Understanding Market Dynamics

Margaret Kelsey (00:42)

This episode, Tony and I talk about understanding market dynamics as they shift, what’s important in the long term, and how people and technology are intertwined through it all.

So Tony, you have an ethos that I think is fascinating, around really loving an underdog story. Can you talk a little bit about where that came from?

Tony Zakula (00:56)

Yeah. It’s interesting because I grew up in the ’80s, so I guess I’m vintage now.

Margaret Kelsey (01:17)

I was born in the ’80s.

Tony Zakula (01:21)

That was all about the Rocky movies, the 1980 Olympic hockey team that beat the Russians for the gold medal, it was 80 or 82—my kids have probably watched that ten times.

I grew up with that, and I also grew up in South Chicago without much. I always wanted a shot to do things, but many times didn’t have the same opportunities others had. I knew that if I could get a shot, I could outwork someone.

I may not be quite as good, but if you work hard enough, and the right opportunity, you can win or you can still go places. But you do need the opportunity.

And I think, again, maybe not so much based on real life, some of the watching movies and feeling that the US team was there. They maybe couldn't beat them every time as the coach told them, but tonight was their night to win the gold medal.

To the underdog story of Rocky and everything else, I kind of grew up with that in my DNA, a chip on my shoulder that I could do something if I had the chance. And I think as you go through your life and you went through…I grew up, went to school, did things.

It wasn't always easy, sometimes there wasn't the same opportunity, or people weren't willing to give you the same shot or share the same information because you weren't that person, you weren't at a certain level in society.

Margaret Kelsey (03:09)

Didn’t have the right college on your résumé.

Tony Zakula (03:12)

Exactly. But I decided that I was never going to let that stand in my way. There had to be a way. I was fortunate that I had a couple very good mentors–I worked in the industry. I worked at a steel Mill. I had some good mentors in the steel mill on how to get ahead, even within the structure of a union structure and other things. So I always question, I always find the way to do it within the rules but around the rules. That maybe sounds kind of bad,

Margaret Kelsey (03:46)

Everything's made up, even the rules, you know?

Tony Zakula (03:49)

but there was always opportunity if the right situation presented itself, right? So I don't know, I've carried that through life and now that I am fortunate enough to be responsible for a company with employees and offering employment to folks. I look for those folks that are willing to work hard, hungry for opportunity and willing to earn it. And I think that's one of the most enjoyable things that when we look at: why are you doing a startup or why are you in business? Why have you done what you've done for 11 years?

You know, obviously we all want to make a comfortable living. It also becomes–I'm doing this because I've had some amazing stories and I've had the chance to impact people's lives in amazing ways. And I think great companies can give people opportunity, make their lives better, make lives better for their families. So that's kind of where it started.

People talk a lot about charity and I'm for charity, but I also think when you give people the opportunity to help them help themselves, it's even more satisfying at times.

Margaret Kelsey (05:06)

Yeah. And the third line that I also see that you haven't touched on yet is when you light up around customers, it's oftentimes the underdog customers that you really get excited about helping. So I love the idea of the employees, and your own underdog story, but talk to me a little bit about how Kodaris is set up to help maybe an underdog distributor.

Tony Zakula (05:33)

Yeah, so, it's interesting in markets, right? Whether it's technology, whether it's distribution, whether it's manufacturing. Many times you have huge companies with massive resources and then you have smaller family companies that are started or they're lower mid-market, maybe they're mid-market. And we all have to compete and that's great. That's what our economy is built on.

And you need those large corporations to service the government, all those different things. But sometimes they're not the best at serving the smaller customer either, right? And in business, we always talk about segmentation, small business versus middle market versus large corporate. So there's always this diversity.

And what's interesting is technology is becoming such a piece of serving the customer. Technology costs money though, costs money to develop. So, you know, are the same tools available to massive corporations as well as the small business? Or do small businesses start dying because they cannot keep up with the technology aspects?

Technology can be used as a weapon for gaining market share, servicing the customer. Silicon Valley companies, I've been there. We do it all the time, change to something people like, you change your habit, you have a customer. That foments and turns over with the next best thing on the consumer side with business, it's a little more difficult, especially in distribution.

So you know, when we talk about underdogs, we talk about family businesses that have been around 75-100 years. How are they going to compete with all this change in technology? It can be mind boggling.

So it's not that I'm anti-large company. We certainly have some huge companies that are customers of Kodaris and important customers and actually fund a lot of our R &D and feature sets.

