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- [00:01]
Carrie
Whenever we think we've kind of figured this out, we just keep pushing it.
- [00:05]
Thiel
Does the company shape us? Do we shape the company?
- [00:08]
Host
This is two co leaders of hlb, one of the most influential lighting design firms in the world. And I was curious, what does it take to lead a studio that outlives you and your existence there?
- [00:20]
Thiel
I think we're a culture of learning and curiosity and that underlies everything and
- [00:26]
Carrie
being curious about how we're going to grow together.
- [00:30]
Thiel
Maybe as you get closer to the last 10, 15 years of your career, you start looking back. I think the other thing we do with each other as leaders is try to make sure we're also bringing ourselves into the present.
- [00:44]
Carrie
It's been a methodical process of developing our skill sets as a shared leadership team. We believe that we are not the end of hlb.
- [00:55]
Thiel
People who are drawn to leadership in our industry. They come in all sizes and shapes and they have a variety of talents and we're stronger for that.
- [01:05]
Carrie
So you do the things that are going to fertilize the ground for you to be what you want to be in the future. And I think that's what we've been working on. What do you want in your career? Where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be in 30 years? This kind of endless thirst to kind of improve and get better and go to the next point. Someone might already start identifying. Fine. With a long term goal. Or maybe they don't.
- [01:37]
Host
Before we jump in, I want to thank five companies that show up for this community. Eureka, Diode, led, Kelvix, ledflex and Targettti usa. Because this show exists thanks to their belief in designers and the work they do every single day. It matters to me, and I hope it matters to you too. Because when the essence of design is commanded by true creativity, seriously, cool things can happen. You know, great design, it's not something people imagine. They just experience it. That moment when a space you designed actually exists in the world and people walk into it feeling something without knowing why. That's not luck. That's your design, your instinct, your eye. The obsession with getting it right. Eureka Lumineers are crafted for this mindset. And they aren't just intentionally designed. They're driven by a genuine passion, a push to innovate and the performance to back it up. Their statement pieces anchor a space and make people stop. So when your project needs that moment, that thing people feel without knowing why, Eureka is a good place to start. Check out eurekalighting.com it's the kind of rabbit hole you'll be glad you fell into.
- [02:47]
Thiel
Growth is intentional. We know that we're very rigorous about it, but we're also very people focused. It's a really interesting question about how do we keep our own leadership? You know, does the company shape us? Do we shape the company? And how do we keep our own leadership growing and thriving?
- [03:07]
Carrie
And it's something we haven't been asked before.
- [03:10]
Thiel
Does the company shape us? Do we shape the company? Does an incredible talent that is two years out of school or somebody who's joined us as a principal, all of those things factor into how we, how we grow. Because I think we're a culture of learning and curiosity and that underlies everything.
- [03:35]
Carrie
I would also say constant growth mindset. So everybody grows until the day they retire and beyond. If you look at examples of Barbara and Steven, they're still out doing activities which are helping them to continue to grow in different aspects of their lives. So I think that's a fundamental, that's a baseline fundamentalist. We're looking for people that are interested in growing as humans. On this long journey, this marathon of your career and beyond and growing together and being curious about how we're going to grow together. I would say one of the things that we have talked about recently is that we are a legacy firm by choice, that is people centric. And so I think those two focus areas have shaped what growth and what success and development and future and meaning are for us. Would you agree?
- [04:29]
Thiel
Yeah. I also think we're not shy about being ambitious. We seek the opportunity to work with the best and do the best work and we're purpose driven to make a difference. So that fuels us as leaders. And we work to bring people in who are fueled by that as well. There's always another mountain to climb. And you know, I was reflecting recently on when you're really young, there's somewhere you want to be. So you're projecting yourself into that place. Maybe as you get closer to the last 10, 15 years of your career, you start looking back. And so I think the other thing we do with each other as leaders is try to make sure we're also bringing ourselves into the present and we're making sure that we're here, very present and in person with our team. Even though we spend a lot of time planning and projecting into the future and also looking back to the past about what did we do well, what could we do better? How could we. We've just come upon or attracted an incredibly talented person. How can we Bring those talents into our studios, into our work processes and get even better.
