How Robert Heil Doubled Growth by Rebuilding Strategy Around Client Value Creation

Bruce EckfeldtWelcome, everyone, to From Angel to Exit. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt, I'm your host. Our guest today is Robert Heil. He is CEO at Financial Aid Services. He's been involved in many edtech companies, on various sides of the equation in terms of scaling and exiting companies. I'm excited for this. Robert has some really interesting perspectives from having been involved in different kinds of transactions, on different sides of the table. So I'm excited for the conversation and to hear his take, and hopefully there will be some good takeaways for founders who are earlier in the process, a couple of insights, maybe a couple of interesting stories. So with all that, Robert, welcome to the program.

Robert HeilThank you, Bruce. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Bruce EckfeldtThanks for being here. Before we get into what you're doing today, the deals, and what you've learned, we'd love to get the backstory. How did you get into business, and into education and training? Then we can cover some of the transactions you've been involved in professionally.

Robert HeilSure. My background is that I've been part of a lot of different edtech and consulting firms within the higher education space. I would never have imagined my career would go into higher education. I was supposed to go to law school, and I was just killing a little time before law school started. I had a unique opportunity to work for an executive vice president at my alma mater. He was a former Wall Street investment banker, and the amount I was learning from him was terrific. So here I am, 30-something years later. I never made it to law school and got pulled into higher education. But it's been very meaningful work, applying some business acumen to mission-driven organizations that are making an impact on the next generation of leaders graduating from college. So it was a bit of an accidental turn, but I'm really glad it worked out the way it did.

Bruce EckfeldtI'm curious. I started as an architect and then got into technology, so I had a similar right turn at some point professionally. What about your training as a lawyer have you been able to apply? Has it given you a perspective, a set of tools, or a way of thinking that's helped you as you've gotten more into the business world?

Robert HeilLike I said, I never made it to law school, so there's no training there. The very beginning of my career had a political background. I ran political campaigns. That's where I cut my teeth, and I learned data through polling and predictive modeling. Marketing and PR are a tremendous element of political campaigns. It was a high-pressure environment, but it was a great incubator for learning. I felt like one year in that environment was sometimes the equivalent of four years somewhere else.

Bruce EckfeldtA pressure cooker.

Robert HeilIt was a good environment to cut my teeth, and it became a nice jumping pad into the world of higher education, especially edtech and consulting firms.

Bruce EckfeldtWhen do you feel you made the switch? When did you realize you were on a different path and think, "I know what path I'm on and what I'm going to be doing"? When did that professional thread form for you?

Robert HeilI don't know the exact year or moment. It was probably somewhere in the late '90s or early 2000s. Higher education faces some really steep headwinds. It's a challenging industry. And I'm drawn to two things: mission-driven work, and work with big challenges. I'm drawn to that like a magnet. After a few years in higher education, I found this is where that is.

Running a college or university has every facet of running a business. You're running a school. And in most cases, you're running a small city for thousands of faculty, staff, and students who often live on campus, so you have to provide food and housing. I don't know of any other industry that combines all three: business, schooling, and running a small city. That's why higher education faces a lot of headwinds, and why it's incredibly challenging. It may seem daunting to some. I like that. So it was this mixture, Bruce, of the challenge and some really meaningful work happening in higher education. I knew I had found a space I could really dedicate my career to.

Bruce EckfeldtTell us about your initial entry into the space. What was the organization, and how did you get started?

Robert HeilThe first decade of my career was spent on a college campus, working for that executive vice president. He put me on a management rotation where I'd spend a few months on the marketing side of the university, then he'd rotate me to admissions and enrollment management, and then to the financial area of the campus. Over about 18 to 24 months, I got exposure to just about every major entity on a university campus.

I didn't quite know where he was going with this, but then all of a sudden he started putting me in charge of these major divisions and departments. I'd be the first to say these were stretch opportunities. I probably had no business running some of those departments, as big as they were, that early in my career. But he was a mentor who believed in me and gave me those stretch opportunities. I'm incredibly grateful to him, and fortunately things took off from there.

Bruce EckfeldtI'm curious about that rotation model. Many companies, usually larger ones with the departments, business units, and resources, develop managers that way. I think it's fascinating to learn what people see as they go through these different departments, what's common and what's different. What threads or commonalities did you see across departments, and where did you see contrast?

