I recently interviewed Jiffy Lube co-founder Stephen Spinelli on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is a college president who co-founded a household name company. Stephen Spinelli is the co-founder of Jiffy Lube and is the president of Babson College. Steve, thank you for joining us.
Stephen: It’s a thrill. I love the subject. I love your enthusiasm. I love your podcast. I listen to a bunch of them. You’re a smart guy. This is fun.
Adam: Steve, I’m flattered. I’m excited to have you on. You grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, home of the Basketball Hall of Fame. And you grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood. Your dad met the great Lou Gehrig back in the day, which somehow made you and your entire bloodline Yankee fans. And when you were growing up, you were really good at football, good enough to play division three college football, which is where you met a mentor who changed your life. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Stephen: What an interesting way to introduce that. Do you know it was a series of mentors, that’s why I’m sort of attracted to the title of this show, and the way you approach the show, and the mentoring. Mentoring is, in essence, a form of education. It is taking knowledge from one generation and blending it with the next. And I have found that the mentor learns a lot from mentoring, and the mentee certainly learns a lot from that. But it is really a two-way street, and the older I get, the more I learn from the people I’m supposed to be mentoring. And so this kind of experience of what you’re trying to do as an educator, and I would call you an educator, I think, is important and relevant, especially today, when the human interaction becomes so important to the real depth of knowledge people get. We talk about AI and we talk about quantitative analysis, and we talk about distance and all that. What we have to always remember is that the human spirit is at the core of what we’re trying to teach and bringing humanity together. Not to get too maudlin about this, but you’ve got to bring people together for humanity to function properly. And for me, sports was this training ground for learning about relationships in the context of a competitive world, that we come together and we try to do something together, and we try to win, and we can define winning in lots of different ways. I can shoot a basket and get two points, or I can score a touchdown and get six points, or a hockey goal gives me one, and I got it. There’s rules around all of that. And what happened with me is I grew up in a poor neighborhood in Springfield, not complaining. It was a great education, great family, though, great environment. I think I was blessed to be in that kind of really competitive environment. And a lot of first-gen, kind of ethnic neighborhoods really love the aspiration that you’re here, you’re supposed to, they wag their finger at you, you better get a college education, that kind of thing. So it was terrific. But I didn’t have any money. Not having any money can be a barrier. So I went where I could get a scholarship, and I got lucky, very lucky, to get a prep school scholarship. My prep school football coach got me a scholarship to college at the college he went to, which was Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College. And my football coach in college was a retired entrepreneur who had done a tremendous amount of stuff and loved coaching, and ended up the head coach at McDaniel College. I was captain of the team, and when I graduated, he would pick off people every now and then, and there were four of us that were sort of on the team. It was Jim Hyman. He was an amazing guy. He picked us off, and he said we’d go to work in his businesses. I worked in a nursing home in Baltimore the day after I graduated. Let me tell you, you’re 22 years old. Had to live in the nursing home, that’ll mature you very quickly. That’s a weird environment to stick a 22-year-old, but go run a nursing home in Center City, Baltimore, and make it happen. The group got together, and eventually he said, let’s go find a big deal. Let’s go find something that we can scale in a big way. He found this little operation called Jiffy Lube in Ogden, Utah, a couple units of a mom-and-pop kind of operation. And to, you know, we got together, and it gets back to sort of core philosophy of entrepreneurship. Is there really a market demand for this really interesting idea? A lot of interesting ideas don’t make money, but when there’s a lot of demand, and you get good at it, you got a real shot at creating value. So we go out to Ogden, Utah, and there’s cars lined up all over the place trying to get into this Jiffy Lube. We said, what is going on today? And they say, well, it’s like this every day. Oh baby, that’s pretty interesting. There’s a lot more cars in Boston, Massachusetts than there are in Ogden, Utah. Imagine what we might be able to do where there’s real market demand. This is amazing. So I moved to Ogden, Utah. Me and my brand new wife moved to Ogden and started figuring out what a Jiffy Lube was. My most fun part of the story is we bought Jiffy Lube. Really, the coach bought it, and he let us in on the deal. To be really honest, it was his money. I might have scraped together 10 grand from begging and borrowing from relatives to put in, and we got lots of equity for