But it's interesting when you get a family company that's been around 75 years. They're also trying to service the market, yet they’re struggling and worried about their family business because they feel certain niches, but customers want technology to be able to offer that at an affordable price. And we do that top tier technology because of the way we model and price on, flat rate. You can afford this.

And because we're not VC invested, a lot of our intellectual property is funded by customers that we contribute back to everyone. And creating this kind of association, it's empowered us to actually help the smaller companies. Service their customers with the same level of technology as the very large companies. And that's cool because then all of you see the light bulbs come on and they say, we do have a chance.

We do have an opportunity to be at the same level playing field technology-wise with some of our largest competitors. That's just really fun because we're not closing business, we're not selling against large companies, we're just enabling, leveling the playing field a little bit for smaller distributors or manufacturers to compete at scale.

And that's great, because if they got great family business with relationships, and they're in business another 25 years because they're part of Kodaris. I mean, that's fun. That's pretty amazing to see them thrive.

Margaret Kelsey (09:19)

Yeah. Well, and outside of the good feelings of helping family businesses and all that, why does it matter on a macro level whether or not these, maybe on the low end of the medium sized distributors exist in the next 10, 20 years? What, is there a reason outside of that, they've been around for a while. So we want to keep the legacy alive.

Tony Zakula (09:51)

Yeah, you know, I think anybody who, if you study economics, certainly the economy is so massive, it's incomprehensible how massive it is. And you look at segments of markets, like I said, there needs to be those very large corporations that service the very large customer. But at the same time, there's so many small niches, so many different service areas.

It's very important to have a diverse market. And I think no matter what market you see that in, you're going to see like in wherever there's consolidation, the market may consolidate down to even 60, 70%, a few large companies at some point.

You still need 30, 40% of smaller companies serving those diverse niches where it makes no sense to go into. You know, people ask me, you're on Amazon, you use Amazon tooling, you provide commerce, CRM, all these different things. Wouldn't you worry about Amazon taking your business? I say, not at all. In fact, Amazon helps us. Why?

Because the markets we're in are not large enough for them to go after efficiently. So the really big companies actually help fund. And we see that not only with Amazon Web Services, but with Amazon. It used to be that everybody said Amazon was going to put every small business out of business, right? And some did because they didn't go to online shopping. Others, however, thrived and do amazing business on Amazon.

And yes, Amazon takes their cut for the services, but there's a lot of jobs, businesses, all of those things running because now you have third party sellers, which over 60% of Amazon revenue comes from third party sellers. So business changes. It's very dynamic. The markets change.

But, those small businesses are important and they'll always be a part of the US economy because that's actually where the big corporations come from–small businesses growing up and either being bought or folded in or becoming large businesses themselves. So, it's an important engine of the economy and sometimes that just the technology aspect gets faster.

It's also interesting because if you're a manufacturer supplying distribution and consumers, do you want to only have two customers? And then things get a little dicey negotiating and supplying and, anytime you have those relationships in the supply chain, people really want that diverse customer base. So they're not dependent on just a few. So you see manufacturers trying to sell direct to consumers now.

It's quite common, distributors hate it, but they're there to diversify some of their customer base, take advantage of a segment they don't have. They like those smaller distributors being mixed with the big ones. Do they like the constant volume of a few big ones? Absolutely. But they don't want it to be 90% and then they're basically beholden and they're out of business if there's a decision at a distributor that changes to somebody else.

So good business says we need a diverse market–SMBs, small business, mid-market business contributes to innovation, it’s dynamic, what customers want. And large corporations fulfill their role that you got to supply the government, you got to supply other big corporations, you got to have different ways of doing things. And I'm an economics geek so I love all those things–but I don't know how many times we've heard over the last few year–small businesses are going away, they're not going to survive. And it never happens.

Margaret Kelsey (14:01)

Yeah. Well, so there's this interesting...and I don't want to reduce it to the fact that it actually is untrue, but it feels like the large corporates are really good at having their own stockpiles of money to invest in technology. But they're also probably not niche down enough to have a very focused customer specific understanding.

And so it feels like the SMBs, small medium businesses, probably have better touch points or understanding of what their customers need, but then not the technology budgets to necessarily implement that solution from a technology standpoint. Do you agree with that? Is that too reduced down to being a nothing burger?

Tony Zakula (14:57)

Parts of it, it's interesting. I think it depends. We're very broad brush technology corporations, right? So you have consulting companies like the big four buildings, but very specific things for massive corporations. have Silicon Valley, who's all about building a product, scaling it.

