Talent and Industry Trends with Marianne Galante

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Marianne Galante, the founder of Galante Talent Strategies. Welcome to the pod, Marianne. Thanks, Dom. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah. Yeah, my pleasure. So just to kick us off and give us a little bit of context, you recently left the executive team at KPMG to work as an independent consultant. And within that team, you're kind of working on like HR strategy and all of that. So can you talk to me about what Galante Talent Strategies is going to be all about? Absolutely. Yeah. So, like you said, I retired actually this summer from KPMG, but I've actually spent about 25 years in professional services. I spent some time at Deloitte, I spent some time at a company called Allied Universals, which actually is hourly resources. And most of my career has been at KPMG, and I loved it. I mean, I spent 20 years at a company, I mean, met great people, worked on great projects, and was able to work on a lot of different, had a lot of different roles at the firm. So everything from I was a recruiter, I worked in finance, did operations, business development, I did client facing work. And then the last 10 years, I really focused on resource management, workforce management. So after retiring, kind of was thinking about, you know, what's the next step, the next chapter. And I mean, quite frankly, what I really like doing, and what I really get jazzed about is helping companies or helping people make money, help and at professional services firms, I knew how to do it. I knew the best ways of doing it. So launched Galante Strategies in October, in October, and really focusing on the mid market professional services industry, companies with like, anywhere from like 500 to like 2000 employees looking to grow and looking to really align their people strategy with their business objectives to increase their revenue and increase their margins. That's awesome. And, and where in these businesses, like, are you typically intervening? Like what's what's usually going wrong in the business that should be their kind of cue or their trigger that that maybe they need some external help? Yeah, that's a good one. Um, I think a lot of business in a lot of businesses in the mid market, probably are well intended and have a lot of people playing jacks of all trades, like multi hatting doing lots of different roles. But might not have documented business processes to even start identifying ways to increase their efficiencies. I mean, you'd be you'd be surprised, I mean, a lot of people do a process because that's the way it's always been done, or this way someone taught them before they started. So doing a business process audit of the end to end or processes from start to finish, how you, you know, how you price a deal, how you deliver a deal, how you recognize revenue, how you close an engagement, how you staff it in between, like looking at those processes on the areas that we find to get most traction. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's interesting, like at at the scale of the kind of larger firms where you're doing these things, people don't necessarily think of like the impact and leverage that it can have. I mean, I think back office is often deeply, deeply underrated, in my opinion, when it comes to kind of the efficiency of a business. And so I imagine like, that some of the changes you've implemented has have had kind of like massive repercussions throughout the organization, right? Absolutely. Um, I think to your point, most people don't recognize the influence and the role of the back office and the influence of the back office, because at a professional services firm, you need the you need the hunters, you need people out there trying to sell the work. And you need to let them sell the work and let them have confidence that when they sell it, one, you're going to be able to deliver it, you're gonna have the people, whether they're your employees, or contingent workers, to that you have the technology, and that you were consultants have the technology, I know that sounds really basic, but you want to make sure you have the latest technology to bring to market. And then and as I said, like the pricing that the, you know, that the people all of it, you just want to make sure that, that it's aligned, that it's efficient, so that people that are the hunters selling the work have full confidence that the delivery is going to be seamless. It's definitely underrated for sure. Yeah. And in that experience, probably at KPMG, that's where you would have been the most senior. Is there like a project that you're able to talk about that you think had the biggest impact? Like a concrete, like, implementation you did, or like a proposal or something like that, that that had super meaningful impact on the organization? I didn't know you were gonna ask that. Yeah. All right. Sorry. Good. It's a good question. I'd say yeah. I mean, so in the later years, so probably in the last two years, in KPMG, and the service that I worked for, so I worked in advisory, had colleagues in audit, and I had colleagues in tax. Towards the later part of my career, I actually worked across. And we implemented a tool that is the skills sensing tool that used AI to take people's parse your resume and identify your skills from your resume, and then match you up based on the demand that was coming in on our pipeline. So sounds real, you know, super futuristic, but I mean, it's all this is all available now. What the stage before that the previous day was, everybody was collecting everything on spreadsheets. I mean, we're talking about a big company. Imagine you're a mid market company, and that's what you're doing, too. So everybody's capturing their own what they think are important skills. But in essence, the skills that really matter are the soft skills, the ability to communicate, facilitate, you know, write and speak. But if you're hiring a firm, and you're expected, they are going to have specific nuanced skills in a