What AI Does and Doesn't Change About Hotel Investing - Tom Deighton & Zach Demuth, TBD Companies

Josiah: Tom, thank you. Zach, thank you for making time to talk. I'm excited to get into your stories, the company, what you're building, but Tom, I'm going to go to you first. Tell me about the company, high level, then we're going to get into all the things that you're doing within it. But high level, what is TBD?

Tom: Well, thanks for having us. TBD is a hotel investment platform. We're focused on buying compact full service hotels in high supply constrained secondary urban cities with diversified demand drivers. We target hotels that typically institutions don't target. So we play within the 15 to 35 million dollar range, which is typically too small a check size for institutions, and a lot of those hotels tend to be mismanaged.

Our business plan as a typical case study would be to buy an independent hotel and convert that hotel to a soft brand in Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, which basically gives us access to those distribution systems but maintains the look and feel of an independent. That's the very quick summary. Of course, there are many nuances that we build into the business plan, including building tech stacks from scratch, obviously within the parameters the brand manager allows us. But that's the quick summary.

Josiah: Love it. And so we're going to get into a lot of those details, but Tom, I'm going to include a link in the show notes to your LinkedIn profile, your website. People can learn more about you, reach out to you. But I want to hear your words. If you think back on your career so far, what were some of the moments or the inflection points or the things you learned that led you to start this company today? What was most formative for you?

Tom: Oh, that's a great question. I might go all the way back pre-professional career. I tried to be a professional tennis player when I was younger, living in Italy, being homeschooled, not speaking the language. So from a very young age, I learned how to be around all different types of people and built my interpersonal skills, which has helped me a lot in building my network in the hotel space.

In addition to that, while I was in Italy, my mother owned a boutique hotel in Città della Pieve, Italy, so hospitality has always been in my blood from a very young age. I didn't pursue that right away in my career. I started my career at Goldman Sachs doing investment banking in their mergers and acquisitions group. A lot of that work actually was on retail spinoffs, but I did work on advising the Borgata on various recapitalizations in Atlantic City. So there is a constant thread of hospitality going through my early days, including at the early stages of my career. I did take the gamble to leave Goldman and pursue a master's degree at Cornell, where I actually met Zach in their hotel program.

Again, I think this was because I loved the work I did at the Borgata. I loved being with people, and I wanted to explore that further, but not really knowing what I wanted to do with it. There, Pete Peterson, who was the head of food and beverage for Related Companies, came and presented on Hudson Yards, and I thought it was an awesome vision, very interesting, and a good way of blending the financial experience I had attained at Goldman with the creativity I wanted to explore.

And so I joined Related, hired by the COO and the head of international development. Largely because of my accent, he hired me to help him build out the London business. I spent a couple of years based in New York traveling back and forth from London. Then I moved into the New York group after a couple of years and was actually placed on the Equinox Hotel project, yet again taking me back into the hotel space.

And so I spent eight years managing that project from cradle to grave until we sold it last year. So it was my constant thread through my time at Related. Equinox Hotel was my baby. So there were various pivotal moments in my life and career, but the hotel space and hotels have always been a constant throughout.

Josiah: I love that.

Tom: I should just say, obviously then, at some point you want to do your own thing. You're a man and you think you know enough to be dangerous. So that's why several months ago we carved off to create this new company.

Josiah: Incredible. Well, and here you are now. Amazing. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Zach, I want to go over to you and your take on this. Obviously, I've had the good fortune of speaking with you a number of times and recording a number of episodes together. We'll link in the show notes where people can hear some of that. But I want to hear your take in this new context as co-founder of this amazing new company.

As you reflect back on those career experiences, the things that you learned, what do you think was formative in leading you? I would love to similarly cover some of those touch points as Tom did for people that are maybe meeting you for the first time, and get a little bit of a sense of your own story and what led you to this moment today.

Zach: Well, again, thanks for having me back, having us. It's funny, when I think last time I was on your podcast I was obviously at JLL, and I don't know if you know this, before I joined any of those podcasts, I had to talk to our IR team about what I could and could not say. So I'd say for starters, it's very nice to not have to do that, not work for a public company, and say whatever I want to say. Although Tom and I of course talk in advance.

It's funny. I look back, so I spent my whole career in hospitality for better or worse. I'm exceptionally biased to our industry towards the positive. I think it's a challenging industry in many ways, but I can't imagine doing anything else.

