Talking event renewal with Canada's Calgary Stampede

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Vern Kimball, CEO of Calgary Stampede Canada from 2006 to 2015 following 20 years in other positions in the organization - a total of 29 years with the Calgary Stampede.

The Calgary Stampede is a not-for-profit community organization that preserves and celebrates Western heritage, cultures and community spirit. Led by over 2,300 passionate volunteers, the year-round events, programs and initiatives invest in youth, support agricultural programs, celebrate western culture and make a lasting economic impact on the city.

Each year, Stampede Park hosts over 1,200 business, tourism, sporting, hospitality and community events, and welcomes more than two million guests. These year-round events create thousands of jobs and contribute more than $400 million to the local economy.

Vern shares with us the process of renewal of Calgary Stampede and how they rebuilt the brand and reinvigorated the entire event. With new purpose and vision statements, Vern and his supportive and passionate board were on a mission...and what a story of success.

Transcript

Linda:

My first question is around context, to get more information about your involvement with the Calgary Stampede. Could you tell us about your involvement with it?

Vern:

Well, let me start off by providing a bit of context, first of all about the Stampede generally. Stampede is a year round organisation. It hosts about 2,000 events every year. Gross revenues are about $140 million each year and $70 million of that comes during the 10 days of Stampede, and the other $70 million comes from the rest of the year.

That's context for how I ended up joining the organisation. I was recruited in 1986 to lead the food and beverage section of the Stampede. The task I was given was to make sure that the food and beverage team was prepared to deal with the 1988 Winter Olympics.

I quickly discovered that the food and beverage team was underappreciated by their then-management. So I told my boss at the time that he had a really good food and beverage team - what else would he like me to do? Because there wasn't a lot for me to do there.

So I moved into sales and facilities and did Midway at Stampede and did long range planning. And then in 1994 I became the Chief Financial Officer. When my boss retired in 2004, the board made me Chief Operating Officer for two years and in 2006, I became the Chief Executive Officer and I retired from the Stampede in 2015.

Linda:

That's a long time to be involved.

Vern:

Yeah, 29 years. But it had the scope to keep me interested. I loved every day of it. It was a great gig.

Linda:

What were some of your highlights during that time?

Vern:

There were lots of highlights, but I mean at the end of the day, it was always about the people that I worked with. When I was the CEO, it was the Centennial, a big year. The flood was a big year. Every year was a big year in some way, shape or form, so it was it was just a fun job in every capacity.

Linda:

You just don't hear of that these days - 29 years with one organisation.

Vern:

At the Stampede, there's a lot of people that stay because the 10 days are just so much fun. Some people who've left the organisation, they say what's special about the Stampede is that everybody comes together for those 10 days.

During the rest of the year, everybody typically works in their own area of specialisation. But those 10 days of the year? It sort of creates that feeling like Christmas. Everybody works like heck to make that a special time, and it really is a special time. Once you leave the Stampede and you go do another job you miss that sense of camaraderie and pulling together. That's a big part of what makes the Stampede special.

Linda:

I think a lot of events have that, and it's why a lot of people struggle with… you know, when you talk about volunteers with events, they think, ‘Oh my God, I can't put in so much effort again.’ But then they experience the event and, I always say, it's like having a baby. You know, there's so much work that goes into it and preparation and then you think, ‘Oh my God, you know, I could never do that again.’ But then you have it, and you forget all about that hard work, because you have such a good celebration, and the outcome is so beautiful that it's, you know, Let's do it again.

Vern:

Well, I can't really relate to having a baby. At least that would be most awkward for me to try and relate to, but our volunteers are pretty special. There are 2,200 volunteers that, for the most part connect at Stampede, and that's really when volunteers and employees have their greatest point of connection in terms of making Calgary as a whole a special place.

Linda:

In addition to you being with the event for a long time, the Stampede has a really long history. Can you tell me a bit about how the Stampede started? Often events lose their way a little as they grow and develop and mature, so I'm interested to understand what was that core purpose of The Stampede, and is that still relevant today?

Vern:

The Stampede started in 1884 as an Agricultural Society. The City of Calgary at that time was 500 residents, and agriculture was the main area of endeavour at the time. The volunteers were excited to put on a show that would exhibit their best, and part of it was about getting people from other parts of Canada to come in and help develop the country, so it was a commercial, community-building effort on the part of those first volunteers.

