A Long Strange Trip: From Space Satellites to Market Research: A Conversation with Bruce Haymes

In this insightful episode of the Greenbook CEO Series, host Leonard Murphy sits down with Bruce Haymes, co-founder of Stage 18 and chairman of Tuluna Global, to discuss his unique and varied career path. From his early days in law to leading M&A transactions in the satellite industry and ultimately transitioning into the market research and data sector, Bruce shares how his adaptability and deep-rooted relationships have shaped his professional journey. He recounts key experiences, including selling an in-orbit satellite, working with Nielsen, and driving strategic investments in Israel’s tech scene.

The conversation shifts to the future of the market research industry, with Bruce and Leonard analyzing trends in AI, data monetization, and industry consolidation. They explore how companies like Tuluna are positioning themselves for growth by leveraging technology and strategic acquisitions. Bruce also shares valuable career advice, emphasizing continuous learning, relationship-building, and being open to unexpected opportunities. This engaging discussion provides both industry insights and inspiration for emerging leaders navigating an evolving business landscape.

Transcript

Leonard Murphy: Hello everybody. It's Lenny Murphy with another edition of the Greenbook CEO series of interviews. Thank you for taking time to spend with myself and my guest. And today we are lucky to be joined by Bruce Hayes, the co-founder of Stage 18 and chairman of Tuluna Global. So Bruce, welcome. …

Bruce Haymes: Week or last week and it was terrific. So, I'm so honored and excited to be here with you today.

Leonard Murphy: Good. So, with Ted Tagalakus from Do you know Ted?

Bruce Haymes: No, I learned a lot about AI and market research though. Exactly.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, he's great guy. So, I'm glad. There we go. I can say we have a viewer. So, thank you. All right. Then you know how this is going to go because we're going to kind of go in the same direction. And we'll just start things off. So for those who don't know you kind of what's your origin story? Give your quick your bio. how'd you get from there to here?

Bruce Haymes: Yeah, are you a dead fan, Lenny? I have to say that you fit right in with the dead head community.

Leonard Murphy: I am not is it the ponytail? Is that it?

Bruce Haymes: Maybe a little bit.

Leonard Murphy: So were you trucking the whole way though?

Bruce Haymes: I am a dead fan and I'd say that my origin story has been a long strange trip. So, trucking and I was space trucking and we'll get into that in a minute. as well. So, I'm a native New Yorker. I was born in the Bronx. I was raised down at the Jersey Shore and I now live in Westport, Connecticut. I went to college in Boston.  and I went to law school in DC and to a certain degree I feel like I'm an outlier I mentioned this to you in the backstory to even doing a podcast that might have primarily market research industry viewers on it because I've had a very varied and eclectic career. So after I graduated law school, I have done so many different things that it's difficult to even list. I've been a lawyer, I've been an operator, a founder, a big company executive, a university administrator, a venture capitalist, and an investor. I've interviewed for executive roles with Elon Musk, sold an inorbit satellite to a consortium of Arab buyers, and one of my former employers was the subject of America's Most Wanted. So, I don't think that there are many market research executives that have that kind of an eclectic career. It's probably hurt me to not be focused on so many things at the same time, but I got to tell you, I've had a really great journey.

Leonard Murphy: That's All right. I really want to drill down to the America's Most Wanted, but maybe you're not allowed to talk about it. I don't know.

Bruce Haymes: No, I can. T. It's been on TV.

Leonard Murphy: Right. And now I get the space trucking reference because of the satellite I assume, right? Yeah.

Bruce Haymes: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's actually a good place to start, even though it's in the middle, is after about eight years of meandering around New York law firms and trying to find a place where my thirst for innovation, technology, creativity was going to fit in. And by the way, creativity and innovation and law do not go together. You do not want your lawyer to be innovative. after I knocked around doing that for a while, I went to the partners of my law firm, which at the time was Chad Born Park in the city, and I said, "Listen, you put me together with your biggest tech clients that are going public. I'll do their IPO or I'll do their M&A transaction and then I'll leave the firm and I'll become your biggest client." And so I had a lot of people working for me in the middle of my career trying to find me a good high-tech company to connect with. And one of my clients was a company called Panamsat. The if you Google Panama, there was a story in the New York Times called a widow's dilemma. where the founder of the company who was a gregarious rule breaker, a really classic entrepreneur, he had died I think about a year after the company went public and nobody knew what to do with the company. There was no one to run it. there was no succession plan and the ownership was in flux. So they tried to sell it and they did sell it and my firm got to work on it. So I led that transaction and we actually sold the company to Direct TV and became a sort of a publicly held subsidiary of Direct TV. it was one of the most exciting industries to be involved in because Panama was the first private commercial satellite company in the world. be long before Elon Musk came along. Panamsat's founder was frustrated with government consortium satellites like the UN signatory Intelsat controlled all the communication satellites in the world and if you wanted to distribute CNBC to Malaysia you had to contract with this ITU governmentontcontrolled bureaucratic entity and he was just sick of it and wanted nothing to do with it.  So he took all the money he made in media and he decided, I'm going to build and launch my own satellite into space and I'm going to start sending television programming via satellite on my own. this had never been done before. there was no regulatory infrastructure for them to do it. it took an act of Congress to actually get this satellite launched, but he did it and then he launched a second one and then he took the company public and then he died.

