The CXLive! Episode 98: The Insight Flywheel: Making EBC Conversations Count in The Age of AI with Dmitry Risukhin

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome to the CX Live, an interview style podcast addressing topics, trends and tips for creating real time digital experiences in a customer First Customer Last World. This show for briefing and meeting professionals brings you authentic and unfiltered conversations with industry experts who know how to elevate customer experience across people, teams and programs. Let's listen in

Speaker B: welcome everyone to our CX Live Podcast series dedicated to today's briefing and customer engagement professionals. I'm Darby Mason Werner, your podcast host and I'm excited to be interviewing thought leaders across our industry who can share their experiences and ideas to help all of us improve our programs. Today's discussion is focused on the Insight Flywheel Making EBC Conversations Count in the Age of AI One of the biggest challenges for briefing and customer engagement programs related to customer listening is no longer technology, but organizational preparedness, with AI, LLMs and speech to text removing traditional barriers to capturing customer feedback. The real differentiator is contextual listening, that is understanding what matters, why it matters, and how to turn insights into action. It's important to realize why capture without routing is just filing, how organizations can build closed loop systems that drive accountability, and why the most effective customer listing strategies start not with the data, but with the decision makers who are willing to make changes based on what the customers say. Today's conversation examines how organizations can design customer engagement programs that create meaningful impact across the business. Today I am so excited to be joined by Dmitry Ryskin, a uh, builder of world class executive engagement programs across some of the technology's most iconic companies including Microsoft, AWS, F5 and T Mobile. Dmitri is a customer engagement leader whose career has moved through three lanes of enterprise technology, writing code professionally since the age of 16, running Enterprise IT and Building Executive briefing programs. At Microsoft, he built the first vertical EBC program delivering 700 plus CXO briefings that influenced more than $1.75 billion in enterprise revenue. At AWS, he proposed and built the EBC program from scratch, scaling from 0 to 800 plus structured CxO engagements annually and 2,400 plus executive meetings at Re invent AWS's largest annual conference during a UH building and tornado period when AWS revenue grew from 7 billion to 40 billion. At F5, an application security company, he elevated the program to a global CXO engagement model spanning three continents and built a new headquarters briefing center recognized by the GSP with World Class and Customer Experience Innovation awards. He he also created the manual Insight Flywheel we will be hearing about today. Most recently, he led a 15 person EBC organization at T Mobile where he unified the demo experience across four sites and built two centers. And the Bellevue headquarters has just received both the GASP World class and innovation awards just in April. A builder by nature, Dimitri combines strategic vision with operational execution. Whether launching programs from scratch, securing capital for world class facilities, or running self hosted AI models in his home lab. Today he is focused on helping companies build the executive engagement infrastructure that accelerates enterprise technology adoption. And I've known Dmitri for a number of years through abpm, now ghp, first as a fellow member working to build our programs and then visiting him as a solution partner when he was defining his strategic vision for reimagining the F5 customer engagement center in Seattle with world class designer Roseanne Bell. We all love Roseanne Bell. I've always been impressed with his ability to build world class teams, programs and centers. And I'm excited to learn more about his approach to taking the insights gathered from engagements to a whole new level. And with that, I will say hello, Demetri, it's so exciting to have you here and thank you so much. I'm so looking forward to chatting with you today.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much, Darby. It is wonderful to be here. And I have to say, you make me sound really smart. Like what?

Speaker B: Oh, come on, you've done a lot. Yeah.

Speaker A: But thank you for giving M me opportunity to pause and reflect on that. And, uh, I also want to say that, yes, we've known each other for more than 10 years and I enjoyed knowing you and working with you in different capacities. What I always appreciated about you is that you are always curious. You're generally interested in your customer. You never can ambush me with sales pitch. You always ask me why, what are you trying to accomplish? And that's really probably, I think, why you started this podcast. Because now you're talking to all the smart people in the world and what you've done is really, it's a repository of knowledge of this community. So, um, I'm thrilled and honored to be invited to be here because this is a topic I wanted to talk to somebody about for a while, Customer insights. And thank you for giving me opportunity to be a guest.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thank you for that. That's very lovely of you to say. And, you know, I was really upset because I couldn't go to your session because it was the same time as our session. Right. Which happens at the spring conferences. So here I get to, you know, understand what it was, this amazing concept that you're bringing. But now more people will get to actually hear it as. So I love that.

Speaker A: So, yeah, that was, that was a bit of tough slot for me. Sorry, I just jumped in because, yeah, not only there was your session, there was Also Microsoft Experience 1 and Google AI at the same. Right.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's hard.

Speaker A: So the five people who did show up for my session actually thanked them. I said, look, it means that you're really into it, so thank you so much for prioritizing. But yes, now we can do it again. Uh, for, for broader.

Speaker B: Exactly. And you know, that just, it goes to the fact that the conference has so much rich content and they can continue to deliver on additional speakers and just things that are of so much interest that it's hard not to have all those sessions at the same time. There's only four time slots. Um, I'm thrilled to be doing this today. I always love to start by hearing everyone's journey to the briefing world. Can you share yours?

Speaker A: Absolutely, Darby. Well, my journey was a bit peculiar. As you mentioned that, uh, I really started my career somewhere else. I had these three lanes where I started writing code as a teenager. When I was 16, somebody offered to pay me grown up salary for doing that. And I was really surprised. And then of course, I got lucky. For people in the audience of our generation, they might remember the word perestroika. That was when the Soviet Union decided to.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: A lot of Western companies came to Russia and it opened amazing career opportunities for people like me for my generation. At 24, I was head of IT for Cadbury Schweppes and Russia at 24, at 28 for Ericsson. And that was a $1 billion business in Russia. Right. So we got, we got opportunities way beyond our skill set. But, uh, it was really, really fortunate. And then also around that time, Microsoft, at the beginning of 2000, they were starting to become a more enterprise focused company and they wanted enterprise credibility. And I happened to be their enterprise client, uh, twice by that time with public case studies. And they invited me to join Microsoft and move me to United States in 2001. And all I did ever since was uh, building programs for enterprise clients, how Microsoft and then others engage enterprise clients. So that, that was really kind of my entry into the US but then EBC specifically when I was working with Microsoft, I worked with large enterprise companies like global. And Fortune 100 was really my target for driving adoption of application platform called dot net. And then I quickly realized that you cannot just pitch technology to enterprise. You kind of have to. When you talk to cio, you have to talk about the broader context. You have to really set the conv. The landscape for them, the conversation for them. Uh, and I discover Microsoft TBC team was just building up and I started using them more and more to host my clients. And then eventually, when Microsoft ABC team was elevating their game and they decided to align with different verticals, I was lucky enough to be asked to join that team, to stand up one of the first programs for retail and consumers. And after that I was basically gone. Right. There was no escape for me. I tried to escape the EBC world three times. Oh, and whenever I try to get out, they always put me back in.

