Monty Montoya - Chief Executive Officer

In this episode we chat with Monty Montoya, CEO of TherOptix and a visionary in the space of corneal therapeutics and transplants.  We learn from Monty about his career and leadership philosophies, his unique take on time off away from work, and about the amazing new technologies being developed in his space.

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Leaders need to set and share a vision with their teams. Leaders need to ensure that we are all seeing future opportunities through the same lens. My guest today on the leaders perspective has built his career around vision. Welcome to the leaders perspective podcast. We're we talk to Triple Threat leaders about the people products, trends and experiences that influence business. I'm now pleased to introduce your host, Jason Goldberg. Welcome back to the leaders perspective podcast where we engage with Triple Threat leaders to learn about their lives, careers and leadership philosophies, and have the opportunity to discuss a hot topic in society. As a reminder, a Triple Threat leader is one who embodies the very best of leadership and who has strong IQ, EQ and DQ intelligence quotient, emotional quotient and decency quotient. I'm so excited to welcome to the show Monty Montoya, the CEO of therapeutics. I said in the intro that Monty focuses his career on vision. He is an expert and leader in the world of corneal therapeutics, products and transplants, and has developed some of the leading products that have restored sight for hundreds of 1000s of people worldwide. Prior to his current role, Monty served as the founder and CEO of cornea gem, a venture backed biotech company. He was founder of Oregon biotech, a spin out from cornea Jen. Previously he was president and CEO of site life. And earlier in his career, he was CEO of the Northwest Lions Eye bank. He is also the Advisory Board Chair of Life Center, Northwest and organ procurement organization serving the Pacific Northwest, and a board member of the Holland foundation for site restoration. And I'm very pleased to say that Monty was a classmate of mine from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. I am very pleased to welcome to the leaders perspective, Monty Montoya. Welcome Monty, thanks for joining us today. Well, thank you, Jason, really great to be here with you and have some time to catch up. Absolutely. It's been a long time. I can't believe we graduated 19 years ago, it is really hard to imagine that 20 years ago, we were together at Duke, and almost 20 years, I guess next year will be our 20 year anniversary. But what a what a great two decades it's been and it's been fun to follow along with your career and and see how you progressed and just such a great cohort of human beings making a lot of impact around the world. It's amazing. You know, I tell people that the class that we were in had such an incredible global presence, and a lot of what people are doing are truly mission driven. And, and you are absolutely leading the pack in terms of mission driven roles. So very impressive. So why don't we jump right in to that, right? I you know, tell us tell, tell, tell our listeners about you. You know, where are you from? What are your hobbies? A little bit about Monty? Yeah, so I actually grew up in a small rural town called Rimrock. In in Arizona, a lot of people would know where Sedona is, I would say we're kind of the south side of Sedona, the farmers and the workers live in Rimrock. My dad was the the this kind of the caretaker, the elementary school, I went to Beaver Creek Elementary. And when I graduated from Camp Verde High School, that was the larger town next Rimrock that I had to bust over to I think I had 68 kids in my graduating class. So kind of a small, small town upbringing. And I went from there to the kind of exact opposite when I went to Arizona State University for my undergrad, I think at the time there was, you know, it was the third largest university in the country. And so went from the small town environment to just, you know, explosion of people and, you know, all kinds of experiences in it. You know, it's been a great experience for me to come from that background where, you know, hard work and sweat on your browser's kind of waiting to find you to, you know, post our Duke MBA education, having an opportunity to be a part of things that, you know, really can help shape the world and make, make the world a better place and, you know, hobbies that I've developed over over time really kind of revolve around culture and people. I have just really enjoyed, you know, through my work, having worked in 30 plus different countries and getting to know amazing people all different cultures and backgrounds and religions and just seeing the good in humanity, you know, crossed our planet has been really a great, great experience for me. One of the things that I sort of brought along from my childhood is golf. That's a hobby I have to this day, I'm still sort of an average golfer, but my grandfather taught me how to play and I grew up playing in the Beaver Creek Country Club, which unfortunately, is, is close today waiting for somebody to buy it. So if you're out there and you're looking for a fantastic project, want to really revive a community look up the Beaver Creek Country Club, it's for sale. Something that I've developed over the last probably 20 years here in the Seattle area where I call home is an interest in understanding of wine and the winemaking process. And that kind of I fell into that probably because of my my love of culture and people and I made a friend here who ended up starting a winery in Brent labor. And so for the past 16 years, actually 18 years now it's first first vintage was 2004. And been, you know, helping my friend Chris Sparkman of Sparkman sellers. In every aspect of