President of Rancho Mesa Dave Garcia welcomes AF Group's Chief Claims Officer Paul Kearney and Senior Vice President of Claims Rick Hobbs. During this episode, Rick and Paul discuss what a business can do to create better claims outcomes.

Show Notes: Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter.

www.afgroup.com

Director/Producer: Alyssa Burley

Host: Dave Garcia

Guest: Paul Kearney and Rick Hobbs of AF Group

Editor: Lauren Stumpf

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence, "Elevators Need Rock Too" by Spence

© Copyright 2022. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

transcript

[Introduction Music]

Dave Garcia: Good morning. This is Dave Garcia, president of Rancho Mesa. And thank you for joining me to today's podcast here at StudioOne™. Today, I'll be talking with Rick Hobbs, the Senior Vice President of Claims for Accident Fund, and Paul Kearney, the Chief Claims Officer for Accident Fund as well. So, Rick Paul, welcome to the show.

Rick Hobbs: Thank you so much for having us.

Paul Kearney: Yes, hi, Dave. It is really a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

DG: Yeah, super excited to have you both. Real quickly, before we get started, tell me, where are you actually at physically today? Where am I talking to you from?

RH: David, I am located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and as I look out my office window, we have about six inches of white fluffy snow on the ground, which is great for Christmas, but we're not even to Thanksgiving yet.

PK: Very similar to the environment that Rick just described. But I'm actually in our home office of Lansing, Michigan, and we, too, are looking at about four inches of snow with an expectation that there may be four more inches before the day is over. But in spite of that, I feel sunshine radiating from this call, in part because of your presence and because of the great recall. So it's all good, but perfect.

DG: Well, I won't share with you that it's currently cloudless and 75 degrees here in San Diego.

PK: As we thought.

DG: Yeah, exactly. So, Rick and Paul, as we get started, tell me a little bit more about CompWest, the Accident Fund Group and your particular role. So, Rick, why don't you start us off?

RH: Sure. Well, accident bond is the parent company of several of our specialty model line workers compensation companies. And I am responsible for field operations. So I get to work very, very closely with Dave McGowan, who is our claim leader at CompWest. And then as I hand it over to Paul for his introduction, Paul and I work very, very closely. I'm responsible for those field operations and executing on all of the good things that we want to do. Paul works very closely with me and he's responsible for the overall claim operations and setting the strategy for our organization. So we kind of, the way we keep ourselves straight is, I'm responsible for the field operations and providing as much support to Dave McGowan and CompWest and all of our good claim people in CompWest as I can and then Paul's, Paul's the strategy guy.

DG: Perfect. So Paul's the brains. I get that, right?

DG: What would you like to add, Paul?

PK: I'll just say, first of all, Dave, again, it's really, really, really great to be here. But let me just say that I've had the great fortune for almost two years now to serve as the Chief Claims Officer for AF Group. And with that, and as Rick has kind of noted, you know, I have the responsibility for setting the claim strategy for the entire organization and for providing, you know, strategic support that allows our claims and business partners to optimize their outcomes through services such as nurse case management, subrogation, causation, large loss reviews, and even via our ICU team, which is responsible for fraud and other investigations. And to the point that rig has made, he and I, as well as our respective organizations, you know, walk hand-in-hand. It's really a great partnership that certainly serves our company very well and certainly all of our stakeholders as well. I sometimes joke that, you know, Rick and I are brothers from another mother. I mean, that's how closely aligned we are.

DG: Yeah. And that's a powerful combination. You know, when you have the two leaders of that side of your organization, of one mind, then it's easy to play to the strengths of each and then just deliver a superior product, which we certainly have experienced with, you know, CompWest and our clients that are currently and fortunately insured by them.

RH: Can I just add one thing to that, Paul? From an experience standpoint, we kind of complement each other very well. Paul mentioned he has been here for two years. I've now just completed my 10th year and it's from a cultural perspective, we absolutely love the culture at AF Group. Prior to my joining the company, I was with another very, very large company that has a Statue of Liberty as their as their logo. And Paul came from another very reputable large insurance carrier that has a red umbrella as their logo. So we both bring a lot of different long term and different experiences into the AF group, and it complements each other very well.