Leonard Murphy: That's so hence the widow's dilemma, right? What's Yeah. Mhm.

Bruce Haymes: The widow's dia. Yeah. So, we combined with a subsidiary of Direct TV and I transitioned from being a lawyer to being a guy, corporate development, strategy, partnerships and things like that.  And I had the unbelievable opportunity at the age of I don't know 31 traveling to the most exotic places on the planet that were reachable by satellite to either try to buy more satellite companies that were owned by governments or to sell more satellites. And that's how I ended up getting a kind of a masked blind unknown caller call from an Arab who was interested in, can I buy your satellites while they're in orbit?

Leonard Murphy: Interesting. And is that where the Nielsen connection came in because you found yourself in the media business? or am I making a spirious correlation?

Bruce Haymes: No, and I think this also ties into, the theme for my career generally, which is one that's built on the foundation of long-term relationships, building long-term connections and relationships that transcend industry and transcend employers.  Panama was merged with Direct TV, but for those who follow the media industry, DirecTV ultimately was under contract to be sold to News Corp at one point and News Corp decided they didn't want anything to do with the commercial satellite business that we owned.  and Chase Carry, who was the CEO of News Corp Fox networks at that time, came to our offices in Greenwich, Connecticut, and said, " we don't want You're for sale. Go prepare a book and get ready to sell yourselves." And so myself and seven other executives from Panama worked with Credit Swiss First Boston for about three months doing a bake off of about 30 different private equity funds that are interested in buying into the satellite industry.

Leonard Murphy: Okay.

Bruce Haymes: It was a very profitable business that we operated and so it was highly coveted and it was a rare opportunity for investors. So we pitched the company for about three months and we were ultimately sold to KKR and KKR brought in Carlile and Providence Equity Partners. About 6 months after we sold to them, we reipoed the business for about twice the valuation of our going private transaction, which was a miracle. And then about maybe eight months after that, we sold to Intelsat, that government bureaucratic consortium that had recently privatized to try to compete with us, at a massive premium. I think we sold it for about five times what we bought it for.

Leonard Murphy: Okay.

Bruce Haymes: And so we were all very happy. Obviously, I was very happy, but KKR was super happy.  and KKR and Carlile had recently bought a company called VNU which was the holding company that owned Nielsen. And so as part of my exit from Panama, the partner at KKR, Alex Nab, invited me to his office to sit down and ask me what my career plans were. And I had no plans because the only industry I knew was the satellite industry. And there wasn't going to be a place for me in that industry at that time. And I said to him, I see that you're invested in this company called VNU. I'd be super interested in getting involved with Nielsen because Nielsen supports the media and entertainment industry with data and Panama, the company that we own, supports the media and telecommunications industry with transmission.  And so, maybe about a year, I actually did a pit stop at Time Warner Cable for about eight months. But after that, lo and behold, someone from Nielsen called me and the rest is history. I was brought on board at Nielsen in a sort of non-specific P&L role as general manager of a new product called Digital Media Manager. And I was able to grow my career tremendously at Nielsen. In fact, I'm very grateful for the experience I had there because the training, mentorship, and the diversity of experiences I had there prepared me for all the things that I'm doing right now. Dad.

Leonard Murphy: Innovation fund for all intents purposes and gosh 10 years ago or more something like that. and remember watching from my perspective seeing the work that you guys were doing, the bets that you were making on companies and just being keenly aware of what one obviously you were smart and thinking about the future. The company was as well and driving kind of the next generation of interest. You were not sorry, I just thought of the neuromarketing company. Neuro Focus. that Was Neurop Focus one of yours, Bruce? …

Bruce Haymes: Your focus. No. it was one where I was told to do the deal and keep my mouth shut. I'll tell you which Arbitron was mine.

