonymous coder. And so I went to rentacoder.com and found a engineer to work with me at night. So the evenings I was working with him to build this competition structure. And so I built this little tiny experiment. Most of the money was spent on building something completely different.

22:28But by night I was still torn. I was still drawn to this idea of crowdsourcing from independent designers. we when we opened our doors we were offering the branded stationary product and nothing was selling at all not one sale it was like crickets it was terrifying we'd spent almost all the angel round we had long we had raised two and a half million and a whole year and nothing was selling um and it's sort of like the last gasp I I held a uh design competition for save the date cards which are these like save the date cards or what you set out when you're about to get married. About, I think we had received 65 entries.

23:07And I thought, I squinted up and I thought, you know, these look pretty good. And we launched those and those, we started getting one or two sales a week of just that product, but we didn't have enough data. So we thought we were doing terribly. We thought we should shut this company. We should, maybe we should shut the company down. we pivoted towards holiday cards doing the same thing. And then sales went absolutely through the roof, which is a separate story I can tell you about if you're interested. But in that interim, nothing was selling when we were working on wedding product. And I think in hindsight, it was a lack of traffic to give us the right data to judge the business.

23:47We should have really probably focused entirely on crowdsourcing and gone with our true gut around crowdsourcing versus brands.

23:57And holiday cards, you know, you can read better because there was a much, much more concentrated demand at the holiday time. So you can really get the kind of traffic and the kind of response you need to really measure whether your idea is working well enough. So, but in the meantime, the headline is, I almost shut it down. It was almost a non-starter.

24:18David Novak:And as I understand it, you ran customer service yourself in the first three years. What did that teach you that you couldn't learn any other way? Well, I would write the customer service manuals. I would run the shifts. I would run the shifts till we shut down at one in the morning, you know, and I had a newborn baby, by the way, at the time. So I had a, I started minted when my daughter was born. So yeah, so I, I would run the midnight shift. You know, I would shut, I would shut the thing, the operation down at one in the morning. Um, at that time we were operating on Outlook boxes. We didn't have customer service software.

24:55So we were, I was triaging all of the, uh, inbound emails into folders and boxes that interior, that the, that the, uh, like internal boxes that customer service representatives would then pick up out of those folders. I think, what did I learn? Well, first, you know, that there's a saying that I didn't understand it, uh, before, but it's, it's, you build the church for Easter Sunday. I had no idea what that meant until I ran this business, which means you have to build the capacity to run a very peaky business, which anybody in retail really understands. I did not understand that. I mean, I think you have to retain great people for as long as you possibly can year over year, and then the operation can actually get stronger.

25:37So the more we could build up business where we could afford to keep customer service managers in place and retain them over years, that's when you can really achieve those improvements. That's one. How difficult the job of customer service really being on the front line is with customers is a very, very difficult job. And I think if everybody could extend courtesy to those people who are on the phone as customer service reps, I think that would be terrific because it's a difficult job in retail and restaurants, hospitality everywhere. And to see most customers are fantastic, but sometimes it can be very difficult.

26:13You can get a difficult customer on the line. Um, and so I think trying to maintain the morale of your employee base and make sure that they can be treated with respect that that can be pretty difficult for a business owner. Um, I'm sure you've had many experiences like this yourself. Um, uh, so I, I just became, I think I just developed a lot of appreciation for the retail job itself for hospitality and retail.

26:39David Novak:I hope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that he talks about in this episode so that you can have some real practical takeaways to apply right away to your leadership and to your life. Stay tuned to the very end of the episode, and I'll see you at the debrief. I love this idea that I learned you have, which is that your customers are basically friends and family. Treat them that way. You know, tell me about a time that that mindset actually changed the decision you made. We started by just selling to friends and family and they told their friends and those friends told their friends.

27:18So in a sense, I feel like there's six degrees of separation between a company and its customers. I tried to infuse that into everybody so that everyone could personalize and feel like, in a sense, like humanize the customers on the other side of the phone. They were really friends of your friends. I got to know customers personally who would order with us over and over again. And I would try to get assigned their tickets every holiday season for years so that I could personally serve them and be that voice and be that familiar person on the other end of the line. It was small decisions every day.