DG: I love the collective IQ. That's something we look for all the time as well. What I'd like to do today, fellows, if it's okay with you, is I want to talk ultimately about some of the unique products and services that you provide policyholders. But before we jump into that, just for those just business owners out there, regardless of actual work comp carrier they have their insurance through. I'm wondering if you guys experience in that collective IQ, if we could talk a little bit about what are just some practical things business owners could do to try to create better claim outcomes should a claim occur for them? So, Rick, what in your view, what are some of the things a business could do to get good outcomes?

RH: Dave, two things come to mind that I think can have a huge impact and there's definitely studies behind it that support it. The first thing I would say is when someone begins losing time from work because of an injury that they suffered at work, sometimes they have a feeling of being very helpless and they find themselves in a very foreign system. I think we're all very used to our group health and how that works. You know, we understand how utilizing doctors that are in network can be different from a cost standpoint to us for using doctors that are out of network. We understand where our prescriptions are coming from and we don't have to deal with where that next paycheck is coming from. When you find yourself in a work comp system, it's very, very different than what we were all used to on the group health side of things. So as an employer, putting that person at ease, reaching out to them periodically just to ask them, hey, how are you doing? I'm is your insurance company taking good care of you? Are you hearing from them just maintaining that contact throughout that period when they can't work is very, very powerful to that individual and assuring them that their job is waiting for them as soon as they are medically able. And then to tie that right into it, having a very formalized, robust “keep at work” program that is available to that injured worker and letting them know early on that when they're medically ready there is alternative modified duty that can meet the restrictions and limitations of what their doctor prescribes. So getting that person back into work, getting up every day to shower, get ready for work, get in their car, or take the bus to work, whatever it takes, showing up at work. All of those things I think, have shown to speed up the recovery process, make the person feel better, both emotionally as well as physically and getting them back to that work routine.

DG: Yeah, that I mean, obviously everything you just said makes total sense, but it's something that I think can probably get overlooked, you know, by an employer. They're busy, you know, they're just trying to like, carry on. I've got to continue to work. I've got to get that person's responsibilities taken care of by somebody else. So, you know, I think that's a great reminder that we all need to have that empathy with those people and show that concern, because most business owners honestly feel like their employees are family members. Then when an injury occurs, you need to treat them like a family member. I think that's kind of, I'm paraphrasing what I think I just heard you say, but that's what it sounds like. And to make sure that the injured worker's family, you know, is comfortable and understands, you know, maybe it's a serious injury and they're not able to speak to their injured loved one. It's important for the employer to reach out as well to the family members to explain to them you're your husband, your wife is going to be taken care of. Here's how you're going to get paid, all those types of things. So those are really great points, Rick.

RH: Well, if you're not hearing from your supervisor or your HR Department and if you're not hearing from your claim representative, you are hearing from your neighbors and the horrible possible experience that they have. You are watching TV and you are seeing attorneys all day long saying if you are injured at work, you're switched. So imagine not being, not having any communication from your employer and not having enough communication from the worker's compensation provider. You have those other avenues that are tapping at you. So I think you need to continue. I like the word that you used empathy, because we're going to talk maybe a little bit about that later, but I think it's the right approach and to treat a person like you would want your mother to be treated or your aunt or uncle or your child to be treated if they were injured at work. That's how we should be approaching things.

DG: Sure. Kind of the golden rule, right? Treat others as you'd want to be treated. There you are. Well, let's talk if you could give me your take on when an injury occurs. How important is it to report that injury to your work comp career? Does it matter if you report it quickly or is it just a toss-up as to when it gets reported.

PK: Dave, that's a really great question. And I would offer to you that it is critically important. I can't underline or emphasize just how critically important is. I mean, how would any of us feel if we had a work related injury and no one was contacting us? I would surmise that we would not feel very well or even very, you know, supported. One of the things that makes me very proud is that here at an AF group, we genuinely aspire to create what we like to call trust equity as soon as possible through a more empathetic and advocacy based approach. And of course, Rick has alluded to, you know, our, you know, our focus on empathy. We know that as an elite worker's comp carrier that we have one shot at making a good first impression and treating injured workers with the dignity and respect that they deserve. With this in mind, we strive to keep communication ongoing and we also look to improve cooperation with our injured workers at every opportunity. This even includes ensuring that they get to the best doctors with the best outcomes for their outcomes tend to lead to an avoidance of attorney involvement. For example, this connection with doctors who produce great outcomes also impacts, you know, lost time days. What we've seen over time is actually a reduction of lost time days. And at the end of the day, you know, we want to do what we can to maximize the opportunity to get our injured workers back to work. That maybe full duty, that may be modified duty, but there's just so many great benefits to being able to get our injured workers back to work. We also understand, too, that there's this focus from, you know, from a trust equity perspective, also impacts overall costs. Obviously, if we have the ability to impact the overall cost, that's going to lead to improved experience mods, which ultimately leads to lower cost of insurance. Our empathetic approach impacts our injured workers and it impacts all of our stakeholders in a very favorable way. So reporting timely is critical.