Robert HeilThe contrast, I think, was that universities can be very, very siloed, probably no different from any business. That stood out to me really early on, and I saw the power of activating all these departments around common goals, so that departments understood how their goals impacted a department on the opposite end of campus. That immediately stood out to me as an opportunity, a way those challenges could be converted into opportunities.

Every department and every division does a lot of good things you learn from. They also have a lot of opportunities to make gains. So five or six months in one area helped sharpen my thinking for the next area, because I could learn from the good things I saw as well as the weaknesses. That made me a better thinker for the next four months I spent somewhere else.

Bruce EckfeldtAs you got more into the edtech side, I always find it interesting with these kinds of spaces where there are so many complications: government, nonprofits, mission-driven organizations, regulatory environments. And then you have commercial ventures inside the space. When did you first get onto the commercial edtech side?

Robert HeilIt was somewhere around 2007 or 2008. I had the opportunity to move out of the institution and into the edtech space. For me, that decision was largely about impact. I was grateful for the impact I could make at that one institution, but moving into the edtech world gave me an opportunity to impact hundreds of institutions at a time. That was really the draw. It was also an opportunity to exercise some of what I felt were my strengths on the business side.

That's been the second chapter of my career. Both have been great. I think I needed to start on a campus to really understand the market, and I think it's made me a better business leader to have started in the shoes our clients are in.

Bruce EckfeldtTalk us through some of the ventures and organizations you've been part of, how they've scaled, and how they've managed transactions. Walk us through some of your journey there.

Robert HeilFortunately, I've had the opportunity to be on the fundraising side of higher education, and also in marketing and enrollment management. Now I'm more on the financial operations side. And I've been on both sides of the M&A process. I've been through a couple of successful exits, and at the same time I've been heavily involved in or have led, I think, six acquisitions now. So I've been on both sides of the equation when it comes to M&A activity.

Bruce EckfeldtI'm always curious about people who have been on both sides. I think there's an appreciation of what the other side is going through when you've sat on that side of the table. What lessons have you learned in terms of how to approach the M&A process? Any philosophy or principles you keep in mind when you're looking at a transaction? Anything that particularly sticks out for you?

Robert HeilAt a high level, I think evaluating a company is ultimately a triple combination: really understanding the financial drivers, the customer drivers, and finally the growth drivers.

Bruce EckfeldtLet's get into each of those, because I'd love to understand what you mean. Financial drivers: are you talking revenue, EBITDA, capital use, debt coverage, all those kinds of things? Are there particular ones you look at when you're either selling or acquiring?

Robert HeilThe financial drivers you rattled off are where all of our minds go first. That's the obvious one. What are the historical revenue trends, adjusted EBITDA, gross margins? That's what we all think about.

The second one, I think, is often overlooked or underestimated: customer drivers. As I think about my company today, and about acquisitions I've been part of, I look at the customer drivers. Are certain segments of the market driving their growth? Are other segments declining? Customer concentration: if 50% to 60% of the revenue is coming from just two or three clients, that could be problematic. Those are some examples of what I mean by customer drivers.

Bruce EckfeldtI'm curious about this one, because it's something I look at when we really look at strategy. On the sell side, where do we have a particularly good story about a segment that's growing, in size or in profitability, so we can make a case for a disproportionate valuation because of some underlying trend we can show has future growth potential? And on the flip side, from an acquisition point of view, there's the risk side, "Where do we have concentration?", but also where there's potentially unrealized opportunity, particularly if I've got a product or service I could sell into this client base. How do you approach the analysis of the customer aspect, not only from a risk point of view but from an opportunity point of view?

Robert HeilExactly. The customer drivers can cut both ways. Hopefully you're looking at great client retention, both in dollars and in logo counts. But you're also looking to identify segments of the market that are untapped, where this company has the potential to really break in. So it can run both ways. And I like the word "risk" that you brought up, because no matter which side of the transaction you're on, this is about both opportunity and risk mitigation, and those two go hand in hand.

Bruce EckfeldtAny good examples or strategies for actually collecting that data? We can look at financial reports and the data the company provides. But is there anything about how to actually test this, or talk to customers? What have you done to validate or verify some of this?

Robert HeilMaybe two things come to mind. First, for myself, as well as in the opportunities I've had to coach, teach, and advise companies: think about those metrics from day one. Otherwise, the due diligence process becomes almost overbearing at the end. There's almost never too early a time to start thinking about this.