technology or a functional area, then you need to start collecting those and staffing your people accordingly, and not staffing your people based on who worked with you on the last project, which is a lot of what does happen at big firms. So I would say that, you know, implementing that skill sensing tool that enabled the matching of people to jobs in this technology, not to take the bias out of the people choosing and let the tool choose was definitely a game changer in how quickly they could fill roles on projects, and how, how that data could be used to upskill people and identify gaps in skills where you didn't have enough supply to meet your demand. Interesting. That's, yeah, that's really cool. And like you say, like, my experience in the big four was that too, like, you kind of glom on to the people that you like, and that you had one or two big successes with in the past. And that becomes like the go team for everything that comes across your desk, right? And then it's like, well, often, yeah, that's not necessarily the people who are best suited to it. It's just your go to people. So it's totally the 1980s. Like you are, you are growing like that is the 1980s model, fast forward, we have technology, and you want to bring a breadth of different individuals, you don't want to keep using those same individuals, you're going to burn them out, you're not giving the others a chance to, you know, get out there on the engagements that they want to work on. So I agree with everything that you're saying, it's still not gonna say that it's, it's still, I think it's still there. But I think a lot of firms are moving in the right direction away from that. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I mean, at the certain point as well, there's like a level of fairness in the training that people are receiving, right, like, because otherwise, you can kind of get left in the dust. So that's, yeah, that's super impactful. Yeah. Yeah. Along a similar vein, I'm actually very curious to know, like, were there any big projects that you were pushing, that maybe didn't quite make it through in your time there that you really wish could have, you know, worked out or that like, you think will work out, you know, within the next couple of years? Um, one that I'm actually trying to bring to the mid market would be specifically around deployment strategies for high performers. So kind of what you were just talking about, Don, a lot of times your high performers, are your high performers because they you, you go on, you know, you kept grabbing them, you sold something, I'm gonna take that, I'm taking Dom again, I sold it, I'm gonna take Dom again. And Dom becomes a high performer in in a very siloed area. And what, in order to grow, let's say Dom doesn't want to work in that siloed area anymore. And Dom wants to do something else. Well, in order to really help that high performer, and it doesn't have to be a high performer, I'm just throwing that out there, expand, grow, meet their individual career objectives, you've got to be able to, to pivot and allow them to have different opportunities. So a problem statement then that I had that I was working on was that how do you really support high performers to get roles that will get them to their next level, but are different than what they've been doing over and over. And it goes back to using that skills data that you have on the people. So I know what people can do. But I don't know if they've been tested. I say tested, I don't know if they've actually dipped their toe in this. You can use your skills data to say, if Dom knows Excel, he probably knows Access and he probably knows SQL and he probably you know, all of that graphing technology could be used to really put you up for a different role and let you try to do that. That's going to keep the employee happy, because most employees don't want to do the same thing over and over and over. So you want to keep your employee happy, but it is, it's stretching the patience maybe or the understanding of the engagement team that wants to continue to use the same person over and over to do Excel, you know, the old role. So the idea of allowing high performers, using skills data to allow your high performers the chance to stretch, to try a different engagement, to even not be the high performer in that engagement, but to learn, it's basic as it seems, because of the utilization challenges and because, you know, people feel like they have to get utilized all the time. Sometimes, you know, people aren't seeing that as a good thing. So I wish that that would have gotten through, but I am pitching it. So we'll see if the mid market firms are willing to do that and really look at graph technology around the skills data that they have to identify what's the next role for that person based on the current skills they have. What I picked up on there that I find really unique, and that I love is that you talk about the transferability of skills. It's not just a checklist. Yeah, it's like, okay, this person's an Excel wizard. So they're probably really good at SQL or whatever this other thing is. I think that that's really interesting. I think people don't typically make those connections. Whereas again, like, yeah, this person's really good at this one thing. And so they probably have a propensity to be a very fast and very, you know, skilled user of this other thing, which is has a lot of carryover. Yeah, that's, that's probably kind of hard to pull off. But I love hearing about it. Yeah, when you look at the different generations, so if you use in the workforce, you know, you're looking at Millennials, you're looking at Gen X, you're looking at what Gen Z, so I want to make sure I get it right. But everybody wants to learn something different. I wanted to learn something different. So I really believe that it definitely takes somebody with vision, Tom, I mean, you have to have a vision to want to do that for your employees. Your return is going to happen because you're going to have people stay. You know, there's lots of opportunities