Bridging China—US Education — A Conversation with Matt Allio

In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Matt Allio — an American educator who spent over two decades as a classroom teacher and head of school in California, before stepping into a very different role: senior advisor to schools across China on leadership training, teacher coaching, and Western pedagogical practices. Matt holds a fellowship from Columbia University and a master's degree in elementary education from California State University, Northridge. Over the past two years he's visited schools across China ranging from elite urban campuses to government experimental schools, building a rare, ground-level view of how two very different education systems actually work.

Together, we explore what changes — and what stubbornly stays the same — when you stop applying one country's template to another's classroom, and why genuine cross-cultural leadership starts with observation, not expertise.

In this conversation, we cover:

• The story of how Matt's first entry into Chinese education wasn't really about education at all — and what it taught him about doing business across cultures
• Why fluency in language shapes far more than communication — affecting cadence, trust, and the ability to genuinely read a room
• "Bob" — the story of a brilliant, overlooked student in a Chinese classroom, and what he reveals about who a system is really built to reach
• What each system — American and Chinese — could genuinely learn from the other, without romanticising either one
• The "don't boil the ocean" principle, and why leading with curiosity opens more doors than leading with answers
• Why the language of "no problem" doesn't always mean what it says — and how to navigate diplomacy, face, and trust when working across cultures
• How Matt measures success in a role where he doesn't own the outcome, only the suggestion

Whether you're leading in a system that isn't your own, working to bridge two educational cultures, or simply trying to understand what genuinely transfers across borders and what doesn't, this is a grounded, honest conversation about what it actually takes to lead well in someone else's context.

A huge thank you to Matt for his candour, his curiosity, and for reminding us that the best cross-cultural leaders are the ones who spend more time listening than talking.

The Common Room is hosted by Joshua Sussex — Deputy Head of Secondary and EdD candidate: researching leadership in international schools.

Follow along and get in touch:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshuadarrylsussex
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_common_room_podcast/

New episodes released regularly — subscribe so you don't miss the next conversation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

International education. The classrooms, the staff rooms, the lives built far from home. This is the Commonweed. I'm Joshua Sussex. Let's talk.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Matt Alio has spent over two decades in American education as a classroom teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and as a head of school at two independent schools in California for a combined 17 years, before taking on his current role as a senior advisor, consulting across schools throughout China on leadership training, teacher coaching, and Western pedagogical practices. He holds a fellowship from Columbia University and a master's degree in elementary education from California State University, Northridge. Over the past two years, Matt has visited schools across China from elite urban campuses to government experimental schools, building a rare ground level view of how the two systems actually work and where they might learn from each other. Every education system carries its own answer to the same underlying question. What is school actually for? In the US, that often shows up in holistic admissions, extracurricular breadth, and individual voice. In China, it can show up in the singular, unforgiving clarity of a Gao Cao. Few people have stood inside both systems closely enough to genuinely compare them, not from a research paper, but from the classroom, the heads of school's office, and now campus visits across dozens of schools in China. Matt has spent over two decades in American education as a teacher and head of school, and the past several years working inside China's schools as a senior advisor, introducing Westing pedagogical practices, training teachers and leaders, and quietly asking what each system might learn from the other. This conversation goes into that territory directly. What changes when you stop applying one country's template to another's classroom? And what stays stubbornly, usefully the same. This episode is for educators working across borders, for anyone curious about what China and the US actually get right about raising and educating children, and for anyone who has ever wondered whether a good education means the same thing everywhere. Welcome, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Thanks, Josh. I appreciate being here.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

So you spent over a decade as a classroom teacher and a head of school in California before making the move into a consultancy in China. Can we just start first of all with your journey in the US?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

So, yeah, classroom teacher for a number of years, middle school math, primarily or exclusively in private schools in San Francisco and also in Santa Barbara. So I taught for 10 years. You mentioned that the Fellowship at Columbia received a fellowship at Columbia. It was called the Kleinstein Fellowship, that at that time they awarded to 12 people per year that they considered the next leaders in independent school education. That was in 94, I think it was. And I did the fellowship at Columbia and then I became head of school in 95 in San Francisco. I missed the classroom, right? You missed the classroom when you become head of school, and nothing really prepares you to become head of school. But it's when what I've been doing for a number of years now, or what I have been doing for a number of years. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