Bruce EckfeldtAre these things like CSAT scores, or what are you looking for?

Robert HeilCSAT, yes. But one of the ways my thinking has evolved over the last decade is that I focus a lot more on the leading indicators in the business and put almost a hyper-focus on them. Ten years ago, Bruce, with the companies I ran and the companies I was looking to acquire, I was really focused on historical metrics. That's where all our minds go. It's pretty natural. Today my thinking is a lot different. I spend much more of my focus on the leading indicators of the business. It can take some grinding work to figure out the leading indicators for each particular company, but once you have a handle on them, the narrative really begins to speak. It's really eye-opening.

Bruce EckfeldtThis is fascinating.

Robert HeilOne quick example, and I'll use Financial Aid Services, the company I'm at now. As a consulting firm, margins are important to us, just like any other company. But we actually don't talk much about margin at all. What we talk about is utilization. We've figured out that if our utilization rate, meaning how many of our consultants are working for clients on any given day or week, is above a certain threshold, it naturally leads to good margins.

Bruce EckfeldtHaving run consulting for a long time, I have lots of questions here. How do you distinguish raw utilization from profit-contribution utilization? I find there are lots of ways in consulting, or in labor management and tracking, to juice the numbers so it looks like I'm really busy, but it might not actually be generating value. How do you tease that apart?

Robert HeilFor us, utilization is the be-all and end-all. Another company may look at profit contribution, or put a slightly different twist on it. That's what I meant: I think it's important to really grind it out and figure out, for each particular business, the 10 to 15 leading indicators that really tell the story. Because, Bruce, leading indicators also reflect behavior. They tell you where gaps exist in the organization, where mindsets need to change, where talent is needed, or where a new toolkit is needed. That's where the leading indicators really come to life.

A more elementary example would be on the sales side. Here at our company, we don't get too enamored with how many deals we closed in a particular week, month, or quarter. What we're focused on is how many meetings and how many proposals are going out on a week-to-week basis, because we've run the numbers and figured out that if we hit those leading indicators, the deal closings naturally happen.

That's how my thinking has evolved over the last decade, and leaning into it has been really successful for me. It's certainly a Robert point of view on this particular discussion. Even on the transaction side, when I'm looking to acquire a company, I'm trying to look past the historical metrics and get with the company's leaders to understand their leading indicators, because that's going to tell me the real story.

Bruce EckfeldtIt's kind of a Moneyball approach, and I'm sure I'm going to butcher this: figuring out the one metric people aren't looking at that, if I can measure a player's performance around it, could lead to exceptional performance in a new context. I think that's very much about figuring out the leading indicators rather than focusing on trailing ones.

How do you balance some of these? With KPIs and dashboards, yes, we have this leading metric or critical number we're focused on to drive results. But there's a risk of gamifying it a bit, so you need to balance it with some other things that check it. "How many meetings did we have?" Well, I can set up meetings with all sorts of people, but are they qualified prospects or not? How do you balance this so you don't get gamification?

Robert HeilI like your word for it, balance. We literally call it a balanced scorecard. It's a series of quantitative metrics, but also qualitative metrics, like CSAT or an NPS score from our employees. We do internal eNPS scoring with our employees, and NPS and client satisfaction scores with our clients. The key word you mentioned is balance: being able to balance the quantitative and the qualitative so you get a good, balanced, 360-degree view of what's driving the company, or maybe better said, what's really creating value inside the company. Value for clients as well as value for shareholders.

Bruce EckfeldtIn terms of transactions, was your first experience on the selling side or the buying side?

Robert HeilMy first experience was on the exit side.

Bruce EckfeldtTell me a little about that. What was it like going in, and what did you learn during the process of actually doing a deal? I always find that the first time someone goes through a deal, there are lots of aha moments. Being in it is very different from watching it from the sidelines.

Robert HeilAbsolutely. I was a member of the executive team, part of a small core group going through that process. What I remember most was the due diligence overload. No matter how much people told me to prepare, until you go through it the first time, there's almost nothing that prepares you for it. That's what sticks out most in my mind.