I arrived at hotels similarly in some ways, a love of travel, the fortune growing up of having gotten to travel both domestically in the US and then elsewhere, just seeing what travel can do. I actually initially wanted to be a chef and then clearly don't have the skill set to do that.

But regardless, I arrived in the hotel space. I took a class when I was undergrad at BU in the hotel school, and I've really just been in love with it ever since. I spent close to a decade at Marriott in various strategy positions. I started on property. I do a lot of mentorship now with students, and I would say if you want to be in the hotel industry, regardless of your career aspirations, I would encourage anyone to spend, even if it's just a summer, on property.

I think at the end of the day, our industry is an operating business, and whether you're in real estate or any other tangential part of the business, understanding that there's a consumer at the end of what you're doing is so important. So for me, I'd say that's when I look back in many ways. Although I had no real interest in being a GM, I spent time as a bellman, front desk, I did night audit. Those are really formative experiences.

And then from there, I met Tom in 2015. I would say that, looking back, a happenstance meeting at the Target in Ithaca turned into a relatively formative experience, at least in hindsight. And then I pivoted towards the real estate side of the business and obviously spent a good amount of time at JLL, which is of course how we met.

Those years, there are so many nuanced experiences, but as a whole, that's really, I think, what launched where I am now in my career and understanding the business side of hotels outside of the consumer, but obviously always tying it back, which is something that's been really important to me.

I had the great fortune of working for Gilda Perez-Alvarado, who used to be our CEO, and I think I learned just so much from her and a lot of others on the team around the globalization of hotels and how capital flows work and how investors think about hotels, the different types of investors, whether it's individuals, private equity, sovereign wealth, et cetera.

And so yeah, that really is how I ended up here in many ways. And I think for me, Tom mentioned this flow or this thread of hospitality. I think that's always been there for me, but for me, it's more about how do you influence either a single hotel or a portfolio of hotels in a variety of ways, and always coming back to the consumer.

And I think it's very easy if you're on the real estate side to forget about that. But one thing we talk about all the time is, whatever we're doing, whether it's a potential renovation, ground-up development, CapEx, technology, what have you, at the end of the day, you still have to get people to come to your hotel and have a good stay and want to come back.

Josiah: I love it, Zach. Tom, I want to go back to you, and I want to build on this thread because I wanted to ask you both about the thesis behind the company, and Tom, you alluded to this high level early. But I want to build more on what Zach just mentioned. From your perspective, Tom, what was the opportunity you saw to do something differently with forming this company? Tell us a little bit more about the focus on the areas that you've described.

Tom: Yeah, I think from a macro perspective, it was a good time, first of all, so to get all the boring stuff out of the way, right? You had a lot of '18, '19 fund vintages that are coming up that need liquidity. They didn't have the appetite or the capital to put money in to do PIPs, which are obviously mandatory right now.

We're seeing record amounts of key money going into the industry from the Marriotts, Hiltons, Hyatts of the world to offset that PIP obligation. So that dynamic in itself has put a lot of good downward pressure on pricing, and we feel like we can pick up assets at decent discounts to replacement cost. Construction costs just being as high as they are now, right, has basically negated the ability to build new supply in the market, which everyone knows.

But that obviously, again, gives you that very favorable supply-demand dynamic in many of the markets we look at to buy existing assets at good discounts to replacement cost. A lot of debt maturities coming due in the next twelve to eighteen months as well. So there are a lot of very positive macro dynamics occurring in the market now, which made this a good time to activate the business plan.

Similarly, as I touched upon, our business plan is focused on bringing our institutional experience to a non-institutional segment of the market. So we know that there are the Patels of the world and the local family owner-operators who are overly competitive on the hotels that cost up to ten, fifteen million dollars, that we just can't be a part of that process because we'll get outbid.

We look for opportunistic returns for our investors, not low yields. And then there's the segment of the market, typically about forty million or so, that the institutional capital plays in. And so we just believe fundamentally that there is this gap in the market where we can be really dangerous with the institutional knowledge we have, me bringing my development and finance experience and being able to manage those PIP obligations very effectively, and Zach bringing the wealth of his experience on the brand repositioning and ops side.

Also, I think being a team of two, ironically and strangely, I think you can move more effectively and faster than you can compared to the institutions. The institutions might have all of these massive assets built into the company, all the latest technology and stuff, but the decision-making is much, much slower.