winemaking. This does, you know again, Grunt labor and helping out wherever it needed to be helped. And I've learned a lot and just grown to appreciate, you know, that whole process of, of winemaking, the business side of it as well, maybe it's a retirement gig for you. It really could be I just enjoy it. I mean from the farmers, which is part of what you know, I grew up with who grow the grapes, you know, all through the process. And then ultimately, this kind of crazy sales and marketing process as well that that drives that whole business. And so there's a lot a lot to learn there and fun, fun, fun people along the way as well. Very cool. Very cool. So. So you went to ASU. And how did you find your way? What did you study? So I started out as a bioengineering major there, truth be told, I flunked out of the engineering part of the whole process and defaulted to just getting a basic biological sciences degree, okay. I along the way, thought about going to medical school, but early on, think to some good thanks to some good mentors, realized I was either going to be a good doctor and a bad husband and father, or a good husband and father and a bad doctor. And kind of was self aware enough to realize that was not a good set of choices. And so ultimately, that led me into the biotech healthcare field, where in college undergrad actually worked in the summers for WL Gore in their medical research facility in Flagstaff, Arizona. And then that ultimately, set me up for what became my career and kind of, you know, full time job and ultimately a passion of eliminating corneal blindness. I love that. So So let's, that's a great transition. Tell us about corneal blindness, right, I think, you know, probably, you know, not something that most people face. It's, it's something that clearly people don't want, you know, when they when they hear that they have some type of corneal injury or, or disease. It's a frightening time. So how many, how many people does this impact? And tell us about about the field a little bit? Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of interesting. So when you look into somebody's eye, and you see the colored part of their eye, there's a clear layer of tissue that covers over that colored part of your eye, and that's the cornea. It's basically the window of your eye. It's, it's what allows light to pass in and for you to actually see also the shape of that tissue that clearly of tissue refracts the light, so that it ends up on your retina and allows you to have focus and be able to see and so it's a critical part of of your vision. Today, there are about 12 point 7 million people worldwide who are cornea blind, in at least one of their eyes. And unfortunately, right now, there's not a treatment or a pathway where all those people could be put in a situation where their sight was restored. And there are genetic forms of corneal blindness. And then you can imagine a whole set of injuries or infections. Anything that affects the front of your eye, can cause your cornea to become Miss shaped, which then the light doesn't focus properly or cloudy, from infection so that the light can't pass through. And so As you know, either diseases injuries or infections are what caused people to go corneal blind and the predominant majority of those people actually live in in lower middle income countries. And so that's where finding sustainable and scalable solutions to corneal blindness is been a challenge. And I feel really great at this point in my career over the past two decades, especially we really elevated corneal blindness to a point where industry is starting to take interest and really ramping up the innovation. So my hope is that over time, we will reach that goal of eliminating corneal blindness by the year 2040. So it's a strategy that we are a touchscreen of a mission that we laid out at Site life, a company I was at. And to really make that happen and have that goal of 2040. And it's, it's starting the flywheel starting to spin faster and faster. So I'm still hopeful we can meet that goal. And how many people need a corneal transplant in the US every year? Yeah, so every year, it's around 50,000. People who need cornea transplants, that's a pretty static member, I think that the growth and need for corneal transplants is flat, you know, maybe single single digit growth. Fortunately, here in the US, because of organizations like site life, and cornea, Jan that I was was previously at, we actually have a surplus of tissue available for transplant here in the US amazing. Which is fantastic. If you're here in the US, unfortunately, pretty much every other country around the world has a shortage. And the reality is globally, we produce probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 corneas for transplant, where you probably need, you know, 2 million a year to just keep up with the new cases of corneal blindness that come on. And then you think of that, you know, 12 point 7 million number, you realize that we've got to do some things differently, to scale access to care and treatments that can help restore these people's vision. So corneal corneal tissue and transplants is just a piece of this right? What what are the other aspects of of your, your world? Yeah, well, you know, one of the great programs that was launched at Site life was really early treatment of corneal abrasions. And so, you know, if you've ever had an experience where you scratch your you think you scratch your eyeball, you're scratching your cornea, very painful. And in most cases, if if you, you know, bathe, you know, daily or wash your face regularly, you won't have any problem, it'll be painful for a while, and in a day or two, it'll heal and you'll be fine. In a developing world situation where you may not have the ability to bathe with clean water and wash your face with clean