Rich Ziade: I’m Rich Ziade.

Paul Ford: And I’m Paul Ford.

Rich: And this is the Aboard Podcast.

Paul: That’s right. It is about how AI is changing the world of software with a little bit of a focus on business to keep it exciting and cool. And I am one of the exciting and cool co-hosts along with Rich, and we’re the co-founders of the company. Richard, by the time people hear this, the party will not have happened. So we should tell them how to come to the party.

Rich: Last minute, velvet rope, we might let you in, we might not.

Paul: Unfortunately, because we’re opening a new office and there’s only so much space. We would love to see you and you are welcome to visit. We just can’t violate fire code. But anyway, check out abord.com. Let’s get into our podcast. You ready? You ready to talk?

Rich: Let’s do it.

[intro music]

Paul: So, you the last time we talked and we don’t, we try not to have too many cliffhangers, but! But we’re trying to give executives good advice about what to do with AI. And the guy from Klarna is, like, “Man, you gotta use some AI. We’re not going to hire anybody.” And then eight months later, he’s like, “Actually, we’re going to hire a lot of people, and the AI didn’t quite work out and the code wasn’t good enough.” So it’s a confusing time. And for people who don’t know a lot about this, we recently went and talked to a big group of executives, people, successful entrepreneurs, and there’s not a lot of like—

Rich: There’s a lot of confusion.

Paul: There’s no instinct, right? Because it’s so confusing, you know people telling you that—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: —artificial general intelligence is around the corner or whatever.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: We’ve belabored these points enough. So I thought what we could do, what we’re talking about is, like, actually coach an executive through the journey.

Rich: Oooh.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: You know, people charge—you’re supposed to go to Utah, and they charge a lot of money for that. You’re gonna give it to them for free?

Paul: Well, yeah, because we’re not providing any skiing.

Rich: Oh. Okay.

Paul: Yeah, execs always like when there’s that little extra, like that spa…

Rich: Well, it ends at four.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: And then you go do other stuff.

Paul: Have you ever been around the really, like, the big-time CEOs? Their skin is so well-tended.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah, it’s like a garden. It’s like they just—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah, it’s like they have a skin—

Rich: It’s creepy, though. Like, have you seen Larry Ellison recently?

Paul: I dream, actually, and he appears to me in a cloak and he sells me—

Rich: He’s the CEO of Oracle. He looks like my aunt. [laughter]

Paul: [laughing] It’s, let’s not talk about his face.

Rich: He might buy our company one day, so. He looks great. My aunt is very beautiful.

Paul: He might have had some work done.

Rich: Let’s go. Go.

Paul: He’s about 98 years old.

Rich: Go. Five steps.

Paul: Okay, and let me be clear, this is not necessarily the most flattering version of executive leadership.

Rich: Ah, they get flattered all the time. Let’s take a good shit on them here. Come on.

Paul: So the first thing that happens is they’re watching like CNBC or Fox Business—or if they’re smart, they’re watching Bloomberg.

Rich: Right.

Paul: Okay? And they hear, probably a competitor or someone in a related industry or an analyst saying—

Rich: “Is investing $300 million dollars in AI.”

Paul: “We’re seeing $3 trillion in opportunity here at some giant bank.”

Rich: [laughing] Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And so, “Goldman is buying Snrgleblax.” It’s just sort of whatever.

Rich: All of it.

Paul: Can’t wait to see what the AI transcript does with Snrgle Blacks, the AI…

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: S-N-E-R-G-L-E-B-L-A-X.

Rich: There you go.

Paul: I’m just trying to help everybody out.

Rich: Go ahead.

Paul: Okay. So you hear about it, you hear about it, now what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?

Rich: You’re probably going to ask—

Paul: What company do you run, by the way? Are you, is this a big public company? Let’s make it—

Rich: Sure.

Paul: Pretty big, okay.

Rich: Sure, sure.

Paul: What do you guys actually do? You can’t be too tech.

Rich: Can I use a real company?

Paul: Yeah, go for it.

Rich: Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Paul: You are the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Actually, wait, think that guy might… There’s some… Choose another one.