So we can be extremely nimble in our business plan and how we approach our target opportunities and move quickly and decisively, which I think gives us a massive competitive advantage. And the gap between our technological capabilities versus what the institutions have, just because they have more money to pay for stuff, has actually become more and more narrow just because AI has made the playing field more balanced.

Josiah: I'm very interested in value creation through changing brands or through brand repositioning, and I feel like that's been a theme of the conversation. What exactly is the opportunity you see here? Why does it create value? It feels like this is a core part of your thesis.

Zach: I'll jump in. It's funny, we actually debate this all the time, so I'll start and Tom can tell me the ways I'm wrong or disagrees, which is also, I think, very helpful in our business. We think differently. But yeah, I think, listen, it's interesting.

Historically, brands were a way to drive value from distribution, and historically, brands managed your hotels, right? If you go back to 2015 and prior, of the roughly sixty percent of hotels in the US at the time that were branded, they were almost all managed by the brands, right? The brands gave you both that distribution, but really, they gave you that confidence that they knew what they were doing as institutional players managing our hotels.

Obviously, that's all changed. I think today, roughly eighty percent of US hotels are branded, and of those, ninety percent are franchised. And so really, the brands have become, in their words, distribution engines, right? They offer you a competitive advantage to get exposure to a higher customer base at a lower cost because you're not competing. I think today what's interesting and what's changing, and this is something we debate and I think it'll be interesting to see, is with the democratization of AI and with AI becoming the foundational way in which consumers find hotels, whether it's that way today, it will be that way in two to five years.

Do the brands lose some of their value? And then does the conversation switch to, well, can you get a similar distribution with independent without paying the brand fees? I think for us, and I think today, the brands still offer that value which exceeds that of the fees that they charge. Not to mention that, again, the way hotels are generally underwritten today from a lender perspective is lenders favor the brands because it gives them some downside risk protection.

So I think from a value creation perspective, A, you're creating that distribution engine, or you're getting access to it in a way that's really challenging from an independent perspective without spending a ton of money, and B, you're allowing yourself to invest in a hotel in a way that maybe is the difference between buying a hotel or not.

Josiah: Makes a ton of sense. Tom, would you add anything there to that whole picture and what you've seen unfold there over the various roles that you've had in your career?

Tom: Yeah. Look, I'm not going to debate the distribution system, but I'm just... I always wonder every day how many negative factors have to occur in the market to offset the benefit of having that distribution system.

We know just how expensive construction costs are now. So to implement a conversion plan, you're going to have to have the appetite to bear with those increases in construction costs. Obviously, you have all the franchise fees and everything you have to pay as well. I don't think any consumers know the difference between most of these brands.

I think brand differential only really shows itself on the luxury side, and anything under luxury minus, it could be any brand. I'm not sure people would really know. A big part of what we're looking at now is just, we're getting really into the weeds and nuanced about which markets would it make sense to keep a hotel independent.

That's my perspective on it. I'm not so black and white, and I think it requires a lot of really good analysis to make sure that you're implementing conversion where it actually makes sense versus just keeping a hotel independent.

Zach: Yeah.

Josiah: Well, I can't think of two better people to dig into the details. And you mentioned before being opportunistic is part of the play here, right? I feel like you're looking at opportunity by opportunity, what creates the most value. You're both bringing so much experience and perspectives of unlocking value here.

Zach: Yeah, and you just hit on it. I think we also have to define what you mean by value, right? Because to Tom's point, from a consumer perspective, even someone that's been in the industry my entire career, I definitely can't name all 40 brands that Marriott has. I could probably get to 20 best case scenario. You can ask me about AC and it's off the table. But I don't think it's about the specific brand outside of luxury. I think it's about that distribution.

The average business traveler has Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, maybe IHG reward status. They're just pulling up their apps and looking. And so the challenge is if you're not on one of those apps, if you don't have one of those brands, you're generally at a disadvantage in certain markets.

That's the value from a consumer in the sense of getting access to that consumer. But the value from a real estate perspective and from an ownership lens, to Tom's point, you have to factor in a whole host of other factors, right? If you're going to pay, let's say, 5 million to convert an independent to a brand because of the PIP, how many consumers... You have to do the math, right? It is ultimately down to a mathematical question, and there's a lot of nuanced assumptions. So I think it's interesting bifurcating the value, because you listen to, and we've all sat through the same conferences and probably talked to the same people, the brands had a clear value proposition to the consumer.

