Problem Experts Win Cybersecurity Sales: Marty Overman, EVP Americas Sales, Darktrace

In the very early stages of a relationship with a prospect, we are being judged. They're trying to figure out if we are someone they should listen to, if we know what we're talking about, if we have the expertise to help them solve their problems, and ultimately whether they want to keep talking with us and maybe even doing some business. So it's important how we approach these early interactions in terms of our mindset, what we say, and how we say it. And knowing our product is important, but not as important as being an expert in the problems that our prospects have. So says Marty Overman, the EVP of America Sales at Dart Trace. And she's got the experience to back it up. She's been in tech sales since 2005 with stops at Cisco, McAfee, Palo, and Imperva. In this episode, we talk about why it's so important, especially today, to be a problem expert, how you do it if you want to make the change in how you sell, what it sounds like in front of a prospect, and why, despite all your best intentions, it can still be so hard. And since it's October, Marty talks about her recent experience with breast cancer and the message that she has for everyone that could well make a huge difference in our lives. This is Marty. All right, Marty, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Andrew. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, you're off a trip to London back in the US, so I'm hoping you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the discussion.

I I like to think I've like figured out how to hack jet lag, so I'm pretty good. I might wait at seven o'clock tonight.

But we should do a whole podcast on that then, because I think there's a lot of people who want to figure out how to get past jet lag.

There's some tricks. It does not involve melatonin or ambient.

So good, good. All right. Well, listen, you wrote an article on LinkedIn, and the title of it was Stop Being a Product Expert, become a Problem Expert. And it kind of caught my eye. Why don't you think more sellers are already problem experts?

That's such a layered question. First off, I'm glad that article got your attention. You've had several of my former colleagues on here, and I and I wondered when I might, when I might be able to get on your podcast. So this is a topic I love to talk about. Why aren't more sellers already problem experts? I think you kind of go where you're comfortable. And you know, when you when you go to a new a new organization, a new company, because you know, let's face it, it's a reality. People change jobs, people, people move companies and are selling a new product. The first thing you're told to do is learn the product. And so they go in, they learn the product, they really wrap their heads around it. Ideally, if you're in a great place, you develop a lot of passion for the product because it's a great product, but the then you have to make that shift to the it's a great product that solves a unique problem that someone will spend money to solve. And so I just think you get in this emotion of being comfortable talking about the product. And it's it's easy to walk in, you know, let me tell you everything we have and let's see if something fits. And it's almost just like this default mode. And I look like I think sometimes buyers put you in that position too, because you are given a meeting and maybe they don't want to give you a lot. They just, you know, they're kind of like, well, no, you tell us what you do, and we'll decide if it fits. And so it can be, you can get trapped sometimes into doing it. So it's a, I think it's a mix of comfort and then circumstances at times, and just not really knowing how to reframe that and kind of pivot around that that prospect who is forcing you into that corner. There are ways to pivot around it. But yeah, I just, and so you you just revert to it and you revert to old habits. That's kind of the easy thing to do too.

It's funny, 10 years ago, I I built the new R training program for a company in Cyber. I want to see who it was, and it was a full week of boot camp, and we didn't do one single bit of product training in that week. And no one complained. You know, no one, no one sat there and went, Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Where's where's the product training? You know, we talked about use cases, we talked about personas, we talked about how to position the company against those things. And nowhere do we sit down and go, well, here's the half day of how to demo the product or all the features it does. It was it was interesting. I really thought I was gonna get a lot of pushback, but I didn't.

No.

No one complained.

That's the fun stuff. You're talking about real problems. If you've got the right people, if you've hired the right sellers, they're probably really excited to do an onboarding that way.

Yeah, it it that's what I found. But I think you're what you said, the second point you made there was so important. You know, when you inside a tech company, it seems like everything you hear is about the product, right? The new features, the new integrations, the new this, the new that. And oh, I didn't see that one bit of the demo before that that SE did or whatever. And it's suddenly everything surrounding you is that. And almost no one seems to keep talking about problems. It's a it's an interesting thing that we put ourselves into.