it. He’s an amazing man. We get all together, and we say it was Jiffy Lube Inc., but that’s the company we’re buying. We’re buying the assets. We don’t want to buy the liabilities. So we got to have a new name. We decided it would be Jiffy Lube International. We had a couple of stores in Ogden, Utah, and we were calling it Jiffy Lube International. It was funny, but it was intentional. We said, I don’t know if we’re going to be international. I don’t know if we’re going to survive tomorrow, but our goals are big. The coach was always like this, but people go too slow and shoot too low. He used to say that all the time. When we were successful, we couldn’t wait to get a store in Mexico or Canada to sort of validate the name. But there was a real perspective that we’ve got to make this grow. If this is a really big idea, we’re going to work 24/7, 365, we’ll do whatever we got to do. We’ll pass out every now and then because we’ll be so tired. Otherwise, we’re working. We were all in on this. We’re all football players and teammates, and we were going to do this. And we could do that to make a salary, or we could do that with the intent of getting rich. I thought I’ll do the rich side. If you want to get rich, you got to scale; you’ve got to create something really special that can grow to scale. You’re not going to work any harder if you’re absolutely committed. If you’re not committed, I don’t care if you just want to keep a few stores; don’t do it. Be committed. Believe in what you’re doing, and go to scale. And you got to work hard. I learned those lessons, and today I live by it still and teach by it still. Wow.
Adam: I love those lessons, starting off with thinking big. So much of your success starts with how you define success. What does success mean to you? And success can mean something different to you than it means to the person to your left, the person to your right. That’s okay, but it really all starts with having a definition of success. And as an entrepreneur, if you want to try to hit a single, that’s perfectly fine, but if you want to try to hit a home run, you’ve got to take that big swing. And I love how you and your partners said, well, we’re just in Utah, but we’re going to get rid of the word just, and we’re going to replace just with international. We’re going to hit that home run. We’re going to think big. We might not be international today, but we are going to be international.
Stephen: There’s a strange, almost unorthodox or contradictory phenomenon that if you think bigger, if you look for an opportunity that really can be big, you actually reduce risk. If you’re thinking small and you make a small mistake, it breaks apart. If you’re thinking big and you make a small mistake, you can make up for it. There’s a contradiction in all of that. I know on the risk-return, but I have found that to be consistently true in every deal I’ve been a part of. Thinking big reduces risk, so let’s think big, and you’re exactly right. One of the things we did that was really fun, probably you shouldn’t even say this, but look ahead. We would sit around if we had a question we needed to all agree on, especially at the end of a meeting, we get a little bottle of bourbon in the middle of the table, and we take a sip, and we’d say, okay, what’s the answer? When we got an answer, we’d stop, we put the top on the bottle, and we were done. We got to the answer. And sometimes we didn’t get to the answer. It could be a long night. We did that with the name, by the way, and someone said, the first thing they said was international. We didn’t have any bourbon. We put the top on the bottle, we said, that is it. Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re so smart. And it wasn’t me, it was somebody else. We went off and we said, let’s go build an international company. One of the things I always ask students to do is to define value. It is really interesting how complicated that can be. You sit around with a bunch of key stakeholders and you say, what is value to an investor? It could be 17% internal rate of return, for an employee, it could be a pension plan, for the mayor of the town, it could be employment for more of the citizens. And the more stakeholders you ask to define value, the better you’re going to understand what your job is. You’re also going to understand the resistance you’re going to get. Because if I’m doing something that contradicts what you think value is, we’re in trouble. One of the things we did at Jiffy was that one of the best things we ever did, we would get a lot of folks to be really unhappy, was owning a Jiffy because it was a car, and because it was motor oil, and because it was used oil, you’re dumping used oil out of a car into your facility. What are you crazy? And what we said was, you know what their value statement is, the environment is important. Well, it’s important to us too. We’ve already talked about that. So let’s design a used oil system that is the best in the world, that can account for every drop of used oil, that can supply that used oil to a cleaning process that then can reuse it and recycle it. We’ll be the first in the world to do it. We did that, and all of a sudden, people liked us. We were able to bring together those definitions of value, having that discussion early in a partnership or a relationship, and growing it to all your stakeholders. It’s so important. What is value?