Speaker B: Pull you back in. Yes, exactly.

Speaker A: I then just repeated doing that at Amazon and F5 and finally T Mobile.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah, well, and you know, now that you say it, I, I didn't realize, but I, I started in the briefing world like 2001, that that's when I actually was, you know, making the transition from events and, and ending up building out the very first version of our program and then launching it in January of 2022. Uh, thousand two. Uh, but I didn't realize until you just said that that's like the right timing, that you were on your way over and starting to work at Microsoft. That's amazing.

Speaker A: Things happen for a reason.

Speaker B: They do, they absolutely do. I believe that. Um, I think I've mentioned the universe many times in these podcasts and how grateful I am. Yes, absolutely. Um, so okay with all of that. We have so much to get to. And speaking of being in front of those customers for more than 20 years now. So before we get into the flywheel concept itself, um, I would love to know, is there a moment early in your career that made you realize just how valuable these kinds of conversations could be if the right people are listening. You just mentioned Microsoft and then building into the vertical, and I'm assuming that that kind of helped guide you into that. But was there a key moment?

Speaker A: Yes, I would say there were a couple of moments which are really sort of career trajectory forming for me because of my involvement with ebc. Uh, at Microsoft. Um, I suddenly found myself in the room with some amazing business leaders you normally see on covers of, you know, business magazines.

Speaker B: Oh, I can imagine. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos. Uh, I mean, it was just fascinating. Frankly, that's what, um, prompted me to get an mba because there was a moment where Warren Buffett was leading a session in front of hundred of his peers at Microsoft. Serious summits. And I just, he made A joke. And everybody laughed and I couldn't understand what the joke was about. And I felt like there's a really smart dog who understands the mood but does not the meaning, right? So finally I decided, okay, I need to get an mba. I need to understand the business better, the language of my customers.

Speaker B: Okay?

Speaker A: And I'm glad to report four years later, I understood, understood his jokes much, much better. Uh, but anyway, um, so, yes, there was a moment, uh, there are definitely moments where I felt that what you hear in these rooms is valuable, is really exceptional. And I think the first time I had this idea of, oh, these are insights and somebody needs to do something about it. I can also remember back to my Microsoft days. Uh, there was an EBC visit, ABC briefing with McDonald's, and that was more than 20 years ago. And McDonald's chief information officer, as typically as part of voice of the customer session at that early in the day, he started to talk about their strategy and how McDonald's wanted to evolve the experience in their stores and their restaurants to really focus on digital. And they wanted. They called it forever Young because they believed that, uh, uh, well, there was a Alpha Lily song again for my generation, if you remember.

Speaker B: No, I do. I remember that song. I'm like, that rings a bell. I know that.

Speaker A: Queen. Queen also.

Speaker B: Either that or Rod Stewart, one of the two. Yeah, but I get that.

Speaker A: But the idea is that they want people, they wanted people to feel excited in that stores and they wanted to do it with digital experiences with digital technology. And I was hearing, as I was hearing that voice of the customer, I was like, oh my God, people in Xbox division need to hear that. And by that time, I was actually a big fan of Microsoft Immersion Xbox business and had some good network there. So I messaged the chief of staff of president of that division saying, somebody needs to be here because what McDonald's is describing can be very interesting for you guys as well. And then somebody joined for lunch, they had more conversation. Then an executive, another executive from Xbox division flew to off site at McDonald's. Long story short, a few months later, Microsoft and McDonald's went to market together. They basically announced mechanism for customers to buy digital music on their devices using wi fi in McDonald's stores.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: And that thing would not have happened, right, if I just didn't do something about what I heard.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And you took the initiative to actually speak up and say something like, uh, hey, we've got to do something. I miss being in the room when people are talking about that stuff. I, you know, I always use the automotive example, but knowing what's coming like five years down the road with the roadmaps, it's so exciting to be in those rooms and to see how you took it and like made something out of it that way is incredible.

Speaker A: But it was almost accidental. Right. So it made me also realize like this is just coincidence of on so m. Of so many things fitting together. How can we make a system that works like that? Right. You asked me what was the moment. That was really the moment where I started to think, okay, we got lucky this time. But how can we build a machine doing this kind of thing? These insights to the right people to do the right things about those insights.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. So it is the process that is put in place and everyone will, which you're going to talk a whole lot about this but everyone realizes the value of what it is that you are hearing in those rooms and what to do with it. So. Absolutely. Well, with that, that uh, moment sounds really uh, amazing and like you know, catching lightning in a bottle. To be able to be in the room at that time is incredible. And you know, like you said, the right people, the right time, just everything about it was, was perfect. So then let's talk about that. How do you build a system that makes that happen reliably? That process that we were mentioning, not someone happens to be there in the room, but that we know that we're going to have the mechanism, like you say, in order to be able to capture that.

Speaker A: I think everybody can agree, uh, that these insights, these moments when you're in the room with the customer and they're sharing something which is exceptional. These are not rare, but quite often they just hit the floor or they stay with the people in the room.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And what really matters is how can these insights reach the right people who can do the right thing.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And you want to build something that I call a flywheel, which is basically a self reinforcing machine which only works when all the parts support each other. Right. So the insight is heard and then it um, it's delivered to the right people and then the right people do the right things about it. Right. And that's what this conversation is about.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I love that you know, that visual, you know, it's a great um, way uh, of visualizing that, you know, and then you are going to describe parts of it and how that all works together. But um, having like identified what the problem is and you know what that is. So how do you start building towards that solution? And then building the framework itself so that, you know, where did, where did that part come from? How did you figure that out?

