The Future of AI in Government Affairs with Steve Glickman, CEO of Statt

[00:00:11] Welcome back to a new episode of The Political Life. This is Maggie Mick with Multi-State and thanks to everyone for sitting patient while there's been a ton of professional travel in the last few weeks, but leading up to the election and as we inch closer to the start of state legislative sessions, you'll see an uptick in these episodes come your way. So thanks for your patience while we've been on the road.

[00:00:35] But today I'm so excited to introduce you to a new friend of mine. I actually just was introduced to him by a mutual friend and colleague, Matt Lipinski, who some may recall was on the show a couple years ago. Matt and I are both part of the PPHC family and he thought that Steve Glickman may be a fantastic guest of The Political Life given his background and what he's up to today serving the public affairs and government affairs industry.

[00:01:04] So welcome, Steve. It's great to meet you. Thanks for having me, Maggie. It's great to be here. Well, we always start with the first question. Where did you start your political life? It's a good question. I think I probably started somewhere in high school, maybe vicariously through watching The West Wing, which was one of my sources of inspiration of what I wanted to do when I grew up.

[00:01:32] I was very engaged even then around political campaigns, working for then Tony Bielenson, who was in Congress at the time. And then Brad Sherman took his seat and was involved in high school and then college politics.

[00:01:50] But I worked in politics all the way through. I mean, when I got to college at Georgetown, which is where I met Matt, I had lots of odd jobs to pay for that very, very expensive experience. And at that point was working in democratic politics in a variety of different ways, working for the DCCC and the DNC and other groups.

[00:02:16] I think as I then became a lawyer and eventually worked on the Hill and the White House and did other things in politics, I became a lot less political and a lot more interested in policy and the public policy process.

[00:02:31] And I'd say these days I do almost know nothing in the realm of partisan politics, but started my career doing all the odd jobs you can think about in the political world. Yeah. I mean, campaigns are the breeding ground for really informed people in policy.

[00:02:54] And I think that after your stint on the Hill and whatnot, you actually, what I think is one of the more interesting pieces of your professional history, you went to Iraq. I think that's the second intersection of our lives together. My husband's a former Hagel staffer, so I think that you served over there in some capacity with Louie Linehan. But yeah, tell us about your time over there.

[00:03:21] Yeah. Well, when I was on the Hill, I worked on the House Oversight Committee during the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I spent a fair amount of time in and out of the region running a number of different investigations around different security contractors,

[00:03:43] the conduct of the war, corruption in Iraqi politics, and, you know, was in and out of the green zone in Iraq, you know, on the road of death, on those up-armored AMRAPs where they would logy in at the airport and put on a vest and tell you, you know, if this gets disabled, but don't run. So, you know, stuff like that that made you feel excited to be landing in a war zone.

[00:04:10] This was just, this was in 2007. It was sort of the height of the surge. And then I spent some time in Afghanistan taking Black Hawk helicopter flights with Apaches and going around to different Ford operating bases around Afghanistan and, you know, meeting with leaders there. And, you know, we were, you know, very deep into understanding, you know, how the war was likely to play out.

[00:04:35] And it was an amazing, you know, amazing experience being so close to all of that. And also, you know, we were lucky to be able to be in and out of those regions, you know, flying in through other places and spending a little bit of time overnight, but not a lot. I mean, folks who were there for six, nine, 12 months. I mean, that is a tough and stressful lifestyle, particularly then.

[00:04:58] And how long did you hold those types of roles before you decided it's time to make a pivot to the private sector? A long time. I did a number of different things. So I started my career as a federal prosecutor working for justice and in the U.S. Attorney's Office. So really a political role, but very much in the day-to-day of the criminal justice system.

[00:05:23] And then worked for the Oversight Committee when they were looking for experienced investigators to, you know, focus more on what was going on in the Iraq War. Also, you know, one of my favorite parts of that job was not related to the wars at all, but was leading investigations into the use of steroids and baseball and being involved in the depositions of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettit and others all around that. So we were able to touch all sorts of interesting issues.