Yeah, and they, you know, kind of to that point around, at that point around it, you know, the customer kind of boxes you in there, the prospect kind of boxes you in there. I think people feel weird about walking into a meeting and saying, Well, why'd you take the meeting? What are you hoping to get out of today? And more than a few of us have been met with kind of the standoffish, well, so-and-so told me I had to meet with you. Or, you know, the like, I, you know, I think I had somebody literally tell me once, like, well, I didn't have anything else going on in my schedule today. And your SDR kept emailing me. So finally I took it. I'm like, okay, but all right, cool. Well, we're gonna spend half an hour together. And thank you for, you know, make making that time. What would be useful for you to get out of today? And they, and we've all had this happen before too, where they go, well, just tell me about your product. What do you guys even do? And then we answer with our product instead of answering with the here's what we do. And that's your chance to talk about that problem you solve. And so it just becomes this, you know, I think the market kind of creates some of it in a way where, like, think about the last time you went to RSA. Everything you're trying to do to draw people into your booth, it's like talking about a feature or like what your product does. And so you're almost by design led to talk about that instead of the problem statement. And some of the really, some of the best sellers and the best companies I see out there have gotten really good about talking about the problem statement. I think that's why you know that that statement of be a problem expert, not a product expert resonates. A lot of our, I mean, we've got some incredibly savvy people out there. I mean, security practitioners have seen a lot over the last, you know, year, over the last six weeks. And, you know, going back even, you know, 30, 40 years while this whole market's been, you know, kind of spinning up into what it is, they know the technology. It's thinking about the unique applications of it that we've got to help them get to.

So, what would a problem-centric rep, how would they interact? How would they talk differently in a half-hour call with a senior security leader versus a product rep?

They wouldn't talk much. It'd be a lot of informed questions. And I don't I don't know if you know, I wanted to go to law school at one point in time. I had applied to law school, gotten in, ended up deferring my admission because, well, my father, who was a lawyer, told me that the only time you make money is when someone else is miserable. And I thought that doesn't sound fun. Let me go figure out something else to do. But like, what do really good lawyers do? They ask questions that lead you to an answer where, you know, where you want to get to. And I think, you know, kind of I use the doctor analogy a lot where, you know, a really great doctor, the doctors I want to work with are asking me questions about my condition and understanding what is hurting me the most? How is it impacting my life? I use the analogy a lot, about it's basically insinuating that you tore your ACL and it's, you know, okay, you were playing soccer or basketball or whatever it is. And can you jump? Can you move this way? Can you do that? And then the doctor's asking questions around what's your lifestyle like? Do you ski? Do you have young kids? Do you want to be able to play soccer or basketball again? Like, talk to me about what's important to you so they can understand a, is this a problem that I think it is? Did you actually tear your ACL or did you just, you know, is it a partial tear, full tear? Like, because that means you have to solve it differently. But also, you know, what what does your go forward situation look like? What's important to you? And it's the physical pain, but it's also the understanding the lifestyle pain. Like if we don't fix your knee, how much is that going to impact you? And does it matter to you? Because look, I know a guy who's been walking around with torn ACL for like nine years and he's fine. He'll get it fixed one day, maybe. I don't know. It's not painful enough for him. It hasn't impacted the quality of his life enough. And those doctors are asking you the questions in such a way that they know where they're trying to get to. You may not know where they're trying to get to, but they know. And, you know, they're already thinking of, you know, they're trying to understand what's the desired outcome and how do I get you there? And, you know, and I go back to the product question and the buying question is is this a problem you're willing to spend money to solve? And a back to the knee analogy. Is this a problem you're willing to spend six weeks recovering from and do the physical therapy afterwards so that, you know, you can be back playing soccer or playing basketball and then, you know, skiing in the winter? And so the the sellers who are really nailing this are asking the question. They understand the problem and the underlying, you know, functionality. You have look, you do have to know your product and you have to know technology in general to be able to guide them on this and to and to elicit the information that you need in order to fully understand their problem and the impact of it and the implication of it. And so the best sellers are asking those questions and letting them talk and getting comfortable with the responses and understanding how to piece together what that means so that it's a meaningful conversation and you know, they're really understanding the situation and then can later get into, I think I can with this.

So it's interesting you say that, Marty. I I heard this phrase, I don't know when I heard it actually, but certainly a few years back. It was someone was teaching me or talking about the psychology of human beings. And one of the things that they said was if someone believes that you deeply understand their problems and you're empathetic, they're much more likely to believe you also have the solutions to those problems. And it was an interesting kind of way to think about it, right? Is you're actually building credibility by asking those types of questions you were talking about.

Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't heard that, but that makes sense. It actually makes me it makes me think about Chris Voss and never split the difference. One of the things that has always stuck with me from that is you don't want the person you're talking to to say you're right. You want them to say that's right, because you're right means somebody else is wrong, but that's right means you get me. That's right. You understand. Yes, we're on the same page. So that's kind of the it's a different iteration of that. But I like the like the empathy. You've taken the time to understand me and you know, kind of level set on what this is, and therefore I trust you to actually give me a solution. It goes back to the doctor analogy. I don't want to go to the doctor who's like, well, what do you think it is? Um, you know, hey, okay, here's what we're gonna do without, you know. I I see people talk about that all the time, and they're like, I had a 15-minute appointment with my doctor, and they're telling me to do this. That's the you want to go get a second opinion after that.

So it's funny, actually, I just thought this two days ago, I had internet issues at home, right? X-finity let me down again. So you do what you do, you get on the chat with someone, and there's they're the tier one chat, and then you get escalated, and suddenly I got a phone call from someone who clearly didn't really know what the why they were asking these questions. It was kind of going through the list, right? And I could tell they just didn't, they didn't really care, they didn't really know, whatever, right? And then you get the tier three person on the phone, and they're you just know in 20 seconds this is an expert, right? They're asking the right questions, they're digging into the right areas, and you're I'm sitting there going, oh, this guy's gonna solve it for me. This is awesome, right? Really, really interesting kind of way to emphasize that point there.

Yeah, yeah, it's so true. You want, and and that goes, that's the problem expert. It's the, you know, hey, have have you seen this before? And that's I tell my sellers all the time, I'm like, you, you know, the the best case scenario is that, you know, we're able to have this conversation, have the discovery where, you know, we're we're discovering their their problem and understanding it, and then getting into, okay, and how does that impact you? You know, how painful is it? Is it something you're willing to solve? And and and and then you get into this, like, oh, I know, I've seen this. I've seen, in fact, I've seen this six times this week. Like, I I I know this problem, and I know, and therefore, like, I can give you the confidence that that I can solve it for you. And I just think the customers breathe a sigh of relief and they feel like they're in good hands. And clearly, I'm southern, you can tell from my accent. The, you know, I've I've said for probably 20 years, hey, it feels like that guy just needs a hug. Like, hey, like we are gonna, we, we got you. We are gonna take care of this. Like, we understand you, we know what needs to happen, and you're in good hands. I'm gonna take care of you. And then they can kind of relax into it because a lot, these aren't small problems. Like what we do in cybersecurity is not insignificant. And I know there are people sometimes who feel like you know, these are career defining decisions at times. I think, especially with what we're doing in AI right now, it feels it is a big moment. And it feels like something that you've got, you have to make some decisions without a lot of information. It's, you know, kind of this new frontier. I equate it a lot to cloud when cloud was first coming on the market. What was that 15 years ago, longer than that? I don't know. I feel like I'm aging in dog years. And, you know, everybody was kind of like, well, what is it? And you could ask somebody what their cloud strategy was, and everybody had a different definition of cloud, even. They were like, from the cloud to the cloud, through the cloud, like, what are we really doing with it? What do you mean? Because it meant something different, and you had a different strategy for each of them. But eventually it kind of started settling into this. We have SaaS applications, we've got, you know, unsanctioned IT. And, you know, you could get into these kind of groupings and everybody developed their transformation strategies. And, you know, board members were willing to wait while you said, we're gonna move a thousand, you know, applications to the cloud, we're gonna move these workloads to the cloud, and they'd go, okay. And you could draft your security strategy accordingly. But they were also getting, they were forming committees, they brought in transformation committees, they brought in transformation officers, and it feels a little like we're doing that again, but on steroids, it's faster, it's higher stakes. I was reading this morning that we've got AI agents apparently in people's bank accounts, which is a little concerning. Yeah, well, I guess if you've asked it to pay bills for you, it probably needs some level of access. And so like the stakes are higher, you know, the risk are, I think, something that everybody's starting to wrap their heads around. Like we all know there's a tremendous amount of risk, but it's defining what it is and where it where it lives and whose responsibility it is. So our ability to really understand that, and Andrew, I love what you said. I'm gonna use it, you know, around being incredibly empathetic. Because it'd be easy to show up and go, hey, I've got a thing that's gonna solve your problem. And they're gonna look at you and go, do you really know my problem? Because I'm not even sure I do, but I'm happy to spend some time talking about it.