And it wasn't just the amount of data, activity, and work behind it. What I had to get used to was the scrutiny that goes into that part of the process. You feel like you're on the hot seat. You're fielding questions left and right, and sometimes it feels like there's a tone of critique coming at you. So there was a tremendous amount of workload, but I also had to get used to the idea that this is not personal, and there really is no critique. These are buyers who are really trying to get to the heart of what's driving this company and what's creating value for clients, employees, and shareholders.

Bruce EckfeldtAbsolutely.

Robert HeilAnd they have to ask a lot of tough questions. They have to really probe to get there. So that's what stands out most to me: the workload, but also the scrutiny that went into the process.

Bruce EckfeldtI always joke that it's like getting a colonoscopy and a root canal at the same time. Was there any scrutiny, or any questions or data they were looking for, that surprised you, or where you didn't quite understand what they were going to do with it? I sometimes find that on the sell side, people don't quite get why the buyer is asking for certain information, or they're surprised by something the buyer is looking for.

Robert HeilA little bit. I think that's what probably sparked my thinking around leading indicators. I went into it much more focused on the general historical metrics we were tracking, which I knew inside and out. At least in that first experience, it was less about that and a lot more about these leading indicators, which I hadn't thought about nearly as much. So, back to your question, that was probably the genesis of where I started shifting my thinking: not just buying and selling businesses, but really creating value inside a business is about these leading indicators. I've gotten much sharper at that, whether it's M&A activity or just leading the company I lead today.

Bruce EckfeldtLet's flip to the other side, being the buyer. Tell us how you've approached acquisitions, both in terms of strategy, seeing where acquisitions would help you strategically or financially, and how you went to market. How did you look at the market for opportunities, evaluate them, and do deals?

Robert HeilThere are multiple philosophies on this, so I'm not saying this is the one way to do it. I just think I bring a particular perspective that your listeners might find valuable.

I know one philosophy is to use M&A purely to grab market share. I haven't really gone that direction. I've looked at M&A as a way to complement, or to expand into new segments, or something that really aligns with our strategic plan. For example, if our strategic plan has four or five major swim lanes, I look at what we can do organically in each of those swim lanes to advance that differentiator. But I also look at whether there are acquisition targets in each of those swim lanes that could really accelerate or strengthen it beyond what our goals originally called for. Obviously you want to look at the financials and how it would all work, but I'm looking at how a potential acquisition could strengthen, advance, or accelerate one of the major strategic pillars in our strategic plan.

Bruce EckfeldtAre there strategies you use to manage benefit versus risk on some of those? An acquisition gets you immediate capacity, capabilities, access to markets, or customers. But there are risks: the general risks of doing a deal, but also cultural fit, integration, post-transaction stuff. Any thoughts on how you've managed or evaluated that when you look at an acquisition opportunity and figure out whether it's going to be worth the transaction?

Robert HeilGreat point. In one of the very early acquisitions I was part of, admittedly, we as the acquiring company probably underestimated the integration aspect. That was a lesson learned: I'm not going to make that mistake again. So now I'm thinking about potential integration from some of the early exploratory conversations. Not because I'm trying to jump the gun or get way ahead, but, as your question alluded to, because of the culture fit of the organizations.

I've seen and experienced how the opportunities or difficulties of integrating two cultures, two different organizations, can derail an acquisition in no time at all. The finances can look incredible on paper. The market can look super attractive for these two companies joining forces. But if the culture and the integration plan aren't going to work, I'm willing to walk away from those opportunities, because culture and integration are absolutely at the heart of making this work.

Bruce EckfeldtI have yet to talk to somebody who said the integration was a lot easier than they thought it was going to be. The errors are usually on the other side. You mentioned culture. I know it can be a nebulous one, but are there questions, mindsets, or things you look at in the other organization and your own to assess cultural fit, or at least to give you some indicators of what the cultural complexities might be?

Robert HeilMission, vision, core values. I don't know if there's a balanced scorecard I can point to on that. You can usually get a pretty good feel for mission, vision, and core values through the course of the process. But to me, their clients really tell that story. For me today at Financial Aid Services, if you really want to understand our mission, culture, and values, I always tell people to talk to our clients. They'll tell you the real story. So for me, Bruce, that's always been the best way to get to the heart of it. Clients tend to tell that story really well.