27:55Things like, I'd see an email coming in in French. I could read French and understand it. So I would try to help with, you know, with, with some French inbound, for example, or I became close to a customer and, you know, would serve her every year. And she was my bellwether in the sense that if I could tell that she kept coming back, I was doing something right. One year I thought to myself, what's happened to her? I haven't heard from her. So I reached out to her and her son had had an accident, had died. And, um, we, um, instead offer, and it was just odd because this had happened right, right about the time when I had been thinking, where is she?

28:37What's happened to her this year? Maybe I've, maybe we've failed her. Maybe, maybe, maybe our cards are not strong enough. She hasn't come back, but it was that, that's what happened. So I sort of felt very, um, I cared a lot about our customers as people, not just as transactions. And, um, we then helped her and stepped in to make memorial cards for her son. Um, and so I think those kinds of things, you know, you put good into the universe, there's then good word of mouth about you as a company. I can't necessarily prove that that, uh, that that, um, particular instance, you know, changed our trajectory at all, but I like to feel that, you know, word of mouth is very, very important.

29:21I always think about the net promoter score and I do think there's that, that's a proven concept. And I do think that putting out good and trying to make your customers feel good and infusing your entire organization with that mentality and philosophy is going to help your, your, your, your culture, your culture will help your business as a consumer brand. Yeah, and I've heard you say that you grow and insulate your business

29:47David Novak:by doing what nobody else wants to do, what's too hard for others to do. Talk about that. In the Valley, a lot of people want to move bits. They don't want to move atoms. And moving atoms, moving physical product, and going through what is a massive undertaking to print with quality and to make sure that your cardstock is the thickest cardstock, you're offering a recycled option that's still high quality. Those things take time to perfect. I think one of our biggest moats is the fact is how difficult it is to scale printing and customer service at the peak at the same quality level when most of the universe orders their holiday cards in the space of three weeks.

30:38So you can imagine like it's really building the church research Sunday that is so difficult. And that's what I mean by, you know, you're doing things that are so painful. As a founder with very little capital, take the midnight shift, that sort of thing, you know, fly around the country to pick the paper out personally and to, and have cards sent to your desk personally to review them. Pick the paper out from the mills, go figure out your printing network, stand that all up. Write all the metrics that track your quality. It just goes on and on. Build the systems to track quality. Those are things that are not very pleasant tasks.

31:22They're very unpleasant tasks.

31:25David Novak:What's something you're learning about AI at Minted that other leaders could apply to their own business? I think we have successfully implemented AI in customer service, actually, as Asian assistants. And it's really helped us with scaling to peak because the problem with training a workforce and you've got, let's say, three weeks to train a temporary workforce that you're flexing up for the holiday season is that you have very, very little time to train. And then people are there for the four-week holiday period, like in all of retail. There's this very concentrated period where you have to train, flex the workforce up and then back down again.

32:04And I can't say enough about how valuable it is to have agent assistance when answering tough questions. And we have a very complicated product because it's all custom. Can I add this bell and this whistle? And you have to be able to answer pretty complex customer service questions. And you have to have everybody understand everything. So you're not sort of having to run it up the ladder into a manager to answer questions that are tougher. So having that agent assistance can really scale human. It takes a bit of pressure off that the agent has to remember everything that they just learned in two weeks.

32:41So I think that's been incredibly valuable. It could be useful for other complex businesses where the knowledge base is complex and you have to scale quickly. That's one thing that's been very helpful. And, you know, I think there are, and this is speaking outside of Minted for a moment, I think there are a number of merchandising, on-site marketing and other tools, optimization to be found in the agents, promotional testing tools, like what promotion should be offered to which kind of customer coming into the site. Many of these things are, at this point of sale, proving to be quite helpful. And I think I've personally seen them moving the needle in different applications.

33:25I think they're worth looking into.

33:27David Novak:How are you personally using AI to make yourself a better leader? It's interesting you ask. I've been looking at, you know, we've been turning on different AI note-taking tools during meetings. And some of them have the ability to tell you who's talking, what percentage of the time different people are talking in meetings. And there's a lot of like conversation analytics you can do to sort of say, how well did that meeting go? and how did I participate in that meeting? And this is making me very self-conscious that I'm talking so much in this interview, but - Well, you're supposed to, you know.

