01: Mark Willis

Chris Suarez (00:11):

All right. Welcome back to the experience growth podcast, where our collective mission is to build experiential businesses while well, more importantly, living big experiential lives. Now we do that ultimately by learning leaders are learners, and whether we're leading ourselves, we're leading our families, we're leading small businesses or really massive companies being on the forefront of leading a movement of building experiential lives is our goal. Here I am your host, Chris Suarez, and today's guest our very first guest, by the way, as a special one. Now I couldn't think of anyone else to launch our guest series with. I met today's guest over a decade ago, and he put me on a path to build a mission-based company. And it really challenged my thinking at that time, when I met him that first day today, we're going to spend some time with none other than the Mark Willis of, of Mark Willis leadership and the Willis family foundation.

Chris Suarez (01:07):

But most in the business community will know him for his over decade long run. As the president and CEO of the international real estate from Keller Williams Realty international. Now he is no stranger to scale and growing something big as he led that company to become the number one real estate franchise in North America with over 140,000 agents put in perspective when he first joined that company, there were about a thousand agents worldwide. So he's going to share his business journey. He's going to share his spiritual journey, and he's even going to share a very personal journey that he went on, uh, more important. He is going to share his path to creating an incredibly experiential life. He opens up as to why he left a corporate job at the top. He shares his thoughts on what Winston Churchill calls a time in the wilderness.

Chris Suarez (01:59):

One of my favorite parts of our conversation and make sure you listen to the end of this one. As he shares a perspective shifting conversation related to his late wife, Cindy Willis. Now, Mark Willis had a very influential conversation with me over a decade ago as I mentioned earlier. Asking me some questions that I had never been before asked and really challenging me as to what the definition of being satisfied was in my world at that time. Now those questions were probably the first time I was exposed to really great leadership because here we define leadership as bringing people down a path to their preferred future. And that conversation really did change my path to the future that I'm living today.

Mark Willis (02:53):

I enjoyed the conversation. I remember the meeting and I think I remember the first question I asked you, which was okay, Chris, you took out a couple of days of your time got on an airplane. You traveled across the country for some reason. Why did you come here? And for a lot of people, I think that question is a little bit intimidating to ask. And yet it's the most important question you can ask and having an openness to first understanding why someone is in front of you and asking that question in a compelling way, I think is where you begin to learn, which need to learn to do what you need to do to help them. And so really my MO at all times, is can I help you? I think of the three questions that every follower asks and I learned this from John Maxwell, I'm sure everybody listening to this podcast has heard this said one way or another, and yet it is, do you care about me? Can I trust you? And can you help me? And you almost have to re-engineer that and start with, can I help you? Because when, when I'm talking to someone, when I'm across the table from them, I'm asking the question, can I help this person? How do I know I can help them? I can't really show them I care. And I can't really build trust until I first know that I can actually do something that will make a positive difference in their lives. Does that make sense?

Chris Suarez (04:32):

It does. What's interesting Mark is, is usually, I think we read them in the book the opposite way, and we actually go about that. Let me demonstrate that I care. Let me earn your trust. And now can I help you?

Mark Willis (04:46):

Is that how it works? That is not how it works. And that's why a lot of people fail. So I'll always start with, can I help this person? How do I know I can help them? What do they want? Am I sure they are clear about what they want? Because what I find is most people don't even know what's important to them. And a lot of us live a life that is somebody else's hypnotic rhythm rather than our own. And one of my favorite books that I've read recently is Napoleon Hill's last book, outwitting the devil. I don't know if you've read that

Chris Suarez (05:19):

It's outwitting the devil.. outwitting.

Mark Willis (05:21):

The devil, and it is such a great book that he talks about this, this concept of the law of hypnotic rhythm. And I mean, that's a whole conversation. I could talk for an hour about the law of hypnotic rhythm. But I think a lot of the reason I bring this up is I think a lot of people get into this hypnotic rhythm, living out somebody else's creation of who they want them to be, rather than their own internal creation of who they want to be. And we began living lives where we define what's important to us based on what other people want for us, rather than what we want for ourselves. And then we get off track.

Chris Suarez (06:08):

So why do you think we do that, Mark?

