Thriving in Two Roles: Dr. David Hage’s Secrets to Managing a Private Practice Alongside a Full-Time Career
Considering setting up a private care management business on the side?
Running a private care management practice while juggling a full-time job as a care manager can seem like an impossible balancing act. But for those passionate about patient care and eager to build something of their own, it can be a deeply rewarding endeavor. Dr. David Hage, a seasoned gerontologist and licensed clinical social worker, shares his journey and the lessons he's learned along the way.
Understanding the Reality: Is It Right for You?
Starting a private practice is not a decision to be taken lightly. It requires a significant investment of time, energy, and financial resources. Dr. Hage emphasizes that before diving in, you must assess whether this path aligns with your career goals and personal life. "I wouldn't advise someone who's new to nursing or social work to start out on their own immediately," he cautions. Gaining substantial experience in various care settings—such as hospitals, nursing homes, or home health agencies—is crucial for building the foundation needed to run a successful practice.
Strategies for Success
Dr. Hage shares several strategies that have helped him balance his roles effectively:
Scaling Your Workload: "I would keep the number of clients I was working with based on how much time I anticipated having in my schedule," he explains. This might mean scaling up during less busy times, like the summer months, or scaling down when other responsibilities take precedence.
Setting Clear Expectations: Being upfront with clients about your availability is crucial. "If I'm not available, I make sure clients are aware of other resources they can access," Dr. Hage advises. This could mean having a backup plan in place, such as a home health nurse who can step in during emergencies.
Efficient Scheduling: Dr. Hage has mastered the art of scheduling, sometimes down to five-minute intervals, to ensure he can meet all his commitments. He also leverages templates and tools to streamline repetitive tasks, saving time and energy.
Building a Strong Support Network: Having a mentor and being part of a professional community can provide invaluable guidance and support. Dr. Hage stresses the importance of being in "mutually beneficial relationships" and always having a "phone-a-friend" in the field.
Financial Considerations
Starting a private practice comes with its own set of financial challenges. Initial costs can include legal fees for registering your business, creating marketing materials, and setting up a website. Dr. Hage recommends saving up before starting to ensure you can cover these expenses without stress. Additionally, managing fluctuating income requires careful budgeting and financial planning, something that should not be overlooked.
Whether you're ready to start your own business or just curious about what it entails, Dr. Hage’s advice is a great starting point. Listen to the full episode here
Subscribe & Leave a Review
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the CareCraft podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps us continue to bring you insightful conversations with industry experts.
Transcript
[00:00:04] Ariadne: Welcome to this episode of the CareCraft podcast. I'm super excited to be joined today by Dr. David Hage, who's a gerontologist and licensed clinical social worker. He has a BSW from Misericordia University MSW from Marywood University and a PhD in leadership and gerontology from Concordia University, Chicago. Dr. Hage is a member of the faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University teaching in the social work department and the medical case management certificate program. And in addition to his teaching Dr. Hage has over 15 years of experience working as a social worker, case manager, and advanced aging life care professional, in acute, subacute, and outpatient care environments, including running his own private practice.
So, a very busy man. Thank you so much for being with us today. How are you doing?
[00:00:59] David: Thanks. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm doing well. How are you ?
[00:01:02] Ariadne: Doing really well! So I'm super excited to learn about how you balance all of your multiple roles but maybe before we can get into that. Can you share a bit about your journey into gerontology and social work and specifically, you know, starting your own practice as well?
[00:01:20] David: Sure. So I was born into a family that had social workers and gerontologists in it. So the first part of my journey starts there. My father was a social worker and my mother was a nurse practitioner and she's also a gerontologist and a nursing educator. And my grandmother happened to be a nursing home administrator and a state inspector. So I was born in a family where helping others was always a priority. And in particular, older adults were themed in, in the work that my family did. I did start out working with children first, so I got a certificate in child welfare and, you know, worked with children and families for maybe the first four years or so of my career.
And then from there I started by working in a nursing home for a year. And then I worked in a hospital full time, got into higher ed, got involved in, in case management, clinical social work. And then while I was also in higher ed, then I did a little part time work at a hospital and began my own practice.
So that's kind of how the journey began for me. What when I was in higher ed too, there's often encouragement to, you know, have a practice day as well. And we could certainly, you know, talk about that more. It's definitely an art.