[00:05:50] And the chief of staff then of Henry Waxman, who was the chair of that committee, became the head of legislative affairs for the Obama campaign and then the Obama White House and sort of ushered me initially into that world. And then, you know, then I had to fend for myself and offer some value and became a political appointee at Commerce and then worked on trade policy at the White House for most of that time there for about two and a half years.

[00:06:19] And, you know, as you mentioned, when I left the White House right after the first term in early 2013, I got connected through then a fellow member of the administration and became a member of Congress, Ro Khanna, with Tishon Parker, one of the co-founders of Facebook, who was then embarking upon a more, as you would say, a more political life,

[00:06:46] looking to get involved and kind of build out an idea around whether we could build a bipartisan consensus around getting private investment in more distressed areas. You know, at that point, there was an open question of whether we'd be focused globally or focused in the U.S. But if you kind of recall, in 2013, we were still in the back of the Great Recession. There were lots of industrial communities and other communities around the Midwest and rural areas that just had not really started to recover economically.

[00:07:17] And, you know, it was clear that the existing tools in the economic development toolbox were just not going to cut it. And, you know, we thought we could build something around a more market-based oriented program of getting private investors to come into distressed communities. And that led to the founding of the Economic Innovation Group. And the Economic Innovation Group became most famous for the introduction of the Opportunity Zones program, which was stewarded and championed by Tim Scott and Cory Booker

[00:07:46] and ultimately a bipartisan group of about 100 members of Congress. I don't know if you can say that about many ideas anymore. There aren't that many bipartisan ideas. But economic development, even today, even if you look at the kind of road to housing bill and other legislation, still tends to be a pretty bipartisan space. Absolutely. And I think that you actually worked on the Big Beautiful Bill through this work as well last year.

[00:08:42] Yeah. But, you know, I left 2018. That's when I first kind of got involved in the private sector, working with private equity firms and venture firms and real estate developers and others who were, you know, looking to engage and figure out the Opportunity Zone program. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, the Opportunity Zone program was up for reauthorization.

[00:09:11] Someone, you know, given that I stayed closely connected to both the public players and as well as the private organizations involved in this space, I, you know, did a lot of thought pieces, a lot of speaking, a lot of engaging with folks in this administration and on the Hill to help them understand what was happening on the ground around the OZ program and helping, I'd say, in a much more minor way shape what the 2.0 version of the program would look like,

[00:09:37] which, you know, in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act became a permanent part of the tax code and is now, you know, just like the charitable tax deduction or mortgage interest deduction, an evergreen tax incentive for folks who have capital gains and are looking to deploy the low-income community. So certainly one of the accomplishments in my life that I'm most proud of. Although at the time, even though it was bipartisan, it was hugely controversial.

[00:10:05] Say just about every one of the major news outlets wrote some kind of scathing piece about Opportunity Zones and what they would turn into. And you don't see that anymore. It's become a $100-plus billion program. But at the time, that was a stressful part of starting and running that organization. I think it's interesting how you started your career in campaigns and then became a prosecutor. But then so much of your career has really been focused

[00:10:33] on entrepreneurial spirit and how policy can match that. Because I think that also kind of speaks to the next step that you took. And I'm curious, did you found stat in a basement during COVID? Like what was light bulb moment? I always think about like new companies that started during the pandemic. What was the light bulb? How did that come together? I mean, not too far off from that. You know, I'd say the connection between the private sector

[00:11:01] and the policy world was really made for me. When, you know, all the way back to working in the Obama administration and working on economic and trade policy, I was heavily involved with that. That time it was called the President's Job Council. And, you know, it was sort of eye-opening to me how much public policy and policymakers and federal government was dependent upon businesses to really drive anything in the kind of economic or technology space.

[00:11:29] I mean, we were just working to enable those companies, you know, and the stuff I worked on to export more, to manufacture more, to be engaged more overseas. And, you know, it was a unique part of the government in that the government was an enabler for all of that. And when, you know, when the Economic Innovation Group was then founded, it was the same kind of principle. How do we create policy that can be an enabler of the private sector to be more engaged?