DG: Yeah, it sounds like that. I think when just listening to the both of you describe, you know, Rick's philosophy of some empathy from the injured to the injured worker from the employer. And then, Paul, you're rounding out like how important it is to take the next step, report that to the to your work comp carrier. And it begins that process of both returning the injured worker to full duty and back to their family members in a in a wholesome way. But at the same time to the employer, it's also helping control the cost of the claim. And sometimes that's what's going to strike the employers to think, well, it doesn't really matter if I report their claim within 24 hours of it occurring or whether I report it within 24 days. But once you have control of the claim, you have an opportunity to begin to mitigate both better treatment and lower costs. The longer it goes, the less likely that is to occur. So I think it's important for the- you employers out there to understand you're not giving up anything by reporting it early. You're simply probably creating a better treatment plan and then a better claim cost outcome. Would you agree with that? If Paul did, I surmise that pretty well.

PK: You know, that was a textbook almost perfect recap, and I could not agree with you more, Dave.

DG: Okay, cool. So I get a B-plus, not an A-minus? What do you what do you mean?

PK: That was a solid A.

DG: Solid A. Okay, great.

RH: I wanted to add one additional point to what Paul said. And I've been talking to- well every chance we get, we're talking about this empathy approach because quite frankly, it's the right thing to do. But I want to be clear, and I've been talking to a lot of our key agency partners like Rancho Mesa about the fact that, it doesn't mean we're getting soft or less proactive or aggressive in how we investigate, analyze and evaluate the claims. We're always going to pay those claims we owe. But if we're finding out through the investigation of the claim that perhaps it's not compensable or a certain part might not be compensable, we're still going to do the right things. But hopefully, as Paul alluded to, if we've established that trust equity right up front, we've made that good first impression and we've built that trust and rapport through routine communication with that injured worker, we can hopefully explain to them that the reason we're doing something is because of the facts of the case, dictated, and I would like to believe that that could lead to less litigation, less attorney involvement, because we've done our due diligence, we've done our investigation, and we're going to pay what we owe, but we're going to hopefully be able to explain in very simple terms why we can't pay either the whole claim or an aspect of a particular claim.

DG: Yeah, that good communication is a key and, you know, ongoing, I'm sure to make sure everybody's aware of it. Then there there's a- you're building up trust within that worker so that they believe what you're telling them. I think that's vital to any good outcome both physically, mentally and then financially. Rick, Let's shift a little bit to say, okay, now we have an injury and this person's injured enough that they're at least temporarily not going to be able to return to their usual and customary work.

DG: Talk to me a little bit about what value a strong return to work program does in helping control the cost of a claim all the way around.

RH: We know through time that claims get worse over time and they start to cost more over time. So getting back to a little bit of what I described before, if we can work with that injured worker and their doctor and the employer together with the claim representative to enforce that return to work, keep at work program and look for ways to get a person back to work, even if they're not 100%. If we can get them back to work in some type of modified light duty. It's that routine that helps get that person back quicker on the road to recovery, both mentally and physically, and it helps reduce the overall cost of insurance for the employer, but it also improves the customer experience for the injured worker.

DG: Yeah, great point. Great point. So it's so employee centric, your approach, you know, what's best for the employee. And then it turns out that what's best for them actually is best for the employer as well. Paul, let's talk about some of the new trends that I've seen over the last couple of years that are coming out and want to get your sense of how valuable they are. One of the things I've heard a lot about lately and we've seen being introduced to the marketplace is something called Nurse Triage. Could you kind of just explain what that is and kind of what your thoughts on services like nurse triage and their impact to the industry are.