So it has enough features, but let's make sure the features are all scalable to enough of the customer base and what happens is customers change their business to match that or they cobble together solutions, right? And I want to when we talk about budget it's more about What's the investor appetite and what's return on that investment? And is it worth it because not everything's worth it.

I think where it becomes interesting is this niche we're in where we say we're a product company, we're kind of a hybrid product slash you can develop on top of us or we will develop custom for you for your industry or whatever. But we also need to fund our product. Rather than try to do that through a hundred percent profit, we do through services and we contribute that back.

So, distribution is interesting when you have big, big corporations, you typically see buying groups or groups of distributors for buying power to compete. And we're just modeling after..we're not doing anything new. We're just modeling and saying, well, if you're part of our community and you get those free features every seven days we release, you get all that for free. And if you need something custom specific to you, we'll also develop that or you can develop it.

So you get your cake and you can eat it too. And we're not investor focused, so we can still offer that price that makes sense for you, kind of your dues for being part of the community.

Margaret Kelsey (17:00)

Is that what you think the SaaS subscription is? It's due for being part of the community?

Tony Zakula (17:04)

I mean, it's a little bit parallel there, right? You pay your monthly fee. Some folks pay more than others based on data and volume, but you're not really paying per feature. You're not paying per transaction. You have a flat rate, right? So it's almost like your dues to get those updates every seven days, be part of the community, contribute.

I like to draw parallels to other businesses. It's kind of interesting or other economic models. So then...is it a question about, some companies don't have the budget? Is it a matter of it's not investor interest? It is a matter of we're not going in that market? A matter of, we think we can enable people to change? In Silicon Valley, creating a new category is terribly risky. So is it, we're going to invest, we think we can get everybody to change and create a new category? And then we kill it because everybody goes into that category?

Anyway, I don't think there's any hard and fast answer to that question. I think it all depends on businesses. It's that win-win in business and being an entrepreneur. What is a win for the customer? What is a win for you? Because if you don't have that win-win, then it's not going to make sense and you're not going to do it, right? Either the tech company is not going to do it or people don't buy. One of the two.

Margaret Kelsey (18:25)

And you've talked to me about this before, but I know that something you repeated to me time and time again is that there’s plenty to go around in terms of business and there's not going to be one winner that serves the entire market. So talk to me a little bit about that in terms of how that fits into the rest of this idea around underdogs and whatnot. It feels like it's a core belief of yours that there's enough to go around. You don't have to be a monopoly and wipe out all of the other competition, but also it's probably not good if one distributor becomes the complete winner and wipes out all the competition.

Tony Zakula (19:10)

Yeah, well I think it's in any market distribution–technology, manufacturing, you name it, right? I think what's interesting about the US economic system is–and I learned this a while ago–several years ago, being an entrepreneur, even growing up and getting a job, that's okay, why would you get a job? Well, to earn money. But you're only gonna get paid really what you're contributing back to society.

So we developed a car, all of a sudden horse and buggy people were nervous. Now it took 25 years, but eventually they lost all their jobs. The economics folks quote this all the time. The world's coming to an end. Do you know what happened? That created jobs in the car industry, automobile industry, which now employs millions and millions of people, right?

Margaret Kelsey (20:03)

And even drivers, you still need. You're not driving the horse, but you're driving the car maybe.

Tony Zakula (20:09)

And now we're trying to get rid of those drivers, right?

Margaret Kelsey (20:11)

I know. One day we'll all be sitting on a beach with a pina colada and everything will be automated.

Tony Zakula (20:19)

So, you know, the economic rule is as things change, there's opportunity. So if you have a very large market player, dominating the whole market becomes almost impossible because you cannot address the needs of every single customer in that market with one product and one corporation.

Because as an entrepreneur, if I'm competing against somebody large, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to see lots of people see how large they are, what they do, and try to model that and say, I can go kill the market and be big like them. Good entrepreneurs say, OK, they have that locked up. They're at that. Where are the people I can serve slightly differently, or with a slightly different model that makes sense for them? Because that will be my part of the market. And if I'm only ever half a percent of what that big corporation is, because they do all that stuff great, that's okay, because as a small business, I have my customers, my niche I serve. But then a lot of people also forget the choice comes down to the customer, right?

The customer is number one. As human beings, we make choices. And there was no bigger message of that than like during COVID and all of a sudden people quit buying. And what did it do to the economy? It was amazing. But all that happened was masses of people made a choice, which is all economics is.