[00:11:57] And in that experience, a lot of our board members and advisors were in the tech industry. They were either investors or they were founders. We were close to a number of, you know, important people in the technology and the kind of Silicon Valley and beyond ecosystem, trying to understand what it would take to get investors to be, you know, willing to invest in these kind of communities. And, you know, I got a lot of ribbing from those folks around,

[00:12:25] you know, the fact that the industry I was in, which was public policy and, you know, government relations, had no technology resources at all. There was really no, you know, predominant tools. There was, you know, unlike the law, which I had grown up in and, you know, longstanding ties to Lexus and Thompson Reuters and other products that were the underpinnings of that sector or in media or in finance, which had, you know, famously Bloomberg terminals.

[00:12:54] There just really wasn't anything like that in the public policy and political space. And, you know, my co-founder and I at the time hugely naively thought, well, why don't we just build something? Why don't we build the kind of the database and ultimately the technology that could help to bring, you know, some level of support to, you know, what was then and still is now to a large extent a pretty manual industry. And it was, you know, it's been a long journey.

[00:13:23] I mean, Stat was founded in 2020, so a couple of years after I started my consulting firm. And it's really taken on a lot of life over the last few years. Some of that with the advent of AI technology, some of it just in changes in how this industry views technology. But, you know, it's been a six-year journey to build something that can really be worthy of the really complex and important work that people in this space do. And, you know, we're learning every day from our customers

[00:13:53] about how to make our tools and AI technology and our analytics more and more useful. And you position yourself in the market as kind of AI end-to-end. So can you walk through kind of how you approach the work and kind of how quickly this has evolved, I guess, in recent years? Well, enormously. I mean, we spent the first three years of our company's history really just building the complex stream of data

[00:14:22] that everyone in this industry, you know, follows. Across, you know, all of these different markets. So whether you're in a U.S. state and you're doing state and local work or you're in D.C. and tracking what's happening in the federal government or you're covering the EU or, you know, a market somewhere even farther afield, we knew we had to collect data in real time that was relevant to all of those different markets, all of the many different industries. And so we started building what's now a data stream

[00:14:50] of about 100 million plus data points. And we pull it from 20,000 organizations in 140 markets around the world. And the idea is to collect enough real-time data that we're really synthesizing what life is like for folks who are in the public policy or public affairs or government relations space and trying to track everything from social media to news, to regulatory and legislative happenings, to, you know, filings, corporate filings,

[00:15:20] to press releases and live hearing transcription. And over time, we've built more and more data sets and more and more tools to make it easy to, you know, really sort the signal from the noise. I mean, everyone's got a lot of information coming into their inboxes. Our mission was to surface only what's relevant to folks and turn it into real work. So the idea is not to put more alerts on a user's inbox that they, you know,

[00:15:47] is this annoying ping that they need to now go ahead and do and add another thing to their list for the day, but to find ways to automate where there's low-hanging fruit to free people up to do the business development and plug human intelligence and, you know, exercise, you know, this sort of strategic judgment that everyone wants to be spending their time on this space and not spending time tracking what happens in a hearing or what the latest comment letter that comes into a regulator

[00:16:14] or the latest co-sponsor added to a piece of legislation or what the thousands of think tanks are saying around these issues. You know, we do everything from sourcing that intel to building the work product, and we also have a forward-deployed engineering team that could turn that work into really a seamless version of whatever one of our individual, or however one of our individual customers do their work.

[00:16:43] So everyone's got a different style, a different way they think, a different way they communicate, you know, everything from a different, you know, structure to how they want any of these documents produced. And, you know, we're doing the best we can to automate that whole life cycle so that, you know, you don't have to spend your time doing the drudgery of the day-to-day research and analytics. You can spend your time, you know, interacting with the people who are really going to move the needle on these issues.