Mark Willis (06:11):

I think why is the people we surround ourselves with that? The inner circle that we possess? I think that people who are well, let me just say, I think that there are two camps of people in the world. There are people who come to be served and there are people who serve. Now. Usually people who serve others want to please others. People who come to be served want to be pleased. So if you fall into the category of being a pleaser, like I am, you'll realize that at some point along the way that you're doing what other people want you to do, rather than what really you might want to do left to your own devices. And I'm a server. I like pleasing people and I actually get more juice from doing something for someone else. And I do when I do it for myself. And I think it's more about internally, the way that we're wired, that determines it. I'm not judging people that are saying, Hey, serve me. I think in most marriages you'll have one. Who's the server and one who's the serve. And a lot of partnerships you'll have that.

Chris Suarez (07:31):

When you, when you look at that and you now really unpackaging and know who you are, I got to know you while you led Keller Williams Realty international. And what I find fascinating about that business model or that industry is, uh, you lead people, not because they showed up for a paycheck, not because you were the biggest employer in the country, but you grew that organization to the largest franchise, uh, real estate franchise in North America at the time for over a decade as the president and CEO. But what's interesting is those people come by choice. Not because you're giving them money, which is a completely different type of leadership. They have to plug in and want to be led by you. Why is that so different than rap CEOs of companies that have a hundred, even 130-140,000 agents, independent contractors. It's a whole nother level of leadership. What attracted that many agents to a leadership team, but a team led by you.

Mark Willis (08:37):

Let me just let me say on the front end that we did this together, I I've often said that when you put Gary Keller Mo Anderson, Mary Tennant and me in the same room, you had the Eagles, you had the Beatles, you had a foursome of complimentary talents where whatever we did, it was a collaborative effort. Now I think at one point we got to, we, when we got to be the largest in the world, we hit a point where I actually, for the first time felt like the four of us. I didn't want the same thing that the others wanted. And I don't think that's good or bad. I think it's just what is, and yet I can tell you, we made beautiful music together. And anything that we did that I would take credit for, I only was able to do it because of the great people that I worked with and the team that we had.

Mark Willis (09:32):

Now, what you're talking about is executive leadership versus legislative leadership. See an executive leader is somebody who has a hundred thousand employees who tells them all what to do. A legislative leader has to be reelected every single day by his constituents. So I played the game of being a legislative leader with the strategy in mind, it was how can I help these people get what they want and how can I teach them to think in a way that empowers them to do what they need to do so that they get what they want to get. And every day that became the way that I showed up. What do you want? How can I help you think in a way that you need to think to do what you want to do to get what you want to get? And if you show up with that intention, see, I think intention is so important because every day I just go to my office with this intention. And when you show up with that intention, people know it and they know it's genuine. And they know that it's not all me. My mind is yours. It's ours. And together, we're going to do more then than we can do alone. And that inspires me. It makes me happy. It makes me spa. I want to wake up in the morning and say charge, let's go, let me help you out. What do you want?

Chris Suarez (11:07):

Well, I think it was very obvious that you always lead with intention. And do you believe that intention has an attraction factor, is that would cause people to want to be around you talk about the four, right? Your, your legislative leadership team, if you will, you were able to allow the people that were part of that organization and company into your inner circle. How do you do that? They felt that you and Mary and Mo and Gary were their inner circle. You talk about how important that inner circle was. How do you invite them into your inner circle?

Mark Willis (11:45):

Chris? That's a great question. I have to really think about that one for a second. I think that I was still back to what you said about intention and back to that, and I'm gonna, I'm going to share something that kinda, for me, it's been my way of helping people and my way of personally growing. So the majority of the books that I've read our books on spirituality, not business, I've read a lot of business books, but my favorite authors are Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra. I love of above all else. David Hawkins and power versus force and letting go. I can tell you that there's not a moment where I don't have this map of consciousness in front of me, Wayne Dyer. And all of these guys say that people can feel your intention, right? And you can say something different from what you intend and they know on some level, it might be unconscious that what you're saying is false, and then they watch how you behave over time.

Mark Willis (12:55):

So one of the things that I went around saying all the time was, Hey, people don't care what you say. They care about what you do. And, and so I just flipped that around in terms of my own understanding of myself. And that is, let's not let's okay. The hardest person to lead is yourself. Why is that? Again? The John Maxwell training that I've had over the years shows up in a big way. For me, the reason you're the hardest person to lead is what, because we judge other people by their actions, we judge ourselves firing tensions. And yet, if you really want to know yourself, watch what you do. Don't watch your intentions because you actions can mislead you, your actions can't be argued with. So I think that intention is one, yeah. Then actual behavior and the decisions that we make, the way that we treat people, whether or not we really listen, or we really tell, uh, one of my rules in life is ask, don't tell, okay.