- [05:53]
Carrie
I would say one thing that I think is a thread that runs through everything we do these days is this knowledge that we believe that we are not the end of hlb. We believe that we in a continuum. So we happen to be sitting in positions of leadership and inspiration for a group of like minded designers and business people who work together for a common goal. There will be a time and we should be in the business of putting ourselves out of our jobs by creating people who can step up and lead and take the firm even further than we've ever been able to accomplish. And so that actually I think is a long term sign of success. And I think that's where we were mentored very intentionally over many years. It doesn't happen overnight, it happens over. And it's not easy. Right. There are many times when we were all having disagreements and working through things that were tough. I think by meeting together and being together and spending time working on the hard stuff, it allowed us to develop a shared identity and a shared ability to move into the future together. And we continue to look to attract people that are interested in that future journey and then come along, come on board, be a part of that. And then hopefully we put ourselves out of a job and then we move on and let them take the baton even farther.
- [07:29]
Host
You bring up the hard stuff. What's hard? What's hard about it?
- [07:33]
Carrie
There are times when we don't all agree. There are times when over the years we have felt unheard, unseen, overlooked, shut down. What am I missing internally? These things happen.
- [07:51]
Thiel
Yeah. Or a group of leaders or.
- [07:54]
Carrie
That's normal. Yeah.
- [07:55]
Thiel
Maybe you stumbled, you made a mistake. You made a mistake and you're really remorseful about it. And maybe you did something that didn't work out as you planned and somebody was really hurt by it.
- [08:10]
Carrie
You know, if you make a mistake, you need to. We're all going to make mistakes occasionally. But it's what you do after you make the mistake that counts. Right. That's really very important. I would say that we have a really strong integrity streak. Ethics are important to us. Words matter. If, if you're not thoughtful, if you're just power hungry or careless or things like that, that's just not going to get us anywhere. We just don't have that. We don't have that mindset.
- [08:37]
Host
What drives it you mentioned. Right. It's interesting to think about does the company drive the people or do the people drive the company?
- [08:45]
Thiel
You know, the answer is Both, it's just like lighting.
- [08:49]
Host
It's part science, of course it's both.
- [08:52]
Thiel
But you have to have a foundation of intentionality. And I think we really took this from Barbara and Stephen and even, you know, perhaps Jules Horton represented the passion. And Barbara and Stephen certainly had the talent as well, but they had the intentionality and the determination to create a place where it was not only about them as individuals thriving, but an entire esprit de corps thriving and an intention to build it. So that's maybe a place where the company drives it. There are people who are individuals, and we have really come to understand that people who are drawn to leadership in our industry, they come in all sizes and shapes and they have a variety of talents, and we're stronger for that variety. And some of us are very bubbly and full of opinions. And we need to set circumstances where those of us who have a different way of communicating can be successful and inspire. So we have some of our most perhaps introverted team members who inspire or leaders who inspire some of our more introverted team members. And that's a superpower. And so that's where an individual starts to drive the company. And we need to be open and in the moment and present so that all of those voices can empower each other.
- [10:28]
Carrie
One of the driving factors in our success is meeting in person consistently and regularly and talking and listening to each other. So we've spent a lot of time developing better communication skills. We're never going to stop learning that. And we can always get better. Just when I think we've gotten better, we fail at communication. We need to constantly get better at it. We have chosen to have facilitated. We call them advances. So instead of a retreat, we do advances. We've been doing that 20 years plus, I don't know how long. So that has allowed our leadership. We can't have. We used to have firm, wide retreats, and then we pivoted on that and we actually started having leadership advances. And that's when I think we started really being able to pick, speed up and shape the company that we wanted to be in the future. But we spent a lot of time, long time ago, deciding who we were and who we wanted to be. Spent a lot of time doing that for years with Simon. Right. And then from there we grew and decided, what was it that was exciting to us as a group? What did we want to be in the future? And we just kept working towards that. So it's been a methodical process of developing our skill sets as a shared leadership team. And it never stops. Right now we are just finishing one more. We have a. It's called the Leadership Insights Lab and we have 15 principals and 15 directors. And we're all meeting for like a McKinsey Harvard Business School style leadership workshop once a month. It's required. And we are developing our shared knowledge, vocabulary, ability to discuss really critical things for running a design business. And so it covers various topics where we brought in experts to help us develop as a leadership team. Whenever we think we've kind of figured this out, we just keep pushing it, I guess, right. That I would say it's this kind of endless thirst to kind of improve and get better and go to the next point and where we can go.