Speaker A: Well, I think just the mental model came um, from Amazon. It was really something. Amazon was the most exciting and the most brutal career experience I had.

Speaker B: And many people can probably, I heard that from others. Yeah.

Speaker A: Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Speaker B: Right? Yeah.

Speaker A: I'm certainly glad it was part of my experience and I'm kind of glad it's no longer is maybe on some level.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But what it does, it teaches you to think in structures and systems. And the whole flywheel, um, name basically came from that culture. Maybe if I can indulge you just. Do you know what Amazon Flywheel is or would like me to tell you?

Speaker B: Tell me about it? I don't know specifically about the Amazon concept of that. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. So that's part of um, Amazon mythology or lore, that whole flywheel concept. Because there is a story that, um, Jeff Bezos, when he was thinking about Amazon, he was really inspired by a book he read by Jim Collins, from Good to Great. And then um, he sketched on a napkin a model of that flywheel to make a business model to make Amazon unstoppable. And basically what Flywheel is, it's a self reinforcing cycle. And his idea was, well, if we have low prices, we'll attract more customers. If we attract more customers, we can attract more third party sellers. More people will try to sell Amazon and that will give more choices to customers. So even more customers will come in. And because of that we will reduce our uh, operational cost, our unit cost. So we'll start differentiating, we'll have a different cost structure and that will keep bringing kind of pulling in more customers and more variety of goods and most of the party sellers, so that's what they called flywheel and they teach you, I think they tell us at your recruitment day. Right. It's one of the things that Amazon shares with you.

Speaker B: So you're indoctrinated the first day that you're there. Okay.

Speaker A: Yes. And you kind of uh, are taught that you need to be building this, you need to be thinking about not just solving a problem as a one off, but you want to build a mechanism, as they call it, a flywheel mechanism. You build systems that do things systematically. Right, right. And that, that's how I started to think like how can we build a flywheel out of insights? Capturing and doing something with insights.

Speaker B: Okay. And that makes more sense. And you know, I'm visualizing Amazon, obviously I've never worked for Amazon or been inside, but just the visuals that you see of like the, the warehouses and how ever, like, I mean that's a huge endeavor of what they do in those warehouses and the little robots that go places and pick up things and you know, that's one simple concept, I'm sure of the whole thing. But, um, I didn't realize that that was like an Amazon thing. And, you know, everybody's drank the Kool Aid, they all know it. Right.

Speaker A: It changes you forever. But I would say in a good way. Right. Because you just can't help your brain thinking about, okay, how do I build a system out of what I'm seeing?

Speaker B: Right, right, exactly. And then that helped you to then think about how to build the system for the capture and then the actual routing, but having somebody do something with information that comes out of these briefings. Right? Yeah, exactly. And so with that, um, this, you, you mentioned the flywheel and it's a self reinforcing loop. Like it's just, it's continuous and where every element is going to basically feed the next. It sounds like. And that to me is, that's very compelling if you can actually make all the parts work that way. Um, so when you moved over to F5 and you started thinking about the customer insights, is that where the AI conversation came in or how did that all work? Because I know that's a big part and the fact that you have an AI lab in your house, you know, which hopefully we can talk about later too, because that's pretty cool. Um, but yeah, how, how did that all work when you went over to F5?

Speaker A: Sure. And yes, let me plant a seed. Happy to talk to you about AI at some point, Darby, because what I'm doing, I don't know if you saw what I published on LinkedIn about a week ago. I'm actually building a personal relationship management system using my self hosted AI, which I'm confident to share very intimate details about the people I talk to, what I talk about. And you know, it's. I think I'm up to something. But yes, we can talk about.

Speaker B: I think you're up to something. Okay.

Speaker A: But my AI journey, yes, it started with a five. It started in 2018 actually. Um, before the model, before the buzz, before the wave. Because I was intrigued by that concept for a while. And in 2018 I went through an executive program with MIT Sloan Business School. And to graduate, you're supposed to propose three scenarios to your company leadership, how they could benefit from AI and back Then it was called machine learning, Natural Language Processing. So basically, we studied these ideas and then we were formulating business suggestions to our leaders. And when I wrote my document for A five, it was a two pager. It had three ideas. And one of these ideas was, how do we capture and analyze conversations happening in the ebc?

Speaker B: So you were already there? Yeah.

Speaker A: It seemed like, wow, this is a perfect application. And I want to skip forward. The challenge is that technology back then was not as mature and not accessible as it is now. There were no LLMs, there were no ChatGPT. My proposal was basically take pieces from AWS services like service like Recognize and Comprehend, and, um, just build software on yourself on your own. We didn't do that. Right. So technology was not there, but at least the model was there. But what we ended up doing, however, we ended up building it A five, the Flywheel machine. It was highly manual. There was not much AI. There was some technology, but not AI yet. But that was the machine that really built that system of listening intently, channeling to the right people, and then doing something about it.

Speaker B: And so you, you didn't build it first at AWS. It was when you came to F5 that you were able to get that, that concept going. Okay, got it. Um, and then, so you, you had mapped out this vision, but, you know, you kind of had to, you didn't shelve it, though. I mean, what happened next? Like, where, where did it go from there?