water, that scratch on your cornea can very quickly lead to an infection. And so one of the things that they've been doing at Site life is training community health workers. In most cases, these are women who are trained how to identify a corneal abrasion and treat it with an antibiotic, so that it heals quickly. And this sort of just prevents a whole load of corneal blindness from happening. So being on that prevention side is another part of what's happening out there. And then more recently, oriented biotech, another company that I helped found, has been able to develop a product where we can take cells from a donor cornea, multiply those cells, so that one donor cornea can actually provide transplants for over 100 people, I think, really, it's probably going to be closer to 1000 people from one donor cornea. And so this really solves the shortage problem. And these cells are delivered via an injection into the what's called the anterior chamber of your eye, just behind the cornea. And so that's another mode of treatment that I think is going to have a huge impact and the cornea regenerates, correct it that's a great question. And the answer is yes and no. So the cornea actually has many different cell types in it, there's layers of cells. The outer layer of cells is called the epithelium. The epithelium continually regenerates. And as you're blinking or whatever, you're removing the old epithelial cells and the newer cells come forward, and so that that process is continued working, and there's a segment of corneal blindness we're working on at the Holland Foundation, which is a nonprofit I'm affiliated with, where patients actually are unable to regenerate new epithelial cells and they develop very severe painful what are called ocular surface disorders. But on the back of the cornea, you have what's called the endothelium. And that's a single layer of cells. And those cells do not regenerate. And so there are genetic disorders like Fuchs dystrophy, or other injuries that can actually damage those cells, and they don't regenerate. And the primary function of those cells is to pump fluid out of your cornea. So it stays compact, and clear. And when your cornea swells, it actually becomes cloudy. And so the endothelial cells are really critical, but they don't regenerate. And one of the, the most common forms of transplant is replacing that inner layer of cells with with donor tissue. Very cool. I mean, I thought I shared with you, when we spoke last week that I was about seven years ago, I had I had a corneal injury to my right eye. And it was, you know, I've had orthopedic injuries and, and other injuries, and I can, I can attest that the corneal injury was by far the most frightening and the most painful injury that I have ever experienced. And, you know, just in addition to the the pain, the panic, the fear that this causes when somebody is potentially losing their sight, in the eye is significant. So having therapeutics that can restore sight is amazing. And obviously, mine wasn't as severe it regenerated. And as you mentioned earlier, it actually mine actually regenerated and changed the shape the shape of the cornea. So therefore, I landed myself with with glasses after that. So but but from a pure, you know, this is not just physical. This is also psychological, because it has a massive psychological component to what you do. Yeah, it really does. You know, I just reminded me, of some of these things I get a little choked up thinking about and remembering, but I just flashed back to this conversation, I was in Nairobi, Kenya, sitting across from a cab driver who had a corneal abrasion, turned into an infection. And through that whole process, he was a driver, he lost his job, he couldn't support his family, his wife and his kids left to go back with her family, because they couldn't support him. And he was sort of a drain to them. And he's sitting across from us basically saying, Can you please help me because if you can't, I'm just going to kill myself. Because life is not worth living, if I can't see. And so the the reality of of blindness across the globe is pretty weighty and the psychological impacts that it has on the person who's blind, but then also the ripple effect out on all the people who are around them is pretty amazing. You know, it really impacted me when the first time I went to the who, in Geneva, of all the things they can have, out in front of the WHO headquarters is a a large statue of a blind man holding on to a stick, and a young boy is holding on to the other end of it. And it's it's basically this thing that that captures the impact of, of health ailments. And in the US, blindness is the one because the elderly man is blind. And so this child has been charged to take care of him and he follows the child around well, that child's not going to school. And so that future of that person, that child basically is changed. Probably not for the better because there are now two people who are affected and probably more by my by this blindness. Very cool. It's amazing. So Tell, tell me about you started to tell me in our prep session about some technology that you're developing, that allows for medications to be distributed through a lens. Yeah, so I'm currently leading a startup company called fair optics. And we are working on brain to market technology that was developed at the Langer lab at MIT and in partnership with Boston Children's Hospital and mass pioneer, where we can take drugs put them in a polymer, embed that Polymer inside of a contact lens that then can deliver drugs after ophthalmic surgical procedures in a very controlled manner. So you have you know, more precise dosing over the desired time period that you want to deliver that and this could really change the trajectory of post surgical care and ophthalmology. Right now, if you know many people