Mark Willis (14:25):

And I led the company at all times back working from an ask, don't tell perspective, and then I have this very impatient style and we talk, we, you and I, some behavior together. Also, I remember validating your idea eight, 10 years ago. And as you may recall, I am a very low three and I believe you are too correct. So a load three creates kind of a tension of impatience at all times, needing DAC with a lot of urgency. So I have this very impatient, fast moving urgent action oriented, natural behavior. I have no real that in, I had to pull that three up artificially had to pull my patients up artificially because it wasn't natural. And so I think that's another part of the hardest person to lead is yourself

Chris Suarez (15:21):

That impatience Mark and that personality profile I have found in the last 20 years, it's difficult to be still as well. It's difficult to in the moment experience life, and yet from afar, right from the outside, looking in, even while you were growing and scaling it and enormous business, it appeared as if you were able to compartmentalize that and focus on living with your family, with friends, with loved ones while you were scaling. Is that the case? And if so, how did you do that? How did you with that low back through three, that impatient, that charging mentality be able to take a step back and reflect on like this. Isn't the only thing that's important in life. What, what helped you do that?

Mark Willis (16:11):

Well, let's start with stillness. I would go back to the way I was raised a Christian scientist that's and I'm so grateful for that background. I'm not really a practicing Christian scientist today. I'm more of a, just that religion is it's a little bit archaic, and yet it has such great meditative stillness. And just in the weekly Bible lesson in having to read something that prepared your mind and created a habit of really looking to a higher source for your guidance. And I could go on about that. But one of my, my favorite Bible verses going up is a Psalms 46, be still and know that I am gone and I had worked very hard to practice stillness because it did not come naturally to me. I had to learn to meditate. I had to learn to breathe properly because I have such a need for action.

Mark Willis (17:26):

And I'm so naturally impatient. So I've worked on that muscle for years. And I don't think that it's hard to tap into. It just takes time. It takes practice and it takes a daily commitment to just slow down, to breathe. It'd be experiential and ask yourself, what do I think I should do now? One of the best experiences I had in the year 2017 was I got to spend a day with Michael singer and Michael wrote the surrender experiment. And he wrote the book, the untethered soul, and Michael singer said something to me that impacts me every single day, still now two and a half years later, or a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Three years later he said, Mark, he said, just slow down. You know, breathe, get still. And when you can find a level of calmness, ask yourself the question, what do I know in my soul, in my heart that I should do without avoiding what I don't want to do such if I were to actually do what I know in my heart, in my soul, in my total being what I should do.

Mark Willis (18:56):

And I actually did it, I would be in harmony with my divine creation. And he said, if you'll just do that and pay attention to what you're being told, you're actually following a path of inspiration and not obligation. So I think in order to serve others, we have to work from what inspires us, not what obligates us and Wayne Dyer talks about living a life of inspiration, not a life of obligation. So what I try to do at all times is I try to stay inspired, which is in spirit. I try to get still enough to have awareness about where I am, and usually that involves some emotional work, which is, am I, am I feeling fear? Am I feeling anger in my feeling craving and desire? Am I being prideful? Am I getting attached to outcomes? Am I working from a position of good, strong, courageous, willing sort of serving behavior? Or am I working from fear, anger, pride, desire. And I pay attention to my intention in a way where if I'm feeling something that is nurturing my smaller self, rather than my higher self, I try to acknowledge it. Not make it good or bad and not make it right or wrong. It just say, that's, that's not for me. And I'm going to let it go.

Chris Suarez (20:51):

Yes. Your question Mark, you mentioned earlier that you got to a place and as frame of reference, when you got to that place, you were at the top, right? You were running the largest company, real estate company, right in, in North America, you had been positioned and acknowledged as one of the top 10, most powerful, interesting word, powerful and influential leaders in the industry. And you said that you wanted something different. Did that wanting something different, have anything to do with that? Self-introspection that you're talking about right now?

Mark Willis (21:31):

Quite a bit. Yeah. Quite a bit. Absolutely. Power has never been my drug crust. Freedom is my truck. And we go back, like, I can tell you that in my early thirties I made a decision and that was, I was going to make this much in equity income, is that making job income. And at that time I was making, I don't know, 400,000 a year. So I thought, okay, I just want to get to 400,000 a year in equity income so that if I chose not to do my job, I'd be able to sustain my lifestyle. And I live my life that way for 20 something years. And one day I looked up, not hit every goal, every material goal I had said, and to be completely transparent, honest and authentic, I have not set a new set of goals when I hit those goals.