Bruce EckfeldtI like that. One of the challenges I always find with this process is that everything is usually pretty quiet. You're doing a lot of this with minimal exposure. You don't know if the deal is going to happen. You don't want to publish it to the market. You don't want your full client base to know, and a lot of times you don't want your employees to know. The secrecy can make it really difficult. I always say it's like dating someone through a one-way mirror. You're observing from the outside, and it seems like it might be a good fit, but you're getting married. As either the buyer or the seller, have you found ways to make those decisions, or to balance providing some amount of insight and access without creating a situation where, if the deal doesn't happen, you're at a real disadvantage, you have too much information in the market, or you've made yourself too vulnerable?

Robert HeilGreat point. That's certainly one of the biggest challenges. It's a very, very small group, under strict confidentiality, that has to navigate the situation. And then, let's assume in your question that the deal does go through. Then you've got employee bases at multiple companies that are suddenly going through a rapid amount of change they weren't expecting at all.

What I've learned through some trial and error, and maybe this comes back to the integration conversation, is that as the deal begins to look favorable and you're getting into the later stages, it's worth the time for maybe one or two people on the team to break away and start thinking about integration. That way, on day one, there's a nice playbook written out for how we're managing the first day, the first week, the first 30, 60, and 90 days. Little things like: what email address are people going to have? Are they keeping their legacy email address, or are we moving them all to a new one? Benefits: are they staying on their own benefits, or are we merging them? I've found that the more of that you figure out in advance, the easier the change is on day one, when you roll it out, for the employees who are directly impacted.

So it's a delicate point: finding the moment where things look promising and favorable enough that it's worth the time to break out, work on this, and develop those playbooks for the early weeks and months, while knowing that until the signatures are on the paper, this thing isn't final.

Bruce EckfeldtUntil the money's in the bank. I've seen things happen where the money didn't come through. And I think it's a really good point. I talk to a lot of founders going through transactions, and these decisions are really important: are you going to use one email address or the other? What I tell people is that at some level, I don't care which one you pick, but you have to pick one, because the worst thing is being indecisive. If you're an employee who was unaware of the transaction, and all of a sudden you get this news, the worst thing in the world is feeling like leadership doesn't have a plan. So pick one or the other, but don't be indecisive, because that's what really scares employees. That's when you get people looking for jobs and customers getting uncertain and looking for other suppliers.

Robert HeilExactly.

Bruce EckfeldtSo having a plan, being committed to it, and communicating it effectively is key for post-transaction integration.

Robert HeilI don't know what you've seen, Bruce, but in my experience, the first 30 days are really critical to a successful integration. So I love the way you put it. Even if it's not the perfect plan, just having a plan gives you a much bigger statistical advantage that those first 30 days will go smoother and that you'll be able to capture the synergies and the enthusiasm. If you can really capitalize on that in the early weeks of the integration, it sets the new company up for a nice runway of success. So I love how you put it: even if it's not a perfect plan, just have a plan, because it makes a world of difference.

Bruce EckfeldtIt really does. Let's talk a little about your situation now: how you got involved with the company and what your goals are. I know there's a history with the company, and I'm curious how you got involved and how your experience on the transaction side has led to what you're doing today and where your focus is.

Robert HeilFinancial Aid Services is a consulting and tech firm for higher education. We work specifically with colleges and universities on their financial aid operations. Our clients are usually trying to solve one or all of four challenges. First, they're trying to use their financial operations to grow enrollment, which is how they make money as an organization. Second, they're trying to reduce their cost structures, and controlling costs is the best way to make college more affordable for students. Third, they're trying to create a much better student experience. And fourth, they're trying to mitigate risk.

Your audience may or may not know that higher education is heavily regulated by the Department of Education. There's literally a financial aid manual that, if you printed it out in hard copy, would be 1,003 pages.

Bruce EckfeldtIt sounds like the tax code.

Robert HeilIt reads exactly like the tax code, and it's constantly changing. We understand that system really, really well, so we work with a lot of campuses, because the financial environment they have to navigate is heavily regulated by the feds. All of our clients are trying to solve one of those four problems, and ultimately all of our services help them make college more affordable and more accessible to more students than ever before.

I'm not the founder of the company. Back in 1991, the company was founded around the dining room table of David and Gaye Gray. David Gray was a really respected higher education administrator who thought, "There's got to be a better way of doing some of this." And he was right. He built a terrific company. His vision, his dream, was to have a small boutique consulting firm. When he was ready to retire, after about 30 years of it being a founder-led company, he sold to private equity. That's where I came into the picture, as the professional CEO to modernize the business and put it on the growth trajectory private equity envisioned.