[00:17:12] What's been the most important learning in running a business in the nascent years of AI? And what has been the largest evolution from a client perspective of how they're using your technology or service? Well, probably the single most important development has been how fast the speed, the pace at which change is happening, not just in this industry,

[00:17:42] but it's true for this industry, but across every professional services industry. So there was a big turning point in late 22, and particularly early 2023, when, you know, particularly ChatGPT, came on to the, it was publicly accessible and commercially available for folks. And, you know, that was a big turning point for us too. That's when we really entered the market and offered one of the first set of AI tools in the market. But at that time,

[00:18:12] a lot of the customers we were talking to who, you know, are in-house teams and professional service firms, trade associations, I think they didn't know what to make of AI, whether one, it was going to be relevant to their life, whether they could trust it. And trust, I think, is a huge topic in this space, whether they could trust it to do the work and do it accurately and not hallucinate and capture the type of tone

[00:18:38] and thinking of a real professional analyst in this space. And then whether their procurement teams and their legal teams would allow them to use it and whether they'd be able to make it a part of their everyday. And we've, you know, from those early years of AI, which, you know, where you saw amazing things happen, but also lots of errors and hallucinations and other things to where we are today, where I think almost every company we talk to expects,

[00:19:06] not just is trying to get permission for it, but it has a top-level down expectation that they're using AI to be more efficient and more effective in their work. That change, every month, you know, you see a change in the perspective across, you know, all of the customers that we work with. And I'd say, particularly over the last year, you've seen an embrace of AI being a core part of the technology ecosystem that folks have access to now.

[00:19:36] And I think policy, tech, I think this sort of technology in this space is still pretty new for a lot of our customers, but the willingness to embrace it, the fact that now legal and procurement teams accept that it's going to be a part of everyone's day-to-day. We're seeing, you know, we're seeing people build their, you know, their in-house teams and their firms

[00:20:05] around AI being a core part of how they think strategically. And I think that that's critically important. If you're just viewing this as a tool, you're probably not thinking about it in the way that it can really have the most impact. If you think about it as a strategic decision about, you know, we should be thinking about how we hire people based on their awareness and knowledge and fluency in AI. We should be thinking about how we take more, you know, work off of our plates and how we free up more time

[00:20:35] and how we resource our office and, you know, around this technology. If you're thinking about it really strategically, it can totally change the way budgets are spent and the way work is done, the way markets are tracked. So I think, you know, you're going to see more of this over the next year. It's just going to have a transformative impact on the way people do their work and everyone's going to get more and more comfortable and I think fluent in the technology along the way. So you just forecasted out potentially a year.

[00:21:04] From all of your experience serving in government and then serving kind of the government affairs industry and I think just your acumen writ large from the national policy level, how do you foresee AI working within or supporting, hopefully not fully replacing, but how do you see AI in government? How do you see it in government affairs

[00:21:32] and how do you see it in public affairs, more of the comms side, in the next five years? So lots of really good questions wrapped up in one. You know, I think, so AI, at a foundational level, AI is a tool. It's a really sophisticated tool. It can do a lot of things. It requires a fair amount of fluency and how to get the most out of it and, you know, I think the right type of partners

[00:22:01] and companies that can kind of build around the very idiosyncratic use cases in this space. So even within the types of entities you talked about, public policy is a different use case than regulatory affairs, which is different than government relations, which is different than public affairs. They're all connected in many, you know, firms and in many companies, but they're different, right? You know, those are different expertise that folks spend their whole careers

[00:22:29] learning how to be, you know, really nimble in. And, you know, they tend to be different types of jobs within the policy and political space. They're also different, you know, in the private sector domain as well. And tools need to be flexible, you know, around that. I think if you're more powerful as a communicator and as a strategist and as a lobbyist, if you're using the right type of AI tools because you'll be better informed,

[00:22:58] you'll connect the dots better. You know, one of the things we do, I think, really well is help stakeholder map around the relationships between public sector players and policymakers and private sector companies and commentators and analysts and how they all fit together, the bigger story they're telling, which, you know, was a big part of the work we did with the Economic Innovation Group was kind of build that story around the idea of private capital, low-income communities. There are thousands and thousands of those stories, but pulling the thread

[00:23:28] and figuring out how everything's connected is really hard to do. There's also a reality that, you know, if you were just focused on the federal government a couple years ago, you're probably now also focused on Brussels and thinking about all 50 states because a lot of the regulatory and legislative activity has moved from the federal government to 50 states. And there's a lot of, you know, if you're in climate or in AI or in many, many other issues, many of those ideas are, you know, coming from

[00:24:00] experiences in the EU or in those member states. So the world's become much more widespread in terms of how the expectations that people are tracking these developments across all these different jurisdictions. And, you know, if it was hard to track Congress and 200 federal regulatory agencies, it's a lot harder to track, you know, 99 legislatures and track 2,500 regulatory bodies in the state level and, you know, and countries