out there have had cataract surgery, for example. And so after cataract surgery, you're sent home with drops, and you have to put these drops in your eye and the drops, when in your eyes are very effective, but But it's hard to get them in, especially if you're, you know, let's say 70 or 80 years old after cataract surgery, that's kind of hard to do. And so there are a significant amount of post surgical complications across ophthalmology. And so by having this contact lens on the cornea, delivering a drug at a controlled way, can really help eliminate, you know, some of those those challenges that we see post surgically, the first product that we're working on, which you would have loved to have Jason when you had your corneal abrasion is for corneal brain corneal pain. And so, there are procedures like PRK or corneal crosslinking, where in order to do the procedure, the surgeon has to remove that epithelial layer of tissue and so that the eye is exposed, those nerve endings are exposed, you know, to to the air, which actually creates a lot of pain. And so by putting on a thorough optics lens that actually has an analgesic in the lens, we can take care of that pain problem. For those patients while they're their epithelial layer, regrows it usually takes two to three days for that to happen. Right now, it's kind of amazing that the primary way that doctors are dealing with this post surgical pain and PRK especially, is by prescribing opioids. Yep. And, you know, there's been studies done at some of the top ophthalmology centers in the country where, actually cornea surgeons, who are providing large volumes of PRK surgery are some of the highest prescribers in the system, a maze of opioids, a whole host of problems leading the lead from that. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So how did you come up with this idea? Well, I have to give credit to the founders of their optics, Dan Kahani, who is at Boston Children's in MIT, he's actually has his section in the Langer lab at MIT and Joe Chileno, who is a corneal surgeon at Mass ion here, those two really are the founders of of this whole idea. And over the last, you know, 10 plus years, they've been doing academic work, that ultimately led to a patent, the patent that they were able to secure as for any drug, encapsulated in a contact lens, so very powerful and broad patent. And then, you know, just this concept, and so those two are really the key, my role came in once therapeutics had licensed that intellectual property from MIT, Boston Children's and mass pioneer, was to come in and do the tech transfer and, and get a product that that ultimately can make it through FDA approval, and most importantly, really serve patients and surgeons in a powerful way. A sell advisors, expert consultants are all veteran operators to bring real solutions to your business challenges, contact us at info at acel dash advisors.com To reach our experts today. Let's pivot. And let's talk a little bit about your leadership style and philosophies. You've led very large teams, across your organizations. How do you set clear vision and strategy for your teams? You know, I think one of the key things in all of that, for me has been really identifying big, you know, those big, hairy, audacious goals kind of working really, really diligently to refine what that is, and then frame it into, you know, something that's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely, okay, those the SMART goal, for example, at sight life, you know, we developed a vision slash mission statement that went, you know, I still know it to this day. We serve as a global leader and partner to eliminate corneal blindness by 2014. And so, you know, we kind of had this very big thing to eliminate corneal blindness. We were very specific about our role to be a leader and a partner. You know, if you see the pictures and hear the stories of the corneal blindness, you know that it's very relevant. And then you have that timely goal of 2040. And then the only question in that was, Is it attainable? Can we really make this happen and, and in that mission statement really served as a catalyst, and a framing for for all of what sight life has done over the last 12 years and still going forward. And so I think, again, having that big, you know, hairy, audacious goal is part of it. But then, I think important to that is you have to have strategies that are, let's say, yearly, but also, you know, three to five year strategies that are serving that statement. And so what do we need to be doing today that, you know, those those, you know, one or two really critical things that have to happen this year for us to make the appropriate progress towards that goal. And so making sure that that's clear across the entire organization, and making sure everybody understands what they do on a daily basis to serve those strategies, right, excellent. today's workforce, as you know, seemingly burnt out, all of the companies that I talked to, are having a difficult time, whether people are working from home or have a hybrid arrangement. Some people seem to be working more hours than ever, even though they seem to have more flexibility. What have you done with your teams to be able to combat fatigue and improve morale and retention? Yeah, you know, I think this is an area where we're still learning, you know, across the business landscape of how to manage this. And, and I think this combination of the pandemic, and this access to technology that allows us to work from from anywhere, has, in some ways provided short term productivity. But this issue of burnout is, is much, much bigger, I think, than we realize. And so, one of the things that I've been practicing really for for the last 10 plus years, is, is a concept I call NATO. And it's no access time off. And so, in this process, I was the first