for people out there who are really smart. Yeah, you know, people will stay if they feel like you're investing in them and giving them opportunities to grow. But I hear you. It's a two, I forget, two sword or whatever, you know, whatever that kind of phrase is. But, you know, you need to use what you have in the short term, but you got to start looking longer term to keep your focus. Yeah, yeah. And the payoff on like employee retention, I obviously kind of like look into that a lot given, you know, what my sales pitch is for Big Four transparency. But like the payoff on employee retention is huge, right? Like I talk to a lot of firms and they talk about like about one percent of top line revenue is going into like recruiting efforts and whatever. And if you're talking about a firm with, you know, a twenty five percent gross margin, that's actually four percent of your entire profit is being eaten up by, you know, recruiting efforts like ramping up to employees. Yep. Yeah. And if you're onboarding, look at your client satisfaction. If they really like that employee, that employee is gone. You're a small mid-market firm. It really is impactful. So keeping, I totally am with you on that. Keeping your employee happy, engaged and skilled and upskilled is huge, I think. Yeah, for the big firms, but totally in the mid-market, it's going to keep your people there and it absolutely is going to keep your margin. Yeah. And so, yeah, turning over a little bit to kind of like resource management side of things because you're heavily involved in resource management at KPMG. What were some of the like chief concerns over the last couple of years within the resource management team? Like what were those kind of like discussions of like, this is what we're really worried about? I would say so the last, my goodness, 10 years. So I would say there was definitely there was comments about burnout, which I think are still there. A lot of comments though, or a lot of focus areas changed after COVID because of the whole pre-COVID road warrior. And I, back in the early 2000s, I was a road warrior and people, you know, didn't want to do that their entire career. So then post-COVID, you know, you have clients that aren't willing to pay for that, those travel expenses. They can get a lot of the work done remote. So a lot of the things that we were talking about have shifted to mental health. You know, really keeping people engaged, culture, you know, what is the culture of the firm and how do we keep people happy, engaged to be part of it. And then skills. I mean, skills is always, you know, and how AI is going to impact. So, you know, I think a lot of people were concerned about, oh, AI is going to replace my job. I don't necessarily think that's true. I think that it can enhance your job and that allows you to get different skills because of some of the things that you may have been doing that the machine can do. Okay, let the machine do it. You test it, but then you do other things. So I think the idea around skills, mental health, engagement, and interaction, because people just aren't there all the time and connecting, the whole idea of learning from others, that apprenticeship model has changed at some firms because people aren't sitting next to you and learning. I had a colleague tell me once, not too long ago, she said that, you know, just nuanced business development techniques, learning how to read the room, that people are losing that because they're just not together. So there are things that, more recent that we were talking about, about our people, because it's a people business and how to help them with that, we weren't talking about that 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting how like the unique challenges kind of, you know, progressed over, over the, over time. Yeah. And that was going to be my next question, which you kind of answered as well, was sort of, how did things evolve over 10 years? No, no, no, that's perfect. You're way ahead of it. And then a little bit of a point of personal curiosity, but you were involved in the, in the salary setting process as well, right? At KPMG? On a, on the outside. So well, tangentially. So what we did, we were, we gave data. So we contributed in, and when I say we, the workforce management, the resource management team contributed in the salary, with the salary team in giving skills data. It all goes back to skills. Really looking at some trends around the last 12 months in, looking at heat maps about hot skills, top skills. And then also looking at forecasting in the future, or is that, you know, is that trend continuing? Is there dips? So providing that information to the comp team to say, Hey, you know, we, you pay for top, you pay, you pay for skills and people need, I don't know if people realize that, but that is really important to understand that, you know, if you look outside, you're totally gonna, you're going to know it because you're going to get a bump, but you don't have to look outside. I mean, you can stay back to the whole retention if firms really do pay for skills. And I do know that some of the bigger firms are doing that now. Yeah, yeah. And I do think like a lot of peace of mind comes with like knowing that your firm is on top of things with that. Like I, I had left not the big four job. I had left some role where like, I was like very clearly behind market and like nothing was going to be done for me and whatever, to a place that had like a very structured comp philosophy where they were like, okay, like we follow the 75th percentile. We do annual surveys, like the data seems relatively trustworthy. And at one point they kind of came off the rails of, of, of that compensation philosophy. But while they were on that, I felt like this huge burden lifted from me. Like I was like, Oh, it's no longer on me all the time to like, you know, scout the market, make sure that I'm like being kept up to date, like blah, blah, blah. It was really like, I can actually just rest easy and actually trust these people that they're going to like pay