1884 through till about 1920-ish the agricultural event was put on. Some years it was a big success, some years it wasn't. Concurrent to that, but at a different time of year, beginning in 1912, Guy Weadick came to town - he was a promoter from the USA. He wanted to create a Wild West show, so he created a Wild West show in 1912 called the Stampede, and he envisioned that as a celebration of essentially the Wild West and cowboy culture. It was a big success in 1912, but it was envisioned as a one-time event and so it wasn't held again for several years.

Then it was held again in the early 1920s and then both events recognised economic reality and decided to merge. So we had on one hand an agricultural fair that wouldn't have looked much different than all the other agricultural fairs that were going on pretty much throughout the rest of the world, but what was different was it was grafted with this Wild West show.

Over the next 10 or 15 years, this grafting of these two very different events became one, although the tensions between the two lingered and probably still exist in some small way today. It was an interesting merger. I think it's accurate to say it was a shotgun wedding of the two for economic reasons.

But the notion of the Wild West captured people. In some ways, the Wild West represented a nostalgia for a time that never was, but it was an imagined past period of cowboys being self-reliant and First Nations -of course they were referred to as Indians - so it was all about cowboys and Indians and that was something that was very special for North America.

There were several movies screened around the world and so there was this identification of Calgary and the Stampede being synonymous, even though everybody was really just a cowboy for 10 days a year, unless you were working on the range or on a ranch.

For sure, Calgary and the surrounding area is ranching country, and that ranching country has cowboys. But there's not a lot of ranches that have a chuck wagon race to get to do their cookouts today - and I'm not sure there ever were.

Linda:

How they merged, and that possibly there’s still some minor tension there today. I've been through that situation myself with a number of festivals where often for economic reasons or human resource reasons that there's a need for a couple of events within a destination to consider that option of coming together. It's quite exciting if it's done well, and adds so much value to both of those events and obviously create some efficiencies, which is fantastic.

What is the purpose of Calgary Stampede today?

Vern:

Well, today it celebrates Western heritage and Western values. One of the things that helped us move forward, and bridge this debate of ‘Are we an exhibition or are we a Wild West rodeo?’ was to soften the attachment to both of those and think about them as in terms of what they had in common at the value level.

If you go right back to 1884 and then in 1886 when the first agricultural fair was held, what was it really about? It was about bringing people together. To share some hospitality and to invite people to come and live in Calgary. And when you think about the Stampede, what was it all about? Initially it was all about inviting everybody to participate.

A particular historical moment occurred in 1912 when the leader of the Stampede took on the federal government and invited all of the First Nations in the surrounding area to participate. At that time, First Nations people were confined to reserves. They were not allowed to share their culture with anybody and Guy Weadick’s vision was the Stampede was for everybody, so the very first parade was led by First Nations and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dignitaries.

But the whole idea was that it was a community celebration for everybody. If you forget about whether or not you're coming to watch skilled trick riders or coming to see the best of agriculture and think about know you're coming together to celebrate being alive in all the bounty of the area, you can get past is it really about the exhibition or is it really about the Stampede? Because the answer is, it's about both.

The other piece of that is by forcing the discussion around what is it we're trying to do and it's about community, it's about what does the community want to see? What does the community want to participate in? That kind of higher level purpose enabled changes to be made to traditions in both areas in a way that the community could embrace and continue to see themselves in those activities.

Linda:

Now, during the time as the CEO, the event underwent that major period of renewal. Can you tell us about that? There's a couple of points I'm interested in - how that all happened, and what were the key determining factors resulting in the need for that renewal? How did you identify, or what happened that made the board or yourself go, look, we've got to renew; we've got to refresh? What do you think would have happened if that whole period of renewal didn't happen?

Vern:

Well, I think the first time that I was aware of it, I was at a board meeting, and I was the Chief Financial Officer at the time and the then-President of the organisation had invited the mayor to speak to us. We as an organisation weren't getting the support that we felt we should have from City Council. The mayor said to us that it would be easy for Council to support us as long as we got all of the citizens to tell their Counsellors that they should support the Stampede, and so while that was a difficult message to comprehend and to agree with because our preference would have been for the mayor to wave his magic wand and make all of our problems disappear.