[00:02:39] Ariadne: It seems like you come from a long lineage then of individuals that have specialized in taking care of others.
So jumping into how do you balance what sounds like three full time jobs to me but can you talk a little bit about how you manage your time effectively between the private practice, your hospital roles, as well as your teaching responsibilities?
[00:03:05] David: Sure, so I'm beginning a new role at FGCU.
So I've paused the practice for the moment, and I'm going to get started there and figure out, you know, where that space exists here in Southwest Florida. But, but prior to that, in my work in Northeastern Pennsylvania you know, there was, again, a practice day that I could do work on and, you know, weekends or evenings.
So when I did a little bit of hospital work, it was often helping out for a few hours, you know, on days where there was higher volume of work. So it wasn't a super high intensity. And then I also did the counseling consults at a hospital. So those, you know, varied in frequency. Some weeks I might. You know, see three patients and some weeks I might see nine and the next week I might have none.
So the variability there is kind of great. But one of the tricks that I found, you know, to balance that with also keeping a private practice was to scale the work relative to my reasonable availability. And so, you know, I would keep the amount of clients that I was working with, based on how much time I anticipated having in my schedule for that week or that month.
And so for example, in higher education, you tend to be off in the summer. And so in the summer, I could scale my practice up and do a lot more work. But. You know, sometimes around holidays or holiday breaks, I have a little bit more time and also by taking on the types of cases that make sense for the availability of time and resources that I might have.
And so for example, some people might just want an assessment. To look at someone's overall function with making some recommendations and suggesting resources for them. And so those cases are kind of 1 off scenarios. You know, that work really well for a variable schedule. And then, you know, more intensive cases would make me think more directly about, you know, how much time I have and how many I can take on in a given period of time.
[00:04:57] Ariadne: That makes a lot of sense. And how would you predict? Because I feel like the tricky thing is you might think something is one off and then maybe, you know, a crisis emerges or you know, vice versa.
[00:05:08] David: Well, I'll say you know, having a spouse who's understanding and and supportive and also has a background in business and understands the variability of of business is a great benefit for myself personally.
So, you know, I'd say you have to make it work for your family and your situation, but you're right, you know, sometimes a crisis would come up and, you know, there'll be times when you have to balance things in a very delicate way. It might mean getting up a few hours earlier on a day, you know, to do some work very early in the morning before you start other work, or, you know, taking a lunch hour to catch up on some phone calls or some, you know, delicate balancing.
There are challenges, but, you know, I typically limited my caseload to something that was reasonable and could be accommodated.
[00:05:53] Ariadne: Can you talk about some of the strategies that you've used to ensure that you are delivering that high quality of care, even if maybe you're not available, you know, 24/7 which, even if you didn't have multiple jobs, 24/7 is an unrealistic expectation for someone to be available.
[00:06:11] David: Being clear with clients about what I am available to do and not available to do is very important. And so if I were, you know, otherwise engaged in something that limited my availability, I would make that known to clients and be up front and honest about it. The other thing would be, you know, making them aware of resources for particular emergencies that might come up with their specific circumstances.
So having a good plan. So for example, if I'm working on a case where there's also a home health company, well, if I'm not available, they can also call a home health nurse as a backup to me, or of course, they could obviously for any emergency, they should present for medical care if something comes up rather than contact me. So there's a lot of resources available.
I listened to an interesting conversation Warren Buffett had one time about managing your schedule. And, you know, sometimes people think of scheduling things as restrictive, but it's actually a way to promote more freedom and, and availability of things that you want or need in your schedule.
And so I have the habit of scheduling things down almost to five minute, 10 minute intervals at times, you know, to really make things work well. At the end of my day, after I finished my primary work, I may have, you know, 45 minutes available before I I'm expected back home or get up very early. So there are creative ways to do it.
The other thing is you could template things that you repeat. And so, for example, if I'm working in a particular geography and I do a lot of research about Assisted living facilities are skilled nursing facilities that people might want to participate in an environment.
I might save those reviews and evaluations of the environments. And that way, you know, when I see the next client that needs that, I don't have to replicate that work. I can just share what I've already done. And so some of that's very helpful.
The other thing that often works is you know, setting someone's expectations for when you might follow up with them.