Adam: It’s such a simple question, but it’s such a powerful question that we don’t ask enough. And you mentioned the importance of making sure that you’re asking it to yourself, asking it to your partners early on. But I would argue that it’s a question that we should be asking ourselves every day.
Stephen: I think you’re right. That’s a great qualifier to that, because if you don’t think you’re going to evolve, or you bring in new partners, or the world changes, my god, it could very well change, and if you don’t understand it, you can go down a path that could really lead you into conflict. Such a good point.
Adam: And what is that value that I’m bringing? And that value, to your point, is going to be different to each of the different stakeholders that you are serving. And it’s really, really important to drill down on that, and we really don’t do that enough.
Stephen: And I’ll tell you, one of the secret sauce of all of that is you will develop a much better marketing plan, because you’re going to be talking to them in a clearer fashion. One of the things that we did at Jiffy Lube was we were marketing to women because we thought this is a simple process. And women were coming in, we weren’t talking to them. We weren’t talking about what was important to them. We were talking about 10W-40, and what kind of lube, and better gas mileage. And they’re thinking, I want to be in and out. I want to be confident they know what the hell they’re doing. I don’t want to have to ask a question. I want to know clearly what you’re delivering, and I got to trust you to do it. Women were really tough on us around that, once we got to talk to that audience better, my god, that our business exploded around that. And they made a lot of decisions around the cars that we didn’t understand. We made bad assumptions about who was making decisions around the cars. But at the time, in the 80s and in the 90s, it was men. When we broke through there and we said, we’re sorry. Let us talk in the terms of what your value is about. And I think we’re going to provide value to you. Once we got that message across, wow, things just exploded.
Adam: I love that anecdote, and I love that lesson. The minute you started to truly understand your customer, you were able to take your business to a completely different level. What advice do you have for anyone in any business on how to truly understand their customer?
Stephen: It’s a very complicated formula. Talk to them, be around them, take notes. It is where the human interaction is so important. I love metrics. The people here will tell you, I drive them nuts with metrics. How are we doing? What was it, students’ salaries when they got out? What’s the SATs? I drive them out of their mind. The best information is, let’s go have a beer with a student. Let’s have a cup of coffee, and let’s talk about what’s making you happy, what’s making you upset? Why are you excited about life? What bums you out about life? And my job is to start to interpret that through other people in the organization, to say, how do we make this person more fulfilled? How do we create value for that person? How are they seeing value? Colleges are some of the last vestiges of bringing community together. So you can really look at creation of value for an individual on a really holistic level. Student comes to Babson College. This is your community. This is your work environment, this is your study environment, this is your social environment. This is probably your spiritual environment. These are the friends you’re going to build for life. Could be your partners. Babson is about business. So it could be about your partners. How do I bring all that together and create all this value for you? I have a better opportunity to serve this customer than in any business I’ve ever been. And shame on me if I can’t make that work.
Adam: Steve, it’s interesting because you started off the conversation by talking about the power of human relationships and how that has informed everything in your life. And when we think about business, oftentimes we think about numbers. You can’t run a successful business without having the right numbers, but you can’t run a successful business without removing the fact that business is not about numbers. Business is about human beings. Business is about human relationships. And if you want to understand your customers, you can look at numbers on a spreadsheet, but your customers aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re human beings. And if you get to know people as people, you’re going to be a lot more successful.
Stephen: The Babson brain is around entrepreneurship, but it really is about people and learners and entrepreneurial leaders. Our top scholars, we’ve got a bunch of them. I get in trouble because I’ll name a couple, but we’ve got hundreds of them that are doing this. Professor Taylor, Professor Greenberg, they look at leadership as a set of relationships, one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many. And how are you managing that relationship and an understanding of the human interaction and the consequences of creating or destroying value. And the social value is the underpinning of a long-term value creation for society, which can manifest in happiness, in money, in housing, in righteousness, in all kinds of good things. But if you don’t understand the relationships and that multi-layered set of relationships, you got to get lucky, and I’ve been lucky. I’ve been unlucky. I’d rather be good. We can teach people how to build these relationships in bigger and better ways and create much more sustainable economic and social value.