Speaker A: The fact that technology was not there didn't stop us. Yes. So, yes, we build the system. We build the system. And that was actually what was my, um, spring conference session about? And, um, I'll try to give you maybe a, uh, very abbreviation recap of what was that model. But of course, the audience can dive deeper because I believe my deck was shared already. And we can, I'm happy to have conversation with whomever is interested. But the idea is that we built this model. We actually called it Aspire. Uh, we coined the name of a very unusual customer engagement format, which combined elements of executive engagement. Because we could go really deep. There were very tight agendas. Um, it was specifically designed to capture insights from the conversations with clients, and it was done at the scale of an event. So it was basically combined DNA of three formats. Customer advisory boards, executive briefing, and event that we called Aspire. And what was specific to Insights? Um, we had a role and we recruited across the company, um, employees. We called them ambassadors. Their role was to be in the room with the class customer, observe the conversation, pay attention to Non verbal cues. How people. What, what's the body language? How do you say certain things? And basically they were trained in ethnography to recognize significant moments and capture those moments. Like what do people say? But also how did they say it? And we equipped them with some technology. Mhm. Yeah, yeah, we equipped them with some technology. We use the platform. So back then, uh, my team was not just evc, but also we were standing up customer insights, uh, mechanisms like Net Promoter score surveys. And we use the system called Qualtrics. And within Qualtrics we actually built this intake form where our, um, ambassadors, um, had a tablet. And as they were observing the conversation, they were basically logging observations. It was very quickly for them to create this inside nuggets, like a snapshot. What was said where about right in

Speaker B: the moment when it's happening. So it's going in there. Okay, okay.

Speaker A: There was even like a temperature they were supposed to log on the scale of one to five, kind of. What was the temperature of that statement? From negative to positive.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: Anyway, and, and as I said, we had, we had these ambassadors. We recruited 53 of them. So we had 53 employees.

Speaker B: Um, 53 team members were doing this.

Speaker A: They were not my team members. They were employees from across the company.

Speaker B: Oh, okay. I'm like, what? I knew you had done amazing things at F5, but 50, uh, three ambassadors in the briefing program. Yeah. No. Okay, so this is 53 folks that you, you were able to bring them in from different organizations and train them in being able to come collect and really pay attention to those significant moments.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. And there was a whole, uh, partnership with HR on that. We basically presented this as a development opportunity. Um, managers had to agree there were some conditions, but it was a good thing because people really enjoyed it. A lot of engineers in the company never saw a live customer before. Oh, people were, we didn't accept everybody who raised their hand. Right. Yes, we could be picky, but.

Speaker B: Exactly. No, I get that. But. Well, it's fascinating to me though because with those people, you know, my brain goes into how do you, how do you train them? I mean, that's an investment in time, that's, you know, teaching them, uh, design thinking or the ways that, you know, you want to facilitate so that they're able to capture the most out of the time that they're there with the customer. And of course that the customer is getting, you know, the most of the day, but they feel like they're being heard, which is a key thing as well. Right.

Speaker A: So we were fortunate on my team there was a, there was a very bright, uh, individual who actually was a big believer in design thinking. And it was his idea. He proposed that mechanism. And then he was doing these workshops and training people, teaching them how to fish, essentially what to pay attention to,

Speaker B: so he could train some of the other ambassadors as well.

Speaker A: He was the trainer for ambassadors.

Speaker B: Yes, the trainer. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. See, I always go to the how, like, how did you make that happen? What were the steps you had to do in order to do that? So, um, and really, you know, was there something else that also informed the approach to how you, you knew to do it that way or build it that way?

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So basically, um, the whole thing was possible because of the CEO. Chief executive endorsed that and he said, ah, we need all to line up and support Dimitri in this initiative. It was basically his idea which we evolved and developed. And, uh, we ended up having more than 200 employees across different divisions contributing in one way or another. But before we started all of that, um, we needed to answer the why question, like, what are we trying to accomplish? Why do we want to collect these insights and what do we want to do with them?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And, um, we were fortunate that, uh, well, my company, fi was company transformation. At that time, it was really trying to find its new place in the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing. And they brought in, um, a luminary, Jeffrey Moore. Jeffrey Moore wrote the book Crossing the Chasm.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, I know that. Yeah.

Speaker A: So basically that book is the bible for Silicon Valley now, how technology moves from early adopters to mainstream adapters. So I was fortunate to have access to him. And, um, when I discussed with Jeff ideas, um, how to build this program, he said, before you build anything, you need to go back to your executives and you need to ask them what business decisions are you willing, um, to change based on what customers are going to tell you? Because if they're not going to do anything about this feedback, why bother asking? And you upset your customers by setting expectation as if you're going to do something about.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And that's exactly what we did. I basically went back to CEO, to their staff, to e staff meeting and asked that question, like, are you going to take this feedback seriously? Are you going to make changes to your roadmap, Are you going to make changes to your pricing, etc. And basically everybody had to commit before we started building. But that was really the foundation from which we built the rest of the program.

Speaker B: And so they did commit, they did commit to it, that they Were listening to act.

Speaker A: Yes, act on the feedback.

Speaker B: Okay. That. The fact that you had the 53 people and the ambassadors and then you take this step and you go back to the CEO and say, okay, now that we're capturing, we're actually going to do something about it. So they've committed to doing that. And then, and then what happened? Like, how do you, how do you go scale that? How do you.

Speaker A: Yeah, what happened was really a very interesting kind of pilot. We prepared that for a year and we run this event for three weeks. So imagine, um, I mentioned that it combined DNA of three different types of custom engagement formats. EBC cap and event. So imagine for three weeks you run multiple EBC engagements in parallel. So everybody has individual agenda. Everybody's experience is very custom tailored. But you do up to 10 of them. And we didn't have enough rooms in our EBC center to do 10 tracks. So we actually hosted, uh, these engagements in different rooms across the building, specifically set up in proximity to product teams. And product teams were doing the demos they were showing.

Speaker B: That makes sense. Yeah. This is in the. Is this. Yeah, the tower that I visited. Right. So you had folks in each. Uh, I'm visualizing like these different floors and everybody's like, who, who's the traffic cop that's sending people to the right place and making sure that they're. I can only imagine we don't need to go there, but I can only.

Speaker A: But you absolutely right. That's. That's why we needed these 53ambassadors, because we kind of burned through them. Right. For three weeks. You can't have a person do it day in, day out for three weeks. And they were not only listening, but they were also shepherding customers through the building.

Speaker B: That makes sense. You'd have to. Yeah.

Speaker A: Because our customer engagement center had only five meeting rooms. We couldn't accommodate everybody. But anyway, so we did it for three weeks. It was frankly, it was 13 business days, uh, up to 10 parallel tracks. But we also were very intentional in terms of whom we invite. Um, we wanted to touch customers who are the most meaningful and influential across our customer base. So out of 25,000 managed accounts we had, we basically focused on 5% of our revenue on a customer side. And we focused heavily on our partner ecosystem because as you know, in enterprise, partners mean a great deal.