And so, you know, scheduling a follow up meeting at a particular time when I know I have more availability, you know, we'll leave somebody, you know, feeling better served if they're knowing when to expect my follow up next. So those are a few examples.
[00:08:26] Ariadne: Those are some really great tips. I, I would love to dig into what you were saying about setting expectations. That is very critical and any business that you're in. How would you go about doing it and making sure that they were actually like understood as well?
[00:08:41] David: The first part I would say is making sure that you're accepting clients that are the right fit for your practice.
So sometimes you may decline a client. That has cold hard cash to pay you, but, you know, it might not be the right fit for your practice. So, for example, you know, if something is more nursing centric, and I don't have nursing expertise, and they don't have additional support, I might encourage them to follow up with somebody who has that expertise and stay away from that case.
If it's not a match for me as a care manager. So, I think part of it's knowing you You know what you're capable of doing and what's within your scope of practice and you know what makes sense for you in particular.
[00:09:23] Ariadne: Yeah, that makes sense. Can you talk about some ways in which your interactions with clients would differ and you're like private practice versus some of the other settings that you've helped clients?
[00:09:37] David: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll start with, you know, I try and give them my best wherever I'm at. That the amount of time and attention you can allocate certainly varies very significantly by environment though, right?
So if I have a caseload of 20 you know, patients in an acute care environment. You know, there are regulatory things that require attention in particular timeframes. There are people that will be discharged the next day or new admissions coming in and there'll be issues that are ongoing and there'll be new issues that present. And so you have to do a delicate balance of your time to make sure that you're appropriately doing things by regulation, ethically and best practice. And so that's delicate.
So, when I'm working with somebody not in an institutional environment where those things are a little more flexible, right? The time and the way that I approach things is different in my own time.
I think I can give a little more almost like a concierge level attention. And so, you know, I could be as intensive with a client or or the or less involved based on what their needs expectations and budget are so some people that. You know, this goes back to the earlier question you asked too, about tailoring expectations for the client.
So I make it known upfront that I could be as involved or not involved that the situation would warrant or that somebody would want or could afford, right? And so if somebody wants more intensive attention, because for example, let's say. Their loved ones out of town and they don't have any local support other than me as a care manager.
Well, they want, they might want me to be more involved. And so for those folks, you know, I might have to take a call at night, you know, outside of normal business hours or early in the morning or change something that I wanted to do personally in order to be more responsive. And so I think that would be a lot of what the difference look like.
The other thing would be, you could sometimes be a little more creative in the way you solve problems like outside of institutional environment. So, for example, policies or philosophical approaches to to client situations might dictate a different approach. You know, for example, in an acute care setting, when you're discharging somebody to a skilled nursing facility environment, you know, the way that the regulations work, you may be obligated to discharge somebody to the first facility that accepts them.
You know, you can't keep them two or three extra days to honor a preference. Now you can send it out, you could send an abstract out to a facility and try and get that preference honored first and then move on to the next one if not, but You know, if I'm working with somebody in the community, I could be more creative in how I approach a facility or we do the timing. Planning, you know, for a situation to get them more of what they want.
It affords you more opportunity for choice.
[00:12:25] Ariadne: Yeah, it sounds like one of the big elements there is really like the flexibility basically in in your ability to choose what you think is the best fit. And I mean, that sounds great.
But I feel like maybe when you're just getting started, that level of flexibility can also be overwhelming, right? You were talking a little bit earlier about the templates and like, you know, starting to set up methods in which you can kind of replicate your own work and things that have worked well in the past.
How, how did you go about doing that when you were first getting started?
[00:12:56] David: Having family members in that background positioned me uniquely, right?
So I was, I kind of grew up in that. And so I had a unique insight into that from my, my family who were involved in care. But the other side of that too is I didn't begin my practice until I had sufficient experience to be prepared to do it. And so I wouldn't advise somebody who's new to maybe nursing or social work or one of the therapies maybe to start out on their own immediately.
You know, you may want to work in a nursing home environment, a home health agency, a hospital for a substantial period of time. The other thing is, I believe in a principle that a friend of mine shared with me and it's to be mentored, to mentor others and to be in mutually beneficial relationships at all times, right?
And so if I'm mentoring somebody, I'm helping somebody else who's learning, right? Like maybe a new care manager. I'm, I'm actually helping someone now become certified in care management. And I have mentors in my life that I can call, you know, I had a gerontology professor who, when I started out, he also did geriatric care management.