That's I think that what you said there was dead on. That's my experience with the whole AI for security or security for AI kind of world right now. It's so fast moving. It is a seminal moment in an industry. And there's there's no one with three years of experience doing this in the world, right? Everyone's in, you know, one, two years, they're finding their way in and they're looking. You you said in your article, something that stood out for me is you know, you're not gathering information and discovery so you can figure out which slide to show next. You're helping someone make sense of a problem. I feel that's such an important thing in this world and for AI security and the big impact it's having on cybersecurity in general.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's I I spoke at our Dark Trace Live. It's these end user events we host. And we did one in New York the day after we launched our secure AI product. And I I opened it up and my presentation, you know, my my my portion, it wasn't really even a presentation. I talked about this cloud, you know, how is this similar to that cloud transformation, that cloud transition? And and you know, we talked about, I raised some questions around the, you know, the questions they have, you know, that the room full of CISOs and CIOs had, you know, around what does identity mean when you have agents and humans? And how do you differentiate between the two? And, you know, what are we really talking about when we're talking about this agent-level access? And, you know, we get into prompt security and all these things. And so, anyways, I'm framing all these questions. And it used to be if you opened up with something like that, they would get really impatient with you and justifiably, because they'd be like, I know my problem. Like, you're here. Like, tell me about it. And don't tell me things I already know.

Hands up, all the security folks like to be told by a salesperson what their problems are.

Right. Yeah. It'd be like, can we skip these first five slides? I don't need you to frame this up for me. We know. So yeah, so they'd get super impatient with you. And and I was a little worried, is my is this gonna land? And it did. And they were all kind of nodding, like, yeah, you I have those questions. Oh, those are new questions. And I even I had a moment of recognition where I looked at someone in the audience and I was like, I should probably say, like, hey, some of these are new questions. Some of these are probably things you've thought about, and some of these are new questions. And what we're gonna talk about today is the, you know, and as a group, like, let's work through how are we framing these questions? And, you know, it and and how do how do we view the problem? Like, what's that really look like? We we have been at this for a few years, you know, using AI to power cybersecurity. And so, you know, we took it from this perspective of let's like really take the time to surface the challenging questions that they're facing and get good conversations going on that. And it it landed.

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, looking from the outside, dark traces going from many products, let's say, down to this QAI kind of messaging around it. Does that make it easier or harder for someone to be more of a problem-oriented seller?

Well, we did it for a reason, Andrew. And I think it it does put you in a frame of where you've got to be more of the problem expert. Yeah, if you've got 14 products, you're gonna talk about those products, you're gonna see where they fit in. You know, that's where that tendency to kind of show, you know, enter a conversation and go, hey, here's my list of products, you know, which one fits your current problem? And hopefully like four or five of them fit a problem that you have or multiple problems you have. And so when, you know, part of the reframe around the behavioral defense platform is that, you know, we're looking at you've got infrastructure, you've got humans, and and and you know, then we've got you know hybrid networks that that we're really talking about. So it's it's it's infrastructure, it's humans, it's AI, like, and all those pieces need a level of security. But let's talk about like you're already kind of putting that, I'm gonna say this, the problem, out there on the front end of it with securing the infrastructure is the problem, securing the humans and the agents is the problem. And then, you know, securing AI is kind of the problem statement. So I do think it makes it easier. I was at a a startup a couple of years ago where you know we were, it was this incredible software that was very customized, that you know, you had to integrate into all these different systems within an environment. And it was, it wasn't packaged because it was all about like this. It was basically, you know, I was kind of saying, hey, this is like professional services where you're like integrating these pieces, super important, super relevant to do. I said, if you really want to go big, you know, in a market, you need a package product. And so we exactly framed it around what problem do we solve? How do we solve it? How do we solve it differently, and how do we prove it? And and it was it was a pretty big shift in in in their approach and in how and how we were talking to customers about it. And I think we've kind of done the same thing here with the with the behavioral defense platform and kind of the grouping there. It's really putting you on the front end of let's talk about what that means and let's talk about the implications and let's understand how you're doing it today and how you view the problem within it. You know, whether that's a disintegrating perimeter, you know, whether it's, you know, again, you know, how how do we look at our cloud workloads or Or this human and agent question. And then, of course, you know, really getting into this deep use of AI and knowing if you're actually using AI and the confidence to proceed accordingly. And ultimately being able to give your stakeholders, whether it's your customers or your board, or we've all got a boss, right? Being able to give them the confidence that, yes, we can use AI. And we can use AI to achieve all of our wildest dreams within our company. And we can do it in such a way that doesn't put our customer data at risk, that doesn't put our infrastructure at risk. And, you know, that is, you know, we've always talked about cybersecurity being a business enabler. Like we got to figure this out real quick to make sure that we can be the, you know, that cybersecurity can remain front foot on being that business enabler and companies can adopt AI and realize the benefits of it without without another hugging face happening.