34:05I'm supposed to hear, but in a meeting as a leader, I'm trying to manage down the percentage of time I'm talking in meetings. So that's one way I'm using it. I want to spend a fair amount of time listening, obviously not talking. So I like using it for that. I haven't found yet any solution that analyzes things like how are people feeling in the room based on the transcript? But I'm sure that's coming. I'm sure somebody's working on that. And that'll be very interesting, right? The other thing I think could and should be developed is like a Mariam bot, which if you want, or like a, let's say you have a manager, it doesn't have to be me, but any manager, their direct reports could talk to their bot version of themselves and say, what would so-and-so think about this?

34:52And you could almost test and get feedback for your manager in a non-emotional setting where emotion has been removed and it's not quite as pressureful. So you are, you know, speaking of AI,

35:03David Novak:now you're the CEO of Arcade AI. Tell us about this business. I think the future belongs to platforms that empower individuals or small businesses and individuals. And the reason, increasingly so, because of AI actually, where AI can actually liberate and enable a company of one person. So I think one of the extreme outcomes of AI will be to allow an individual, let's say you're a TikTok influencer, who's really great at marketing, and you've got a specific style point of view, you could backwards integrate design products, launch products, and market them and probably set up all your finance, your fulfillment, your operations using AI tools now.

35:48So literally you could have companies of one person. And I see, so I think, I think really the, the future belongs to, to, to, to platforms, um, frankly, like Minted that empowers individual artists or Arcade that empowers individual manufacturers and makers. So what Arcade does is we train models for manufacturers, makers, based on their data, such that when you talk to them using their model, images appear that they can actually manufacture. You could say, I'd like a flat weave olive green rug. That's a rectangular flat weave. Maybe let's say throw in some lavender, olive and lavender flat weave rug.

36:33What that's going to do on arcade is it's going to ping the models of those manufacturers that make flat weave rugs. Every image that comes out has been trained using their photos and therefore is the knot type and the texture that they can make. It's not going to come out of some generic model that produces something they can't make. For example, Moroccan manufacturers don't like to use synthetic dyes. They really only use natural dyes, whereas my Indian manufacturers in our network are able to use synthetic dyes. So you have to use the images coming out of their respective models. And by the way, they also knot rugs completely differently, even in different regions in these countries.

37:16Arcade is basically building the largest group of manufacturer models in the world and allowing you to prompt to make products using text or image on demand.

37:27David Novak:This is going to drive innovation through the roof. I think so. Hopefully that's the future we see. It both increases business for those manufacturers because you can actually talk to them visually with images. And hopefully it allows really anybody to become a product designer. You can envision something yourself. You could be an interior designer and envision something. You could be a TikTok influencer and design something. we find that both like individuals want to use this but also businesses want to use this so we have a b2c arm that's very obvious on our site arcade.ai but we also have a b2b arm that's not as visible where the manufacturers themselves are asking for their own models so that you know when crate and barrel comes to me and asks me for a rug pitch i'm a rug maker i can pitch them a presentation of all of these rugs built from my model.

38:21And I can use that to actually pitch them better. That sort of thing is what we're doing for manufacturers and businesses on the other side of the marketplace.

38:29David Novak:So after 18 years of building Minted, now you're back to day one building Arcade. What is it in you that makes you want to start over? Yeah, I did that with from Eve to Minted too, where I started Eve, sold it and did Minted. But yeah, I think it's just that I like creating new products. I like creating beautiful products. I feel like with Minted, I could create beautiful stationery products and paper products. With Arcade, the world of ceramics, rugs, furniture, textile is all open. And that's really exciting. It comes back to David, me as the shopper. I can actually now make all the products that I like, that my friends who are interior designers can make.

39:14who want to buy, that they can make those products. It can open up the whole world of all these makers that you normally might only be able to make with if you went on a trip, on a physical trip, to see them and talk to them, you know? So that's really a joyful act for me. And of course, I really am fascinated by this technology shift. This is probably like the third or fourth technology shift that I'm, where I'm sort of guiding independent creatives through a technology shift. With artists, I had to guide them through a number of shifts with Minted. Online invitations, wedding websites, all this digital transformation.