And I will call him and ask him some questions, even though I had good experience in education. So I had a phone, a friend, if you will. That's a term I like to have a phone, a friend in different areas, somebody you could call. And then it's good to be around mutually beneficial situation. So if you're around other care managers, just people you could kind of talk shop with a little bit and just generally ballpark some ideas.
I think sometimes it's good to have regular meetings with other care managers. So, if that's possible within your area, or if not, at least people in overlapping disciplines with similar knowledge, like maybe a nurse or a social worker, a case manager. The other thing is joining professional associations would position you well.
So, for example, I mentioned as an aging life care professional, or other people sometimes call that geriatric care manager. There's a professional association that exists. And so you join a network of other professionals. And so I'm on a list serve. And we talk about all kinds of challenges and issues where we ballpark, you know, what would you do in this type of situation?
We obviously, you know, remove people's identities to maintain HIPAA confidentiality, but you could sometimes ask for a resource or ballpark a hypothetical case and get some support from other professionals. As a social worker too, we also have an ethics hotline. So if you have an ethical conflict in a situation, you can call that and get some ethical advice.
There are tools to use to assess things and do ethical screens like Lohenberg and Dolgoff two social work researchers have a really great tool to help prioritize ethical principles or the Aging Life Care Association has a set of Standards for practice. And so between all of those things and continuing education, having a good network you also learn from clients.
So I had a really astute client I worked with maybe 6 months ago. And she was a mental health professional herself, and her husband had dementia, and she looked up some case law that got her husband therapy extensions four times in a nursing home, and I've not seen that happen very frequently, but because of, you know, the research that she did, she was able to find this Jimmo case that justified the continuation of therapy in a subacute environment.
For the maintenance of function instead of gaining new function. And so she was able to get I think it was three or four extensions. And so I learned that from a client and so clients teach us, we learn from experience we should do our own research and keep up with it. with things. I think it's good to review your codes of ethics annually.
You know, to do some continuing education in varied areas to expand your knowledge base. So between all those things that I think it can help people. But if, if somebody were starting a new practice, I would strongly advise them to seek some mentorship from somebody who has more experience in the field.
And I think that would position them well.
[00:17:03] Ariadne: That network is critical in so many ways. And there's the formal networks, like you're saying, like the associations, the schools and then the informal network which you always need a phone, a friend I'm, I'm curious more digging into some of the challenges of running a private practice and some of the financial aspects as well.
Because, you know, it was maybe a little bit more fluctuating, right? Like when you would take on a larger caseload, when you maybe would have more responsibilities elsewhere. How did you manage that from like a financial perspective and maybe, you know, like any sort of projections or analytics you were doing for your business?
[00:17:48] David: That's really great question. So the first thing I would say would be, you know, you do have to set aside enough money to take care of the initial startup costs. And so you might want to save up for a period of time. For example, you're going to want to register your business in some way. Perhaps an LLC or, you know, some other legal formation.
And so that's going to cost some money. Some people can do that themselves. There's websites that could kind of help you. And people are ambitious and you know, savvy enough to do that. Or some people may want to pay someone. I chose to pay an attorney to do that for me because I didn't want to, you know, mess that part up.
I had a background uniquely in I worked for a social service agency that also produced a magazine, and so I got involved in graphic design and editing. And so I was able to make my own logo, my own website, business cards, and, you know, collaterals. But somebody without that experience, you know, may need to pay for that.
Or there are some services that, You know, you can use to help you that are cheaper to do that. And knowing those would be helpful too. So your costs are going to vary depending on, you know, how, how much you get together in the beginning. So for example, like if you can't afford the website to start, I wouldn't skimp on the legal registration of your business or buying insurance, the liability insurance, right.
But you may start off having a Facebook page and then as you develop some income over time, then you add in a website. You could kind of scale things up very slowly. Like for me, for example, when I started out, I paid rent in an office on an hourly basis.
So I didn't have a monthly intensive cost for rent. I found an office of therapists that had office space that wasn't used in the evening and primarily I was doing things in the evening or on a weekend when they weren't there and so I paid them a certain agreed upon amount per hour to use the space and so I had a, an office address for my business and I could use it when I wanted to on a limited small basis while I was building it up and then eventually I moved into an office, you know, where I sublet a whole office space from somebody but it allowed me to scale it.