And was it something you planned early in your career? Could you see yourself in leadership or did you naturally fall into that direction?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Completely fell into it. You know, I was very happy teaching at this point in '92, '93 in Santa Barbara at a country day school, a private country day school, had a remarkable set of colleagues. The learning was crazy interesting that I was doing it for myself professionally. And before I knew it, I was the the head of the middle school. I received the fellowship and then I became head of school. So I had no idea uh that it's the kind of role that I would be doing. I was perfectly happy teaching as well. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

And and then what took you to China? I mean, that jump then from being in that role in the US and then finding yourself in a situation where you're potentially combining or comparing two entirely different curriculums and approaches to education.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

You know, the entry or the entree in the China, you know, could be mildly interesting, but I think it's actually instructive when I think about it. So it's about 2013, I was head of a school in in Los Angeles, in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. And an Asian guy walks in the front door of the school. And that area of Los Angeles was heavily Asian, high Chinese. But he walked in, he asked to talk to me for a minute, and he said to me, We're starting a school in China, in Chengdu. You've been identified, and your school has been identified as perhaps a model that we can inherit for our new school in Chengdu. He said, Are you interested? And you know, I thought, yeah, sure. You know, I'd give it that much thought, sure. And I said, just pass along whoever my contact information is, we'll go from there. Fast forward three or four months. I'm with a team of four teachers at the school flying out to Chengdu. And this is where it gets kind of uh instructive. And again, you've lived in Hanzhou, so you understand the culture. You get to the hotel and there's a big banner welcoming you, right? Big banner on the wall welcoming you and your team to Chengdu. Uh, the next day we go out and visit this development, new housing development, beautiful homes, not the 40 or 50-story apartment buildings, kind of monolithic apartment buildings, but beautiful estates out in this one section of Chengdu. And we do a tour there and we see this pit in the ground, big pit in the ground where they're going to build the school. The next two days, uh, we're sitting in a conference room in the hotel just going over details, what we're going to be doing. They want us to be able to hire teachers to look at American curriculum, to look at professional development, to design classrooms. And we spend hours and hours in conversation about this. And then on the final day, the fourth day, I go out and I do a presentation on American education in this beautiful clubhouse in Chengdu that had just been completed. There's probably a hundred parents there talking about American education and what we're going to do in Chengdu. And I'm all in. Like this is, I couldn't have been treated better. Uh, we had the, you know, the dinners with the toasts, we had everything. Like I couldn't be more in. So I go back to Los Angeles and I know I'm coming back out to Chengdu in six weeks. So I go back to Chengdu again, I do another presentation, same thing, a hundred people uh in the room explaining American education, good slideshow, have a translator. I go out a third time, I go out a fourth time and do the same thing. And what I realized, Josh, was, and see if this makes sense, I wasn't building a school, I was selling real estate, right? I mean, it was it was in order to build this section of Chengdu, the owners had to guarantee that a school would be built. In order for a school to be built, there'd have to be, you know, families that had bought the condos or bought the townhouses and the homes. So in essence, I was selling real estate in this clubhouse to all these people that had come out to tour homes. I think the last thing I'll say about that is I had an excellent board of trustees in Los Angeles. And I had signed a friendship agreement that is pretty typical in China when you, you know, sister schools or friendship agreements. It's very ceremonial. And my board of trustees was really worried about this. Like, what does this contractually hold to? What's our exposure? Do we have liability? I said it's merely a friendship agreement. Like it's a good photo opportunity. But just the difference in cultures, that was my introduction to China, was essentially selling real estate. We didn't move forward with it. It was fine. I played the role that I needed to play. And then eventually moved there to China in 2016 to Jinan, Shandong, for a completely different role. But that was my introduction and where I made some connections.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Wow. So your your introduction really wasn't for education at all. Education perhaps was the initial conversation, but it turned out to be, dare I say, a sales pitch.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