Right. You guys, let's let's try and make this real for a seller who's listening to this. You know, I always think about that that poorer seller who's, you know, one of 25 at a startup. They've not a whole bunch of support from from HQ, because you know, does HQ even exist? It might be a virtual HQ, and they're in their basement office in Ohio trying to figure out, you know, how do they sell better and be successful? What do you think? Two or three tips for someone who's going, I want to be that person, I want to be that problem-oriented seller, two or three tips for them to make that change. What would you say?

I think no matter what you're selling, whether it's cut code knives or you know, the most advanced, you know, quantum compute software you've ever seen, you've got to be curious about your customer or your potential customer and about the market in general. And that just means that you're like constantly learning and asking questions. And I think if we go into, you know, as a seller, if you go into these conversations, is you're here to, you're here to learn something. You're here to learn, you know, and understand their problem better and how they're like viewing the problem and how impactful it is to them. And and, you know, really getting into the root of, you know, again, kind of going back to the is this a problem you're willing to spend money to solve? That requires a tremendous amount of curiosity. And it's it's this like all-encompassing subject around understanding your market, understanding their market, and then being able to, you know, it take that and kind of apply it into an interesting conversation where actually there's something else I heard. It was one of our chief marketing officers years ago at McAfee said it's there's this general premise where if you teach someone something first, they're much more likely to listen to you. They're much more likely to, you know, believe you and engage with you because, and maybe it goes back to that psychological premise you were talking about. So there's empathy, but then there's also trust. And if somebody can teach you something, maybe you're looking at them like, okay, like maybe you're someone I should listen to then, because I learned something from you. You know, being able to understand that problem and then and then help reframe it. And I just think if you're if you're only curious about your part of the world, which is where you get into being a product expert, you go and learn everything you can about your product, but you're not curious enough to understand how would somebody implement this? What systems within their environment would it integrate with? So if you only know your product and you don't know that, you know, Cisco infrastructure and Palo Firewalls and Sentinel One endpoint, and you can't piece together what all those three pieces might mean into, you know, the context of your conversation, you might steer them down the wrong road, actually. But if you understand those pieces, then you might be able to help help frame it. And so you just got to be curious about not just your part of the world, but about the rest of the world. And and I also think that if you're if if you are genuinely curious, that comes across in the conversation. You're not you're not doing discovery because you have a list of questions that you're supposed to ask. You're genuinely curious. Like, help me understand, help me understand you better so that I can help you better. And I I just I think that comes across. So, sellers, again, no matter what you're selling, be really, really curious about the conversation. Like actually seek to learn and then seek to teach. Um, you will get that opportunity if you've kind of shown that you're really understanding the problem, which I don't I just don't think you can do without without that sense of curiosity. And then I'd also say be willing to admit when you can't solve it. And I I talk about this a lot, actually. The the Go Giver is another good book. And it's you know, you can summarize it as be you can earn trust, you can earn and build credibility by kind of admitting where you stop and where something else picks up and referring. Hey, I can't fix that for I hey, you know what? Thank you for this conversation. I hear you, I understand you, and I can't help you. I would love to be able to help you, but I can't. And then the other thing we're kind of programmed to do as sellers is to contort ourselves in such a way that we can find a way to help them. And and it and it it doesn't usually work. You end up, you know, kind of putting yourself into a weird spot with deployment, and then there's, you know, unmet expectations and all that. But being willing to say, I can't help you with that, but I know someone who can. And that's also going to mean you've been curious about your industry and kind of your your you know, your your domain, so that you can build those relationships and that connectivity to be able to say, I can't help you with that, but I know this guy who can. Let me provide that introduction. And they never forget some of my best friends in this industry came from doing exactly that.

So one of the things you were saying there, Marty, was interesting about curiosity. Like it's one of these things that is more and more a trait that we we look for in salespeople. I'm curious if if you, as you're hiring people, if you have a way to try and get a sense of how curious they really are.