You know, you might do advertising over time. Things like that. But I would say, you know, building good networks is free too. So, you know, if you could build a network with some physicians and refers, you know, social workers at nursing homes or assisted living facilities if you can solve problems for people, you know, that often makes them feel very positively about what you're doing.
So for example, you might. Take on a pro bono case to help somebody, but you build up your reputation a little bit, or maybe somebody wants to work with you and they don't have the full amount of money and you could do a sliding scale and still earn a little bit of money to build up your practice. And then you could adjust your prices as you go.
[00:20:40] Ariadne: So a very incremental approach is what you're describing of like figuring out that what you need in the beginning and then growing that as you grow. That's actually a great point that you were making at the end about getting the clientele, right? Whether you start maybe with some pro bono cases, a sliding scale, et cetera.
How did you think about that pipeline of clients, especially in this context of, you know, where maybe there's fluctuating time? And I expect you have to start doing more business development a little bit before you kind of have the capacity for, for the full caseload. Right? So if you have capacity in the summer, right?
Like, what did that mean for your spring?
[00:21:25] David: Sure. So. One thing that anybody could use is there's something called small business development centers. And at least in Pennsylvania, I don't know if they're here in Florida as well, but in Pennsylvania, we had what are called small business development centers, and they were places that you could go and you basically get free business advice from experts in business.
And so they'll help you formulate a business plan. You know, they'll help you walk through resources, maybe some grant money that's available. What I did was while I worked in the field, I cultivated my relationships with professionals, not for the utility of my business, just as a best practice, right?
I cared about other people. I tried to really do well with outcomes and listen to what they were concerned about. And that paid dividends later when I opened a business, right? A lot of the physicians that I worked with in a hospital setting and nursing home setting knew that I was a trustworthy person who cared about their clients or patients and followed through on things.
And so some of them would often be very glad to send a referral. When I was leaving the hospital full time to go into higher ed. I wrote a, I wrote a like you know, a note when I was leaving to thank everybody for the opportunity to work together. And, you know, I, I expressed some gratitude. And then when I started my own practice, I sent out a mailer to all those positions that I'd work with and other ones to let them know that I've established a practice along with a flyer I made.
And that got me a couple referrals to start. And I had some pretty unique, you know, one of my first clients was, out of California, and it was a film producer. It's kind of a unique situation. And so they, they had you know, some local family. And I got really fortunate with a case that was more intensive that allowed me to generate enough income to pay for things.
So some of its luck, some of its preparation and you know, adapting to whatever the situation is to make it work.
[00:23:18] Ariadne: That's incredible. Is there one or two pieces of advice that you would give someone considering starting while maintaining a full time job?
[00:23:27] David: Get the appropriate training to ensure that you'll do the work properly is the first thing, right? So you don't want to develop a product that you're not prepared to regularly and appropriately, you know, meet the need for what you're advertising, right? So at Misericordia University, we had a geriatric care management certificate, right?
So if I didn't have that experience, I might consider going to do that. Or at Florida Gulf Coast University. I believe Dr. Felke was on your show. And I know that there's a certificate program you could go through to get care management training there. Or, you know, we have a medical case management certificate here in Southwest Florida.
And that would be very helpful to people, you know, to be able to provide care management in an institutional setting or eventually to be more entrepreneurial on their own.
The next thing I would say is get a really good mentor and a plan. You know, somebody who could help you through that plan and then to be realistic with yourself and patient as you implement it. And, you know, I got to the point with my geriatric care management where I probably could have done it full time.
If I had wanted to, I liked the balance of those other jobs, but I built it up slowly and reliably in a way that worked for me, but like, you know, if the teaching opportunity was no longer available, I could have done that full time or so it's nice to. You know, build it up and scale things in a way that works for you.
Or, or let's say for example, at a certain point in your life, something makes sense in another way. It doesn't, you know, I have, I have a young child and so, you know, that makes me want to do less things late at night, you know, when I want to spend time with my family. Right. So you scale things as things happen in your own life.
[00:25:13] Ariadne: You've also moved recently. So what does that mean for, for your practice and how you think about that?