PK: Yeah, you know, Dave, you may or may not know that we are huge fans of Nurse Triage and for so, so many, many reasons. I'll begin by saying, and Rick kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, you know, it gives us the opportunity to kind of address the holistic concerns of an injured worker. We don't just focus on that physical piece. There's something to be said about connecting with our injured workers in such a way that we are impacting them favorably from cycle perspective, from a mental perspective, and in addition to doing so from a physical perspective. With regards to nurse triage, one of the things that it does, it gives us- it gives the injured worker, I should say, and their supervisors, the ability to immediately engage a health care professional that is not from the insurance company. Additionally, once the triage occurred, we find that many claims do not require a visit to urgent care or the more costly emergency rooms. And obviously you can think about, you know, the favorable impact that has on the psyche of that injured worker as well as the favorable impact on productivity as well. In addition, many minor claims or triage as they self-treat with no need to actually leave the premises of the injured worker's employment. And then lastly, I would add that, you know, nurse triage saves the employer the step of reporting the claim as it is done automatically behind the scenes. And that also kind of favorably impacts that desire for us to see claims reported sooner than later. So needless to say, Nurse Triage is one of those tools that I think from from an AF group perspective, we take pride in being kind of in front of this tool for quite some time. But you are correct, it is something that has kind of overtaken the industry.

DG: Yeah, it's as you just described it, a picture came to my mind of an iceberg where you identify the tip of the iceberg with triage. Then you get below the surface, you're like, oh my gosh, it impacts productivity, it impacts cost, it impacts reporting the claim. So there's so much to go there. And just to continue to add to that, we really advocate strongly that our clients and prospective clients evaluate that on a on a carrier basis. Not every carrier is as supportive of that as Accident Fund Conquest are. And we think that's critical because a lot of the times, as you as you said, Paul, they end in Self-Treat, but you're capturing kind of the near miss in, so to speak. And it allows, you know, hopefully your broker and the carrier to begin to trend something and prevent it, you know, implement some training before you have the severe accident. And nurse triage is a big part of identifying those trends. So I I'm a huge advocate of it. I know you guys were one of the early people to adapt it. And I couldn't compliment you more for doing that for your all your policyholders out there. If they're not using it, they should be, you know, for sure.

PK: Very much, very, very much appreciate that, Dave and to the point that you've made, I mean, we do, you know, share the trending points of data with our policyholders because it creates the opportunity for them to understand just how impactful and favorably impactful they're being, you know, to their employees. And it also creates the opportunity for us to show how we're partnering with an injured worker, and the policyholders as well, to again, create this holistically favorable outcome for all of our stakeholders with an emphasis on our injured workers.

DG: Yeah, that's a great segway because now I'm about to jump into- okay, we've talked about how just a business in general can improve their outcomes regardless of carrier. Now let's get a little bit more specific about Accident Fund here in, I'm in California, here in California, CompWest. What are some of the things, maybe three things that you guys are most proud of that CompWest in their approach to handling claims?

RH: Well, the thing that pops out at me right away and we've been talking about it quite a bit and probably because it's so important to us is our empathy and advocacy based approach to working with the injured workers and our policyholders and our mutual policyholder customers. The other thing that we're that I'm really, really proud of and I'd like Paul to talk about it in a little while, is our newer texting capabilities. And lastly, we work with our actuaries to understand how well we're performing against the rest of the industry. And we know that our claim outcomes on loss time claims are 20% better than the rest of the industry, and that pertains to both outperforming in our medical cost aspects of the claim as well as the indemnity portions, the parts of the claim that we're paying for the individual's lost time from work or in some cases permanent disability.

DG: Well, those are three great points. I really want to jump into all three of those, if we could for a second. So let's tackle them in the order that you listed them, Rick. And I'll tax my memory to see if I got these right. I think you first talked about the culture of empathy. So how do you train your claims professionals? This must be a huge undertaking. You know, you can't I'm sure you don't just say, okay, new claims person. We want you to have empathy. Oh, okay. Thanks. Thanks, boss. I'll be sure to do that. So how do you go about doing teaching training for empathy?