Speaker B: Huge. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: So at the end of the day we had, uh, 78 customer accounts, but 90 partner accounts go through this program.

Speaker B: Holy cow. That's incredible. No wonder it took you that long to like put it all Together. I mean, that's realistic. I mean, people need to hear that, you know, this isn't something you prep in three weeks to have, you know, three weeks worth of all of this engagement. So.

Speaker A: Okay, you realize for a year.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker A: But that's how large companies run larger, even larger events. But what was also impressive was the, uh, commitment again from our leaders, because, um, the chief executive and his directs, they were all in Seattle for three weeks, committed to these three weeks of.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Okay. Personally made, I think, seven appearances. Chief product officer made 18. Right. And they were not just sitting in the room M. They were leading the sessions.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.

Speaker A: So the entire C suite was there. And, um, that was a big commitment. And of course, yeah, because we had this listening system set up. Uh, I mentioned the 53ambassadors. They were filling these forms in real time, and I was like, spider in the middle of the network, listening, seeing this feedback coming in.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And sometimes this feedback was surprising. It was like temperature. Temperature in the room was not where we expected it to be. And we had to intervene very quickly to react right in the moment. Wow.

Speaker B: So, but that makes sense, though, the, the commitment and the investment for that many executives to be there and, you know, the other members of your team. When you are focused on your top 5% of your customers, you know, I have to think that's a pretty high percentage of what your overall revenue is as well. And being able to have everyone feel like I'm imagining being one of those customers in there and seeing like, the. The flurry of activity that's happening, but also feeling like the time that I'm spending with these folks, I'm having access to the executives, uh, they're talking to me about what's important to me. People have done their work to understand what are my needs. You know, everything we try to do in briefings. But having this all just, uh, in this one place at this one time for three weeks and getting all the execs to say, yeah, I'm going to drop everything to be there for three weeks. You know, that's a. It's a huge, uh, line item on the. On the, you know, the budget sheet, if you will.

Speaker A: It was expensive for the company to do that.

Speaker B: I imagine it has to be. But the return on this also, I would assume, had to be, um, um, amazing from a financial standpoint, but also from what. What we're talking about here. And, and these, you know, um, folks coming in and then, you know, what, what. What would you say? You know, the insight did. Did you count how many customer, uh, insights you had or it. Were you able to quantify it? I'm sure there was lots of qualitative, you know, information you got as well.

Speaker A: Totally, totally. So we definitely, uh, I mean, the whole thing system was built with a return in mind. Right. And the goals and the whole reason why there was such a level of commitment from the CEO and leadership team is that it was a pivotal moment for the company. We really needed to revalidate our destiny, so to speak. What is our strategy? What is the portfolio of solutions that customers want? Because with emergence of cloud computing, FI was sort of losing its touch in perception of the clients.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And customers didn't realize what kind of innovation was happening behind closed doors. So the idea was we wanted to expose what we're building, but also validate ask clients, are we building the right things? That's why most of the conversations were NDA conversations. We actually, we had to build the entire portfolio of topics, catalog and demos just for this event.

Speaker B: Just for that.

Speaker A: Yeah, because we were trying to show customers what we're doing. But in terms of outcomes, what did it accomplish for us? Um, well, immediately immediate accomplishment was that we saved some customers from leaving us. Because I mentioned, I mentioned some of these conversations temperature was not as we expected.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Basically, it started with them telling our leaders, thank you very much, F5, you were good to us. That's why we took this meeting. But this is our last meeting because we don't believe you're relevant anymore. Right. And I saw these signals coming in from my ambassadors. I was like, communicating back to our leaders. We need to do something about it. We need to reshuffle agenda. We need to accelerate certain conversations. And our chief product officer, that's why she ended up with 18 appearances. She was jumping in on some of these conversations earlier than planned. Uh, and it was amazing how. See how, as the day progressed, how that was turning around, comments went from, you are no longer relevant to. Oh, I didn't know that. By lunchtime and by end of the meeting. Oh, this is amazing. We should do a pilot. We should double click.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yes. So talk about pivotal. I mean, it really was a pivotal time for you. Um, wow.

Speaker A: And that alone saved. So there were four customers like that.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: If they left, it would have cost us $8 million.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.

Speaker A: In annual revenue. Right. But. So that was one. But then another one was the rest of the clients we touched. Um, we basically relaunched the brand with them. We relaunched Perception of us as hey, we're still relevant. And we're very much innovative and we're building stuff which is very much needed by the clients. And because we invited the top tier, we knew that there were trendsetters and movers and shakers in their markets. Right. So.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We were sort of confident that if it satisfied them, the rest will fall. Uh, and I think you asked me something else. How many insights? Yes. We did capture like 14. I think it was 1400 plus of these.

Speaker B: Oh, um, my gosh.

Speaker A: Nuggets.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I would hope that snapshots in the moment. And then, of course, there was a job of aggregating that. And this is where AI would have been so helpful because I had no AI.

Speaker B: I had to every night. Oh, my gosh. You were manually doing that. Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: So I was reading every note every night and then basically compiling summaries for our leaders. What we're adjusting for the upcoming engagements, but in terms of outcomes, um, it definitely helped to make some decisions. I know that our leaders prioritized their roadmaps. Certain product features were shipped earlier or not shipped at all. Uh, it changed a little bit. The naming, I believe it changed packaging and pricing, how things were bundled. So it was really actionable. And, uh, you know, it was a, there was a return on all this investment. And look at the fight now. I mean, they are no longer near to be a company in crisis.

Speaker B: Right, Exactly. Yeah. It really is that turning point for,

Speaker A: not to say just because of that, but that was a big contribution, of course.