one to do it myself. Fortunately, I had a board chair, you know, 10 plus years ago, her name was Diane Sabin, and she was a former CPA and CFO. And she thought it would be good periodically for the CEO, to be on vacation, and to not have access to anything in the organization, just as a way to check for fraud and redundancy in the organization. And so her purpose for that was more kind of from a CPA audit compliance perspective. But what I learned when I took time off, and I was unplugged from the network, I couldn't log into my email because they changed my password that I, wow, I actually had a lot better experience I came back even more refreshed. But I still had one problem in that is that I came back to this pile of emails. And so all that, you know, sort of refreshing I had gained kind of dissipated very quickly because I'm trying to catch up and, and dig out from under this mountain of email. So in the no access time off process, I ultimately developed for myself and then began to push down into the organization. When you had a vacation, I really encourage people to take at least a week, and if possible two weeks a year where you're completely unplugged from the network. And for most hard chargers typing people like you and I, Jason and probably the people listening to this, you have to change their password because we can't help ourselves, we'll still try to work with our spouses, you know, off to the store, and we're on vacation, we're checking to see if there's anything we missed. But so, so changing the password, so you can't get in at all. And then here's the big one that really made a difference for me. That out of office message that informs people that you will never read the emails that they send you during this time period. And that if they need to contact somebody in the organization, here's who they can talk contact or if they need to contact you. This is when you'll be back and resend the email then. And and while you're gone, all of those emails are completely deleted. And so when you come back from your time off, you have zero emails in your inbox. And that has been something that I have found to really help refresh people and kind of changed perspectives when you know, just having that time off to, to get your brain rested and your mind rested. You know, I feel like it's really promoted the creativity of of our key leadership, it's definitely been a great tool and retention of, you know, keeping people and, you know, I'll tell you some of the people that will fight this the most are your salespeople. Right, you know, they can't imagine being away and not being able to resolve problems, but but they're the ones that probably need as much as anybody, it's, you know, it's amazing to hear a leader, not just, you know, do this themselves, encourage it for other people, no matter the function in the organization. And, and obviously, it's, it's scary, right? It's, it's, it's a massive sea shift in people thinking about this. But I know that when when employees returned from vacation, and they find dozens, if not hundreds of emails waiting for them. It negates the entire purpose of that vacation, they come back, they're underwater, they're overwhelmed. Undoubtedly, people who check their emails either during vacation or right before they come back, just so that they can catch up. And this is just an absolutely phenomenal idea that other leaders can can implement and should encourage people, people who are listening this probably can feel that anxiety, I felt it when you were talking about it. Days before my vacation is over, oh my gosh, I know, I'm gonna have 1000s of emails or hundreds of emails and I have to deal with and absolutely, I'm just gonna start working on them now. So last thing I wanted to chat with you about in this market, how are you recruiting high performing talent? You know, one of the things that, you know, it's funny, there's some of these things that we benefited from our time at Duke, we had some great leaders and professors there. And one of the things we worked a fair amount with, remember sim sitcom and, and Alan, Alan land, yep. His culture and how to build culture. And, and one of the things that stuck for me and I was able to develop is, you know, it's not just having values in the company, those are really important. If you don't define the behaviors, that animate those values in your company, it's really hard to know what you're recruiting for. Yep. And so one of the things that I've done at my company is, is put a lot of time and effort in understanding, not just from my perspective, but the company itself. How do we, how do we define top performers? What are they? And what are the behaviors those individuals exhibit? And so for example, you know, one of the the values that insight life was passionate. And we went through identifying what are those? What is passion look like, at Site life, and one of the funny things that came up, is, you're willing to pitch in help and help whenever it's needed. You just nobody has to ask you. It's just you just step in. And once we identified that it was really funny to watch, if some, like the one thing you never said at Site life was, that's not my job. If you said that, like everybody just would kind of take a step back be like, okay, this person doesn't belong here, right. And so what we began doing is actually codifying the questions in our interview process, looking for those behaviors, and potential candidates. And so finding people who were already doing those behaviors wherever they were at, and then bringing them into the organization, and actually, we many times we're more focused on does this person have the right behaviors, we'll teach them how to do what they need to do, we'll train them up on whatever the details of their job are. But if they have the behavioral slash cultural fit, we can