RH: Exactly. Well, as you can see, Paul and I are pretty well versed in in our approach to it. So we talk about it every single chance we get, whether I'm attending a specific team's meeting or if we're having a larger claims meeting at CompWest, we're always socializing it. we're always talking about it. We also are very fortunate to have a very strong customer experience group within our company, and we took the approach of the three E's with their help. And as we talk about the total customer experience and as we talk about how we want to help our injured workers, we talk about the three E's, which are E's, expectation. And I'm guessing the whole audience can figure out empathy. So we are constantly talking about that as we bring new people on, as we enter into meetings, we're talking about the three E’s. And not just do we talk about them, but we measure them with the help of our customer experience department. When we close a claim, we send out a survey to that injured worker and we're asking them a lot of questions around empathy and communication and how they were treated. And probably what's more important to me than the actual survey scores or the ratings that we get is looking at the verbatim comments and seeing where we might have missed the mark and talking about where we can continue to improve. Another thing that we've done is we started our Empathy Awards this year, so every month we get several nominations about how one of our claim reps worked with an injured worker, and it's usually unsolicited and it comes from an injured worker. It's either sent directly to our claim rep or a lot of times directly to their boss talking about how well they were treated. Or I was reading one this morning from a mother of a younger, injured worker, thanking both our claim rep and our nurse case manager about how well they helped their son get back on the track to being normal at home. And then being able to get back to the workforce. So we see those all the time, it seems. Not a day goes by that I'm not getting some complimentary message from an injured worker about how well they were treated. Those go into the award every month and then at the end of the year, we're going to have a grand prize winner. Another thing that we did is we teamed with a gentleman by the name of Carl Van. Carl Van is the author of The Eight Characteristics of the Awesome Adjuster. We call it the Characteristics of the Awesome Claim Rep. So we've employed him to come into our organization. He's helped us develop several e-learning modules around the whole empathy. And as you might have guessed again, one of the eight characteristics of an awesome adjuster is empathy.

RH: And we put that through our whole entire organization. And every time somebody joins our organization, they are, they go through the module and they learn more about empathy. And in the whole injured worker experience.

DG: Well, it's evident that you're committed to this. It's not just a slogan. You know, we many times call certain slogans cotton candy. You know, they look great. But as soon as you put water on them, they disappear. It's obvious that this is a key component of the success within your company. And anybody that comes in the door is not just going to hear at one time. They're going to it sounds like they're going to hear it every day. They're going to get recognized for it. I commend you on that. So that's, you know, this is where your actions speak louder than your words I think, so that's, congratulations to that. Paul, if you could tell me about your texting capabilities. I kind of know- I'm 64- I kind of know what texting is. Tell me how it how it relates in the in the claims world.

PK: You know Dave, you had me because I was thinking you were not north of 50, but neither here nor there. Let me just say that, you know, truly, texting has been just this an incredible game changer. You know, texting gives us another avenue to communicate with injured workers and their employers, especially when we know it is their preferred method of communication. Our texting tool also allows for automatic translations into 20 different languages. I mean, that's pretty phenomenal when you think about that. The other great thing about texting, it's quick, it's easy and it happens right from our playing professionals computer so they don't need to access, you know, some ancillary tool in order to be able to effectively tag with our injured workers. Texts also go directly into our claim file documentation and or file documents. And as you know, documentation is critically important in everything that we do. So texting makes that component easier as well. With our texting ability, we can even send doctors’ appointments and even send reminders as well to our injured workers, which is obviously an incredible benefit to them. We can transfer documents such as pay slips, such as return to work slips, and we can send electronic pharmacy cards. So it's short. You know, they this tool has been nothing short of phenomenally great for our injured workers, our policyholders, and for our claim professionals as well.

DG: Yeah, I can just, I mean, just hearing what you just said, so many things jump into my mind of the improvement of that communication process, the productivity gains. Here at Rancho Mesa we do a lot of work in the nonprofit arena, but also in the construction arena. So I can just envision an injured worker's not back to work but still need to communicate with the claims examiner. He or she's out on the job site, gets a phone call, probably not going to take the call, waits till after work, calls, now, the examiners not available. And this can just go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth where if they received a text with a asking for something, they can respond accordingly. It gets into the file, saves those back and forth phone calls. The examiner is probably on the phone with somebody else. So it's kind of like you're doing two things at once. That's a terrific idea. How long have you guys been doing that?

PK: You know, so we've been- Rick, correct me if I'm wrong here- but just under two years now, we've had people texting in force. And I have to tell you that, you know, you probably know this from the history of working with us. We have always been about the business of, you know, looking for ways to transform our claims organization into that next generation of industry leaders. And to that point, one of the things that guides us is certainly the needs of our entire workers, the needs of our employers, the needs of all of our stakeholders. And so one of the reasons we came to understand the value add of texting is because of, you know, some of the results that we receive, some of the verbatim, commentary that we receive from the many surveys that that we've employed, you know, over the years. And so we know that this is a value add and that it's made an incredible difference for, you know, for all of our stakeholders.

DG: Yeah, I think it's phenomenal. I'm definitely going to re-emphasize this to our group here to make sure they understand that this complex task, that capability and what an advancement that is. And Rick, let's jump back to the third point, which was and I think sounds like texting is probably a portion of that, but you talked about your outperforming the industry by, I think you said about 20%. Talk to me a little bit more about that.