Bruce EckfeldtWere you involved during the transaction, or post-transaction?

Robert HeilThis was all post-transaction. I was at another really large tech firm at the time. My name came up in some conversations, and things took off from there. So I'm probably more of what thought leaders like Reid Hoffman or Satya Nadella would call a refounder. I inherited a terrific company with a lot of strengths, but it needed a refresh. We needed to refresh strategy, culture, and mission, to be more responsive to the higher education market of today and where higher education is going over the next decade.

That's really helped kick-start this new chapter, this new growth trajectory for the company. Fortunately, the team has been able to double the company in a very short amount of time, and earnings have accelerated even beyond that. I'm really glad the team has no intention of letting that growth trajectory slow down at all. So we're looking forward to what the next several years could bring.

Bruce EckfeldtI think it's interesting for folks, particularly founders who sell and get involved with private equity. It's a different game then. You've got money involved. People are investing equity and debt to see growth and some kind of exit. How do you manage the tension between "I want to grow and scale and have more impact as a company" and "I also need to think about time horizons and work with private equity to realize their goals"? How do you balance that relationship?

Robert HeilI think about it as a three-legged stool that's always got a little wobble to it. At least in my role, I'm constantly thinking about three things. First, what's best for our clients? Second, what's best for our team members and employees? And third, what's best for our shareholders? It's not necessarily in that rank order. All three are the major constituents I'm thinking about all the time. If I made decisions for just one of those groups, if I did everything our clients wanted us to do, we'd go out of business.

Bruce Eckfeldt"Do all your services for free."

Robert HeilAnd if I did everything our private equity firm wanted us to do, we'd be out of business. So it's a matter of finding a balance between all three stakeholders. That's where I've found success. It may not be that there are solutions that are a perfect win for all three. It's a balance. Sometimes something is really, really great for our clients and just good for our private equity partners and sponsors. So I'm always trying to find the balance between those three and constantly focus on value creation. I really feel that if we can focus on creating value for our clients, really good things usually happen for all the other stakeholders.

Bruce EckfeldtI generally find that if things get confusing and complicated, at the end of the day, the question is, "Where do we create value?" I always joke that we need to make money now and in the future, so there's a bit of balance there. But if I can focus on value, in the end everyone wins. It might be a longer-term win or a shorter-term win at different times, but I think that's a great rubric for making some of these decisions.

Robert HeilIt's amazing how easy it can be to get distracted from that, just by the day-to-day. It sounds so simple, but staying hyper-focused on value creation makes a world of difference.

Bruce EckfeldtAny personal practices you have to keep that in mind? Do you have mantras? Are you meditating every morning? Is there a sign on the wall? Any tools you use to keep it in mind amid the complexities of the day-to-day?

Robert HeilI don't know about mantras, and there are no signs on the wall. I think the best tool, on more of a corporate level, has been our strategic planning process. We have a strategic plan that's aligned to an exit strategy when the timing's right. And it's always a rolling three-year strategic plan. We chose to go down the Metronomics route. I know you're familiar with that, Bruce. So we have a three-year, highly achievable goal that's always rotating.

I think that's what keeps us focused as a team and as an organization: the alignment. It's been a great vehicle for bringing together those three stakeholders, our financial sponsors, our clients, and our internal team members. The strategic plan drives us toward finding the balance between those three. And since it's a rolling three-year plan, it leaves the timing door open, so whenever the timing is right for a liquidity event, we know our strategic plan is going to be pointed in that direction.

Bruce EckfeldtAs a strategic coach, I can't plus-one that enough, in terms of having that process. I had a post on LinkedIn recently about how I don't do annual planning anymore. Once a year, we do three-year planning, so you always have that runway. I find a lot of companies end up in a December limbo: "I don't know what I'm doing in January, because I haven't done my annual planning."

That was great, and we're going to hit time here. Robert, this has been a pleasure. Great stories, great insights. If people want more information about you or have questions, what's the best way to get hold of you?

Robert HeilProbably the two best ways: my website, robert-heil.com, or LinkedIn. Those are the two best places to connect with me.

Bruce EckfeldtPerfect. I'll make sure those are in the show notes. Robert, thank you for taking the time today. It's been a pleasure.

Robert HeilAll right. I appreciate it, Bruce. Great conversation.