Speaker B: Well, you know, but I, I, I think, think, you know, the orchestration of that, the commitment from the executive team and your, you know, CFO specifically, um, to be able to do that because everyone realized that they needed to, as you say, change the perception. But to have those decision makers from those top customers in and then to know that if they're saying what you have on your roadmap isn't going to cut the mustard, so to speak, and that you're willing to make the changes around that, uh, and refocus. Um, it sounds like an amazing success, you know, um, well, the focus was

Speaker A: what do we need to build. Yeah, being relevant to you. Right. What do you need? And companies don't frequently ask these questions of their clients. Right. Typical customer advisory board is pat on the shoulder. Right. It's basically validating. Um, the stuff can be.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. Although we did them and we were, we were asking for inputs on, you know, certain areas and stuff. But, you know, and then you always get the issue of, okay, you've got 20 of your top customers in the room and they don't necessarily agree. So. Hm. Which, which way do you go? Right, let's see. You know, you're all bigwigs in these big companies but you know, we have to weigh the pros and cons of all of that. But that's really amazing to hear that. So many things were uh, able to be redefined and reevaluated and, and obviously like you say, F5 was able to get back on track and, and they've been going strong ever since. So that's fantastic.

Speaker A: That was one of the ideas initiative that I'm sure contributed, but not the only one. But I just want to close back. So we talked about Flywheel. So that was a communication on that Flywheel.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because it only worked because we didn't just listen. We were set up to actively listen and route people whom we are out into or uh, committed to doing something about it. Right, so that was, that's what reinforced that system.

Speaker B: Absolutely. No, that's um, a good point. Thank you for closing that out. Um, and then you're talking about all of these, um, the people and the resources, everything goes into it. Um, that's like a big time thing. So you can't necessarily do that at every single engagement, you know, individually. But um, how would you say that that changed or, or shaped, I guess you would say your next adventure. Like I think you went to T Mobile next after that and, and there were a number of years in there. So what changed? You were saying AI would have been great to have had at that time, but you didn't have it back then. So. Yeah, all that manual work that you and your team hopefully were doing, uh, how was it by the time you went to T Mobile?

Speaker A: Well, I mean by that time, seven years later, of course the technology was widely available. Right. We had already had ChatGPT Moment T Mobile, the former CEO of T Mobile actually made a very bold statement that we are going to become AI and data company Mark Sievert. And he started the project that the pilots for trying enterprise version of ChatGPT. My team got four licenses, we tested it, we proved that our productivity improves. We were able to get licenses for the entire team. So we were well equipped on the tool side. And um, the team that was building that, frankly it was not me. I just asked the team to work on that. And then the team started experimenting and building this, uh, implementing these ideas and where we ended up, um, all briefing managers used these AI tools as they designed engagements even before customer would show up. Uh, One of my team members, he actually built an agent that went and researched clients before they. They were engaged.

Speaker B: Oh, for all the discovery information about that, that client.

Speaker A: That's right, yes. Based on public sources. But it was an autonomous agent that just went and researched. And I didn't ask him to do it. He already did it before my team, we're just lucky to have him join. But it became the number one used agent across T Mobile for a while because other sales engineers use it as well. But we got that input. And then of course, when the briefing managers talked to account teams, they transcribed every call with Copilot because T Mobile was using teams and Copilot was part of that. So that notion was captured. Everything people put in Briefing Source, where Briefing Source shop, all the goals, all the speaker nodes, all that intelligence was then fed into, uh, ChatGPT and it started to create the insights documents. So essentially this, the byproduct, if you will, of any customer engagement was creating of that document that had input from what we researched about client, what we learned on the prep calls, what happened in the room, voice of the customer was also transcribed and fed into that. And then the debrief call with account teams also was fed into this. In terms of who's got the ball, who needs to do what. So what the team was doing, we kind of were. Organization was not really asking for it, but we were building grounds up just because technology was accessible. And it felt like a waste not to capture this intelligence and not to do something about it. Um, so yeah, I mean, but was it a flywheel? No, I mean the technology was there, but I had like a pivotal moment where we were on a sales QBR quarterly business review, right? And then our, uh, head of sales, SVP of sales taps me on the shoulder, says, dmitry, did you have customer such and such for briefing lately? And I pull out my phone, I go into Briefing Source, I say, yes, we had who was there. And of course I can answer that.

Speaker B: Of course, yeah.

Speaker A: What was discussed, what was decided, what were the actions because of this Insights doc the team was saving, I was able to give him all of that. And he was like, he stopped the presentation. He said, I want everybody to know. I just asked Dmitry some hard questions and he had all the answers and we should be doing more of that. He basically made an obvious showcase of that showpiece. And that was a fantastic moment because what the team was building finally got the spotlight and appreciation. The challenge is that it never became a practice. It was not mandated.

Speaker B: Oh, it wasn't?

Speaker A: Oh, Intelligence and. Yeah, yeah. So I hope the team, my team, the team who's, uh, you know, in place and very, very innovative. I hope they're still doing something about it and I hope it will get the recognition it deserves to become more, to make it more of a practice. But the company needs to realize the treasures, you know, the treasures we keep shoveling for them out of those mines and start using these treasures intentionally.

Speaker B: Well, and, and so that goes to the point of, you know, then, then there's still those gaps, you know, if they're, or even the, the lack of consistency. I would say, you know, if you uh, want to have your team, you know, if it's mandated, right. All the team and consistent and process and how they're using, what can be the mechanism that's in place. But if not, then, you know, where do you go with that?

Speaker A: Um, well, I would say there are two gaps. Right. The first gap we already talked about it. Organization needs to intentionally consume, route and act on these insights. There's no question. And that's the leadership commitment they need to make this decision. I'll also say on the intake side, um, what we learned from five days from those 53ambassadors, the quality of insight was directly correlated to who was listening because the listener needed to have the right context about the business strategy, about the customer situation, about the product portfolio. People who are not in tune with that, they didn't capture insights which were as meaningful or as actionable. Right. I would venture, guess that in the case of T Mobile, because my briefing managers, they did their best, right. But they're not experts in solution portfolio necessary or not experts in business context. So I think that might be another gap, another opportunity to enhance. So if you want to build a good listening and flywheel sort of system, your intake needs to be good. And then, um, the rest of the steps need to be set up in the right way where the right insights get routed to the right people who act on those insights in the right way.