make them work. Absolutely. I completely agree. I was chatting with somebody this morning about it. I was asked how do you build high performing teams? And what do you look for and it is somewhat amorphous, right. And so I, you know, I explained some of the technical characteristics, but I also explained a persona of somebody being both a helper and a problem solver, and being intellectually curious, because if you're a helper, you're a problem solver and you're intellectually curious. You don't care if the issue or problem to be solved or work to be done is within your realm. Or if it's over in a completely different area and you're just excited to help somebody else to for the greater good it? Yeah. You know, I think it's one of the things that's really hard and I struggled with this, I just thought of a accordia Gen i, we got to a point where we needed to hire a new Chief Commercial Officer. And we, I was able to recruit in somebody that the investors and the board really had high esteem for, they thought, well, this person is fantastic. We can't believe you've recruited them in. And in the onboarding process, this individual basically got kicked out of the process. And like day one, it was patently clear that this person did not fit our culture. At the same time, I knew I had investors and board members that, you know, just thought this person was, was perfect. And they were going to, you know, be everything we needed. And so I'm in this situation, do I honor the culture? Or, or do I protect my own backside of my board and investors. And, and, you know, to do the right thing, ultimately, I had to let that person go. And we, you know, we had a very amicable conversation, where we both realized, Hey, this is not a good fit, right? And let's, let's call it now allow you to move on, and allow us to move on and do it in an amicable way. And so we were able to do that, but I have to admit, it was a little scary as a CEO, because I you know, I wasn't sure how the board in the investors would handle but I think ultimately, everybody was pretty pleased to see that the culture was that strong, that, you know, right away, even though this this, you know, highly regarded highly touted brilliant person, very, very accomplished, they just didn't fit. And that was identified quickly, you have to protect that at all costs. So, Monty, I want to, you know, thank you again, this has been an amazing conversation I've learned a lot about, about your, your field. I know, the listeners, I'm sure have, have learned quite a bit. And, and certainly, you know, and probably even more importantly, learning from your leadership style and some of the unique things that that you brought to your companies in your industry. And I know that the leaders and aspiring leaders listening in will will learn from that and, and I'm pretty sure we're going to see NATO implemented around so when when we start seeing NATO all around, we're going to attribute that to you. I love to see that just for the benefit of humanity for people to have that, that, you know, mental, physical, emotional health, you know, through that process be great. Thanks again. Thank you, Jason, fun to be here. Well, that was an absolutely amazing conversation with Monty and and I personally absolutely loved hearing about all of the exciting things that he is working on, and in the corneal space, and absolutely appreciate that somebody like Monty a leader like Monty has dedicated his life and his career to restoring sight for millions of people. So, at the end of every podcast, we recap, with the three main things that we learned from our triple threat leader of the day, and And I noted down three things that I learned from Monty. The first one is around goals and vision, we need to set big, hairy, audacious goals, otherwise known as B hag. And it's not enough to tie those big, hairy audacious goals, or at least set those big, hairy audacious goals on their own. We have to tie them to smart goals, and smart goals SandForce, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time bound. So we take those big goals, we tie them to smart goals, we then set a timeline for those on both short and medium term objectives. And then we need to make it personal. What does that mean for each individual in each role? Second thing I learned from Monty is his philosophy on NATO. No access time off, which I think is an absolutely incredible philosophy and is is a wonderful thing to do for your employees. It's to make sure that your employees aren't overwhelmed during or after a vacation. Time Off, is time off time off is is meant to be spent recharging those batteries coming back to work full steam ahead. And when we stare down the barrel of a full inbox that's that's waiting for us. When we come back, it negates all of that time off. So lock down, email, delete the emails, refer to other people on the team who are not on vacation, and let that employee come back to a clean slate, Moving at full speed ahead as soon as they come back. So NATO was absolutely fantastic leadership idea from Monty and the third is around hiring and and Monty suggested that we need to define behaviors that animate culture and values. I think that's really powerful. We have to define our culture. We have to define the behaviors. And once we do that, and we're recruiting, we look for people who support one another. And and if you do those things, you can often recruit into high performing teams. So once again, I want to thank you for listening to the leaders perspective podcast. As always, have a great day and be your best self. Thanks for listening to the leaders perspective podcast, brought to you by a cell advisors visit a cell dash advisors.com For more information about our growth turnaround, optimization, risk in HR Advisory Services LLC, and is available on YouTube, Apple and Spotify.