So those big corporations are only there because people are making choices to use them because they provide a great service or they provide a service in a way masses of people need it. It's not everyone. Because we all know we're different. Some of us just like to be different. Not me, I like to be like everybody else, but. Yeah.

Margaret Kelsey (22:22)

Just like to fit right in, right? No distinguishing factors.

Tony Zakula (22:27)

So there will always be people out there that want something slightly different, want it their way, want and think it's cool, right? And as a startup, you always look for those.

You I've been through several startups that you always look for those early adopters, the people that want to change that want something different. Those are going to be your adopters, right? Not the people who are just like, I've used this for 20 years, I'm good with it.

Because what happens is as those early adopters adopt and they like it, we as human beings watch other people and say, I might want to try that. You'll never get the people if you're unproven, but that's what makes going into business hard, and being entrepreneur hard, is getting that initial traction and building it and making the customer happy.

And it just repeats itself with every business, right? So big market players, the competition's always coming, right? And you have to continue to iterate. You have to maybe even buy those people that are changing so you can adopt those strategies. But I don't think the economy is so dynamic. I don't think any one company will ever dominate entire markets. It's never happened in as long as we've been having a U.S. economy.

Margaret Kelsey (23:47)

Talk to me a little bit about your relationship with competition. It feels like a friendly relationship. And I feel like this history of being an underdog and really believing in the underdog story, there is no underdog without some sort of competition, right?

Tony Zakula (24:06)

Yeah, competition is healthy, right? Competition and the government does this. Competition is healthy for the market. So. I think as an entrepreneur, it's important to understand when something is not good for us business-wise and maybe we don't want that customer.

I think sometimes people are too greedy or they think I want to win every deal because that's what I get high on, or I want every dollar. Look, some people are better at things and nobody's best at everything, right?

So I think that, you know, I don't like to lose as much as the next guy. I hate to lose, but if I'm in a deal or talking to a customer and they're looking for specific things or they say we think this solution is better for these reasons for us, I'm like, great. You should use that. Cause one, I don't want to be that person who sold you something. Now you invested and you're unhappy because unhappy customers don't bring more customers to me.

And two I'm in business, and I want to have fun. It's not about money. I want to enjoy my customers. I want to be friends with them. I don't want to have sold them something that's not good for them. As human beings, nobody likes that, right?

So sometimes competition is going to win or sometimes people specialize in a thing and your customer doesn't need everything you offer. They just need this one thing and somebody's better and that's all good. Where it makes sense. And so the key to being an entrepreneur is to always appeal to a larger and larger set of customers and more will come, because you have the capabilities to appeal to them and they'll buy from you versus competition.

But I think that the folks who say I want to own this space. I want to put other people out of business. I want to do that. I learned early on, it was always interesting. Years ago when I started with a GMS some of the execs who are retired, they had that attitude. They were the biggest in the market, but they started small and, when I had to hear them talking about pricing or the markets, they would say, enough, we don't need it all. There's enough in the market for everyone. Obviously they were acquiring and building, but I don't know what they were at their peak or whatever before they got purchased by Home Depot. But I mean, I don't know that it was over 25%, might've been less than that.

So when they were in a competitive deal or when they were pricing something, they don't worry too much if somebody else got it. I think as things become more corporate and then change and you're publicly traded, there's obviously investors and analysts that don't see it quite that way. But when it was a private company, that was their view on the world, and I really respected that. I thought that was always interesting. Even when they were the biggest, they were like, it's OK for other people to be in the market and service customers, we're fine with that.

Margaret Kelsey (27:10)

Yeah, it's almost like if you can pick your head up from the, ‘yes, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm at this company and I want to win, I want to be the best.’ But if you can lift your head up to the macro lens and say, but if we look at the markets, if we look at the economy, it's actually really helpful if we don't win all the time, right? Because it's the macro lens that's actually the better option.

Tony Zakula (27:39)

Always winning or always selling no matter what takes the human aspect out of it. At the end of the day, we're all humans. And I'm really big, obviously, on the human aspect of business. So the customer, say, you know what? I'm not the best fit. You should use that other product if it's better.

That customer is, or potential customer is likely to come back when they have a need in the future if you have something they can buy. Right? Versus hounding and hounding and selling and selling and then they buy it, they're unhappy. And that customer, even if they don't buy, they may say, you know what, I was talking to so-and-so about this, but you might want to check them out because, you know, they seem to do the right thing.