Mark Willis (22:31):

And sometimes I've wonder I looked back and I asked myself the question if I had done, like I always did before. And if I had actually set different plateau of goals, a higher newer plateau goals would have that would that have reengaged me because honestly I just became a little bit disengaged and I'm just being truthful here. I had everything that I thought I ever wanted. I just felt like it was time for me. And I've always worked my whole life. I've never stopped. And yeah, I had a great life. I had, I had, I'm blessed with a wonderful family. I have a lot of dear friendships. I have a lot of long-term friendships that I've held on to basically my whole life. And I treat people well. I don't think I've ever mistreated anybody to my knowledge. And if I have, I go back and try to make right, but maybe the one person that I didn't put first was myself at that time.

Mark Willis (23:45):

And so when I left KW, I hired a transitional coach and he said something to me that really helped me a lot. You said, Mark, you'd been living your life as though your first responsibility is to everybody else. And really how you need to live your life is this. The, your first responsibility is to yourself so that you can be the best that you can be. And then you have your second responsibility, which is to use what you've learned to help others. And I think that made my first responsibility to others, my whole life. And I had to go through this period of making my first responsibility to me. I know you and I talked about the Ryan holiday, but stillness is the key. I feel like my years after KW were my years in the wilderness. He, Ryan holiday talks about that with respect to Winston Churchill and his political exile after the run in the twenties, and then in the thirties, having his decade in the wilderness.

Mark Willis (24:57):

And he used that time to paint, to really live and to clarify what mattered to him and to learn. And I think it was his using that time to think about how he could first be responsible to himself. So then he could be more responsible to others. And he used a statement that I love. He said that, and that everybody must come. Every man must come from civilization, but he also must go back to the wilderness. We're all social beings, but if you've accomplished a lot and you have a little break after that, you have the opportunity to go create psychic dynamite. And I feel like that's what this period has done for me. So I think I just accept the journey of learning and growing and being the best that I can be so I can help others be the best that they can be.

Chris Suarez (25:57):

What you're saying is most people think about Churchill. I know both you and I have have done just a lot of just research and reading about him as a leader and even more recently. And, and, and, and people look at all of his just incredible leadership skills and when he was in these roles of position, and if I use that word again, power right from the outside, looking in. And yet when, when we really read about him, people forget, or don't even realize that there was that decade where he spent most of it alone about it being a period of isolation and meditation. And that was when he started painting and he started building, he wasn't a builder, but he, he built right homes out of stones on this. And the last part of his quote, you just used that phrase. And I don't want, I'd love to get your perspective on it. Cause he said it is that process by which psychic dynamite is made, what is dynamite?

Mark Willis (26:55):

Dynamite. Yeah. What is, let's talk, let's start with psychic. That's where you become really aware. And then dynamite is where I think of dynamic. I think of something that is going to clear the way for the highest expression to show up. But if you just stay on that treadmill and you just keep going mechanically and you don't have that period of isolation and reflection and meditation, you hit your peak and everything is downhill from that point. But as you go downhill, if you can be quiet and if you can be reflective and if you can listen and get still, you create that awareness, but an awareness creates the opportunity for another client and you get a higher peak still. And that peak may be business. That peak could be philanthrophy. It could be teaching. It could be a lot of different things for me, moving forward. What I want to do is I want to teach, I love teaching. I've always loved teaching and I love people. I've always cared so much about having impact on helping other people. So that's my focus moving forward. And that's, I think that's what that psychic dynamite created for me just to get awareness of what my purpose is.

Chris Suarez (28:30):

Do you think that could have happened or would have happened? And I know that might be a tough question. Would it have happened if you didn't take that break? If you didn't go into the wilderness,

Mark Willis (28:41):

I think that'd be a byproduct to someone else's creation rather than my own. And I'd always choose to be a byproduct of my own creation and not someone else's. And I had to get still and get a little isolated to be able to get clarity about who I am and what matters because materially, my needs are all satisfied. I think we tend to think, and we see this all the time. I've seen it so many times with myself. I'm just make fun of myself here for a minute. But it's like when I was on that climb to acquire as much as possible, one of the things that motivated me the most was owning a private jet. And you think that when you get that private jet, that you're going to finally be satisfied. Let me tell you, you just get a different level of virus remorse because we think that material satisfy spiritual needs, the material, things do not satisfy spiritual needs, Chris. And so we set ourselves up for disappointment and I had got to life, I think, where I had a lot of material things and I needed to create a little more spiritual depth on this journey to be able to fully do everything that I crave doing purpose wise for my life. And I I'm really grateful for that awareness that only spiritual experiences satisfy spiritual needs. And obviously I look at myself as both the physical being and a spiritual being, but my eternal nature is my spiritual, my nature, my temporal nature is my material nature.