I think it's becoming more and more apparent that their value to ownership is not as clear, as evidenced by that open letter that was written to Marriott, Hilton's recent announcement on fee cessations and everything. So it's like, how do you bridge that gap? And us as owners or as prospective owners, that's really the value that we're looking for. Obviously, it comes down to the consumer, but again, a $5 million PIP is a lot of consumers, so how do you bridge that?

Tom: And it really isn't just that black and white. It's getting harder and harder to quantify that risk now. We were both at Lodging, and I assume I can disclose some information we learned from there, but listening in to the economist talk at Lodging and him laying out the 10 different macro factors that are all more than 30% likely to occur that will further increase construction costs and increase inflation, you start to think, "How can I quantify this risk for my investors?"

So that is the impetus behind us as a company thinking much, much more deeply than we ever have about the value proposition of keeping a hotel independent versus converting.

Josiah: Yeah. So I want to talk about the underwriting process, and I want to hear this from both of you. Tom, I'll go to you first. Explain what the underwriting process that you plan to do will look like and how maybe it differs from how others would be doing this, because I think this is one of the key areas you unlock value as you make investments.

Tom: Yeah. I fear it's not too different yet from everyone else, because I think everyone's using AI to help their underwriting now.

Quite simply, when we first see an opportunity and it immediately passes the sniff test, we do try and keep a neutral perspective on the investment and approach it from a high level first before digging into the weeds. So we'll do market analyses. We think about how we might reposition it and with what brand.

And of course, we will use AI to facilitate those decision-making processes along the way, but we'll never let it inform us. We have the experience and institutional know-how to direct AI the way we think it should be thinking versus the other way around. We'll never rely on AI to do the thinking for us.

So it's more about, we think X, Y, and Z, can you just pull this data and then let us objectively look at the data to see if it backs up how we think. If we get through that test and now we're starting to look at a deal more granularly, then we have built out various skills where basically we've taught Claude our voice, and we've laid out the steps one through 100 about how to think through the investment from that point on and build an underwriting case for us.

So we have rigorously built out a platform underwriting toolbox that we can use on each investment. But the most important thing to highlight is that we never let Claude or AI do the thinking for us. It's more of a tool to validate our thought process and provide additional evidence and backup to our thinking, and always with a source that we can validate, because I still think it does kick up some funky stuff. Zach, I'm sure you have something to add on that, but...

Zach: Yeah, I think high level, I agree. The one thing I would say is that, again, I can't speak for every firm out there, but having spent time at a very large institutional firm, while AI, and granted AI is obviously picking up speed in its adoption and its abilities, the way we use it allows us to look at more deals than the average team of two otherwise could.

And to Tom's point, we never use it as a final decision-making power, but one thing that I found very helpful is that initial gate of go, no-go. Sure, between the two of us, we can probably look at a deal on its surface and very quickly tell if it's awful or if it's great, but there's a lot that's in the middle.

And in today's world, you see a lot. There's a lot of deals out there, and frankly, there aren't necessarily a lot of good deals. And so I think AI can really help if built the right way, if built using whatever your investment thesis is, all your screens, your gates appropriately. It can help, I think, also with the initial screening. Again, just give you some of that nuance that you otherwise couldn't get yourself.

And then also, I think it's really an iterative process, and I think that's something that we are continuing to build out, and as our platform expands, as we ultimately acquire hotels, feeding our loop back into our model will help tremendously, right? Because at the end of the day, underwriting is just based on a series of assumptions. You don't actually know if those assumptions are accurate until you acquire the hotel or do something. And so how do you make your AI better or how do you make your model better? It's feeding it back in.

So that's something that I'm really excited about. Also, the amount that we can continue to collect, and obviously we do so in a way that respects data governance and everything else, but that'll continue to feed, right? Because I think there's a huge opportunity, and obviously with Actabl, you guys do this tremendously on the hotel labor side and elsewhere, but how do you do appropriate benchmarking in the hotel real estate world?

And historically, that's been really challenging. It's been based almost solely on actual acquisitions, but you have no idea what the underwriting assumptions were. And so that's something that I'm excited about as we continue to evolve, is creating this sort of trove of our brain, so to speak, in an AI model that takes into account what actually happens.