I'd if we all have different strategies, it is definitely something that I'd I ask our talent acquisition and all of our leaders to be on the lookout for. Some of it, it it's as easy as like, tell me something you've learned recently. And I actually love to hear them talk about something totally random that like they went to an art museum and picked something or, you know, a fun fact they've picked up somewhere along the line. Cause you can also see how excited they get about it. And and that starts to translate later into passion, which I think is also a super important part of selling. But yeah, so it like talk to me about something you've learned recently. You know, what's a great book you've read? How do you, this is this is actually an interesting one because they can easily fall into a trap on this about if they're a product expert or a problem expert. Hey, especially let's say they've changed jobs a couple times, because most people have at this point. How do you view your onboarding? Like, how are you gonna learn what you need to learn in order to be successful here? And how can I support you in that? Like, what does that look like from your perspective? And some of the best responses I've heard are, you know, obviously I'm gonna do my enablement, all these things. I'm gonna take my SE out to lunch once a week and just sit there. And for an hour and a half or as long as, you know, my SE will let me, I'm gonna ask questions about what they've seen, how it's worked, what, you know, and how these things have gone for them. And that's where you can start to see, okay, they're gonna actually invest in learning this, not just memorizing a data sheet.

Yeah, that's interesting. I love that. Uh, people would take charge of that themselves and really go and know how they learn and what they need to fill in the gaps.

Yeah. Yeah. Instead of medual my enablement. Like it's more than that. Yeah.

Well, we're recording this in October 2026, Marty, which is breast cancer awareness month, which I know is personal for you. What do you wish more people knew, especially about early detection? Oof.

Well, we've been talking a lot about outcomes and, you know, understanding the problem. And, you know, when it comes to breast cancer, early detection is literally the most important factor in improving the outcome, you know, in terms of, you know, catching it early, just it changes your treatment plan and, you know, can get you back to living your life faster and, you know, reduce kind of the look, if if you've had any kind of cancer, you know, I I can speak to having had breast cancer, it impacts your life afterwards. And so the earlier you catch it, the less impact you have because your your treatment might have been less invasive. And you just, yeah, you can you can reach so much better outcomes. But also the important thing about early detection is there's still a lot of development going on about it. And, you know, right now, I think it's super important to kind of the hard way of saying it, I want to answer your question, but I also really want to share this message is that do not stop in reaching detection. You have to advocate for yourself a lot, especially if you want to catch a go. If you wait till your problems and your symptoms are super, super evident. That is typically when it's pretty late. So if you suspect something is going on, push for the testing that you need. I I have no problem sharing this pretty openly. I was given a clean bill of health three weeks before I was diagnosed from one scan. And then I needed to have a different type of scan. It didn't show up on an ultrasound, it showed up on an MRI. And so there's kind of this thing about to get early, to reach early detection, to be able to make early detection a reality, it that is in itself pretty invasive, and you have to push pretty hard for it. So there's a lot of development going on to come up with a blood test that can detect breast cancer so that you don't have to go through all these invasive and sometimes not accurate means of getting to it. But I yeah, just early detection, so, so important. And it's something that you might have to fight pretty hard for because sometimes you're told what you think is going on isn't going on. That's not a real problem. And, you know, you've got to you've got to push to get to the diagnosis so that you can get it early and it makes all the difference.

Now, there's gonna be a fair few leaders on uh listening to this, watching this. What helped you from the company, from the people you worked with when you got diagnosed that really helped you out to kind of get through that? And what didn't really help out?

My team was amazing. I had the best business partner you could possibly ask for. And my SE leader, Steven Rockwell. I hope he listens to this. He was like, I got you. We got you. So I had hired a great team, I had built a great team who all said, Hey, we we've got this. So, you know, I think an important thing there is make sure you've got a good team surrounding you. Because if you're the one, a lot of us fall into that martyrdom of I've got to do it all. If you've created a situation where you have to do it all and something like that happens, it's probably gonna be tough. Luckily, you know, we had built this great team that knew what good looked like and what was expected. And then I had this, you know, incredible partner in Steven who was, he was like, we got it. And and it, I mean, look, I was at Palo, it was 2021. There was no shortage of hours to work and things that needed to be done. So knowing that I could, you know, really, really trust them to do what needed to be done. But look, we'd set up a great system and you know, and and had this great team. And so everybody was kind of able to pick up and run. But I think if I had to summarize it, it's the hire great people, empower them, get out of the way. Because when you need to get out of the way, they're gonna need to be able to function without you. And, you know, we've got to let go of some of that ego of no, everything has to be done by me, or I'll just do it all. Because, you know, one day you're not gonna be able to do it all. And you're gonna need people who can pick up and run with it.

Well, that's a great note to finish on Marty. Thanks for sharing that with us. And we wish you all the success, especially with the change of dark trays in terms of how you're going to market. So looking forward to seeing the results from that.

Thank you. We're excited about it.