There was no sleight of hand. You know, everything was in the document that we reviewed, and it was all spoken about, but it was a way of doing business in China. It wasn't deception, it wasn't sleight of hand. It was we need to sell these homes in order for this school to be built. But I realized, wait, wait, wait, these people are here on a four-hour tour of the homes. I happen to be occupying 4500 minutes or an hour of it. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

And from there you moved into a different role. Can you just give a bit of insights to that?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

After I had left the head of school role in 2016, I went out to Jinan and essentially taught demonstration lessons. They weren't rote, there wasn't memorization. We focused on dialogue, doing field work.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

And along that way, I'm assuming you met plenty of students, parents, and part of the Chinese community of education. What happened after that? What was what was your next next role?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

So I got a call when I was in China by a recruiter that was recruiting for a head of school position in Silicon Valley. And I had to ask myself a really difficult question. I love it here in China. I find it relentlessly interesting. I've never regretted walking out my front door, even if I had nothing to do, just walking around the apartment complexes and the parks. But if I stay another year, what does that really say? I've got a potential job sitting for me back in Silicon Valley, adjacent to Stanford, right in the middle of the epicenter of Silicon Valley. So I looked at that and I took that and did that for the next six years. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

So you had a stint in China, you had a taste of what it's like, and then went back to obviously a great reputational school, I assume, in the area and great um surroundings. And you did that for six years. And then where did that take you?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

I love being in Silicon Valley. I mean, talk about interesting venture capital, private equity, really smart people. Stanford's right across the street or adjacent. But at that point, I had finished my contract. I mean, I had done the work. I was ostensibly retired. And given our location in in Menlo Park, California, and which is in right in the heart of Silicon Valley, we would often have small groups of people that, because of my connections in China and connections of connections, that would come and want to visit the school that I was at. And just for come out for an hour and a half, you know, two hours, see the classrooms, watch the music program, see the reading lessons, see the math lessons, just get a kind of have a two-hour season ticket to the school. So I would meet them, we'd walk around, we'd have lunch together, and we'd probably do that four or five times a year. And we were right next to Stanford. So people go to Stanford and visit, then they would come to the school. And there was one company in China that came three times and they knew I was retiring. And the third time they came out in June of 24, they said, we'd like you to be our senior advisor for our company, and we'd like you to consider it. And I thought it's the perfect position for me, right? Much different from ahead of school. And again, I find China really interesting and enriching for me. So that's how it started. The company that came out, it came out on a third visit. And the last one, they knew I was retiring, and they uh asked me to do that role. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So I followed you a lot on LinkedIn and been really interested in your post for you. But you've been talking about that cross-collaboration across the US and China, but also the differences within China that you've experienced, you know, whether that be you've gone to the sort of more rural schools, but you've also gone to the more premium, the more expensive areas and schools of China. What differences have you noticed in that sense between those more rural and more premium areas and schools?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I can't say I've seen huge differences between the rural schools and second and third tier cities in China. It's still primarily, not exclusively, but primarily Gao Kao-based. Uh test scores are still uh very, very important. The method of instruction they want, the methodology, the pedagogy, is still fairly traditional and wrote in both areas, not exclusively, but predominantly.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

You said about uh proficiency and language can make all the difference when working in China. How has that shaped the way you now work, teach, and build relationships there?

SPEAKER_00 12:29

You know, it's a great question. I noticed that without having fluency in the language, and I emphasize fluency, it puts you at a bit of a disadvantage. It kind of goofs up your cadence. Uh you can't get real traction or momentum. It's hard to read the audience. You have a different give and take.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

It's an interesting thing. My wife is Chinese, and my daughter, who's now four, she's completely bilingual. She can dip into Mandarin and English. I've actively tried to learn and speak uh Mandarin. And then sort of three and a half, four, she has just completely gone on to the point where I will try and speak Mandarin to her and she will reply to me in English and sort of say, just don't bother that. If the pronunciation, I'm sure you've seen this, if the pronunciation's not absolutely right, then my experience is they just won't bother her. They just reply. It's slightly condescending when a four-year-old's laughing at you saying, Don't bother that, but that's that's a different story.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