Josiah: Zach, I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about this. I heard you on stage at Destination AI, and then we had a conversation off the stage about this a little bit, and I don't know if calling it continual re-underwriting is the best way to describe it, but it's this loop. You described it as an iterative process, and I find that fascinating and different from how I see others.

I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about practically what would be those data sets, what would be the operating rhythm, what does this allow you to do that maybe others wouldn't be able to do if they don't have this iterative approach? It feels like a really unique edge for you.

Zach: Yeah, I think, historically, in my experience, when you underwrite a hotel, you spend a tremendous amount of time on all these assumptions, your P&L assumptions, your STR assumptions, your PIP assumptions, all these things. That's what informs ultimately, do you try to buy the hotel? That's what informs your investor decks, all this stuff. You buy the hotel and then again, in my experience, all of that stuff goes into a drawer or goes into a SharePoint, never to be seen again. Maybe one day you pull it out because an investor asks, but broadly speaking, it doesn't actually influence your business plan.

You don't actually refer back to it and say, "Did this assumption come true?" There may be exceptions to that, but I think that's where AI can be so powerful, because the reality is that hopefully you put a lot of work into this and you think about what these assumptions mean. If you then feed that back into what happened and you use that to inform future underwriting, that to me is where the opportunity is.

So it's an iterative process, whether that's continual underwriting, whether that informs your future decision-making, whether that informs what you do with your existing business plan, I think that's hugely impactful. And to me, one of the reasons why I've seen that not be the case in the past is people just don't have the bandwidth.

Or big teams, right, to Tom's point, big organizations, they have different department functions, right? If you do underwriting, chances are you don't also do asset management and you don't also do disposition. So there's a little bit of everything.

Tom: I'm raising my hand because that's kind of true, but big data is what Blackstone does best, and that is a massive advantage.

They're basically doing what you're saying we're going to do once we have a portfolio of assets, to dictate or further refine our future investment decisions. Blackstone famously has led over the past several years on the real estate side by leveraging their big data and their ownership or management of thousands or millions of square feet of different asset types across the country to inform decision-making and trends and consumer trends across the world, and it is probably their biggest advantage.

So they definitely have a leg up on a small team like us, but we're able still as a small team, when we do build some kind of portfolio, to leverage that data much faster than we've ever been able to leverage before. So to that degree, I agree with Zach.

Zach: Yeah, I agree, and I think to that point, we are intentionally not trying to compete with the Blackstones, the Brookfields, the big REITs of the world, partly based on the check size we're looking at and partly to Tom's point.

But I think our way of thinking is aligned with the big institutions, yet we're a smaller team, a very small team on a relative basis, and so I think that's unique in the market that we play in. I agree it's maybe not unique in the bigger market. I would also caveat, and this is something we talked about a lot when I was at JLL, people talk about Blackstone, they talk about Brookfield, they talk about the REITs, and obviously they are important players, but cumulatively they own less than 10% of hotels in the US.

So people talk about them because everyone knows who they are, and they have tons of money and very sophisticated models, and they buy these big splashy hotels, but they don't actually control a meaningful amount of the market. And again, not that we're trying to be 10%, but just something to caveat.

Josiah: Well, it makes sense, and I think it's when you string all the things that you both have shared together where it becomes very clear there's a big opportunity here. And I think to do something compelling or interesting or financially rewarding, it is connecting all the threads, because the world's complex, right?

And so you think about, okay, here's maybe what an institutional player is doing, but maybe here's an asset type that they cannot or won't engage in, and we're going to take this practice and we're going to apply it in this way. But I also hear a novel way of operating where, you touched on this, Tom, you're referencing a lot more datasets, but you're using your judgment.

And then Zach, you spoke to this as well. I think this notion of an iterative process, I think that loop, it's the loop of insight to execution. And also, the hotel industry is so fragmented. We talked about brands in our conversation. We have owners, investors, we have operators, we have people on the ground.

There are so many different entities, and there's a lot of other entities as well. I would love to talk a little bit more about this. Think about the whole hotel ecosystem. We think about the unique approach that you're building. Where else does this show up? Is it with interacting with people in your hotels? Is there sort of an operational component to this way of working as well?