Adam: What do you believe are the key characteristics of the very best leaders, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Stephen: Communication is absolutely a requirement. The more multi-dimensional communication, the more two-way, or multiple ways that you communicate and come to understanding is the essence of building a relationship, a narrative that is honest and forthright and shared. So there is a discourse. You don’t have to share conclusions, you don’t even have to share values, although that helps when you share values; that communication becomes really, really important. But we also know that there is conflict in the human condition and that we are not going to always agree. Sometimes that disagreement can become vociferous, and so resilience becomes really, really important. Then you have to have problem-solving. And so you go from communications, and I understand, and do we agree? No, we don’t. How do we react to that? And can I be resilient, or do I walk away? That’s a lack of resilience, and maybe that’s the time to have it. And then you say, what is the nature of this opportunity? How do I solve this problem? And if you can do those three things, and always keep those in mind, and it is much more woven together than sequential, and you can sort of manage that three-dimensional nature of the relationship, you got a shot at solving a problem and creating value.
Adam: When you have an idea for a business, your idea is great. Everything is going to be great. I’m going to be rich. Things are going to be perfect. Then you start your business, and all of a sudden there are a lot of conflicts. You use the word conflict. That is a word that we don’t really think about when we’re in the ideation stage, and when we’re in the everything is going to be great stage. But then when we’re in reality, that’s when the conflicts arise. What advice do you have on how to deal with conflict, whether it’s conflict with a partner, whether it’s conflict with people who you’re leading, whether it’s conflict with investors, whether it’s conflict with competitors? How do you deal with conflict?
Stephen: The nature of entrepreneurship is solving problems. So if I’m going to solve problems, I’ve got to be good at that, and that those small problems within the organization, larger problems, that is the nature of our market demand, problems in individual relationships. So to be a great entrepreneur, I think you got to be a problem solver. And if we communicate deeply, and we think about where are the conflicts occurring now, again, I think with your partners in particular, and your understanding with your customers, or, frankly, all the stakeholders, if you have a pretty good understanding of how they define value, you’ll anticipate those problems better, and you’ll come to a resolution better. If, for me, value is a 12% return, and for you, the value is serving more customers at a lower return, maybe we get to 10% and less customers than you want, but more customers than I want. But we’ve got to understand what the nature of that disagreement is that requires a relationship that is an honest discourse. It doesn’t always work. That’s life. And partnerships break up for lots of good reasons, but what I have found is when you have common values, you see the friction points more clearly. You solve problems better, and you end up sometimes with giving more value for the same or better return, because you’ve learned the texture of the problem, and you’ve met with someone who deeply believes in solving that problem, and you come to a better solution. It’s almost like when you’re lifting weights, and you get to the point where that muscle really is tired, and it starts to get really tough. That’s the problem-solving that makes bigger muscles. So lift the weight. Sometimes you lift, and you pull a muscle. Okay, you know, I get it. There’s risk in all of this. It’s not all return, and I’ve pulled plenty of muscles, both exercising and in business, but you learn a little bit about that. You build more muscles, and you build more resilience, and you get better, and you learn. I think it is a dynamic process. And again, it is based on the relationship. If we have a good relationship, I can say, Adam, I think you’re wrong, and you probably won’t punch me in the nose, but if I walk up to you in the street and I’m a stranger and I grab you by the collar and say you’re wrong, you’re probably going to punch me in the nose or call for a cop. So we build a relationship where we can have an honest discourse about things we really disagree about. Most of the time we come up with a better solution. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we even break up.
Adam: Steve, I really, really love that analogy. It’s an analogy I’ve never heard before, never thought of before. I love lifting weights. I love resistance training. And when you think about conflict through that prism, resistance training is really good for you. Lifting weights is really good for you. You have to be able to step up when conflict confronts you, or even a step earlier when you see conflict potentially arising, but at the same time, you need to balance the conflict that you’re stepping into or the conflict that you’re potentially diffusing, and understand what the right level is, because if you go too far, you could tear a muscle. If you go too far, you could hurt yourself, you could hurt someone else, you could blow the whole thing up. It’s not about avoiding it, but it’s about confronting it with the right level of balance, with the right level of sensitivity.
Stephen: Yeah, listen. Your podcast is about mentoring. A lot about mentoring is, you know, a strength coach, but you’re teaching someone how to lift more weights and get stronger and be faster, have better bone density, perform better, jump higher. All of that is exactly analogous to what we’re trying to do in new venture creation and organizational growth. Your podcast is a weight-training exercise for entrepreneurs. It’s exactly right.