Rich: [laughing] Okay.

Paul: I think there’s like a thing there. just don’t wanna, I don’t wanna get in—

Rich: Frito-Lay.

Paul: There we go, not a problem, not a problem.

Rich: [laughing] Okay, good.

Paul:  The CEO for in Frito-Lay. As far as I know, there’s not gonna be any, like, Bluesky chatter about Frito-Lay. Okay, you’re Frito-Lay, you’re sitting there, you’re having your breakfast Fritos. [laughing]

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: You’re just, you’re dying.

Rich: [laughing] I put milk over Fritos. It’s really weird.

Paul: Oh, it’s so bad what’s happening to you. Oh my God.

Rich: Okay, so yeah, and we find out—

Paul: You’re rubbing sour cream and onion ointment onto your face, yeah. But that’s—

Rich: PepsiCo.

Paul: PepsiCo.

Rich: I think they own Frito Lay.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: Let’s assume the chip, potato chip company across the street—Lays. No, that’s Frito-Lay. What’s another? Wise. Is Wise still around?

Paul: [laughing] We’re learning something terrible about the food industry right now.

Rich: [laughing] That it’s one company.

Paul: Utz! I think Utz—

Rich: Utz. Utz. Utz has decided that they’re going to use AI to come up with their next 10 flavors. Okay?

Paul: Oof. Okay, you’ve heard that. You’ve heard that.

Rich: Yeah, they have accelerated customer testing and surveying, so that it’s 10 times faster so they can get things to market much more quickly. So they’re really leaning in.

Paul: I mean, frankly, to me, that’s hurtful, if I’m running a competing chip company.

Rich: No, speed. Efficiency. Innovation, right? Those are the things that freak people out.

Paul: In my head I just went, wow, I spend $14, $15 million a year on Crunch.

Rich: So what is, okay, you wanna keep going or—?

Paul: So that’s what you hear.

Rich: Yeah, mmm hmmm.

Paul: This is part of the journey. So you’re getting your bearings.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. Now I think the second part of the journey is you talk to your people and maybe somebody’s coming to you in the company.

Rich: You’ll call, like, your head of potato-chip innovation.

Paul: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm.

Rich: And you’ll call your CTO, your technology people.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: That’s a classic move. Like, “Hey, what are you guys, are you guys thinking about this stuff?”

Paul: You get your sour cream guy, you get your onion guy. And your barbecue guy…

Rich: Let me tell you. I’ve flown close to the sun. I’ve dealt with some very—I’ve reported directly to some very serious, high-powered CEOs. What ends up happening is they’ll send that signal out, and then the executives below, it becomes, like, a little project, prepping the messaging and the deck and the memo for that meeting with the CEO. He’s giving you 30 minutes next Thursday.

Paul: All hands on deck. Your job is now.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: You thought you were the director of toppings.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And you are—and your number-one function in life was just to get enough salt.

Rich: And your best PowerPoint guy is brought nearby, you tell him to drop everything, we need you for a week.

Paul: And you’re figuring out how AI…

Rich: This is real.

Paul: This is real.

Rich: This is very real.

Paul: So, like, the whole company, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars of executive time.

Rich: Are going to be spent to make sure that they show him or her that they are on top of this innovative moment. Like, this moment, this game-changing moment.

Paul: Seeing this, maybe they’re even calling some consultants.

Rich: That’s right.

Paul: Okay so now they come in and they present to you. Now I’m going to skip ahead. We can talk about the presentation again, but at the end of the presentation, if you’re a typical CEO, you go, “I just don’t see it.”

Rich: Absolutely.

Paul: That’s your number-one move.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Okay, so this is, but—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And one of the reasons I’m doing this particular narrative is that a lot of our listeners are downstream of all of this, and they’re, like, reading Hacker News, or they’re actually using these tools, and then they’re getting the worst signal from their company, saying, like, “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. And, like, things are moving around, like—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: When you are way downstream of this?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: But this is all that is happening, is, like, the person who is in charge of making sure that enough people eat crunchy chips and advertising them on the Super Bowl and so on and so forth, is getting a lot of mixed signal and is incredibly suspicious because everything—one person says it’s gonna save $20, 30 million dollars?