Chris Suarez (30:37):

It's that search for happiness, right? That ultimately we oftentimes wind up on paths searching for it. And yet just one of those simple verses, right? Happy as the man conscious of their spiritual nature, that takes that first step of being conscious of it and then feeling it and fulfilling it, which is the simple equation towards happiness, which, which we see you doing, which is so awesome.

Mark Willis (31:04):

I would say attempting, I don't know that we ever get there because I think it's a journey. And I think it takes a lot of work. One of the things that I've said recently, I have this book coming out and the title of the book is the call to evolve. And I think that in that call to evolve journey, what we have to understand is that we are always evolving. And so the most important work we do is the work we do on ourselves so that we can actually be authentically aligned with our purpose and authentically growing and experiencing life in a way where it's fruitful and it's rewarding, but it's not always easy. I've got to tell you that. I decided on the title of that book. When I found out that my wife was terminally ill, I thought this moment is really my call to evolve as a human being because the purpose of life is to keep on living and a life worth. Living is a life that is always evolving a life that's always growing and in a way that nurtures growth and a personal evolution so that we can actually be our best selves. And I think that starts with awareness. That's I pull out this map of consciousness, every chance I get, and it starts with awareness about where we are, because if we don't manage that side of it, we can't evolve. It's impossible.

Chris Suarez (32:52):

Do you think Mark that, that oftentimes we think that the evolution will happen naturally as opposed to, by our design,

Mark Willis (33:01):

I'd say that's true. The majority of, yeah. Yeah. I think for most people that's absolutely the way it is.

Chris Suarez (33:11):

And so then you mentioned that call to evolve really came from, you know, after the fact that, that you found out your wife was terminally ill. How did, why was that the call?

Mark Willis (33:24):

It's hard to explain for someone who hasn't been there and yeah, the purpose of life is to keep living and to live a life by design. You're going to have to do a lot of course, correction and a lot of personal work to keep that personal evolution moving in, in the direction that your purpose costs for. And I knew that I had a lot to give and I want to give it, and you can't give without continuing to grow and evolve. And that was tough experience. Life was not about what happens to you in the end. It's about how you respond to what happens to you. That's what evolution is.

Chris Suarez (34:14):

Uh, one of the things that, um, I want all of our audience to recognize is that your call to evolve there is so incredibly well aligned with our mission of living experientially, because you went on and started a foundation, right? The Willis family foundation with your family in honor of your wife, Cindy. And, and what I love about the foundation Mark is this, that there are lots of foundations and there are a lot of people working aggressively on figuring out how do we find a cure for cancer. And yet for those that have it, or those that wind up with it, I believe that all of us deserve experiential lives and lives can be more experiential. If we had found out or we find out things in advance. And so your foundation is based on right canine, early cancer detection, when it's hard to say out loud, but many of our listeners are either experiencing this now or have experienced it now. And with early detection, our loved ones could continue living experientials or it just had a more experiential life while dealing with their illness. And I think it's, it's ridiculous, really important from someone who has been affected by this personally, the work you're doing there just, I would implore all of our listeners to reach out and learn about what you're doing and donate to your foundation as well.

Mark Willis (35:45):

Thank you, Chris. I do. Um, if I can, I'm gonna take a few minutes just to tell the story, because it's an important story and I want to share it for anyone who can hear this, where it might have an impact on their lives or the lives of someone else that they may know. My, my experience was on December the fifth of 2018, I'm at a friend's birthday party and he's a radiologist. And my wife says, Hey, in the sharing of this morning, I felt a little lump on my breast. And he said, Oh, it's probably nothing just come in on Monday. And we'll, we'll get a mammogram. She had just had a mammogram, uh, in April of the same year. So this April, 2018, she had a mammogram latest technology, 3d mammogram, and she was a hundred percent like, Nope, no problem. Earlier, December, 2018, eight months later, she feels a lot better breasts and finds out that she's going to be in surgery.