Leonard Murphy: Okay. That was a coup. that was the Reese's Cup, right? Of yeah, why did this not happen sooner? So, okay. Sorry. I have history with Neuro Focus and with the founders and…

Bruce Haymes: Yeah, exactly. We all do. Yes, we will not.

Leonard Murphy: We won't take that any further. It was fun while it lasted kind of. all right. So you're driving all of that through Nielsen. Can you take a forward? I gave you the softball. So,

Bruce Haymes: Yeah, I mean I was doing corp dev again, doing a lot of M& doing the arbitrons, doing the neuro focuses. we probably did about four to six deals per year of which two of them were usually M&A deals and my group and my colleagues were responsible for identifying opportunities and then executing them. And again this was just another amazing career opportunity to travel the world and learn about new markets, new industries. Nielsen is a highly complex business, especially when it was combined with Nielsen IQ and Nielsen media. and the people that work there super smart. I might say even smarter and, more complex than the satellite industry, which is, traditional high-tech. And so one of the great things about Nielsen having a global purview like that was being able to learn about all the different business units, all the products, being able to travel to Spain, travel to Japan, South America, to work on all these projects. there was a time though probably around 2010 2012 where I became pretty restless doing M&A because I was just known as the M&A guy at Nielsen or the deal guy and I wanted to do something different and I had recently been to Israel for personal reasons and told my supervisors that if there's ever an opportunity to do more work in Israel. I would love to do more in Israel. I think there's a lot going on there that could benefit us. And one of my colleagues, Zach Fischer, convinced Dave Calhoun, who was the CEO of Neielen, to allow us to set up a venture capital fund in Israel in partnership with the Israeli government.  So, I went to Israel probably about six or seven times per year for a year and a half negotiating a deal with the Israeli government for them to sponsor a technological incubator and accelerator and a companion venture capital fund with Nielsen as a corporate venture capital partner. This had never been done in Israel before. The program was really innovative. I wish they had a program like this in the United States. The Israeli government would give us five times whatever we put against any investment in an Israeli company and…

Leonard Murphy: Wow.

Bruce Haymes: They would take no equity in the deal. So there's tremendous leverage. So if we put a million dollars on a project, the Israeli government would stack another five on top of it and we would keep the 33% equity that we were buying in to these startups. So it was a great program. I identified a partner in Israel and we founded this platform. We set up offices outside of Tel Aviv and I became Israeli for three or four years getting this thing off the ground and it was just a blast. We made about 25 early stage investments. We made a bunch of follow ons and the objective was really simple in terms of benefiting Neielen was to identify disruptive startups that we could capture at a very early stage and co-opt into ultimately accelerating the innovation at our own business. And so I always was making investments with an eye towards is this a business that when it matures I can buy it out and then integrate it into our own product plan.  So it was very tightly tied into Nielsn's internal product development aspirations and we ended up doing I think three or four of the companies that we invested in at an early stage resulted in purchases either by Nielsen all of them I think sit with Nielsen IQ right now or one of them which is the good bridge to the next part of the story was purchased by Tuluna.

Leonard Murphy: All right. Let's although one question I remember Get Wiser, I believe. Yeah. Was one of those companies that you invested in and I don't think they're owned by Nielsen.

Bruce Haymes: Mhm. Yes.

Leonard Murphy: I think that they were standalone and…

Bruce Haymes: Still independent.

Leonard Murphy: And doing stuff. So then you wound that up and moved on So now Tuluna. Yes.

Bruce Haymes: So, as part of a combination, as part of my M&A mandate at Nielsen, I ran into this very interesting suave and Devonir French executive named Frederick Charles Petit who was the founder and CEO of a panel sample company called Tuluna.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah.

Bruce Haymes: And he was very interested in picking up our Harris assets.  We had bought the Harris Interactive and we didn't want the European assets and Frederick was very interested in them. So we negotiated a deal to sell Harris Interactive to Tuluna. And it wasn't the first deal that Frederick had done at Tuluna, but it was one of the first ones and it was certainly the biggest deal that they had done.  and he felt, somewhat at risk in terms of inheriting some risk from this acquisition. And so my style is to build strong relationships with people even if they're on the other side of the table. And I told Frederique, listen, when this deal closes, if there are issues or you need help, you can call me anytime and I will make this right for you. I will make sure that this acquisition is successful for Tuluna because it isn't like I win you lose. That's not the way that I do business. And I think he was very surprised by that and we created a very collegial relationship and when I eventually left Nielsen he started calling on me when he would come to the United States to bounce off ideas about his business.  And then shortly after that I became an adviser to the company and then he was very gracious to recommend to his investors that they bring me on to the board and then his investors appointed me non-executive chair of Tuluna as well and I've been with Tuluna either as an adviser or chairman of the board since 2019. Quite a while now.