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: But it looks like you have to spend $20, 30 million dollars, so why bother?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Okay, so that’s where we are now. But, okay, are you ready? You ready though?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: That’s status quo. That lasts about a year.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: It’s like, “What the hell is everybody talking about AI? We do potato chips.”

Rich: Yup.

Paul: Calm down. Board meeting.

Rich: Mmm.

Paul: What happens in the board meeting?

Rich: I mean, the board is… First of all, board meetings, I’ve been to those, too. Pretty big ones, too.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: They are a particular dynamic where that CEO is in a very different setting. And this is, I’m generalizing, but let me generalize for a split second here. Because the board, and depending on the governance rules and whatnot, they essentially hold his or her fate in his hands.

Paul: They really—

Rich: They can vote them out. They can actually write a memo to the investors.

Paul: We mostly hear about sort of boards that are kind of like puppets, right? And so, like, Elon Musk’s board, like, obviously Elon Musk is—

Rich: He’s gonna control that board.

Paul: The exception is the board that has no control with the out-of-control CEO, but that’s the biggest news. Most boards are pretty boring, very senior people who are the only people in the company who are related to the company who can actually yell at the CEO.

Rich: Yeah, I mean, a lot of times a board seat is given because, like, a fund invested a billion dollars in your company “You got to give us a seat and we’ll make that investment.”

Paul: “And you don’t turn it around and get me 25 % of my investment, I might replace you.”

Rich: Or whatever, yeah.

Paul: But that’s actually the deal with the board seat, right?

Rich: And so, you know, the board members, a lot of them are, have a lot of time—

Paul: [laughing] Yeah.

Rich: —to read and watch videos and learn about this incredible moment in—

Paul: Let’s be clear, too, the hyper-wealthy, hyper-successful, they love a good report. They have kind of consultants on tap, like you go and get—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: You get water out of the tap to drink, that’s what they get with PowerPoints.

Rich: And look, the executive, the CEO of that company, they know they have to put 15 minutes on AI at the board meeting.

Paul: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm.

Rich: They know that already. So they already have a team of people that is, like, “I got to come to them with a strategy and, like, a budget. I got to tell them what’s up.”

Paul: So let’s be real. All of their hand-picked selected leaders who they are supposed to empower have come to them with exciting AI strategies, which they have absolutely shot down. That happened about a year ago.

Rich: They’ve shot them down—

Paul: But now they know that the board is going to yell at them, and it’s the one time when they actually have to be humble and not annoying.

Rich: That’s right.

Paul: And so they get their hand-picked team of consulting types who despise the C-level people who actually do all the work to put together a nice package.

Rich: Yeah. We’re painting a hapless CEO here, which is, I mean, look, let’s be real. CEOs got there because they’re probably really smart and they’re probably oftentimes curious and they’re probably reading up—

Paul: Yeah, but they’re not smart about technology often.

Rich: Often they’re not smart about technology.

Paul: They’re smart about people, they’re smart about P &L, they’re smart about tax, they’re smart about distribution and supply chain. But they’re not actually in there figuring out how an LLM works.

Rich: I come from the consulting world.

Paul: Boy, do you. And to there you must return.

Rich: And let me tell you—we are in one of the juiciest moments in consulting.

Paul: Oh yes.

Rich: There is anxiety. There is excitement. There’s a new technology that people don’t really understand.

Paul:I mean, what if we still ran an agency? It would just be like, I mean, phew!

Rich: We’re seeing a lot of people ask for advice, rather than ask to buy something.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: There’s a lot of nervousness out there. And so, look—

Paul: It’s a very fleeceable world right now.

Rich: It’s a very fleeceable world.

Paul: A lot of fleecing is going on.

Rich: And why is that happening? It’s not because people are not smart. I think it’s because this has been pitched as like, “This is changing everything forever.”