39:53And how are we going to do this in a way that protects artists and their intellectual property and makes a living for them? Here, it's a similar problem. How is AI going to eat into my intellectual property? What's going to happen to me? How do I navigate? In a way, above all else, I'm interested in creating an opportunity for other people to make a living. That comes back to your original question. I think of people and their work being a really important part of their identity and their dignity. And if I can help other people make a living in a way that gets at their passion and preserves their dignity, I feel like that is a service to the world.

40:35You know, I do really enjoy that. um so i think i think ai could really amplify human creativity and business not you know replace it i see a lot of opportunity for independence actually i think ai most works for independence it most works for small companies and independence and i think it could be dramatically helpful for independent artists actually independent makers manufacturers and entrepreneurs. I think it's going to enable all these independents. And really, that's why I think that's really the future is companies like ours and platforms that really empower these independents.

41:17David Novak:And this has been a lot of fun. And I want to have some more now with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Three words that best describe you? Persistent, passionate, analytical. If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? I'd be Beethoven. Who would play you in a movie? I hope Maggie Q would play me in a movie. The city from your childhood you'd most want to go back to? The inaccessible one, Tehran. The minted product in your own home you love the most? I've got a big art print by Prima Studio from Minted. What's something you've been curious about lately that has absolutely nothing to do with work?

41:58Telling stories via filmmaking.

42:01David Novak:What's the one thing you do just for you? Probably shopping. Strolling through a mall or shopping, yeah. Besides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession? I have this ancient glass bowl from Iran from 600 AD, and it's still completely intact. And I touch it, and it has ridges like somebody hand formed this. and it just is incredible that I could touch all the ridges that somebody formed by hand that long ago. If I turned the radio on in your car, what would I hear? A weird and eclectic mix of many decades, including the 70s, the 80s, now, just rap, everything. I mean, it'd be like a very, very, very eclectic mix.

42:47David Novak:What's something about you few people would know? I was the sports editor of my college newspaper. Which one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? 10 minutes of yoga in the morning. All right. That's great. We're out of the lightning round. Just a few more questions. We'll wrap this up. You and your husband, Michael, you have two kids. How do you think about leadership at home? The number one thing that comes to mind is that as a parent, I want to role model happiness, that I can be happy. I want a role model that you can be happy to my kids. What do you see as your unfinished business?

43:25I think I see it. I see two things. Telling stories about a past that maybe some people haven't been able to see and been experienced. And the unfinished, the other part is drawing a line more directly to empowering people with an income platform.

43:43David Novak:Okay, last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? I would say persistently try to find what's in your blind spot and find people who will tell you what is in your blind spot, who will be honest with you. What would be your blind spot? I think my persistent blind spot is I'm so focused on, I'm more of a T than an F on the Myers-Briggs scale. So I have an intuition when things are, some intuition around when, how people are feeling, but I'm, it's not my like absolute number one strength. I have to actually stop and really pay attention and think about it.

44:26It's a more of a decision I have to make that's very much, it's not an intuition. So when I'm running around getting things done, I have to stop and go, okay, don't forget, stop in the coffee room and say hi, because otherwise I'm sort of blasting off to my next next task. You know, I'm very much like a, what's on my checklist today? What am I doing today? I feel that my ideal, that around the table, I need empaths around my leadership team who compliment me because obviously none of us can be everything to everyone, right? We all have our different strengths and weaknesses.

45:03David Novak:I think I've always felt that every job should have human dignity. You know, I mean, every person needs respect. You know, everybody is put here to, you know, be treated, you know, everybody should be treated with respect, have human dignity. And, you know, if you can help unlock the potential of the individual, which is what you're doing, that's a, you're making a dent in the universe, you know, you really are. You should feel really good about that. Thank you. Thank you, David.

45:34David Novak:David, I don't know if men have as much experience with minted as women do, but I feel like I see minted cards all over my house all the time because of all of the babies that people are having and weddings that people are having and holiday cards that I get. I mean, I feel like I am a minted household, especially around the holiday season. Well, I imagine you are. And I think you're probably correct in saying that not many men are, okay? And that's probably a fault. Men, we should be looking for ways to really let people know what we think and finding really cool cards to do so. But yeah, you're probably right.