[00:24:30] that are, do their work in, you know, different languages, not English and Spanish or French or German or Japanese or, you know, what's ever going on in that market. And AI is a really powerful partner for that. We do auto-translation in the background and we can track 2,500 regulatory agencies with the same kind of fluency. We can track the federal regulatory agencies and, you know, we can track live hearings across all of those different jurisdictions. That's an impossible task to ask any human team

[00:24:59] to take on. So there's always going to be, like, the human in the loop is essential, particularly in this industry. I mean, this is an industry, as you know, it's built on relationships and it's built on intelligence and it's built on experience and knowing who the players are. But I think if you're not using AI, if you're not enabling it in your team, eventually, I think those teams will get outpaced by others who are. I mean, you know, Jensen Wong and NVIDIA has a, you know, I think, fairly famous quote now

[00:25:29] that AI isn't going to displace the work people do, it's the people using AI that are going to displace the people who aren't. And I think there's some truth to that. It's an enormously powerful tool that if you're not, have changed dramatically. People expect not to pay a premium for the analytics, they expect AI to be delivering it and they want to pay a premium for that human level of intelligence and unless you're

[00:25:58] set up to focus your work, whether you're inside a company or at an association or in a firm on doing that and not spending the time on the analytics that people still want but have become a little bit more commoditized, you're, I think, going to fall behind. I think that's the reality of this industry and it's true across every professional services industry where there's a premium on research and analytics is going to, you know, be displaced by the premium that people

[00:26:28] expect upon delivering real strategy and expertise and I think that's just going to be the reality for professional services over the next several years. Well, speaking of professional services, you've held so many different roles in your career and I think that's what was so interesting when Matt was telling me about you is just how layered it is in all these different ways that you've used your brain but in any of the roles that you've held,

[00:26:57] what was probably the most challenging day and how did you get through it and what has been the most rewarding day and how did you celebrate it? It could definitely be better at celebrating rewarding days. I'm pretty, you know, I'm a big believer in, you know, in experiences and spending my time and including my free time on having kind of as many experiences as I can.

[00:27:27] I've traveled to 85 countries, I've done lots of different types of roles throughout my career in both law and politics and just that transition, it can be pretty challenging. I think before starting Stat, which is probably the most challenging thing I've had to do because, you know, when I was running EIG, we were lucky to have some really committed and supportive funders and, you know, on our board so I didn't have to worry as much about, you know,

[00:27:59] revenue. Yeah, I didn't have to worry as much of revenue, I just had to worry about being a really good executor and, you know, operator and getting something really hard done which is getting a piece of legislation passed so, you know, no one thought we were able to do that and I think passing the Opportunity Zones law was one of the most important times in my life and we actually threw a huge party on the back of it so we did celebrate. But sort of

[00:28:29] immediately afterwards I think the New York Times came, investigative reporters came hunting around my house to understand you know, who the true winner was behind this program and was convinced there was something behind the curtain there and so that was tough to deal with, feeling like you were being targeted for something that you were doing to Yeah,

[00:28:58] thought was going to have a positive impact on people's life and that was tough but I think nothing's tougher than running a startup to be totally honest. I've had high demand high impact roles you know, working at the White House working 12 hour days and until I got engaged and married and my wife then fiancee at the time forced me to leave kind of insane lifestyle all I did was work but it's different when you're responsible

[00:29:28] for growing a company and building a market and you feel the responsibility of everyone who works for and with you and all of your customers and delivering a really good product and the technology is changing this is really hard and there's some days you're like, I don't know how this is all going to play out. I think an entrepreneur who's really building something from scratch lives with a lot of doubt and

[00:29:56] that part can be really tough but if you deliver in any of these circumstances particularly in a company like Stat, if you feel confident you're delivering a really good product and customer experience everything else works out. That's not great, it doesn't really matter what else you do. If you focus in on that it's a clarifying way to focus and I think focus is critical. Anytime you're doing something hard, really successful people are able to focus.