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: “It’s over. There was the past and there was this.” So there’s that. But it’s also being pitched as something you have to get on board with, or you will be left behind. And that is—

Paul: It’s the classic market dynamic of greed and fear, right? Like I’ve got—

Rich: It is a moment right now, and here is the one bit of advice we can tell all of those anxious CEOs out there who are trying to come up with a strategy and whatnot. Nobody knows what they’re talking about. Nobody has the answers. Those thick white papers you’re seeing get pumped out of the big consulting firms? It is absolute fluff right now. It’s too early.

Paul: We can really validate that. We went and gave a talk recently to a bunch of business leaders in an enormous institution, and they brought their expert, who truly knew a lot. Like, a real—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Had looked at thousands of companies, had thought about, had talked to the leaders of the big AI companies.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: To his immense credit, he looks at us, he’s like, “These guys don’t know anything, and neither do I.”

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And he’s like, “I think we know about as much as anybody, and we still don’t really know where this is headed.”

Rich: Yeah. And so you end up hiring these consulting firms, they’re like, “I need a plan.”

Paul: That was step four, you got there before me.

Rich: Oh shit. Sorry.

Paul: Yeah, no, this is great. It means that my whole strategy is good and I can just go under the table and take a little nap.

Rich: No, I mean, you go outside because it’s safer to go outside, especially with a big brand, like a McKinsey or a Deloitte or whatever.

Paul: I will notice that you’re defending CEOs and you’re the CEO of this company. When I was the CEO of the last company, I don’t think you would have stood up quite so fast.

Rich: I wouldn’t have.

Paul: No.

Rich: I have shot you down.

Paul: A little something to say.

Rich: And look, I think, I want to make a distinction. I want to make this distinction by defining a very, like, an often used, abused term and define it in as plain a way as possible. Right?

Paul: Okay.

Rich: There’s two things a CEO, someone very, that is making big decisions, worries about.

Paul: Okay.

Rich: Strategy and execution. What a strategy? Well, boy, this could get real dry real fast, but I’m going to give you like the dumbest definition of strategy.

Paul: Good. That’s smart, actually.

Rich: Putting some thinking in about what you’re gonna do before you do it.

Paul: Very often strategy does not accomplish that, so I’ll take it, right?

Rich: That’s the most base definition I can give you for strategy. Execution is doing the thing.

Paul: I would also say with strategy, it’s very easy to say what you should do in a very—it’s actually, it’s able to be turned into execution, good strategy is.

Rich: Do know my strategy exists?

Paul: Why?

Rich: Because when you’re thinking about doing the thing, and then you’re changing your mind? It’s cheap.

Paul: It’s very cheap.

Rich: It’s free. It’s free to spend more time thinking through what you’re going to do. If you’re already executing—

Paul: Not if McKinsey is involved, but yes. [laughter] The larger—

Rich: That’s totally fair. Execution is like, “I’ve decided I’m going to tackle the Southeast.”

Paul: Yeah.

Rich:  And then you find out five months in that nobody wants to buy your product in the Southeast.

Paul: Oh—

Rich: You have armies of people down there. You spent money on marketing.

Paul: These are fried corn chips. They’re gonna buy them. You’re gonna be okay.

Rich: That’s true. This is very true. I don’t like corn chips.

Paul: Really???

Rich: Aw, it’s terrible!

Paul: What about, like, crumbled on things?

Rich: I’ve never done that. I don’t know. I don’t live in a shack like you do, crumbling corn chips on things.

Paul: You don’t even, you don’t, you, you—

Rich: We digress.

Paul: You haven’t lived, you’re just, like, [mocking voice] “With my lamb.” Anyway, you go ahead, you go ahead, keep talking.

Rich: What is happening now is everyone is arrogantly pitching the thinking before you go do something, A, which no one can really do adequately yet.

Paul: I mean, we are able to be in the questions industry because we actually build things.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: But most people who don’t build things are in the answers industry.

Rich: But I think there’s a bigger issue.

Paul: Yeah?

Rich: And I think what’s happening is because of this anxiety and fear is they’re skipping the thinking part. They’re just going into execution. They’re buying stuff. They’re hiring people. Like, Chief AI Officer has become a thing.

Paul: I mean, you remember before, we had Chief Metaverse Officer. We had Chief Blockchain Officer.