Mark Willis (36:49):

Four days later, a surgery occurs. Not only does she have a huge tumor in her breast, but all 17 left nodes on our left side were devoured eye cancer. So how is it that somebody has a claim mammogram in April and then the same year, eight months later in December has all 17 lymph nodes debarred by cancer. And it was breast cancer. The origin of the cancer was breast cancer. It wasn't well lymphatic cancer, and then find out a week later that her entire skeletal system was eaten up by cancer. And so I would go to MD Anderson, which is one of the leading cancer treatment facilities in the world. And the oncologist there tells me two months after we start treatment, Mark, the truth is, is cancer has been in her body 15 to 20 years. That's the thing. It couldn't have been breast cancer because she said all these mammograms, how in the world could that cancer been in her body?

Mark Willis (37:57):

And she gets clean mammograms every year because she got a mammogram every single year. Now, every female listener right now, please pay attention to this because my wife was so religiously committed to getting an annual mammogram. Literally from the time we were married in her early twenties, she, she was obedient about doctors, the advice that you get an angle checkup. And so I, they sent us home and said, okay, you need to get hospice because nothing more we can do. This is just a couple months into this. And you think breast cancer is going to be, they say, okay, breast cancer is really treatable. And then we have this experience. So I'm sitting with it. Couple of doctor, friends after Cindy is sent home to die. I am so upset. I said, I'm so angry with your profession. I don't understand how we could have done what we were supposed to do every year at claim mammograms.

Mark Willis (39:01):

And then get told that there's nothing more medical profession can do. And that the cancer had been in our body 15 years. And my good friend, Rianne just says, Mark, the really the greatest hope for early cancer detection that exists is not oncology. It's cancer, sniffing dogs, and it's really compelling. And the research out there is showing that dogs are the best source for early cancer detection. So I did some research and here we are two months later and my wife is I've done research and I had a lot of time on my hands and I'd go in. This is the last couple of weeks that were alive and I'd go in and kill them. She had round the clock caregivers, and obviously they had taken over the bedrooms. I'm sleeping in another part of the house for the most part. And I'd go into good night.

Mark Willis (40:01):

And when I walked in the room, I got what's that smell. And then I kissed her forehead and I tasted it; cancer. Okay. And I said, is that smell? And the taste on my lips, I asked the caregiver. I said, is that okay? Cancer? She said, yeah, yeah, that's it. Is that with the dogs? Yes. And so my wife passes away and I think, okay, I want to help others. And if awareness about dogs and their ability to smell cancer layers and multiple layers deep is real then. And we've got to get behind this and create awareness. And I've got a pretty big network that I can begin to work in terms of just educating. And so we created the Willis family foundation, anybody who wants to go to the art foundation, there's a website, www.willisfamilyfoundation.org. We are aligning with the University of Pennsylvania, which is where the leading research center for canine cancer detection is.

Mark Willis (41:12):

And there's a doctor that actually was introduced to me by two different sources. One of them being one of my friends at KW Ashley line met dr. Otto during the recharge of that. And Philadelphia ran into her like in an airport and you about our foundation. And then another one being my niece, who's a large animal vet. You had found Dr. Otto on her own. And so we're aligned with her research department to hopefully get to a point where she can have a machine in every internal medicine office in the world that mimics the olfactory abilities of canines. So that, and this is a huge undertaking. So we're supporting her right now. Universities are shut down. So we're in a bit of a hiatus and yet it's still full speed ahead and everything that we can do to create awareness and raise so that we can support Dr. Otto and her work.

Chris Suarez (42:21):

I just want you to know that after this conversation, our charity will, we'll make a donation to your charity experience giving though we'll make a donation to your foundation and we'll send the.. we'll send that link out in the show notes as well, Mark. Um, just thank you. Thank you for being willing to share parts of your journey and actually in this interview, more parts of you than even the journey and how you think. And you've been a thought leader and someone that it's interesting, I go back and it is evident every single day that you wake up looking to please and serve others, because you've done that for over a decade that I've known you personally, and, and I'm excited, uh, for, for that future. After you've come out of the wilderness to watch that leadership journey, I'm excited about the upcoming book that we will make sure that our entire community is exposed to and gets a copy of. I will personally make sure that happens. And also I'm looking forward to supporting your foundation now and in the future as well. So just a million thank yous.