- [12:49]
Thiel
Recently we've been developing our 3D modeling visualization skills. And you could think of a group that would say what we're trying to do is get less expensive people to produce stuff. But that's not at all what we're trying to do. And we value the people who have those skills. They're specialists, they're very high value. Add to our team, they may not come from a lighting design background, but they have deep expertise that we really value. And so as we grow, that's one thing that's allowed us to do is get specialists in perhaps more narrow aspects of our business. But it lifts our skill set in those areas that in the end allow everybody to do what they do better, communicate with our clients better and have more joy in the whole process. And so I think that's the other thing that we're discovering is that there's so many layers of expertise that can come into the team and make us so much better.
- [13:56]
Carrie
Oh yeah. And it goes way beyond from design. We do that. But also in terms of how we operate as a business, we've brought in experts in their fields. And so that has allowed that area of expertise to thrive in the company. It's provided a better solid foundation and which allows all of our design team to really be in the business of design, which is how we describe it. We have many business units and one of our business units is design. It's actually the outside delivery method of what we do. We're in customer service, we're in design thinking. Right. So that's what we do. But then we have lots of facets of how we have to get that done. So whether it's marketing and business development to it, to accounting, to hr, you know, all of those things, finance, that all has to happen in the background. So the more that we've been Fleshing this out. We've been understanding, you know, when it's time to pull the lever on yet another unique value add specialization. So we've been exploring quite a few in the last couple of years. It's really exciting. We have a couple that we're bringing on imminently and I'm really excited because I think really what Thiel and I were talking about at the beginning of this discussion is the goal that we all share is, and this is really something we talk about as a firm. We are never going to win every project, nor should we. We're never going to do all the lighting design in the world. And that's not appropriate. But what we do want is to have a shot at the best, most exciting, most rewarding work that we possibly can attract, with the best design professionals that we can possibly attract, with our best design team that we can possibly attract. So we want to create that highest level of design excellence that lighting design can achieve. That's. We really want that. That's what our supervision is. And we want that to be really, you know, a global. A global position on that. So that's an exciting thing that attracts a lot of people. A lot of people just really get jazzed. It's the North Star, you know, we want to be making a difference globally. We want to be making a difference in people's lives all over the world and in many different layers, in many different ways. And so that's something that we regularly say in our town halls and in things that we do firm, wide. And that is something that we hear people really get attached to so they can all grasp onto that same vision. And that really, I think, propels us all in the same direction.
- [16:40]
Host
When you guys sat down with Simon, I think it was you said and did all this work to really think about who you want to be. Is that what you wrote down?
- [16:49]
Carrie
Like, not at that stage. This came later.
- [16:53]
Thiel
It does. And we keep looking back at it every year. We don't change it every year, but we take a look at it and say, is this still who we are, where we want to go? The world is changing around us. Are we still. Is the North Star really, really our North Star? And circling back around to all the elements of how we stay inspired and how we bring a team together. Every one of our micro teams has their own mission statement.
- [17:28]
Carrie
Yeah.
- [17:29]
Thiel
So they.
- [17:30]
Carrie
It's really exciting.
- [17:31]
Thiel
You should see our IT mission statement.
- [17:33]
Carrie
It's so cool.
- [17:34]
Thiel
You'd think it was. It's kind of sounds silly. We sound silly, but it matters. A lot.