Some of us paid attention to that and started to keep our ears to the ground, and asked folks what they thought of us. And the short version that we used internally was that we were difficult to do business with and one of the things that was tossed around about us was we were male, pale, and stale. And we didn't like that depiction of ourselves, because of course, we thought that we were working hard for the benefit of the community, but when several people anecdotally had suggested that that's the way we were seen, that caused us to think about doing some things differently.

To the board's credit they commissioned a survey of Calgarians to determine what they thought about Stampede and what we needed to do differently. We talked through a survey company, actually a reputation management company that did interviewed community leaders on a one-on-one basis. They did this for every sector – the agriculture sector, entertainment, First Nations, downtown businesses, small businesses. They had focus groups with community leaders in a very comprehensive way.

So we had a good picture of how we were being seen, and then we did a formal survey based on what we learned and surveyed 1,700 Calgarians. $400,000 and two years later we had a really good understanding of how we were seen and that became the starting point for a number of changes.

Those changes started right from the level of mission statement first, then governance second, master planning third, and then execution of those over time.

When I talked earlier about how important it was to move from activities to values, we moved from a three quarter of a page purpose statement that described everything that we did and moved it towards the very simple purpose statement, which was to preserve and promote Western heritage and values. Concurrent to that, we created a vision statement which was to become a world class year round gathering place. Those two statements became the glue that held all of the rest of the activities together.

We thought about what do we need to change to fulfill those purpose and vision statements? The first thing that was determined was we needed to change the governance model. And the governance model evolved because there was confusion in the marketplace based on the surveys that they didn't know who was who and who is in charge of the Stampede. So we employed a Chief Operating Officer and then Chief Executive Officer. that was a big change for the board because prior to that the President of the organisation held executive power, but that was relinquished such that the board had one employee who was me and I was accountable for executing against the purpose and vision.

Being really good at rodeo and being good at presenting agriculture, were no longer what they were asking me to do. They were asking me to think about what do Western values look like, and how do we express those on a daily basis? How do we express those in our product offerings? And what does it mean to create a world class year round gathering place?

So another few hundred thousand dollars later we had a plan, we had a billion dollar plan to create a world class year round gathering place.

We had no money, but we certainly knew that we had a dream that we could talk to Calgarians about because we were reflecting back what we are proposing to do, what they had told us in the focus groups, with community leaders and in the surveys with Calgarians.

That's kind of where it all started. My job was to communicate externally and to communicate internally. Once we had the purpose and vision, then we worked on the brand. I think the language that I used was ‘many voices, but one message’ and it was all around that.

We worked hard to make sure that everybody understood that what they were about was what they were doing before but they understood why, in the context of preserve and promote Western heritage and values, and/or creating a world class year round gathering place.

Linda:

What do you think would have happened if that whole period of renewal didn't happen?

Vern:

The short answer is I don't know. But what I do know is because we listened, we were able to connect in a much more comprehensive way with the community, so we ended up with new partners and new sponsors and government support. We ended up with all kinds of people wanting to do business with us.

In 2004 or 2005, we had half the revenues we do now. We had half the sponsorship we do now. We added about $400 million worth of assets over that 10 year period. Some of that for sure would have happened had we not changed, but I don't think we would have been anywhere near as successful at getting governments to say, the Stampede’s a good organisation and the Stampede is an organisation that we can use to help us fulfill our objectives.

For example, we've done all kinds of Indigenous programming and the government has supported us because we do Indigenous programming, and they have an interest in tourism. We bring tourists to Calgary and then send them to other areas in the province because they make a week's holiday out of the event. Or we connect with education. We have probably 11 different departments that we actually work very closely with on various programs.

So the renewal worked out well.

Linda:

I can't help but think back to after the flood where everybody just came in to make the Stampede happen. When you think about it, that is the result of all the work that you did, listening to community, engaging with community, a lot of events forget about that. They get so focused on visitors and attracting visitors into town and that side of an event that they forget about their local community and the significance of having them as ambassadors for the event.

Vern:

Well, we when I look at any organisation, when I analyse the organisation, I take a look at it and I draw two lines diagonally and then the box in either end I say, Here's what you do. This is the factory and then on the other end here's what the market is, and that's two dimensions. But then there are two other dimensions. One is financial. And how do you get money? Do you have to borrow? Or can you borrow money? And then the other one is the social-political dimension.