[00:30:26] on achieving goals and having tunnel vision and if you don't focus I think it's really hard to be successful. Whenever I advise the folks in the cabinet I used to work with and for, that was always my top advice is if you can focus on a handful of things you want to get done you can get them done and exert your will in the world and if you don't focus the world's going to take you and eat you up.

[00:30:56] focus is inherent or do you think it was taught somewhere? Or both? I'm a pretty goal-driven person. I do think it's something that was a big part of growing up for me and my brothers was we were very goal-oriented. We were very focused on doing well in school, doing well on that test, being really involved in the world around us. Achievement has always been a big part of it. It's a double-edged

[00:31:26] sword to be totally straightforward. Now that I've got kids, I've got eight and nine and a half-year-old boys and I'm trying to figure out how to let them be kids and not be too focused on achievement or any of that stuff. I think it's been a big part of growing up. It's also an innate part of who I am. I'm a pretty goal-driven person. As anyone I think on the stat team you can say I don't have tons of

[00:31:57] patience for small talk or icebreakers. I just want to dive right into the work. That's just how I'm wired a little bit. At home, it can annoy my wife and kids. I try to be not like that when I'm at home and focus on stuff. Travel is a great way to bridge that gap.

[00:32:27] I can be goal-oriented around travel and planning trips, but still do something rich and meaningful and fun. It's tough for me to hang out. I'm not a great hangout on the beach and put my feet up on a person. Maybe that goes back to how the 2020 light bulb went off. You had space to think you were remote. I always joke that I'm not much of a water cooler person. I'm really bad at chatting about what shows were good because I don't

[00:32:56] watch the shows. I think it's because you drive towards the goal or the meaningful bit. You're 100% right about that. Being goal oriented and high achieving and ambitious is obviously not unique to me. It's very much a feature of this industry in particular where DC is able to attract some of the most ambitious accomplished

[00:33:27] successful people from all around the world who want to have an impact and create the world in which they grew up in or believe in. It's one of the best parts about being in politics is what attracted me to politics then and now. No matter what I do, I've stayed engaged in politics throughout my career. But you are 100% right that no matter what you're doing, having moments and even better

[00:33:56] sabbatical moments in your life, weeks or months or longer, to think about what you want to be and what you want to do and how to accomplish it, it opens you up to all sorts of new things. Having the courage also to leave jobs and move and try different things, I think it's really important because it makes you uncomfortable and I think most people can achieve a lot more in those circumstances than they think they can. But it's also really stressful, right? My hair is

[00:34:25] a lot grayer than it was. I feel that you feel that stress. You have to embrace a little bit of that chaos to do that, but I do think it leads to a more rich career and more rich life. But yeah, having that time, you're absolutely right, having that time away opened me up to something I probably wouldn't have done otherwise, which was, you know, I found a startup and try to make it successful. people. Yeah. I'm getting the theme

[00:34:54] of you're always part of something larger than your own self-interest as kind of the, between all of the different roles you've had with an eye on the goal. I think that's right. I mean, that's not just a family thing for me. I mean, you know, I'm, you know, I think that there's, I grew up in a very strongly Jewish cultural family. my grandparents were Holocaust survivors and refugees in, you know, first in Eastern Europe

[00:35:24] and then in Italy and have amazing stories of just survival of being able to come, you know, survive that horrific, crazy set of circumstances in Europe and then come here knowing nobody, not speaking the language, settling in Detroit, which is where I was born, in a really tough part of Detroit, and building a new life. That's hard. Like, what I'm doing now isn't anywhere near as hard as that, but there's, I

[00:35:54] think, values in, you know, at least in the way we kind of embrace our Jewish background around tikkun olam, around the requirement, the spirit, that everyone has a responsibility to try to repair the world, make it a little bit better than how they found it. That's in small and large ways, I think a really important value for me and my family, whether it's, you know, picking up litter, volunteering for stuff, you know, or engaging in national political

[00:36:24] issues, like that, there is something important, almost spiritual, holy, around doing that in the right way. And, you know, I have to say, I see that same kind of connectivity to kind of repairing the world as a part of anyone who spends a career in D.C. Now, not everyone lasts. There's a lot of elbows and there's, you know, you got to be tough and you got to be willing to deal with people who have their own view on how the world ought to be shaped and understand the cyclical nature of