Adam: If only my biceps grew bigger after each recording, that would be amazing. You’d be a monster, man. I’m still trying to figure that out.
Stephen: You make a lot of money, too. My other job is, I’m Chairman of the Board of Planet Fitness. I was an early investor in the Planet Fitness deal. So I love the weight-training example, because it is both personally satisfying and it is better health, and it is communal in nature. We talk about Planet Fitness as being a judgment-free zone. We want you to come in and get better. We want you to be stronger. We want you to be more healthy. And yeah, it’s good for our business. You’re darn right. It is, and we’re proud of that. We’ve got almost 2900 stores now based on that philosophy that a healthier you makes a healthier community, makes a better world, and it’s incredibly fulfilling. That kind of muscle is broader than just your biceps. It is your brain muscle and your sensitivity muscle and your guts and your heart and all those vital organs. Jim Heineman used to say the three vital organs of an entrepreneur were their brain, their heart, and their gut, and the entrepreneurs that could connect the three together were the best entrepreneurs. When you only go with your brain or only go with your gut or only go with your heart, you make a mistake two-thirds of the time, but the more you get them connected, the better your decision-making is going to be.
Adam: Was there a difficult moment in your life that shaped you as an entrepreneur and shaped you as a leader?
Stephen: Yeah, several 1000 difficult moments. What was difficult 40 years ago seems trivial today, and I bet 40 years ago, the problems I have today would seem like, are you kidding? He’s unhappy about that. You know, he didn’t get the return he was expected. 40 years ago, I was worried if I could pay the bills or if we’d lose the house when we started Jiffy. You face the amount of stress we can handle, and if we can grow those muscles, we face more and more. And it never stops. You know, I was telling you earlier in the pre-discussion that the colleges and universities are going through a lot right now, and there’s some really tough decisions that are being made in government and in commerce and in society, but the value of what we’re doing now is so important, so big, that it’s worth the pain. It’s worth the debate. It’s important to have the debate. It’s the muscle building you were talking about just now, when you’re talking about feeling healthy, when you lift the weights, when you solve bigger problems, when you get used to saying, when I solve a problem, I’m creating value, and who am I creating that value for? Do they really believe it’s value? Do I really believe it’s valued? Higher education, I think it creates an enormous amount of value. So Steve, face the problem. Solve the problem.
Adam: A topic I’m interested in exploring with you is generational leadership. You’re now leading in an environment where most of the people… I’m trying to figure out the best way to phrase this.
Stephen: I’m old and they’re young. Yeah, I’m okay. Old is good. The alternative is bad. If I’m not old, I’m dead. So I’ll take old. It’s a gift. Listen, every part of life has something interesting. You got to explore it, and you got to deal with it. I’m really enjoying it. There’s two lessons that I am learning. I have not learned yet, but I’m more fully learning. You mentor and let them go in the direction they want to go. That your job is not to guide them. It is to mentor. It is to answer questions. It is to give them examples historically, but they have to put it in the context of their lives, their environment, their dreams, not yours. You got to be really careful about that. When I dealt with investors, here’s the problems that I had. You use that information as you believe is important in your deal. You have a question I’m happy to answer. But I’m not the decision maker, you are. If you’re going to be a good mentor, you support that person’s decision, whether you agree with them or not. I think that’s an important part of mentoring. The other part of mentoring that has been just incredibly fulfilling for me is how much I learn. It is just amazing. I am so happy I’m not competing with Babson students. They are so much smarter than me. They are so much more mature than I was at that age that it’s frightening how much they could accomplish. And we have discussions, and I pretend to be processing what they’re telling me to give them information I’m processing to learn their depth and texture, their ability to gain information across the globe, anywhere, anytime, on any subject, and the ease with which they do it is just inspiring. They are knowledge-absorbing machines, and they process really well, and we help them organize and process and make better decisions and layer in values and understanding and make them holistic in the way they grow. I tell you, as a mentor, it is teach them the experiences you have and support them in their mission. And as a mentor, learn from them as they teach you about the rapidly evolving world. In that interaction will let both parts of that partnership grow if you see it as a partnership and not a hierarchy.