The investments that people make in an organisation that's not-for-profit like the Stampede, tend to be emotional investments and social capital as opposed to return on shareholder value or some other kind of typical stock market. We had debt and we had the capacity to carry debt, but really a tremendous amount of our growth was driven by saying to a sponsor, here's what we're trying to do, and here's what we think is in it for you as a company, here's what we think is in it for your employees, and they can get engaged in it. And our brand is good, and it would look really good beside your brand. And if we have that trifecta, then you can participate.

We have one sponsor that had some business objectives and they wanted to connect with a particular demographic and it aligned with what we were trying to do. They purchased naming rights eight figure level naming rights that included programming visual identity and a genuine partnership with us -  a 15-year partnership. Those are the kinds of things where people looked at us and said, hey, we can work together for mutual benefit.

Linda:

So is the mayor now happy?

Vern:

The mayors that I worked with were very happy to participate. We have a Council of 15 led by the mayor, and our Council has been very supportive. It wasn't particularly supportive in 2000, but it became progressively more supportive and when we had the flood, they were just one of many who made a phone call and said, can we do anything to help. The city was terrific in terms of permitting and providing materials and lending equipment. They were outstanding.

You talked about the flood and was it a testimonial for how much the community cared? We had ordered 720 t-shirts that said, Stampede 2001, come hell or high water. Two weeks later, we sold 163,262 t-shirts. In the community, so that's a lot of t-shirts. We donated the proceeds to the Red Cross Flood relief. And so that was a $2.5 million contribution to the Red Cross, which was the largest contribution they'd had from any one organisation, and it was all because citizens saw the Stampede as an icon trying to make a difference and they wanted to show that they cared. It was pretty special.

Linda:

That's amazing. I love that.

What were the critical factors that had to line up to ensure the renewal process was successful? I noted things like community engagement, the governance structure, the brand, and you've already touched on all of those. Is there anything else in terms of what had to line up or what was a key focus for you in order for this renewal phase or this renewal process to be a success?

Vern:

For me, the key was that I had the opportunity to work with some forward thinking board members. Our board had 28 members and many of our board members were accustomed to doing things the way we had been doing them and really didn't understand why we weren't being appreciated. These board members are all volunteers and they all devoted hundreds of hours each year to this, and they weren't being appreciated. There was foresight amongst some board members to say let's find out what people really think, and they supported me in doing a survey and that's a courageous step to say, we're hearing stuff that we don't like, so we should do something about it.

To their credit, they supported very large expenditures of money to find out what people really thought, and then they were prepared to act on it. Being aware that there's an issue and not running from it and then having the courage to act on what you've been told – I give a lot of credit to the volunteer leaders of the organisation who said yeah, we're going to do this.

Although I was a part of the process, I wasn't the number one mover in that. I was the one who was a part of it and worked closely with some of the board members, but then once they decided what they wanted, then they asked me to then lead the charge from that standpoint.

I suppose the buzzwords today would be, don't waste the crisis, but I would say, recognise the crisis before it really becomes one, because we were doing just fine in 2004. The organisation was not in financial trouble. It just wasn't being seen the way we wanted to be seen.

But I would give kudos to a forward thinking and progressive Board of Directors. Any CEO needs thoughtful support from the board.

Linda:

Yeah, I totally agree. My next question is the Stampede has not been without challenges, and we've already talked about the flood as one massive challenge. But what do you think has been the key factor resulting in the ongoing success of the Stampede?

Vern:

Even though for many years we assumed it was our event, our event meaning of the people that put on the event, we had to understand that it was the community’s event. It doesn't do anybody any good to say we're doing everything right. What we learned was that we needed to make sure that our values conformed with the community’s values, and that drove a number of changes in terms of, for example, rodeo.

Rodeo at one time was influenced heavily by the different rodeo events - the Pro Rodeo Cowboy’s Association and the Canadian Pro Rodeos Association - very organised folks. They were interested in putting on an event that worked really well for the cowboys. By us moving towards an invitational rodeo, what we were able to do is to say we really respect what the two associations that we dealt with did, but we also pushed for some changes such that the rodeo was more urban friendly than it was before.