RH: Dave, what I like about that is it sounds like it could be something that's helping just improve our own financial position. But the better story to be told is every time we can achieve savings better than the industry, it's going to be result in lower losses for our employer. It's going to reduce experience mods and hopefully at the end of the day reduce their overall cost of insurance. And I think there's many things that we do, whether it's, Paul referred to some of the services that we have internally, like our nurse case managers, our staff attorneys, our cause, what we do with causation. There's a number of things that we do to a claim to help reduce those losses. But I keep coming back to what more we can achieve if we're working through treating the injured workers the way they should be treated with the dignity and respect, building up that trust equity, hopefully, especially in California, in top West with the with the litigation that we see in California compared to some of the other states. If we can if we can prevent some of those claims from going into litigation, which we all know can become very, very expensive and add additional costs to the claim, if we can build that trust and work together and gain more cooperation because of how they've been treated and coming back to work on a return to work, keep that work program and getting to the right doctors in the first place. And you know, we may want to send them to a more expensive doctor because we know that they're going to get a much better outcome and they're going to be able to return to work quicker and they're going to be able to recover quicker. So I think there's a lot that goes into that. But hopefully at the end of the day, what we really want to see is lower cost of insurance for the employers.

DG: Yeah, and that makes total sense. And I think it's a win-win, right? The injured worker gets better treatment, the employer gets a better claim outcome, and Accident Fund Complex benefits from both. So that's really what we should all be focused on and we all know the world we're in right now, we have lots of pressure upward on a lot of different costs. Just the cost of medical treatment has gone up, payroll inflation has gone up, and all of those things will ultimately impact a business owner, an individual, in the event of a claim. By you guys being so focused on this empathy model and bringing these new services to the marketplace- Nurse Triage, texting, and things like that- really focusing on, okay, we're never where we want to be. There's always another layer. We know medical costs are going up 4% on average. Okay, how do we improve our services by 4% to keep the costs down? That's really, I'm reading between the lines, but listening to the two leaders here of Accident Fund/CompWest claims experience gives me a lot of inspiration to get out in the marketplace and say, hey, listen, these are real people who really care and looks like they're not satisfied even though they're here where they're at. These two gentlemen that I talked to are not satisfied. There's got to be a way to improve. And I'm excited about that. This is something that we can talk about throughout the year. When you bring new ideas to the marketplace, you know, we're all ears out here. We would love to be able to communicate this to policyholders and industries, you know, that we represent. So is there anything else before we wrap up, Rick or Paul, that you'd like to add before we close today?

RH: I would just like to say thank you for the offer to come back. We will definitely take you up on that, Dave. And I did want to just express that this is quite a great partnership between Comp West and Rancho Mesa Insurance, and I appreciate what you're doing with these podcasts and reaching out to a broader audience to talk about the great things that are happening at Rancho Mesa and CompWest as well.

DG: Rick, thank you for that. I appreciate that.

PK: Hey, Dave, I want to I want to echo Rick's commentary as well. It's an honor to have partnership that that we have with you and Rancho Mesa. It makes for great outcomes, I think, for many of our stakeholders who are associated with our two entities. I do hope that that all who have an opportunity to listen to the three of us understand that, that we are still very sincere with regards to, you know, being the difference makers that we aspire to be for, for all of our stakeholders and really appreciate the opportunity to, you know, to share that today and to spend time with you.

DG: Thanks so much for that, Paul. I think, you know, collectively we have the same values, so it's very easy to work well together. We all believe in the same thing, trying to help people out there do the right thing, work hard every day. So listen, guys, I appreciate it. You know, I'll let you get back to that beautiful, snowy weather while we enjoy our sunshine out here. You know, you might think about next time we want to do a podcast, scheduling it in the snow season and taking a trip to San Diego. And we'll actually do the podcast in our studio together. That would be a lot of fun. And so listen, Rick, Paul, thank you for your time. Let me wish you and your families just a joyous holiday season as we approach it, now. Be safe, stay healthy, and we'll talk again soon. Thanks for joining me.

[Outro Music]

RH: Thank you, Dave.

PK: Thank you, Dave.

DG: Okay. That'll do it for today. So thank you for joining me in StudioOne™ and listening to our podcast today. Until we talk next time, please have a safe and happy holiday season signing off. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Alyssa Burley: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne™. For more information, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.