me properly. And then eventually, you know, things changed and that was a broader change in the tech sector. I don't, you know, I don't blame anyone specifically, but like for that period in time when that was the case, I was like, wow, this is like, there's a lot of like mental peace and like clarity that comes from knowing that my employer is on top of this. I think you make a great point about sector though. So it's, so in a professional services firm though, you got to remember they're selling to all those sectors. So what might be hot for one, like a skill, what skills might be hot for one might not be hot for others. Workday's super hot in healthcare, but might not be that hot in, I don't know, public sector. So I hear what you're saying. So I do think that there's even more complexity in the, I'm just like trying to like literally thinking about a diagram, you know, the cross and over that, yeah, a skill might be hot, but then let's look at the penetration of sector. Let's look at the penetration of level because like an introductory level of skill compared to like a subject matter expert of the skills also going to have different interest in the market. And I'm totally not like pitching for myself, but I just wrote an article and posted it on LinkedIn because, yeah, no, and thanks for teeing it up. I think that a lot of firms talk skill, all right, they talk about the skills and they talk about, oh, everyone's got to have these skills, but they're not measuring. There's no like metrics around skills other than you check the box and you went into a tool and you said that you knew this once a year. So looking at the velocity and how frequently those skills are utilized on different projects is something that any size firm, if they have a time and attendance system and then they have a skill system can marry up. I'm just looking at the way that the skills are utilized, the skills of your new hires versus the skills of people that you're leaving, like the people that are exiting. There's just a lot of different metrics that I think people can explore to get it right when they're having those salary conversations and conversations. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was a, yeah, I was a first firsthand witness of the, you know, some skills are hot and then they're not. I was like, I think I was the only analyst on the Deloitte blockchain tax team. And for like about a year and a half, like my time was billing out at like, you know, instead of a write down, it was like 120%. They're like billing out at my time at like a, like a surplus. And then, and then I came back, I was a co-op student, I came back for like my full time role and like everything had collapsed. Like all of that, like I was supposed to go to Bermuda for like a work trip or whatever. And it was like, and it was like, no, like we're not doing that anymore. Like we don't talk about this whole like side of the business. It's probably hot again now, but like that was, that was a really salient example for myself in my own career where it was like, wow, like I've got the hottest skill set out there. And then I came back and it was like, oh, this is now, yeah, the way things are happening in technology today. Yeah. So it's important for the individual professional him or herself to be knowledgeable in that and to ask questions about that because you don't want to be left out. Yeah. Yeah. So you've, you've seen like a lot of firm evolution and like a lot of evolution of like how the industry has been and kind of in a previous conversation, you and I talked about how you kind of helped push, you know, a movement away from time and materials pricing more towards value pricing. And you alluded to there being a certain level of resistance to that. I'm curious to know a little bit like the details of like, what was the resistance to that? Like, and then like for any kind of more entrepreneurial firm, you know, member right now who wants to push change at their firm, like what were the things you had to do to kind of push that change along and, and, you know, get through that resistance? Yeah. Um, so I will say that I was on a team of people, of course, because, um, and not to not so, uh, far in the past. So it was pretty recent. I mean, professional business, professional services is changing. I mean, the idea of rate times hour equals revenue, that has always been there. Right. But now, now that you have technology, you have, um, AI, like how that is accounted for your revenue can happen if you're just billing out time and materials, because you're not, unless you're really buffering your rates and clients are smarter than that. So the idea of selling for value or selling and milestones or, or something like that is just so much more, um, I think clients can understand that clients know what they get from that versus, you know, I'm getting Marianne 10 hours times, you know, her rate. Um, so the idea of that, I think there wasn't pushback on the, that it was a good idea. So I think most people know that selling products and selling solutions and selling value is more, um, it's just a better sales technique than just selling out the idea. So the pushback didn't come because I didn't want people didn't think it was a good idea. I think the pushback comes back to, that's kind of like I said to you in the beginning about your business processes and standardizing, um, how you do things. And cause the pushback comes back cause no one knows how to do it. Like people are like, well, what does that mean? How do I price it? This is, you know, I've done a hundred jobs and every job I do, I, I roll up how many people I think I'm going to need, you know, their rates, but that is your cost. That shouldn't be your price. And understanding that it's going to cost me a hundred dollars, 10 people at $10 an hour is not what I'm giving the client. I'm giving the client a solution. So that price should not be your cost. And I know that sounds really basic, but growing up in different firms, cause I was in finance in both firms that I was in, that concept