We were able to get the very best cowboys to come to our event and instead of having hours of slack where cowboys compete, we brought in the best cowboys from all over the world because our guests wanted to see the very best for an urban audience who haven't grown up in the ranching. They don't have the sophistication that a ranching community would have. By having the best of the best we could market our rodeo as having the best of the best.

We then put in all kinds of TV and commentary that showed an urban audience what was important in rodeo, so people could really appreciate and support the sport. It wasn't about doing a great rodeo. It was about making a fun event for an urban audience.

These are the kinds of things that we tested. We eliminated some of the events where an urban audience would say this isn't kind to people or kind to animals. For example, when cow milking didn't score well on our audience measures, milking disappeared, and some of the other events were modified to reflect the urban sensibility.

Linda:

What's next for the Stampede, an event that's got so much history, and I'd imagine quite high expectations placed on it, having had so many years of success. What's your thoughts on how it can continue to stay fresh?

Vern:

Well, my thoughts don't matter much because there's a new guy in in charge now. But when I had coffee with him a couple of weeks ago, he had just come off the second best attended Stampede in our history. He and his team and all of our volunteers had continued to refresh the event and continued to make it more interesting and more exciting to the audience.

He is working very hard on expanding the exhibition facilities and is optimistic that he would have a $500 million development starting to go later this year. As he said, you never know until the money is in the bank. But he was very optimistic that there'd be a $500 million development started, which would be absolutely fabulous. Currently the Stampede has an economic impact of $400 million. He says that once this development’s up and running that will add an additional $300 million of economic impact.

I think the Stampede is just going to continue to grow and continue to build. I'd be surprised if in ten years it doesn't double again in size. He's got a great board that's supporting him. Of course, any anything can happen in this crazy world that we live in, but as of two weeks ago, he was having fun and enjoying the challenges of leading an organisation.

Linda:

How does that compare around the world in terms of size and scale of an event organisation? Is it up there with one of the bigger organisations?

Vern:

In many ways I would think that the Stampede is unique, so it's difficult to compare. If you were to look at rodeo, the benchmark for measuring rodeos is always prize money. And the National Finals Rodeo is the number one in terms of prize money, so they get the best cowboys and they compete for a very large purse. We get the same cowboys, but our format is different and so we have the half million dollar payday on the final Sunday where the winner in each event gets $100,000. But we would be top five on just the rodeo component.

We would be one of the largest fairs in terms of attendance. If we attract 1,300,000 attendees which is what they almost did this year, that's 130,000 people a day on average. There are other fairs that attract more, but they run over two or three weeks, so again we have the highest intensity.

I think what makes us very different from any fair is the community participation. In some ways we would be more like a Mardi Gras or an Oktoberfest - something where the whole community comes out and participates. The individual elements of the Stampede have significant scale and would be among the largest in North America, if not the world. But over and above that, there's this tremendous sense of community where activities go on downtown, they go on in every community centre, they go on in people's backyards, they go on every bar and hotel in the city. Because the community is so involved it's quite unique, and the Stampede actually loves the fact that all this other activity is going down.

For example, for a few years, one of our sponsors (and this goes back to Western values), one of our sponsors had said, I don't think there's enough people wearing cowboy hats. If I gave you $100,000, would you get some people in hats? And so we turned this promotion over to our breakfast committee, and when they were doing breakfast on the mall, they were giving out 10,000 hats to anybody who wanted a hat, and we didn't really care whether they wore a fancy Western hat or a straw Western hat. We just wanted them to participate in this notion of, this is part of Calgary's Western hospitality. I think we did our hat promotions for three or four years so almost everybody has a hat.

It's so easy to dress Western, it's basically jeans, a big buckle and boots, or any form of denim, and the cowboy hat, so it's nothing to see a line of cowboy hats coming into the Stampede at any time of day, and frankly it's not uncommon to see Western dress year round in offices in Calgary. But everybody makes a special effort during the 10 days.

Linda:

It shows the impact of events and what they can achieve year round for a destination and for brand. All of a sudden you start to see that brand filtering beyond the event, and it starts to become more of an iconic feature of the destination. It's similar to Mount Isa Rodeo in western Queensland, and what that has done on a smaller scale, but for us in Queensland.

Vern:

Yeah, Mount Isa Rodeo gets more people at the rodeo than they have as a population, so that's certainly a great marker of success.