No, it hit me, it hit me, Josh. I was doing this was in May, I was doing a presentation to about a hundred parents in a school in Hanzhou. And I did the presentation where I went through what American education looks like. I showed probably 120 pictures and just talked through them, my story told, and it was being translated. And then we went to the QA. The first question I was asked was, how would you change childhood in China? And I must have stood there for 20 seconds and thought, number one, it it's an impossible question to answer. And number two, how do I answer that question in a way that's relatable, that's relevant to these hundred people's lives? And I remember saying to myself, as I stood there for the 20 seconds, if I just had a better use of language and the nuance in the language, I might be able to answer this more effectively. That's when it really hit me. That's was kind of the pivotal moment when I said I should learn more of the language.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

What was your answer to that question?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

My answer to that question was, and this is where it gets tricky was about not pressuring your child, use of technology, following your passions, teach of the genius in every child, or reach for the genius in every child, extracurricular activities that reach that genius. It was so obscure and so nonspecific. And I didn't get any feedback from the audience. You know, they were looking at me. Interestingly enough, about half the people had been educated in the West and understood, and you could see them nodding. The rest of them had kind of blank stares. Like, I'm not quite sure what he was saying. I'm not quite sure what I was saying, but it was it was kind of not real tangible what I was saying. So it's a tough question to answer given the culture.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Absolutely, absolutely. I remember when I did a presentation in Hangzhou on a Saturday morning, it sort of wanted a better term, advertising, marketing at our school. And it was this grand sort of hotel. Must have been 200 plus people in in the room, a huge room. All sat in these sort of lovely leather chairs, individual, you know, chairs, really lovely setup. And and similar to yourself, I I practiced this presentation, had a translator for everything I was saying, wonderful slides that were not prepared by me. I can't take any credit for them. And delivered this presentation, which I thought went really well. A big focus was on holistic education. We were a British boarding school that really valued the Britishness and the house system, the holistic education aspect of Western, arguably, but but or British boarding schools. And that was our kind of pitch, that was our area that we're really focused on. And one of the first questions from the parent was all of this essentially, I mean, I'm I'm paraphrasing, all of this is lovely. What grade am I going to get? You know, and it's sort of like, of course, we are focused on grades, of course we want to make sure they get to the best universities and set themselves up. But that holistic aspect is really important. Again, straight back to me was we have a cleaner for that, we have a nanny for that, we have a driver for that, we have the and I sort of we want to move on from that. We want to give them independence, we want them to grow. And you can just see the faces just kind of turn off, just yeah. No, I'm not not really interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

No, no, yeah, I find that all the time when I talk about more of a holistic education. Maybe it's outdoor education or place-based learning, as we would call it in the US, or community service or service learning, or class-wide music classes, social and emotional learning, you know, things that have multiple intelligences, which goes back 20 years, but another way of saying it is teaching in different modalities. I get kind of the same blank stare. Like, why? Like, why do you need six weeks of the year be traveling to different parts of the U.S. to experience science education uh at Yosemite or at the Yellowstone Park? Why would you have your entire class learning music when you really have the top violinist in the country in your classroom? You know, uh athletics is another one. You know, the athletics does not hold much weight, at least the schools that I have visited. Why do you have them doing sports teams after school? You know, the number one ping-pong player in the region is already getting enough practice. So much different, much different. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