Speaker B: Right. And so it sounds like it's really important then for. And my mind goes back to kind of back to your Microsoft days too, right, where you were focused, uh, on that vertical. You knew everything about the retail industry, as Microsoft had done with all the different industries that you, you could listen with those ears and reflect um, on what it was that was being said because you had that context, you had that understanding of what's going on in the industry. It's one of the reasons why, like at Xilinx we would have, um, there were eight different Industries. And we had one of the, uh, leads from that particular industry was in almost every single briefing, depending on the tier level of the customer that was coming in. But that was part of my, you know, being a team of one. I was relying on that lead to understand the context of their own industry and to know how to facilitate and lead the conversation to be able to pull out more of that information from the, uh, customers and, or do what you were doing when all the stuff was flying while you're doing the aspire event, that things are going haywire in one particular meeting, that, that lead person, because they understood the context, they knew what levers to pull and how to change the agenda and who else to bring in and what conversations needed to happen. So having that, um, knowledgeable, uh, team that can handle those conversations and, um, capture the right insights, I know correctly. Correctly is not the right word. But, you know, with that background, I think um, is is really important as well.

Speaker A: Different listeners hear different things in the same. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You want to make sure that the right listener for the right outcomes is in the right conversation.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. So, ah, wow. And so, you know, here's, here's these two very successful programs that, um, you kind of solved different pieces to the same puzzle. But, you know, where do you think that leaves the industry today? Um, do you think there's, you know, a way to bring it all together that we can, like, look at? This is the roadmap. This is the way that we should be going.

Speaker A: Yes. So I want to be clear that what we just discussed, right, these two examples, F5 and T Mobile, this is not the story of a vision realized seven years later because of technology. These are really touching the same elephant in the dark with two different hands at different places. Exactly. Two sides of the same problem. So at the 5, we solved the process. At T Mobile, we had access to the right technology, but the holy grail is still how do you combine the

Speaker B: two to get them all together. Right.

Speaker A: And I would say that the good news is that technology is now no brainer. It's widely accessible. If you're not doing it, you're basically missing the boat. Uh, but what remains scarce is the competency, the listening competency, and then the organizational commitment to close that loop. Right. To do something about what you're hearing. So I would say it's basically back to, um, the core, the processes you need to build the right listening pipeline and act in a pond pipeline. Um, I saw Somebody say on LinkedIn recently that AI, it doesn't make you Smarter, it just amplifies what you are already. If you're not smart, it will be more obvious. Right. You'll be more productive.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Same applies to organization.

Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, so true. Um, yeah, but it's also interesting to me that, you know, here, here you are kind, uh, of ahead of the curve. You know, like you said, this is the waves, like the last two years, I would say is, you know, AI everywhere in every conversation and whatnot. But the thought process and the ability to recognize, uh, what was possible was happening years earlier. Again, technology was being created earlier. Um, but being in the middle of that, understanding that and driving for things to be used and be more efficient in these programs, uh, earlier on. And with that, one of the key things I also wanted to talk to you about too, because, uh, you're a unicorn in some ways right here.

Speaker A: You're very common.

Speaker B: Well, it's true. You have gone across four different well known programs and been very successful there. You've seen what works there and you've seen what doesn't work there. And um, where do you see things moving from here? Uh, what do you see as your own focus? I guess I want to know that. And I have another question, question for you about pulling out some information for our audience. But, but let's start there. Like what, what do you see for, for yourself now?

Speaker A: Having all this experience or what they see for myself. Well, I mean, as, as you mentioned, Darby. Yes. I, I had chance to experience and contribute to four programs.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: World class facilities, um, engineering, sorry, customer engagement programs where, uh, I was able to return, you know, show the return on investments so I could get funding. Executives trusted me. And frankly, another part which I really en high performing teams, which were high performing but also happy. Right. We got along well. We trusted each other.

Speaker B: I would agree with that. Yes. Yes.

Speaker A: So what's next for me is really, I either continue doing that at a fifth company or I help somebody else to do it. Uh, and I sometimes even joke. Joining the dark side. Right?

Speaker B: The supplies come to the dark side. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: That's right. So to be honest, I'm exploring all these options right now. I'm not sure what's next, but I know it will be related to how do we combine technology, customer engagement, and how do you make better decisions for the company and for the clients. As a result of that, I'm doing a lot of time coding right now. I mentioned that I'm back to my kind of engineering den, so who knows, maybe I'll stay in that den.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, but I think it's great also because I'm just seeing across the industry this kind of combining of all different kinds of customers, customer facing kinds of activities. You know, as you mentioned, you pull together ebc, you've got the cab, you've got events, you've got other executive engagement programs, executive sponsorships, um, advisory board, you know, all of these things together. And you know, there are similarities, there are differences also in recognizing what the differences are in there. And I think one of the things you just mentioned about your teams is it just feels like every one of your teams, you were able. And I talked about this in the last, um, podcast actually with Dan, uh, Rishkin too. The idea of bringing together diverse teams and really focusing on what is the strengths of those folks, but having different, um, strengths and personalities, but bringing them all together and really bringing out the best in them. And I know, you know, the T Mobile folks and five folks, you know, they've, they've all had just wonderful experiences and have wonderful things to say. So m. Yeah, with that. And so I'm going to get to my other question because, um, I would love to know because I haven't been in this situation, I've known only a few of you. Um, if you are walking into a brand new program, what would your practical advice be for where would a leader start? Where do you think?

Speaker A: As related to insights or in general?

Speaker B: Well, both really. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I'm asking that because, uh, so the first thing I would do and the first thing frankly I did when I would join another company to lead the program or to set up program, the first question is how am I adding value? Like, how do we measure the business impact of the customer engagement program in an objective and credible way? And credible is the key word here. Right. It's not influenced revenue, it's not what we touch. But can you show the net difference of things before the program and things with. With the program?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, I like that.

Speaker A: And you do want to make sure that your sales partners and your finance partners agree to your model. And you want to get this agreement before you start asking for investments. Right. Because I mean, my experience with F5 was, you know, when you join a company, sometimes new hires get greeted by an executive. Uh-huh. Like, this is me. Welcome to the company. This is what I do. What are you going to do? Um, what is your role? So my role, my greeter when I joined was head of sales of a 5. And when we went to introduction and I said, I'm here to to lead your EBC program. He said, oh, we don't need an EBC program. Oh, the best EBC is not no ebc. It's just a crap, it just, it just doesn't happen. Oh no, that was my starting point. Right.