Linda:

So my final question. In Australia, there are many regional events and festivals that are struggling with burnout, and this challenge of becoming stagnant. They've been growing and they're on that trajectory, but then they've hit a wall where there's a combination of the volunteers and the community getting tired. With that comes the event becoming stagnant, lack of innovation, not a lot of freshness coming into the event, not a lot of creativity. I'm interested what would be your tips for events that are in this situation.

Vern:

I think I would start much the same way we did in terms of having a good understanding of whether the reason the event was created in the first place still makes sense. That's a hard question to ask, but really, if the mission of the event is no longer relevant or popular or needed, then it's tough to do anything with it.

For us, the answer to that question wasn't about doing a better job of activities. It was more about bringing people together. You talked earlier about sometimes people have to consolidate events because it creates efficiency. For sure, that's always a possibility. But when that's done, it's really key that folks agree on what it is that they're trying to achieve, and it may not be exactly what the two events were doing before. It's probably around some kind of value, like, we're going to create excitement about nature in this city at this time of year, because that's what the community needs.

If that research is solid, that provides a platform to then develop a plan for renewal. I think it there needs to be a plan for renewal that's pretty specific. In our case, our high level statement was world class year round gathering place. Well if it's just an event in August, then that's not going to be year round perhaps, but what is it that? Why is the event in August? Why does that make sense? Why did people start that event in the first place?

And then I think it's about, once you have the plan, and you should be able to say this is going to be different than what we did before. Then it needs to be resourced and I don't have any tips for an event because it's different depending on how big your budget is to deliver your event because you'll have different kinds of resources available to you as scale. A smaller event is going to be way more reliant on volunteers.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but what was really critical as part of the survey work we did is we asked our volunteers what they thought. We asked them how they would feel if the Stampede didn't exist anymore. What would you say if the Stampede ceased to exist? What would you write on the tombstone? Would you say so sad, too bad? We had these passionate outpourings from people describing the sense of loss that they would feel if they were creating the eulogy of the Stampede.

It was a very interesting focus group, and it was a very powerful way of communicating what the Stampede meant to its stakeholders. I would think if any kind of stagnation or sense that a renewal that is required would be to talk to everybody involved and ask them how they think about it. What would they say if it ceased to exist, and what would they suggest would make it better? And would they be willing to participate if it was made better? And did they have any desire to participate? That would be the kind of foundational work I would do in considering any kind of renewal process.

Linda:

I think the biggest thing you've highlighted for me is something that a lot of events forget to do, which is a regular process of going out and asking the community for feedback. They get so consumed in the delivery mode, keeping the wheels turning - it's a very heavily intensive process organising an event. What I see in my experience, there's a lot of event committees get so bogged down in the delivery of the event and making sure that they continue to deliver something, that they don't often stop to think, hang on, are we still relevant? Are we still delivering what our attendees want or what our community wants?

Vern:

From my point of view, I think it can be a lot of fun for any organisation, because that renewal process creates a sense of energy. I there's a sense of stagnation or a sense that renewal might be required, just saying, OK, we need to do something different, how do we do that?, and then having those conversations with others is really energising.

For sure, not everything you hear is going to make you say wow, isn't this a great day? But it starts to create a baseline for you to say, OK, we need to do some things differently. Sometimes critical feedback causes you to think about things differently than you otherwise might have, and that is energising.

Linda:

I do a lot of that work with events in terms of strategic planning work and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I think the biggest challenge I have is when you've got board members of an event that just can't see the opportunity, and are sometimes over quite overwhelmed by that sense of vision or thinking strategically. They're so used to being operational and having that hands on involvement in, you know, where we set up the cattle yards and what colour chair covers will we have?

Vern:

I think every board struggles with that. I mean, we're all really comfortable deciding what colour to paint the washroom, and much less comfortable deciding where we're going to go. I think that that is not uncommon.

I think that that is where whoever the leader of the organisation needs to say, well, we need to change. And here's the things we need to do differently. But you can't do that till you've got a good understanding of where you want to go. I think most people once a game plan is put in place, can buy into it. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that when somebody's presenting the new game plan, somebody's going to say, what colour are we painting the cattle pens again? I think that just is part of human dynamics in every area of endeavour.

Linda:

Well, that's very reassuring to hear. Thanks for your time, Vern. I really appreciate you making yourself available to talk to me.