Rich: You just go in.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: And the truth is these are big companies with a lot of budget and so they go in. And the truth is this stuff is so murky still and still kind of sorting itself out, but they’ve already, like, “We’re going to build a mall right here. Right here. We’re going to build one right here.” And then the construction starts, and that’s happening, and people are going to be walking it back, because they’re going to realize that the payoff isn’t there.

Paul: You know one of the big tells with all this, why isn’t it ready? I’ll tell you why. Especially for big orgs. When I say “software methodology,” what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

Rich: Architecture?

Paul: Sure, or Agile, or—

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Or like, you know—

Rich: Some process.

Paul: There are these processes. People learn them, they get certificates.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: The processes run in a recurring basis, they run for years.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And they cut the risk of software delivery because software is—partially what they do is they enforce a strategy phase.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: You have to go think, then you’re allowed to talk. Who can talk?

Rich: It’s phased out.

Paul: It’s phased out, and it’s iterative, and so on and so forth.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: There is nothing for the new ways of working. There is no AI process that’s actually demonstrable that works that everybody agrees on.

Rich: Correct.

Paul: There’s 50,000 different ways to use these tools to get certain outcomes.

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And until you anchor things into reproducible processes and can land them in a trainable way into an organization, no big word can metabolize. Small ones can because they’re like, we’ll take a swing. I got my work done. Cool. Good for me.

Rich: I mean, I think you’re nailing what the big orgs can’t do. You’re nailing that. So let’s give people a piece of advice. If you are an executive, first off, reach out to us, because we’re about as good as it gets when it comes to AI.

Paul: You really—

Rich: That’s marketing.

Paul: You know, you wouldn’t think it. You’re dressed like you’re on a safari. I’m just showing up.

Rich: I was thinking war correspondent.

Paul: Well you gotta wear the sunglasses.

Rich: Yeah. I have those. Two tips. Let’s end it with two tips.

Paul: Okay.

Rich: Tip one: Do not start any conversation with, when you talk to your team and your leaders and whatnot, with, “What are we gonna do—what is our AI plan?” Don’t start a conversation that way. That’s the cart before the horse.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: Like, “What are we doing about AI?” Terrible way to start a conversation.  this.

Paul: How do you start a conversation?

Rich: You start it like this: “I’m seeing and hearing that you can do things a lot faster and lot quicker. Can we get support response time from 40 minutes to 20?”

Paul: I mean, be a customer is what you’re saying.

Rich: And go back to the old-school boring metrics that you care about as an exec. “Can we make it cheaper to get the box from the West coast to the East coast with these new tools?” I don’t know. Go figure that out and tie incentives to sort of the classic metrics that you care about as an exec. To go and run into, is like, “I heard there’s a new cardiovascular surgery tool, Doc, are you going to use it?” You would never ask your doctor what new tool they’re going to use in the—

Paul: No, it’s kind of like saying what are we doing about aluminum?

Rich: [laughing] Yeah! Yeah!

Paul: You know, there are two failure states, and one of them is obvious and one of them is really sneaky with this new technology. So failure state one is, “We went and we tried to use it and it turned out not to be that good and we don’t want to use it anymore.” Because that’s, like, a classic. And then you’re going to miss out on a lot of the growth and the weirdness that’s coming because you didn’t think in that way. You didn’t actually measure that way. You’re just like, “We rolled out some AI stuff and it wasn’t that great. And now we’re going to go kind of, like, we might keep a little bit around.” The trickier one is the, like, the mild early-stage success? You know, you said, like, so you did something tactical, and now that you’ve seen that success—

Rich: You can blow it up times a thousand.

Paul: And that is actually, in some ways, risky because I think we’re hitting a phase now where people are like, “Wait, this didn’t fully work out,” and now I think we’re gonna hit a phase, because the tools are getting better, where they go, like, “Oh my god, no actually, it is working out.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And then they’re gonna write that memo saying, “We’re now an AI company no matter what and every potato chip will have AI in it.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And like, et cetera, et cetera.

Rich: They’ll jump to it, yeah.

Paul: They’ll jump to it because they want to be visionary and they want the market to see them as visionary.