[00:36:53] politics. But people who stay here a long time, I think they ultimately, that's how they see the world. And, you know, that's one of the greatest parts of D.C. I, you know, I live in Austin now. We love it here. We have a great community and a great technological ecosystem, been able to find great investors and make good friends. But people's connection to that type of mentality is just different. And, you know, even a place like Austin, which is a big cosmopolitan city with

[00:37:22] lots of successful, ambitious people, and D.C., where you're just purpose driven if you're going to be out there. It's one of my favorite parts of politics. It's funny. You and I both live outside D.C. now, but we both commute every couple weeks. So it's like we're moth to flame, but we also know that there's life potentially out there. Oh, yeah. Our Aeros can benefit from Kentucky and Texas. For sure. For sure.

[00:37:53] I need to get my fix of being able to, you know, have those sort of conversations where, you know, around politics and policy, which you just don't have in plight conversation. I don't know how it is in Kentucky, but in Austin, people don't want to, you know, talk about politics at dinner. Well, we just assume everyone's a Clay and related to Henry Clay here, so you can't say anything unkind because everybody's a cousin. Of course. Of course. Well, we always end

[00:38:22] every conversation with the same two questions. First, where were you last, business trip or personal trip, and what was the best meal that you had? So if someone is traveling to where you were just visiting, they can get a good meal. And then where are you headed to next, whether it's Washington, D.C. or somewhere else, so that if someone wants to connect with you on LinkedIn and make a new friend, they can send you a restaurant recommendation. Oh, man, those are such great questions.

[00:38:52] So the answer to both those questions is not particularly unique. I mean, I think I was in D.C. last, and I'm going to D.C. this week, so my life tends to revolve around going back and forth to D.C. You know, I'm a big fan of lots and lots of places in D.C. Austria. Austria. Mazda has been one of my go-to in Georgetown, I think, over these last few trips. I really love

[00:39:22] eating in Union Market as well in D.C. Although, shortly for our anniversary, I'm headed down to Santa Fe for the first time, and restaurants are going to be a core part of our trip. And then we're going to Italy, I think, over Thanksgiving. And a big part of that is to get my kids, you know, the best pasta and piece of their life so that I can forever ruin them or Italian people. food in the U.S. So I would love recommendations on, you know, in either Santa

[00:39:51] Fe or in Italy. And, yeah, I mean, meals have been a big focus of my life, although I'll tell you something, you know, publicly that I just started one of the GLP-1s that found, and so I have to say, food is like a smaller part of my mind share. Speaking of focus, it lets you focus on so many other things because, you know, meals are just a thing I now use for calories and I've got to make sure I get

[00:40:21] enough protein so I don't whittle down to nothing and, you know, my legs fall off in a couple years from now. But, you know, they are miracle drugs and they have changed my connection to food over these past few months that I've kind of experimented in this space. Quality over quantity in the food. You can still love food. I love that. That's exactly right. Although it does... You're in for a treat.

[00:40:51] I'm sorry. No, no, say it again. You're in for a treat going to Santa Fe. I think it is my favorite food city in the U.S. Any recommendations off the top of your head where we're planning this trip or in real time? There are three spots that I absolutely love and I'd have to look up the names. But I can send them to you afterward. Okay, great. It's our anniversary trip so I'm on the hopes to come up with a couple really good anniversary meals. Yes, all different casual fine dining.

[00:41:21] Yeah, I love Santa Fe. So, but what was your closing thought? I cut you off. No, I was saying that it's amazing how much of my mind share has been focused thinking about my next meal or my last meal or a trip I'd planned just for the meals. And now all that extra energy is put into driving my team crazy. It's that now gives me all sorts of new ideas to have around what more we could be doing in the business.

[00:41:50] So, speaking focus. Yeah, I've got even more so. You've repealed any lack of focus. Well, thank you, Steve. It was a pleasure to meet you. I really appreciate Matt putting us together and wishing you much success as your endeavor at stack continues and all the good work that you are doing for the profession.

[00:42:20] Thanks to our audience for joining us and have a great week. Thanks, Maggie. So great to be here with you.