Leonard Murphy: And Tuluna is one of those companies and your description of Frederri totally agree. Anybody who has not met Frederri amazing guy and Suave and Debonire but Tuluna is one of those companies that I think is a I was going to say diamond in the rough. that's not the appropriate way to say it.  they are underappreciated for the thinking and the innovation and the business that they have done over the years. I just have a ton of respect for what they built and think why are they not at the same level of some of their competitors overall and I've told Frederick that I don't know why you're not as big as company X so you should be because I think you're doing better work and better business.  So although I have a suspicion that narrative is about to change I think you guys are really in the right place at the right time for the current era of AI etc etc.

Bruce Haymes: Agree with you on that point. one of the things that's again interesting about Tuluna and also defines my approach to business is that Tuluna was a survey company. That was what they were in They were a survey company. In 2019 though, we got together. Frederick pulled his executive team together and they created a new plan and they did a major pivot and that was comprised of number one going direct to enterprises which was unusual for panel and very risky by the way for a sample company. Number two, building a technology platform Tuluna start which is a technology platform that allows them to include many new technological products that their clients can use on a single self-help digital platform. And then third, they embarked upon a strategy of growth via M&A and partnerships.  And since 2019, without giving the confidential raw numbers, company's doubled its size. I mean, Tuluna was a relatively small company in 2010. Right now, we are one of the larger companies. we're not punching at the NIQ level that I was used to, but Tuluna is a large player in this space. And I agree with you. I think this industry is going to start hearing more from Tuluna as a result of both their innovation and their size and scale. Yes.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, I agree and not surprising to kind of share the growth aspirations and outside for those who we're definitely inside baseball in this conversation. So for audience who's not interested in all this stuff, apologies. the relevance is let me step back a second. One of the reason I wanted to have you on here is I think the industry as a whole is at a point of transformation. and fundamentally that means there's going to be deals done. So right and there's going to be a series of consolidation plays that occur and there's going to be a series of growth plays that occur. and we are primed for that. The last time we saw this was about 2019 2020. Big wave we're in it going into that cycle again now and it's exciting from my perspective for the industry because all those that have worked in this for so long data is the new oil and we've said that for years but it's really true now right so these companies that are positioned like Tuluna to acquire and deliver data. not research per se, not all the trappings of research, that's a piece of it, but data, access to consumers and information, that helps feed the AI beast, and all the transformation that comes with that. I think that, it is we're going to see some really interesting stuff happen this year overall. and getting your perspective kind of this inside baseball for the audience, especially, we have a lot of sea street folks that listen. it's going to be interesting times. So that's my take. what do you think this year holds? Not just for Tuluna, for the industry. So

Bruce Haymes: Yeah, I don't want to speak for Tuluna. but I agree with you on the data front and I have been a big proponent of monetizing and commercializing data before open AI and…

Leonard Murphy: Yep.

Bruce Haymes: Gen AI was a household conversation.  But I think one of the things that will be very interesting over the next 18 to 24 months is to see how many traditional market research Restec companies are able to take their longitudinal data. I mean Tuluna has 25 years of longitudinal survey history.  We probably have one of the best views of the global consumer of anybody. And then you take companies like Caner Ipsos and I mean they're just sitting on mountains of consu in consumer behavior data and sentiment data and train that data on an LLM on a large language model and create AI tools that do two things. One is improve the state of the products that our clients receive so that they're getting a product that is more real time, always changing based on the data that's coming in and expanding the reach and applicability of what we do. Because right now market research industry is mostly like you're saying yourself. It's inside baseball. It's closed to the market researcher. It's closed to the data analyst or the research coordinator at our clients. But why wouldn't the CFO be interested in this? Why wouldn't at the highest level the CMO or the CRO or the cso be interested in understanding how consumers think? And I don't know whether that will come in the form of synthetic personas or it will come in the form of synthetic data itself but it's coming and…

Leonard Murphy: I could not involent agreement.

Bruce Haymes: I hope that the incumbents that are in this industry are the ones that transform this industry and that we don't see them get disrupted by interlopers. But the reality is if they don't disrupt themselves, they will be disrupted by this.