So so you visited um everything we we mentioned about elite urban campuses to government experimental schools in China. What what are those visits taught you about the Chinese and US education systems of what they both value? Is there similarities, is there differences?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Uh there's differences. There are similarities, but but I think the differences are regardless of the innovation labs that you see in China, the pristine campuses, the nutritious cafeterias, the meticulously trained teachers, my experience is all roads lead to the Gao Cow, right? Yeah, they except if you go to an international school and and you've made the choice not to feel that pressure, and you're gonna go abroad to the UK, you're gonna the US, Canada, and and so on. All roads in the public schools lead to the Gao Cow. And indulge me for a minute, because I keep coming back to this vision. I spent 10 weeks last fall in uh at a school in Tinjin. And, you know, maybe you can relate to this in your your time in in Hanjo. There was a kid in the back of the room, like the classroom with 35. He sat by himself. His English name is Bob. Bob was a brilliant kid, absolutely indisputable brilliant. I took pictures of underneath his desk was a mess, inside of his desk was a mess. He sat by himself uh because he was too distracted other kids. He was constantly sat out in the hallway. He'd find a piece of string in his desk and he'd be, you know, putting it in his hands, and he'd sit by himself and in the cafeteria at lunch. He had a food all over his uniform, but absolutely brilliant kid. And I'd see this kid at the end of the day, I'd say, Bob, if there's one thing I know you're a really smart kid, and he would just light up, right? Uh and I did a presentation to the faculty there, a small group, 10 or 12 people. And I said, This Bob is a brilliant kid. And imagine if you use different modalities. And they listened, but Bob is headed for, you know, if something doesn't change for him, this brilliant kid is gonna be at some point difficult to get into university, difficult to find his way. There's nothing wrong with vocational work, but moving to some kind of vocational work in China when and I see that as the biggest difference. There's the kind of instruction fits one kind of learner, where in a perfect world, uh, you're reaching the genius in every child. And I'm not sure that happens as much in China. That said, you know, talk about content delivery and content absorption for the kids in China. I used to I tell groups they're like, you are years ahead of what the kids in the U.S. are learning in terms of content. So there's a balance in there somewhere between the two cultures that you know I'm really interested in continuing to learn more about.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

And if you were to name one thing each system could genuinely learn from the other, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

So I think it it's a great question. I think in the US, it would be, and I'll try to explain this, know your audience. Meaning when you're in a classroom, for example, kids in China would say, It's my job to learn. This is my job during the day. Kids in China will tell me that. I think in the US, we could use more of that. You go into the classroom and that's a place to learn. Know the audience. The audience is your teacher and your fellow classmates. So taking their learning more seriously and more diligently in the US is one change that I would see. In China, it would be make room for all learners. You know, that there are different ways to reach kids. And I don't see that as much in China. I mean, when I've observed in different schools, they are masters at using the smart board. Like I look at the smart board, I can't believe how well they do. But the instruction is very monolithic in a way. And they might be reaching 70% of them or 60% or 80%. But there's kids like Bob in the back of the room, they're not reaching. And is there a way to do that and not sacrifice content? Those are the two things that come to mind. Brilliant. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

So you advise on leadership training, teacher coaching, and Western pedagogical practices inside these Chinese schools. What has the full arc teacher, head of school, now cross border advisor to what's it taught you that you couldn't have learned any other way?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

What I have learned going over there and advising, whether it's leadership mentoring, whether it's teachers, whether it's an ownership group or a group of investors, is my role is not to boil the ocean. You know, pick pick something that's You know, may be important. It could be the governance structure, it could be teaching and learning in different modalities, it could be assessment, it could be community building, it could be SEL learning, but don't bring them all there at once because you'll lose them. So each time I go back there, I pick something that feels particularly acute and I focus on that. And I don't bring in the 10 other things that may be on my mind, but I know we'll get no traction. And I think the other thing that I learned this long ago, but I'm reminded of it all the time, is the language in China is much different. When I make a suggestion and someone says, no problem, sounds like a good idea, it doesn't mean it's going to happen. It means that we're kind of done with the conversation. And by all means, the way you approach a conversation, no one can lose face. Like you can easily embarrass somebody without knowing it. And as soon as you embarrass somebody, then the room incrementally goes quiet, you've kind of lost the room. So there's a bit of a nuance or a diplomacy that you have to be thoughtful about so people don't lose face and you don't embarrass people. In the US, it's generally pretty straightforward. I don't agree with that. I think there's a much better way of doing it. You don't do that in China. So don't boil the ocean and be very thoughtful and nuanced in your language and listen all the time. Listen, observe all the time. I do much more observing than I do talking.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

