Jamie Claire Kiser [17:48] Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. When I talk to frms that want to be buyers and they start kind of giving us you know, here's what we want to make sure that we're positioning ourselves as. You're not going to believe this, but every single frm says their top priority is cultural ft. Every single one, the number one important thing to us is the cultural ft. And that applies to ten 10 person frms, it applies to publicly traded frms, it applies to private equity groups. Everyone's culture is their top priority within their organization. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I guess I think that we don't take it a step further and show it. If culture is your ft, what do you mean by that? What are the aspects of your culture that make you a gem? What are the differentiators for your company? Know who you are and what that basis and that's how you stand out in a crowded feld? Randy Wilburn [18:37] And especially as there are new players that have gotten into the M&A space in our industry, I was hoping you could speak about this a little bit. Private equity has taken note of what's happening in the AEC space when historically when you think of private equity, they were not necessarily interested in professional service frms, but now they are interacting with and doing transactions with AEC frms. And I would love for you may be anecdotal to share some of your experiences as it pertains to private equity getting involved in this space? Jamie Claire Kiser [19:15] Well, I have a lot to say on this topic. [RW - I fgured you did so] and I want to be even-handed. So one of the biggest benefts of having an infux of private equity in our space is that it's forcing us to sit up and run our companies like real businesses. You have to pay attention to your working capital. You have to pay attention to where's the money going. You have to really have a handle on your expenses, your effciency, and the return on the investment. And that doesn't mean it's all about the numbers but our industry is a pretty big gap. I think sometimes between the project works that people want to spend their time on and the things that actually create that long-term value and the infux of private equity and the valuations that we're seeing in those increased numbers. That's great for our industry overall, being an undervalued industry isn't a good thing, if that's what you're going to spend your entire legacy building. I think getting valuations that were closely tied to other types of industries that perform services is a very good thing for the space overall. If we're going to recruit, retain people, you want to see people that are able to achieve great wealth in a space. That's how an industry boom, right? And I think that's really important and it's a very good thing. There are some challenges too, of course. I think that some private equity frms have a bit of a naive view of what you can do with a company that you buy in our space. We've got this record backlog, therefore, all we have to do is hire twice as many people next year, and then we'll achieve this growth
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