Leonard Murphy: So I'm glad that audience, you've heard me saying stuff like this for years. now hear from Bruce. Which is…

Bruce Haymes: I am not from this industry innately.

Leonard Murphy: Why I think it carries more weight for you to say that you have a broader perspective.

Bruce Haymes: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Leonard Murphy: You've been in the middle of doing deals across industries that were around disruptive technology is what I've heard through this. So, I think that your perspective carries more weight than others.

Bruce Haymes: And then in terms of the corporate landscape and the ownership and investor M&A landscape I think this industry is the industry that Tuluna is in the industry of Danata and Yuga Vipsos Canar Nielsen it it's at a precarious point right now if you look at it if you take a step back and you say who owns this industry indry right now. Almost all of the companies that I mentioned and…

Leonard Murphy: Yep.

Bruce Haymes: All the companies that would be on one of those splatter maps of competitive landscape, almost all of them are owned by funds private equity funds, smaller ones owned by VC. And most of those funds with rare ex exception have been in those stocks in those companies for longer than they probably want to be. And I'm not going to name specific companies, but I think what we're going to have is a recapization of most of this industry over the next year to two years. So that we're going to see different owners, we're going to see different combinations. and I hope that the new investors that come in with fresh thinking, new capital and appetite for innovation. the other thing that I think might happen because there is the possibility that in some cases there will be a buyer seller imbalance where there are more sellers than there are buyers into this market and…

Leonard Murphy: I think we're in there. I think we're in that place right this second. So,

Bruce Haymes: And to the extent that that is the case I think what you may find is unique combinations of companies and I think those combinations are a good thing. I mean, they are consolidating combinations. I don't think we're there yet. I think that the investor base of the industry needs to see what the lay of the land is and to determine what kind of outcomes they're willing to accept. But I do think that some consolidation will be healthy for the industry and I think it will help it to reinvent itself.

Leonard Murphy: So it's interesting as we have this conversation on January 16th right this week the announcement of the numerator world panel merger…

Bruce Haymes: Yeah. Perfect.

Leonard Murphy: Which I think many of us it makes sense I actually expected to see the canar marketplace personas in that deal as well and who knows maybe that'll happen next but anyway My point is right we are seeing this recombination of solutions. I find it fascinating that that Bane is making multiple bets in kind of the data aspect of things. so there may be another company that I think joins that at some point in that distant future I suspect. so I can say that I won't expect you to, but I do think we're seeing some interesting recombinations. My concern is what happens to the service companies. and there are an awful lot of those out there as well that are private equity backed. as the industry shifts to understand the balance between data, technology, and service, which has always been a struggle for us, I think for the industry as a whole. In some of the larger from that previous boom of private equity there's a lot of service companies they're going to continue to be service companies that is the value that they have built and I am concerned about the investor view of the service companies when we have so much technology and data and AI I don't have a clear sense on how that's going shake out. So, just my take on that. Yep.

Bruce Haymes: Yeah, I mean I think data is going to be more valuable inherently…because it's more scalable. So from an investor perspective, I can make data once and sell it a million times and I can make a service once and I can sell a service once or a few times. And I think that that's the challenge and…I think even the service businesses have to start to think about how they can invigorate their models into something that looks more like SAS and…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruce Haymes: More like software. if they're not going the data route already,…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. Agreed. And I think there's indications of that. There's some companies that I see experimenting with. I mean, as well as I do, there's no such thing as a pure SAS company in this industry, right? It never has been.

Bruce Haymes: Is it

Leonard Murphy: so there's a few that I know that have they bit that bullet they built in service they didn't like having to do it but now they are transform their pricing into subscription pricing with service baked in right and I think that's really smart so it looks like it may not be pure SAS the way we think about it but they're managing that and the more that the data help drives that service component. then I think that we're going to see more companies like that that are moving away from the ad hoc engagement into we're basically your outsourced insights function leveraging this technology and data asset that we have for ondemand execution and more importantly implications. But that's also challenging for these companies that were built on cost plus huge chunk of the revenue. I think they'll become more profitable but there may be a reduction in their revenue overall as the cost of projects just decrease. Interesting times. Yep.

Bruce Haymes: Definitely. I mean…one of the companies that Stage 18 my company has been working with is WXY, which I know you're familiar with. And I love their business model. They are a Restec company and They're a SAS business. And they don't have any data, but they can take a data company or a services company.  they can partner with them and effectively convert those companies into SAS companies for particular clients.  So I think that there are bridges being built into SAS even for the service companies right now.