That was exactly where I was sort of thinking with that with that question, really, because I was putting myself in your shoes and having been in China and having got a lot of things wrong, to be really honest with you, I very much did go in perhaps naively, ignorantly, perhaps, and think that I could just pick up that approach of, as you kind of alluded to in America and probably is very similar in the UK, is if I'm honest and I have good intentions, it doesn't really matter how the message is delivered because I have good intentions. I'm not here to offend anybody, but I'm I'm not necessarily focused on whether I'm offending somebody or not, because the most important thing is the students. That's all I'm focused on. And I believe my idea is going to help the students. And I personally experienced really challenging times in the sense of I've offended people without even realizing, and I've lost the room without even realizing. It took me a while to, well, to be honest, it probably did ignite some interest in where my research has gone to, but it's interesting with your role, because I'm aware of how language is important, but just trying to think about a Chinese person would say the foreigner is coming into the school to do what? And and the question would be not that you'd ever hear this question, I would imagine, but the question would be amongst Chinese colleagues, what's he here for? Why does he need to be here? What's the what's the reason? And I was picturing you coming in and sharing and asking questions, and like you say, that diplomacy, it must be absolutely vital. And you're almost mediating between the two, aren't you? You're mediating between you have some ideas, but at the same time, you're not coming in to say this is how to do it. There'd be an element of face, as you said, there'd be an element of we're doing well without the American system. Why do we need the American system? Um, but you know, there would be all that sort of at play. And I was just curious of how you mediated that, how you negotiated that, which you kind of touched upon. And I think that's it's really interesting that you at that point you say you have 10 ideas, but you only really focus on one or two just because you're aware of the room and reading that room.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

But you imagine, Josh, imagine one of the things I do at the school that I visit in Tinj, and I've been there a lot, is I might spend the first two weeks. I mean, I always say lead with curiosity. So just observing in classrooms, talking with teachers, setting up meetings with teachers and and saying, you know, tell me about your group of kids, tell me about what you're struggling with, tell me about what you really feel successful with, where you feel like you need the most professional development, tell me about what you did this weekend, you know, and nothing at the end saying, well, here's what I think you should do. But doing that the first two weeks I'm there. And then when you sit down with the group, with not with individuals, but the collective group of 12 to 15 teachers, you say to them, like I've been talking to a number of you in the past two weeks, if not all of you, and here are some of the things I learned. Here's some of the things that I've really internalized and been reflecting upon. Let me mirror back what I'm seeing and how that may work in the US. You get a much more open group, as opposed to me walking in and saying, let me be really clear in the way that we're going to do this next week, where you just get iced. And that's not disingenuous. It's completely fair to lead with curiosity and take good notes and repeat things back to people and have people feel seen, valued, and heard. That will open a lot more doors than walking in and pretending to be the expert, at least in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Brilliant. And before my final question, just ask you one more, just out of that point there you made. How do you measure your success in the role?

SPEAKER_00 26:52

It's a great question. I think about that all the time because when I was head of school, success was in some ways dependent on me and me initiating things and the leadership team and the teachers. I own the issue. Uh when I do the work in China, I I don't own the issue. My my role is to gather information, provide feedback to the company and the ownership group and to council teachers and the leadership teams. I think how I measure leadership are the things that I'm suggesting being executed. And if they are, why are they being executed? If they're not, why not? Not in a critical way and not in a judgmental way, but I will make a number of suggestions, and of those suggestions, some will get it implemented and executed, most will not. And that's just the nature of the beast. So I judge my success on am I making suggestions that are strategically being implemented, and then how can I be helpful with that implementation?

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Brilliant. And my final question is for an educator trying to genuinely bridge Chinese and American approaches to education, what do you want them to hear from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 28:04

I think it goes back to my previous answer. Don't try to boil the ocean. You know what you do well, and bring that to your work in China. And by all means, uh default to listening, observing, taking in the information, having dialogue about that information. Because on first glance, when you first go to China, it seems very similar in some ways to the US, in some ways, not in all ways, but it's a school. It's full of kids, it has teachers. The longer I'm there, the more complex it gets. So if I keep things simple, things that I think that that I have some skills in that I can transmit if needed, but more than anything, observe. Observe, listen, collaborate before making any suggestions going into the situation. Too many people went in. Here's what we're gonna do. I observe today, and here's what I think I think you solve it. And it does not work that way in China. It doesn't work in the US that way, but it doesn't work in China that way at all.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Matt, thank you very much for your time. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Josh, I appreciate it very much. You have a great day.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

All right, bye-bye.