So going back to–it’s always about the customer, it's about people and holding them up. And that takes discipline for you not to blame other people if you don't win or not to blame the customer.

But to say, what did we not have? What could we do better? Well, how could we serve this market better if we really want to sell to folks like that? And does it make sense? Now it's a business decision. Do we invest in getting better or do we just hold back and say, no, not really our space. We're going to keep going. I remember I was in a very large negotiation.

We had demoed to a huge international pharmaceutical firm for expense reporting when I was at Expensify back in the day. They were going to need a global rollout across, I don't know, 18 countries and they had all these regional systems. And ultimately we didn't win it, and their reasoning was we didn't have the infrastructure to do the rollout, support them, we didn't have the people.

Product was great, but we couldn't support them. I always thought that was disappointing. But after some years, I realized that it was a good thing, good thing for them. And it probably would have been a nightmare for us.

So at that point in time is probably the best we didn't get it, right? And I think that sometimes everybody wants that massive deal. Sometimes you're not equipped to handle that massive deal. And sometimes the large corporations are just better at it because they're equipped. They've done it before. They know how it works.

And so businesses are at different trajectories, different places. And what you think you may want, you better be careful because it may kill you if you actually were able to get it, right?

Margaret Kelsey (30:18)

There's a parable and I'll probably butcher it, but it's this idea of this old man is in this village, and he has a son and the son falls off the horse and breaks his leg and everyone's like, that's such a shame. And he's like, we'll see. And then the army comes to the village and enlists all of the young boys that are healthy, but his son has a broken leg so he doesn't go to war.

And they're like, wow, you're so lucky. And he's like, we'll see. And the parable goes on and on and on, right? Anything that happens, whether it's good or bad is not necessarily good or bad based on the judgment in that moment, because like, who knows, right? Maybe sometimes when you lose, that's actually a better opportunity for you than if you had won that deal just for money.

Tony Zakula (31:05)

Yeah, and you know, I think also sometimes you have to invest, and try, and you learn. And then if you're learning from your failures, you might try another… I had a VC that I knew that I was talking to one time. He told me, he said–I don't know, we’d lost a few deals, and he said, ‘That's okay. Cause you were shortlisted.’ I'm like, ‘what does that mean? We lost.’ He's like, ‘No, it's great because if you're shortlisted on the top three, the more you're shortlisted, the more likely you're going to win. But then when people start seeing you across the industry, that's raising your ability for them to see and take you more seriously than if they never see you.’

So when I realized, losing actually can be a very positive thing, because it’s sometimes about being in the game, not necessarily winning the whole thing. Eventually, you'll learn enough to win the whole thing if you're learning from your failures.

Anyway, there's been some great words of wisdom I've learned from people over the years, about business and about it not being an instant gratification thing. It's a slog. It's a long process. I also understand with customers, we may have great tech, but they have to change their people, their business process. They have to do a lot of things. Business is a slog no matter which business you're in. And technology is just one component of that.

Margaret Kelsey (32:44)

Software doesn't always solve people problems. Change management and digital transformation is not a push button, unfortunately.

Tony Zakula (32:56)

Yep, because it's people that make the world go around. And it will be that way no matter how fast AI gets and everything else. The world operates on human beings, not machines.

Margaret Kelsey (33:08)

Well, and that's the interesting thing that I find so fascinating with AI is that I think that this, the human touch point will actually just become like that much more precious, right? With everything else, if you can go and order your fast food on a kiosk, but then when you sit down at a fine dining restaurant, there are no kiosks. You know what I mean? So it's like, there's a certain luxury to relationships, then I think that will only see that increase.

Tony Zakula (33:41)

Well, it's like when we were finally able to do Zoom video, right? And that was, everybody said that was great. Nobody needs to travel anymore. And even after COVID, when there was no travel, for the most part, and you could finally just close deals by Zoom, right? You didn't have to travel to actually close a sales deal.

Margaret Kelsey (34:01)

No golf trips or steak dinners.

Tony Zakula (34:06)

And now, you know, I think the world is coming back, so we still use Zoom heavily all the time, every day. However, customers, team members, people still want to see people in person. And when I don't do it for a couple months, I'm always amazed at how much the relationship is built with an in-person trip or an in-person discussion, even for, you know, a few hours.

It makes all the difference in the world and then on the other side of that zoom meeting the next time you understand that person better, you can better relate to them. So anyway, AI will change some things in our jobs and our lives and make us more productive. Still not going to change the human component. I mean, same as people predicting small business will go away.