46:13David Novak:And I'm glad you're a minted household. You know, and Miriam shared that she was drawn to the idea for minted because on every product, on every card, on the back of it, you can see that it's printed by minted. So it has this almost viral component within the product itself. And I mean, when she was talking about that, I was just like, well, yeah. And every time I have to create an invitation for something or send out a save the date for one of my friend's wedding parties, I immediately and only think of Minton. Well, isn't that interesting how, you know, just a little phrase, printed by Minton.

46:47David Novak:You know, just, you know, you remember and it takes you to your core. And, you know, one of the things I love is how she crowdsources her ideas. You know, she gets, you know, artists to submit their ideas. and, you know, she picks the best ones and that allows her to really get great content very efficiently and the artist wins and she wins. So she's able to find a win-win in her business model, which is great. You know, David, in addition to that creative take on how to source products, she also has a really interesting way of setting people up for success in her business. She talked about, you know, when someone's underperforming in their role, she asks herself, why did I originally hire this person?

47:35David Novak:What did I originally like about this person? And then based on that, she tries to move that person into a better role as opposed to just firing them because it's not working out. And I really like that approach. But from your perspective, David, how do you know when someone has potential in a different area versus just not being a fit at all? That's something you really got to work through as you watch someone in action and what really turns them on and where they add value and in initiatives, you know, that can kind of tell you that maybe, hey, this person shouldn't be in finance. Maybe they should be in marketing or maybe this person shouldn't be in marketing.

48:12David Novak:They should be in more of an analytical type job. So, but I think you got to watch people in action. But I think that the insight that I love the most from this podcast was this insight that you just mentioned is that if you're, before you fire somebody, think about, you know, Why did you hire him in the first place? I never really thought about it that way. But I think that's the first thing you should do is go back and say, hey, what was it about this person that I really thought they had, but they don't have? Or what is it about this person that they have that got me excited about them? And I don't know if that's going to take you to a different position for them or not.

48:53David Novak:But I just like that thought process. It humanizes the whole thing. I feel like when leaders make decisions on whether or not to fire somebody, it's very performance-based and results, of course, matter. But I like that it reminds you of, you know, the essence of their humanity and why you liked them in the first place. What I think you need to do is you always have to, you know, coach first, then fire. OK, but if you're in your coaching, I think going back to the beginning, you know, what was it about you that got you excited about them? You know, I think that's an important thing to bring up.

49:32David Novak:In fact, I think if I was coaching somebody and they were struggling, I'd say, you know, when I hired you, you know, one of the things that really got me excited about was your ability to do this, this or this, you know, and it just doesn't seem to be happening here. What do you think is the issue? And hey, maybe it's something inside your company that's creating that, or maybe the person doesn't feel free enough to do that. But it's just such a great way to start a positive coaching session. And then I think you got to coach people on what they need to do to be successful and give them a chance.

50:03David Novak:And if they aren't successful after the coaching, then it's time to fire. But I just think a coach first mentality really works. And going back to the beginning, you know, of why you hired that person really makes a lot of sense. And that's the insight that I really actually like the most from this conversation. David, the next real concept that came through in this episode is Miriam's passion for what she does. You two talk about when she left her investment banking job and co-founded Eve, which is one of the first e-commerce beauty companies that existed. And you said, you know, what made you make the job?

50:39David Novak:And she just came out and said, I love to shop. and she does love to shop and it's what's guided many of her ideas and businesses in her career. And I think this passion that she has really helps her create great experiences for her customers and for her people. And I want to know from your perspective, I mean, do leaders really need to love the world that they work in? Do they need to be personally passionate about their business and their product? Or is it something that you can do without that passion? Yeah, well, I think you better fall in love with it sooner or later. OK, that's my opinion.

51:16David Novak:You know, I remember having a podcast with Tom Nolan, who was the CEO of Kendra Scott. And he obviously was not into ladies' jewelry. But over time, I think he really became passionate about that business, you know. But I think you got a big head start if you're working on something you love, you know. And, you know, I think I'd have a hard time, you know, working on things that I didn't have a clear cut passion for. And I found my performance to be even better when I was working on something that I love more than something else. You know, for example, I came up in the package goods business of Frito-Lay and Pepsi.