Speaker B: That's not a good starting point.

Speaker A: But that was, that was a great challenge because I went on a good listening tour to basically figure out what's wrong with the system and what is right. And then some of them became my best advocates. When I was proposing the brand new center in Seattle on uh, the top floor of the tower, the presentation was co signed with these sales by these sales leaders which gave me credibility because I was able to earn their trust. But my point is the first thing you do, you earn that trust. You build the system to measure objectively the business contribution and make sure you have alliances. You align with sales and finance so they don't question your metrics.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And then, and then once you do that then you can start building other things. And if you want to venture into the custom insights, uh, this mechanism we're discussing here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, you interview your executives. Yeah. You align on the why. Why would you be doing this? You don't want to set up CAD just for a checkbox. You really want to make sure that uh, the outcomes, you start with the outcomes you're trying to drive from this customer listening program and you want to make sure that the company is wired to receive all these insights. Because if you spend your time building listening mechanisms, um, it will be a wasted effort if this listening again the same thing.

Speaker B: If there's no action, then yeah. Right.

Speaker A: Yes. So uh, because if you, if you ask the why then you understand what exactly you need to capture what to listen for and that will help you to build that a closed loop for actum on this insights, you're going to be surfacing. So I think these are my two advices for somebody.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I think what's interesting is you, your example is not the first time I've heard that. But to have your greeter on your first day be the sales, you know, executive and he's saying, you know, poo poo on the, you know, ABC thing. Oh my goodness. Um, you know what, we talked about it for years and years and years about executive, you know, support and understanding of what it is the program can do. So yeah, I think what you've uh, shared about how you go in and being able to have those conversations with the right like finance, that's a really good place to start. You know Finance and sales and building those alliances, but also understanding what isn't working, what's not working now.

Speaker A: And it can be a little upsetting and, um, overwhelming. Right. When you get this feedback on your first day. But, um, when I was doing mba, we were studying, there was a case study, I think it was called. It's a. It's a widely known study, case study in many programs, what was called the case of complaining customer. And the whole idea was that customer who complains, they do it because they care enough. They want you to change something. Right. Hm. So that's the lens. I'm trying to get this sort of constructive feedback through that. Of course, it was not pleasant when that exec told me, like, we don't need you, Dimitri. But I was like, okay, let me unravel, uh, this, Let me, Let me.

Speaker B: Exactly. I'm gonna prove you wrong.

Speaker A: What needs to change?

Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Oh, well, to me, this has been wonderful. I love just, just, you know, talking through all of this, the understanding now, the flywheel concept as well. Um, but as you know, I love to, uh, close out with lessons learned. You have many lessons that you could share, but can you share maybe your top three with us?

Speaker A: Well, specifically for this sort of, um, customer intelligence and the age of AI, Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I would say there are three things. Um. Well, technology barrier is gone. It's much more accessible. The competency barrier is not. Right.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So all the old obstacles, organization not willing to do something about these insights, that's still in place. Right. So it's the harder problem to solve now because technology is already solved. So you want to train your people. You want to. Well, uh, you want to interview execs, you want to train your people on the context so they listen to the right things. And then your execs are committed to do something about it. That's one. The second one is, um, we talked about it already, but capturing without routing is, um. It's just a waste of effort, right?

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker A: So you want to make sure that there are mechanisms in the organization which force the right behaviors. Who needs to get this insights? Who needs to do something about them? What's the cadence? What is the driving factor? Are they accountable to do something? Because they would need to report back. Uh, if you only report insights and nothing happens, they need to report back what they've done, what they've taken, what they've discarded and why. And then you bubble up that dashboard to the high level in your organization so they know they are accountable to. They cannot just ignore You. Right. So that will be my second one. Build that mechanism. And then the third one also kind of talked about that. But, um, start with why. Start with what decisions do you want to change as a result of this customer listening? And that will give you the answers for the rest of the pieces you need to build to build this closed loop. So backward from the answer at Amazon, the head expression, the heavy expression, start with a customer, and then work backwards from that. Right. So the client is here. Start with the problem you're trying to solve, and then walk backwards to build the right mechanism to solve the problem.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: As it comes to customer insights.

Speaker B: No, it makes total sense. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Demetri. I really, really enjoyed preparing for and being able to chat with you today. I just think this is wonderful. And, um, yeah, we will also. You mentioned, um, you mentioned, um, crossing the chasm. You mentioned good to. Great. Uh, you've got your content, um, from your session that you had from the flywheel session m that you did. Um, I always link, uh, things off of the web page for this particular episode, so folks that are listening will be able to have a way to go and find those easily. So we will definitely do that, too. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Well, thank you, Darby. I really appreciate, again, you invited me to this. I appreciate that you're doing this for our communities. It's a goldmine of knowledge, your podcast library, and I'm just honored to be a piece of it, to be one of the small jewels in the crowd. So thank you for doing this, and I had so much fun. We should do it again. Absolutely. When I have something important to share,

Speaker B: I would love it. I mean, we could have picked, like, 20 different topics, you know, we could have talked on. I just thought it was so timely, and I really did. I was very sad that I didn't get to be in your session, uh, again, because we were in the same time slot. But, um, yeah, this is great. I'm hoping that, in fact, I know that a lot of folks will gain, um, a lot from listening to this and certainly your experience so. Well, thank you so much again.

Speaker A: You are welcome. And thank you, Darby.

Speaker B: All right. And with that, I'll say thank you to everyone for listening today. And please visit our podcast episode page, where we'll provide the link to those resources. As I was just saying that Dimitri shared today, and you can listen to this and other episodes in our series by visiting the cxlive.buzzsprout.com or through the GSP Resources podcast page. And please subscribe to stay informed about future podcast episodes. And if you have any thoughts or questions about today's podcast or of any ideas for future podcast topics, the best way to reach me is by email. And that's at, uh, darbyengagewithexpressions.com and thank you for listening.