was just different. It just was different because they have, um, because your rate and then you discount your rate. Like people think of it that way. I'm not suggesting that I'm suggesting roll up your cost, sell value, but your cost should not be your price. And getting that through to people was, we probably didn't do a good enough change management initiative because that those concepts just were not sticking. Like it wasn't landing. There are some, I mean, there's absolutely some in the tech space, you know, in the ERP space that are doing that now because of the arbitrage that they're getting from labor offshore. I mean, a lot of them are doing that same labor offshore that they were doing onshore. So the rates have come down. So the idea there is you got to sell the service or sell the value or you might not make money on that project. I think like to answer your question, I'm sorry, I went around, but to answer, I don't think that people were against it or, um, I didn't, weren't positive for it. I just don't know if it's understood. And I think the more mature place, the more mature firms, or even they could be small firms, but more forward thinking, more tech savvy, people thinking about digital transformation are thinking that way because they have to. Because the idea of, because clients are getting smarter and clients, the idea of a client is going to pay $10 for 10 hours. It's not the way their procurement team that's looking at this proposal is going to sign off on. Because there's a lot of different layers of organizations before they buy work from you. And a lot of it has to do with how they're looking at it. So I just think that the idea of selling solutions, selling service, selling value, is much more cogent to a client than selling race time hours. Yeah, and I think that that change, the importance of that change, where some firms are still behind the times and haven't implemented that yet, is really underrated when you just look at the firm and the talent marketplace and all of that as a whole. A lot of people right now are complaining, I can't find talent at rates that I can afford. And it's like, well, the trickle-down explanation of that might actually just be that your firm is not efficient at making money and you need to fix that rather than necessarily complain about the talent market and all of that, where it's like, you maybe need to fix that because the rates are what they are based off of what can be used to drive a real business. Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah, yeah. And so to me, it's firms that aren't even at that step yet, which there's probably several hundred of. You really need to understand that. And so it's cool to have a conversation with someone who had to kind of educate in the larger firm context because I think you communicated that very, very well. Whereas a lot of people are just kind of hitting people on the head with a hammer about it, be like, ah, change your pricing, change your pricing. But actually communicating what's behind that and how the mechanics of it work, I think is really important, for sure. I agree. A lot of people are saying change your pricing, change your pricing, but you're right. The why, and if you don't really explain the why to people, you're not going to get the buy-in. You just really aren't. I mean, that's just human nature, right? If I didn't understand it, but I, yeah. I think the other thing, Tom, is like, I think that there's a lot of leaders, and I do think a lot of leaders are just never, it's okay not to be settled in how we do it today. You always want to get better. And that's how I grew up. I mean, you always want to do something different, find your niche, get better. So you have those leaders out there saying that. Let's sell for value, let's sell solutions. It's just when you are in such a big company, I think, so I do think this can resonate in the mid-market, because they think they can pivot quicker. They're more flexible, they're able to do it. But when you're talking about the big firms, I mean, big changes, it takes a long time to actually get enacted. Yeah, for sure, right? It's the turning a tiny boat versus turning a cruise ship, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot harder. Some of what we spoke about is all these people are talking about this and that. Do you feel like since you've left the big four, you've kind of exited a bit of a silo and you're seeing what's going on in the market a lot? Because I've had these convos with people where, and this was my truth at Deloitte, I was in the Deloitte universe. I actually didn't know anything else going on at all in the entire world. Have you found that to be the case? And what was new to you after you kind of left that sphere? Yes, yes, and yes. So being an independent has a lot of responsibility for yourself, right? Because you're always out there hunting for yourself, but it's also a lot of freedom. Freedom to, you're out there on LinkedIn and you're out there in social organizations, whatever, to actually say how you feel. Because when you do work for a big company, sometimes you can't, you cannot express that I think this client, or excuse me, that this product, this vendor is better than this vendor. So I definitely see the difference in the freedom that I have to say, hey, I've worked with a lot of great vendors. I have, I mean, I worked with a company called MBO Partners. They helped me set up direct sourcing, Beeline helped set up back office for contingent workers, provided the skill stuff. I mean, there's some really great vendors out there. But when you work for a big firm, you can't really tell anybody, you can't. You're not allowed to go out there on LinkedIn and say I think this is, unless you get sign offs and all that kind of stuff, that could take a long time. So the ability to be, I know this sounds really corny, but free to express your, what you're seeing out in the market. Even just to go out on LinkedIn and say, I think there's a lot of PE interest in small firms and I read all these articles and this is why I think that. You can't do that when you work through a big firm. The idea of change management, the idea of, everyone's going to have politics. So politics are everywhere, but the idea of being able to connect with stakeholders at smaller firms and enact change. So the enactment of change management, a communication strategy, it's much more doable than, it happens at big firms. It just takes longer to stick because there's so many people. And I mean, so that's logical, but it's kind of liberating being on the other side. Yeah. Freedom is such a weird word, but to say what I'm actually seeing out there. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, there's a lot of very cool creators and people in the accounting space and no big four partner that I've ever spoken to knows who Jason Stats is or Logan Graff or any of these people. And yes, it's really just this kind of little self-contained silo, which I think is a bummer. And to their credit, big firms have tremendous resources and they're able to train you and teach you a lot of things like that. But I think that you do end up with a lack of diversity of ideas where, again, big four people aren't really looking at enough outside resources, I think, to really take in the broader picture of like, this is what accounting is. This is the accounting or consulting market. Yeah. Interesting. And then the kind of last topic I wanted to talk about before my dog starts barking at the door, he's kind of growling a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. When we started talking, we were actually talking about kind of private equity, sort of like offline. You, I think, had responded to something I posted about like a study on private equity and whatnot. I'm curious, like from, you have a very unique vantage point compared to a lot of the different guests I've spoken with. And I'm very curious for your opinion on like, where do you think this whole thing is going with private equities involvement in public accounting? And like, what are the big impacts that it's going to have? Yeah. So since, so you're right, I mean, I reached out to you because I thought what you had written in your first newsletter, part one of part three series, was super interesting. And for selfish reasons, I mean, cause I kept trying to figure out what kind of service offering can I make to PE about not necessarily accounting. So I was looking at accounting or any type of professional service industry that they might be looking at tapping into. And have since read a ton more and started networking. I've just this week, I think I talked to three different people in PE because I wanted to get their point of view. And their point of view is all that it's still right. There's still evidence that what was happening in 24 is going to continue to happen in 25, that there is interest. And again, from a selfish point of view, I was trying to figure out what service offering I could do and where it fits in, in the different terms within private equity when they start looking at your firms. I can't tell you for accounting, look, I wish I could, but I can't. I stopped my, you know, point of view focus area. But I think for firms in general, there's a lot of smaller firms that are talking to people that are staying tight because they think they're going to grow through acquisition, through being acquired or through that acquisition. If you're the PE firm, you can gobble up quite a few mid-sized firms and come back with an offering that has some niche skills. If they streamline their back offices, like we just talked about, and, you know, looked at all their business processes and saw the duplications and saw the redundancies, they can reduce their overhead costs as a percent of revenue and make more margins. So I have this ropes and grays I was reading this morning because I've been Googling articles and everything there says that they see everything moving towards 25. I've read something else. There was a KPMG article I read too, that staffing, accounting, pretty much anything that falls under professional services consulting seems right in 25. That's super interesting. And I think that like the back office might be where they see a lot of the opportunity, right? Like I've spoken to a couple of people in the private equity world and like the roll-up part is one of it, right? Like you buy a bunch of small, medium things, mush them together, you can get a better EBITDA multiple for it. But then like part of the rest of it is actually also like, yeah, a lot of accounting firms are a little bit messy in terms of their operations. So roll up 12 of them, clean everything up. Not only do you get that like better multiple on EBITDA. It's a little bit of technology because a lot of them don't have the technology either, Tom. They're just still doing stuff in Excel. So in fact, you don't have to go high end, but invest in a little bit of technology to streamline your end to end. Yeah, I see it. Like I can, and the more I talk to people, the more I can see it. So like this week, three times had this conversation and I'm noodling over, what is that service offering and can I do? So stay tuned, cause I'll be reaching out to you and sharing with you. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm excited to see where things go for you. I think, again, you have an incredible background. Well, thank you. I think you have a great background, a great perspective on the industry. And I think like a lot of firms, like that's what they need, right? Yeah. So yeah, I'm definitely going to be staying tuned. I'm going to make sure I link that article that you wrote recently on LinkedIn. So for anyone who's interested in learning more, check that out. But yeah, thank you so much for joining Marianne. Thank you, Tom. I appreciate it. And maybe I'll come back in a year from now and we'll both be doing something completely different, running different firms, who knows? Honestly, very, very possible. That's kind of how that goes. So yeah. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks. Bye.