51:57David Novak:And, you know, I learned a lot of skills and it really helped me. But the package goods business was slower moving than the restaurant business. So when I got in the restaurant business, it was very retail focused. And I could see the results almost immediately in terms of what we did. I love people. I love food. I love marketing. And I loved it a lot more than I love packaged goods. And I remember when I had a chance to go back to Frito-Lay when I was in the restaurant business. And I said no, because I loved what I was doing. And that was the best decision I ever made because it put me in position ultimately to end up running Young Brands.

52:33David Novak:But it was the passion that kept me there. And so, yeah, I think you can probably run any business to a certain extent without having passion for it. But I don't think you can run it as well. It's so funny you bring up that episode we did with Tom Nolan because I just saw recently that he is now the CEO of a giant tire manufacturer, like tires for cars. I'm like going from Kendra Scott and jewelry and retail to tires. It's so interesting to me, but it brings to mind, you know, the fact that if you have real transferable skills, you're focused on the customer and you know how to create a great culture where everybody counts, you really can make a big impact and drive results regardless of industry.

53:17David Novak:Yeah. Well, we'll find out how much she loves the tire business. David, another theme that came through in this conversation with Miriam was this idea of an entrepreneurial mindset. And she talks about when she started Minted, she was actively looking for a business idea, but not just any idea. There were certain criteria that she needed this business idea to have. And it's very clear that she takes this entrepreneurial mindset to everything she does in every division of her business. And I'm curious, you know, in your experience working with entrepreneurs and your experience developing great CEOs and leaders, what do you find in the best entrepreneurs?

53:57David Novak:How do they think? The first thing I would say is, is learn from the best entrepreneurs. And, and if you really want a great answer to that question, go back and listen to the podcast I did with Jeff Yang. You know, he's a serial entrepreneur and he creates a lot of businesses and supports a lot of businesses with other entrepreneurs. And, you know, but he really drives home some of the key traits that the entrepreneurs have. And I think first and foremost is, you know, there's just an incredible passion for what they do. Okay. There's a huge desire to, you know, to basically solve problems that exist.

54:39David Novak:And you're passionate about solving that problem. And there's just an incredible learning mindset. You know, you start out as an entrepreneur where you have to almost do everything. So you got to learn every aspect of the business if you're going to be successful. And then you realize that you can't do it all by yourself. And you got to have people around you to get done what needs to get done. And these people learn how to grow as the business grows. And that mindset, I think, is really important. But go back and listen to Jeff. Jeff will talk about it much better than me. And one story I remember from him that was really great.

55:19David Novak:It's about hiring people. He said, you have A's, B's, and C's in your company. A's are like, everybody wants to have the A's. I mean, they're the superstars. And then you got to have B's, okay? B's get things done. They're not A's, but you really need them. And not everybody can be an A. but he said, C's, you got to get rid of the C's because the C's are like cockroaches. They get in your cupboard and you can't get them out. Okay. They just keep coming back. And they just keep coming back again and again and again. And, you know, I love that. But the real point that he's talking about there is just, you know, as an entrepreneur, you got to, talent is key and you got to make sure that you hire people that can take your business to the next level.

56:03David Novak:Well, David, there's some real gold in this episode. And I think that anyone listening, Even if you just take one of these ideas and apply them to your leadership or to your life, it's going to make you a better leader. Yeah. And I think that's what makes podcasts what they are. I mean, if you can get a leader on and listen to them and see how they attack their business, you're going to find something you can take with you. And for me, the biggest thing I'm going to take from this is that if you're about ready to fire somebody, think about why you hired in the first place. Okay. And maybe that'll take you down a different path.

56:35David Novak:The other thing is, is that there's nothing like passion to really get the best out of you when you're really growing a business. So if you're blessed enough to be able to work in a business that you're passionate about and you get up every day and you love it, like Warren Buffett would say, you know, I tap dance on the way to work. I mean, man, that gives you a leg up. And then, you know, I think all of us need to have an entrepreneurial mindset, you know, as leaders, you know, solving problems, constantly learning, growing with the business as it grows, you know, having a relentless passion for putting the right talent around you to be successful as the business grows.

57:14David Novak:I think those are those are things that we can we can all all do and be successful if we do it. Well, thank you again to Miriam for coming on the show. And thank you, David, for this wonderful debrief. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead. We'll see you next Thursday.