Zach: One of the things that we've said from day one is implementing the right tech stack for the hotels we ultimately own as well as for our own business. I think one thing that we've done and we continue to do is map out the hotel P&L starting at the top with rooms revenue all the way down to NOI and every line item, and determine where in each line item can we as owners influence using the right technology, and then what has the most impact, right?

Because I think there's a risk. One thing we've heard in talking to many experts in this industry is that you either build something proprietary or you sign up for a bunch of third parties, and then you ultimately just have technology bloat. Maybe you save some, but you ultimately lose. So one thing we're really focused on, I think, and again, nothing against an institution doing the same, but I don't think that it is as widespread across the industry, is finding those areas that an owner, again, a non-operating owner, can influence the P&L, implementing the right technology where we can see real positive margin savings or value creation.

The obvious answer, or the answer that we've arrived at at least, is on the building itself, right? Utilities, energy, preventive maintenance. I think one area that is hugely untapped, and I would even put the institutions in this, having done work for them in the past, is smart or tech-enabled CapEx spend and maintenance spend and PIP spend.

Tom referenced it. The brands mandate these PIPs based on their historic mandates. They really have no... And nothing against them. That's how they operate. But they really have no data on what is the ROI here. Is there an ROI here? And so again, I think when you think about reinvesting in your hotel, doing it in a way that incorporates all the right data and is done in the most efficient and effective way.

And again, a technology loop can get you there, but you have to start somewhere. So to me, it's a lot of different things, but I think that's something that we are keenly focused on.

Josiah: Yeah. Tom, I'd love to get your take here on this as well, and that makes a ton of sense, Zach, and it feels like the industry is at a moment of disruption, and it feels indirectly powered by AI.

I think from what you shared, Tom, it's not like the AI is necessarily disrupting it directly, but it's like, okay, now we have these data sets that we didn't have before. Maybe the interactions we have with a brand could be different. Is that something that you see or you've seen, brokenness across different elements of this chain in your career, and you say, "Hey, now with AI or empowered by AI, there could be a new way of interacting with these different entities"?

Tom: Yeah, I think I agree with that somewhat. I do think AI is the fuel in the gas tank that has accelerated many older leadership to be more open-minded with using technology in their platforms. I saw this a lot at Related, where in real estate, not just hotels, but all asset classes are famously behind on this stuff, and only when OpenAI came out with ChatGPT did our senior leadership start thinking about integrating it into our platform to help inform better decision-making.

And then just before I left, they even hired an associate director of AI to put together different initiatives for the company. So I do think AI is the impetus behind this change. It remains to be seen how quickly the brands and the managers will open up their tech stacks to work better with owners.

I think this is a point of high leverage for ownership. In a world where brands can't do ground-up development, they're trying to increase their net unit growth and need to work better with owners. So there's this great coming together of brand desperateness with this technology rush that is benefiting owners.

So it remains to be seen actually how... Hopefully that dynamic continues for owners, but I'm sure there will be some brand leaders who remain rigid in how they want to open up their tech stacks and others who don't. And I think those that don't will end up succeeding in the long run because they'll be more owner friendly and the industry will flourish faster.

So, remains to be seen is the answer. We continue, as Zach said, to look for the low-hanging fruit here. On the fixed costs, we think that does not require ownership and management approval, and there are several add-ons that you can do that do require sign-off, but ultimately make the manager's life easier, so we think there'll be much less friction on adding that to the cap stack.

So we do think that we have a lot of tailwinds here because of that. It's a fundamentally important part of our business.

Josiah: Amazing. Well, I'd love to have you both back on the show soon. I feel like this space is moving quickly. You're both moving quickly. You're building an incredible business. I'll include some links in the show notes where people can check you out on LinkedIn, on your website. You have recorded some amazing videos together talking a little bit more about some of these themes. But yeah, we'd love to have you back and unpack some more layers to...

Tom: Can I say one thing?

Josiah: Please.

Tom: I love the brands, okay? I can't come across as... We work with some phenomenal people in all the brands, and so I just wanted to make that clear. I still have to get good returns for my investors, though.

Josiah: We can be one big happy family here. I love it. I love it. Awesome. Well, good to see you both. Thanks for making the time to chat. I encourage all of our listeners to check out what you're building in the show notes. Always fun to connect with you, so thank you.

Tom: Thank you.

Zach: Thanks so much, Josiah. Really appreciate it.