Leonard Murphy: It's fascinating times overall. So, you and I can go on for a really long time. I hope our audiences get as much out of this conversation as we have, but let's kind of wind it down so they're free to go do something else rather than sitting at the edge of their seat.

Bruce Haymes: Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: What's Bruce going to say next? Because I know they are. we had kind of a topics we wanted to cover. I think we got most of them baked in, but there's a few ex questions, specific questions I want to make sure we get to. near the end and here's the big one. Lessons learned from your career, especially this varied career. So, as well as all this transformation, we have a new generation of leaders that are coming up. think about that. What would you tell them? What would you tell other folks that are in their, 20s, 30s, instill your wisdom, Bruce? Okay.

Bruce Haymes: M&A guy, P&L leader, a strategist, a Nielsen guy, a telecoms guy. the one thing I never let the market do was to define me. And in some ways, this may have even stunted opportunities to advance as hard far as I could go. I mean, I can recall recruiters found me to be a hard to sell leader because they could not pigeon hole me like that. But it meant that for me personally, I was always learning, always challenged, and always engaged. So I would try as many things as you can…until you find the things that float your boat and get you excited. and…

Leonard Murphy: Good wisdom. Go ahead, please.

Bruce Haymes: Then the other thing that I still do and I tell my kids they do is You are never done learning. And if you're young in your career, they're paying you to learn. It's just a continuation of your university or whatever your postgrad experience is.  you are getting paid to Be curious. Don't try to be an expert on everything. Stretch what you're capable of and learn. And I'm finding e even now at this stage in my career, I never stop learning. And I try to set an example for my children to go into areas and do things that I've never done before. I think it's really important and especially if you want to futureproof yourself for the market. We're seeing now Gen AI was not a word in 2020 and in 2025 it's all anybody is talking about in terms of displacing jobs. It is essential that you do not become a lite. You have to constantly keep up with everything that is going on.  So, that's another lesson that I've learned. And then, the last thing that I'll add is, don't estimate the power of relationships. I really do worry about the lack of in office time for younger workers and midworkers. I mean, it's great that I'm talking to you from my home right now and that I can work remotely. If I were a young person, this would be horrible. you're losing opportunities for mentorship and you're losing the opportunity to create relationships because the one thread that flows through all of the strange experiences that I've had in my career are the relationships that I've created. I still find myself connecting with lawyers that I worked with at the beginning of my career.  I am still friends and still rely on executives that I went through my leverage buyout with at Panama and my Nielsen network is the foundation for stage 18's business that I run right now. So if you think that you're just going to tap away at a keyboard in isolation in your, studio apartment in the city and you're going to be building your career, You really have to get out there and network.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, all good stuff. And again, violent agreement across the board. that's all good stuff. I was think Can I add something to that? No, other than echo it. though there's something I will add the I don't know about you but where I have wound up so far in my life was nowhere near what I envisioned hell even 101 15 years ago certainly not 20 or 30 and anything that I would have envisioned then I would have been selling myself short So allowing this progression going even in various places I didn't anticipate sometimes because things kind of sucked in some cases right I mean it was like no my rocka research we went under during the great recession wow that was not a good experience I didn't like that but yet here we are now so we just kind of echo that bach will  open in my own experience. somehow the universe just puts us where we need to be if we're open to it. we just need to be present and ready and doing our best to be available. My experience Yeah, same here. the opportunities will come to you if you make them available. If I were doing what I thought I was going to be doing when I was 27,…I would be a bankruptcy lawyer right now. And there is no way that I ever thought that I would be the chairman of the board of a company based in Europe or running my own strategic consultancy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the summary of that is that we're both pretty lucky men, Bruce. and hopefully our audience can get some inspiration from that as because opportunities always present themselves. Thank you.

Bruce Haymes: We are thank you. Yeah, best place to find me is on LinkedIn.

Leonard Murphy: Where can people find you?

Bruce Haymes: I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I'm also very approachable. and I would love to connect with people. So as I mentioned that expanding the network is always valuable.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, I think that's how I connect with you. I just kind of spammed you on LinkedIn and you responded and we just, then did that. So, I can attest, yes, you are approachable. All right, Bruce, anything else you want to mention to our audience before we close it down.

Bruce Haymes: No, I just want to thank you so much for having the time. it was great speaking with you.

Leonard Murphy: And I appreciate you making the time to do this as And thank you to our audience making the time to listen to Bruce and I. This went a little bit longer than we normally do, but I think you'll get some value out of it. and with that, we will end this edition of the CEO series. Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye-bye.