Adam: This isn’t your first go-round as a college president, and you’ve led a number of different businesses. What are the similarities and the differences between leading in business and leading in education?
Stephen: Such a good question. A lot of similarities, and some of the similarities, I think I probably bring to the experience, so I may force those similarities. Babson likes to call a thought and action paradigm. Thought without action is frivolous. Action without thought is dangerous, and both colleges and businesses live within that. The ones that are doing it right, and we all make mistakes, the ones that are doing it right think deeply and act decisively. Now it tends to be that the colleges in higher education think more deeply and act less decisively than businesses do. Businesses have a tendency to think less deeply and act more decisively, and I have found that every organization is different in the dynamics of every business, and every company is different. But when you find that balance between thought and action, we studied, which is time to go pull the trigger, and the other one is we’ve got to be much more decisive, quicker. And finding that balance in your organization, which is understanding the nature of the opportunity and understanding the skill set of your stakeholders. Are we good enough to make that happen? Can I push them to the next level? Can I push me to the next level? Finding that balance is how organizations can really grow, but that thought-action paradigm is consistent across the higher education model, a not-for-profit model, a for-profit model, a commercial model. I see it as an important sort of synthesis. I can learn more all the time. I can be more decisive in the way I act. And it’s funny, the more I learn, the more decisive I tend to get. And it is this virtuous cycle of learning and action that is so invigorating; it gets the adrenaline really working. So I want to work harder. I want to read more. I want to talk to smart people like you. This makes me excited. I know I’m going to be better tomorrow because of this interview. That’s cool.
Adam: Steve, firstly, thank you. I’m very flattered by that, and what you just shared is something that I’ve observed from my time spent with the most successful people, including you. The most successful people are dedicated to learning. They don’t spend any time thinking about how successful they are. Other people can talk about that and think about that. What they’re focused on is, what do I need to learn so that I can be great today and be great tomorrow? And it’s that growth mindset that has allowed the very best people to become the very best people, and allows them to continue to excel, continue to enjoy such tremendous success.
Stephen: Great messaging. The human spirit is aspirational by nature, and if we feed that aspiration in higher education, it does a great job with that. We solve every problem, and we continue to advance. And there’s lots out there. So we need to continue to learn. We need to continue to do podcasts. We need to be better innovators in higher education. We need to partner with folks like you more. We need to be part of an ecosystem of understanding the potential is limitless, just a very exciting time, as long as we don’t blow it up.
Adam: Steve, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful, personally and professionally?
Stephen: I like setting specific goals. You’ve got to do this however you want to do it, but make sure you’re a learner and an actor. What did I learn today? Even if it’s one sentence or one thought, what did I learn today? How did I put that into action? When will I put that into action? What put it into action? Teach me. And it’s just fun to be thinking about that. I’m going to walk a little faster today. I got there quicker. I feel a little better. I’m going to read a book, I’m going to read an article, I’m going to listen to Adam’s earlier podcast on a subject that’s important, just what is a little bit of thought and a little bit of action I took today. And again, the better you can combine them, the more synthesis you’ll find, and the more excited you’ll be both about thought and action. You’ll be less hesitant to take action because you’re more confident because you thought it through. You’ll be more fulfilled by the thought, and you’ll be more confident and enlightened, and all of that feels good, and you’ll better learn from your mistakes. You’ll make fewer, but you’ll learn better.
Adam: Steve, every podcast that I do, and I’ve done several 100 at this point, there’s always at least one, but usually one, perspective-shifting moment for me, where I walk away from that interview thinking completely differently. That one thing for me, what is value? How am I adding value to everyone around me every day? Who are the people that I am influencing and impacting every single day, and how am I adding value to them every day? Am I doing a good enough job at that? And if I’m not, how can I do better?
Stephen: A lesson I learned a long time ago that you are reinforcing today is I try to interact with a good teacher every day. I wander around here, or I’ll call an old friend, and today I’m talking to a really good teacher, and so I’m better because of that.
Adam: Steve, I’m flattered. Thank you. Thank you for the incredibly gracious words, thank you for all the great advice, thank you for the incredibly fun conversation, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Stephen: Adam, you’re a gentleman and a scholar.