AI is just going to change our lives and how we work and maybe make us more productive, but it's not going to change us as human beings. I don't see it.

Margaret Kelsey (35:00)

Well, and we saw that too our first customer summit, right? Our customer innovation summit a couple months ago, it's one of those things we get to see customers and prospects at TUG or other shows that we go to, but it feels like there is something special bringing people in person together, to build those relationships and also have the focus. I think there's a piece of it too, of when you are on Zoom, you're getting email updates and Slack and whatnot or whatever. But when you're sitting face to face with somebody, it's much more poignant to have a relationship build.

Tony Zakula (35:40)

Yeah, it's interesting. Absolutely. But I think as humans, all about, we remember experiences and we relate to experiences. And on Zoom, there's no experience, right? So that in-person gives you the ability to have experience together. Whether it's a meal, whether it's a conference for a day or two days, no matter what we're doing.

As human beings, that's what we relate to because that gets stored and saved with us and we remember it and we remember that time. And if it was a fun time or a special time, we're going to carry that the rest of our lives. I think on a more personal note, that's what we don't sometimes take into consideration as human beings. The impact we have on others, they will take with them the rest of their lives, whether it's positive or negative.

When you think on a personal level, how you're interacting with your family, with your friends, all of those things, you are having an impact on them that they will have to deal with for the rest of their life.

Margaret Kelsey (36:47)

No pressure, parents.

Tony Zakula (36:50)

And I think it's, yeah, I think it's no different with customers. You know, if we positively impact their lives, and that's what I hope with every one of our customers, we're making that positive impact on not only them, but their families.

Everything we do, we become their friends. Become, if it makes sense, they no longer do business with us, that's fine, but they're not a transaction. They're impact we're having on the world. And I think that's one thing where we've been very successful is our customers tell others a lot. They sell us, right?

But I think that's mostly because we try to be good people, we try to do the right thing. We try to give a fair deal, we service, we want to be a community. They're not a transaction to us. And as human beings, we enjoy that. We like that.

Margaret Kelsey (37:45)

I think it was Maya Angelou who said, people will forget what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. And I think that's really poignant to what you're talking about, which is it's less about the exact right words and more about the cumulative experience of being in a relationship, whether it's a business relationship or a familial relationship of how does that person feel when they interact with you? And to that point, Zoom, you probably don't feel much other than like I checked it off, you know.

Tony Zakula (38:17)

Yeah, I think that's how we build in technology as well, right? I mean, when you have Uber pick you up, you have this relationship with Uber, always, tech companies know this, right? When they pick you up, you have your ride, you have your experience. They ask you to rate that experience because they want to make sure you're getting a good experience.

And we get very vocal about that, but now the experience becomes almost like a transaction, right? But if 90% of the time we have a great experience, or we say, oh, that one's got five stars, I want that guy. You know, that becomes, well, I just use Uber. I don't use anybody else, right? Or I just use Lyft or whoever.

So technology companies know even when they don't necessarily interact with you at a corporate level, wherever that human touch point is extremely important, right? Because that's the experience people remember. That's why they may or may not come back.

Anyway, it's fascinating–people, technology, markets.

Margaret Kelsey (39:23)

I know we really touched it all on this one.

Tony Zakula (39:27)

People don't really understand sometimes, all of this is interconnected in your success, right? All of these things together. And what's the one thing in the middle of all those things? The human being, and how we feel, and the choices we make.

Margaret Kelsey (39:45)

And how we need each other, right? I think even when going back to the competition and the underdog and whatnot, like we need the Goliath so that there is an underdog. We need the competition because if you were the only one playing, you're not actually doing anything. You're practicing, honestly. You're not playing if there's nobody else there. And so I think that's the thread that I'm picking up on is just this need, this like, reliance on the other in order for the world to go around.

Tony Zakula (40:22)

Yeah, absolutely.

Margaret Kelsey (40:23)

And that's your philosophy lesson for today.

Tony, thank you so much for chatting today. I feel inspired to go out and number one, be a better parent. If I'm thinking about how, my interactions with my son, he's going to carry for the rest of his life. So thank you for that one. I'm going to carry that one with me today. But thank you as always for spending the time with me.

Tony Zakula (40:49)

Yeah, no, this is always fun. It's always interesting. And yes, I think that sometimes we get frustrated, but being a better human being every day, I think, is a good goal to strive for.