[00:25:19] David: Yeah, so I made a transition plan for the clients that I'd had locally in northeastern Pennsylvania. And so some of them that was to end service and others. It was to make a referral to another level of care provider, you know, of care management.
You know, I could certainly be available to do some remote consultation intermittently, you know, as long as that's something I review with my current employer and that's okay. But for right now, I'm kind of pausing practice, figuring out the lay of the land and in the higher education part. And then, you know, I'll look at that practice day, you know, maybe next semester after I get my feet under me in the new environment and see where we go from there.
That's the beauty of the flexibility, right? I can build it up or or scale it back as I need to.
[00:26:05] Ariadne: Yeah, that's incredible. What has been the biggest rewards from running your own practice?
[00:26:12] David: So I worked with a physician one time. His name was Abdul Prabola. He's a physiatrist, a really great doctor. And, you know, he always used to teach, teach us, you know, don't cherry pick, you know, take the hard cases and the good cases.
So for me, some of the, some of the things that I really remember are those really difficult cases where you made an impact that that's very personally satisfying. Like for example I obtained one client one time because a home health agency wouldn't go in their home because they had scabies and nobody would go in the home.
So I got one of those Tyvek suits and I was working with my mom who was a nurse practitioner at the time. We were both doing care management together at that point and she was a nurse and she applied Quell to them, scabies. And I helped bag up all the things in their apartment and it was gross, really sweaty work and I didn't enjoy it.
But the fact that I helped that person get their nursing care and their private duty aides back in the home and keep them safe was really rewarding for me and nobody else would do it. Home health wouldn't do it. A family member didn't know how to do it. You know, the private duty aides wouldn't even go in there.
And so, like, that was a case for that person would have been up a creek without somebody who's willing to be really flexible.
I recently had a, another client with dementia that had like a really difficult home situation. And I was in there throwing away 13 cat trees and all these things in the house that we needed to get rid of to make it a safe environment, you know?
And I was in there throwing things in a dumpster with them too. And it's not typical in care management, but I really pride myself on helping people solve problems and being willing to go the extra mile. And I think that differentiates you from others.
[00:27:56] Ariadne: Wow, that impact is incredible. How has your work as a faculty member or an academic influenced your practice and, you know, how you approach your, your delivery of that care?
[00:28:09] David: It's a great question. For me, personally, I see them as interrelated and both necessary. So I like being, you know, in higher education and teaching and catching up on research and then, you know, also being involved in direct practice.
For me, those are both rewarding and they inform each other. So in our council on social work education standards, we have what's called practice informed research and research informed practice, you know, so we will research what helps the client best and then we'll see where there's gaps in the research and then conduct research based on those gaps that we see in the practice environment.
For example, you know, some of my doctoral dissertation work was focused on dementia and caregiving. And so when I would work with people with a dementia diagnosis and caregiving, you know, I had the experience of working in a behavioral neurology clinic, doing my research and learning a lot about those resources.
And so I really would often, you know, know places that would be really helpful to refer clients or, you know, be able to share some research information and resources with them. And that overlap, you know, made a lot of sense and was beneficial in both environments. So, when I spoke to students, I could talk a lot about real world cases, you know, that happened very recently. So it informed theoretical discussion in a very practical way as well.
[00:29:29] Ariadne: You took the question out of my mind. I was going to ask what are some gaps that you've seen in your practice that have, like, influenced your research aspects? Are there more in addition to what you were mentioning about the dementia?
[00:29:41] David: Sure. So, so, for example, one that's common You know, caregivers tend to be disproportionately female, for example. And so often caregivers get forced out of working roles. And then, you know, when it comes time for retirement, for example, they're disadvantaged in terms of their social security income. So there's an unfair disadvantage to females who happen to disproportionately be caregivers.
And so for me, that's an issue I'm very sensitive to, or the unique challenges of caregiving related to different stages of dementia. For example, you know, you can read a pamphlet, but when you live the experience of a caregiver, it's very different. I cared for my grandfather who happened to have dementia myself. So I lived that caregiver experience as well as helping others in that experience.
[00:30:27] Ariadne: Well, I feel like I should invite you back solely to talk about your research because all of those things sounded super interesting.
I really appreciate you being on. I'm so excited to see what you continue doing in your research.
[00:30:41] David: Oh, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I'm in the middle of a couple really interesting pieces of research, and I'd love to chat with you again if you're up for that.