Rich: Yup.

Paul: And now nothing has changed. It’s still going to be really hard to finish stuff. It’s still, like, back to where you are, like, “Hey, is there a way that we could save 90 % off of the way we’re doing engineering in this particular domain?”

Rich: That’s a classic executive, like, top-of-the-heap, like, “Make this happen better. I need—can we get renewals up from 18% to 26%” or something like that?

Paul: Big enterprise software installs are creeping monsters that destroy your company. There’s probably $30, $40 million in big companies going to Salesforce and ERP tools.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And like, okay, sure, go assess all those.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Could they become people’s domains and they defend them?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: But a lot of them should probably just not be there in the future.

Rich: Can I throw a bonus tip?

Paul: Throw them a bonus tip.

Rich: Let people tinker, because I’m talking about it in sort of classic efficiency ways and, like, cost-cutting and whatnot. But I do think that if this is like the ultimate hacking tool, and I think people have innovation groups and teams that are supposed to play around and try risky things. They should. Because there are opportunities to like, “Look, I think I can cut five steps out of this if we do it this way.” That takes time and thinking, but let people tinker, because it’s too early.

Paul: I mean, go back to something you said in our last podcast, which is that this is a kind of a grassroots technology, which sounds weird because it’s such a big platform.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: You have to encourage grassroots thinking. Let people solve their own problems.

Rich: We’ve seen that in our own company, where we’ve let engineering kind of explore and come to us with new approaches sometimes.

Paul: Well, because it’s still early days and there’s no teachable, repeatable processes that you can use to get good results in a predictable way.

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: But if you want to take a swing, you gotta let people play.

Rich: What, like, what do you like about corn chips?

Paul: It’s like asking me what I like about my children.

Rich: Really? Do you love them that much? Like which one? The curvy ones? The ones that are, like, curvy?

Paul: You know what I do, frankly, I stay away from them. They’re not safe for me.

Rich: You love them that much?

Paul: Well, no, but have you ever had, like, a Dipsy Doodle, and it just, it hurts. It’s so much salt, it hurts your face.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And you’re like, “What happened here?”

Rich: I’ve had a Dipsy Doodle.

Paul: That is like a Neanderthal caveman kind of reaction, that kind of food. They’re like, “We’ve jammed so much calories and poison into this that your brain won’t be able to process anything else.”

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And you just, suddenly you are in space floating on a corn chip—

Rich: CALM DOWN.

Paul: And then you’re like—

Rich: You dip them in anything?

Paul: No. And then they say—that plus Diet Coke. And then they’re like, how about—

Rich: Ugh. Jesus.

Paul: Oh yeah. And then they’re like, “Hey—”

Rich: This podcast is brought to you by America.

Paul: And then they add, they’re just, “You Neanderthal garbage, you and even tried anything yet,” and then they dust it with, like, that barbecue, fake barbecue dust.

Rich: It is dust, by the way.

Paul: It’s dust.

Rich: It’s sawdust.

Paul: If you could combine that with one Parliament Light, I would just—a column of light would open up ahead.

Rich: There goes all of our marketing.

Paul: That would just be it.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Just up into the Frito-Lay mothership.

Rich: Cool. Cool. You’re in a motel. This is all happening in a motel.

Paul: Sadly, this is where it happens, right? [laughter] Like, you’re, like, the bad business travel.

Rich: End this on an up note for—

Paul: No, no, but you’re—

Rich: You’re a thought leader, for Christ’s sake.

Paul: I know, but let’s be clear, when you’re in that Sheraton? All rules are off. Like, it is Dipsy Doodle time.

Rich: Fine. [laughing] Fine. It’s Dipsy Doodle time.

Paul: But not at home. We have an agreement.

Rich: Okay.

Paul: Okay, friends.

Rich: All right. Thanks for listening [laughter] to the Aboard podcast.

Paul: Come to our party. There will be no Dipsy Doodles.

Rich: Yes. Have a lovely week. Give us five stars on the podcast.

Paul: Please, God.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: Goodbye, beloveds. We’ll see you soon.

Rich: Have a great week.

[outro]