- [17:39]
Carrie
It does.
- [17:39]
Thiel
And it motivates all of us. We're inspired by what they're inspired, et cetera.
- [17:45]
Carrie
I get excited knowing that our HR team wants to deliver the best people experience, that the IT team wants to be able to create the best product delivery experience for us in the future so that we have access to the best tools. And that's exciting. Like they're going for a game excellence that really gets us all fired up. It inspires other groups. So then another group will write another mission statement. They get kind of fired up thinking about the possibility and they go, well, what do we want? What do we want to be? And then they start. I think it's a lot of that. I mean, if you go back to just like personal development, let's say you want to like, if you're somebody who doesn't run and you have this fantasy of running a marathon, one of the first things you identify is I want to run a marathon. So that means I have to become a runner and then I have to become a long distance runner and I have, you know, I have to be somebody that has a lot of stamina. I have to be X, Y and Z. I have to be a healthy person that has good nutrients. So you do the things that are going to kind of fertilize the ground for you to be what you want to be in the future. And I think that's what we've been working on as a company is like creating the right environment.
- [19:08]
Host
I have this terrible vision of the egg is the dream. Right. But you have to crack it and let that thing just go everywhere so that it, so to speak, ends up on the table.
- [19:20]
Carrie
Right.
- [19:21]
Host
And everything's covered in that dream and vision to the sense that it's like, okay, we gotta get to work.
- [19:27]
Carrie
So. Yeah, how does the work get done? Yeah, so we've been going in 10 year planning cycles. So our, we are five years into a current 10 year plan. And then the last 10 year plan was 2010 to 2020. And then we created another. So it's like a decade long plan. But then a decade is a long time to plan. So there's the early work that you do and that's when we were, we started with refining what our vision was and who we wanted to be and who we were then from there we have been embarking on a ten year strategic plan. And so we had to do a five year. Where do we want to be in five years? What are some check posts? And we've actually, we just did our Five year kickoff. And we actually have exceeded most of those goals. Where was one that we were right on the precipice of? So that's exciting.
- [20:24]
Thiel
And so I think the other thing that Carrie may have mentioned is that we involve people at all stages in their career in that process. So it sounds like, you know, we're all the leaders are all sort of secreting away behind the black screen over there. But no, we're actually. And every year we poll everybody to see who would be interested. We bring in some people are part of that team for three years in a row. Other people come and go. And that's I think what again, it's this flavor of new people, new ideas, new voices to the conversation. And it's also about building that kind of strategic thinking into the next two or three generations of where we're going. And it's pretty exciting to see because some of those voices are incredibly. Aha. Moments that hadn't occurred to us.
- [21:23]
Carrie
I agree. For example, this year, well, last year we brought on one of our youngest designers onto the strategic team and he's only been with the firm for, gosh, I want to say three years now. And he's in his second year of strategic planning with us. We also just brought on one of our BIM team members. He's added so much value in two meetings. It's incredible. And so by bringing in corners of and then what happens is that they're not doing the strategic work, we're breaking into subgroups and then we go off and do work and then bring it back to meetings. And so there's kind of this in and out, but it's getting polls from the firm, getting the feedback, allowing people to express their interest. So we run surveys annually and say, A, do you want to be a part of this team? And B, if you want to be a part of this team, how much are you willing to commit the time to it? Because you could really want to be on the team, but you just might not be able to commit the time.
- [22:31]
Host
You're not going to let them give up their ever job to come be on this team.
- [22:34]
Carrie
Yeah, it has to be. And it's an and job. And so then. And there are people who go, I'm really interested in being this but not right now. And then what we say is, you know what, you can also be in one of the smaller groups, you can be in an offshoot group. So we involve a lot of people on the firm in different areas of strategy and then that allows them to be like focused on one area of strategy, which might be like a better bite sized chunk for them. So by developing the strategic muscles across more and more people in the firm, I think it also just helps like people feel, I think, a sense of ownership and like they're steering the ship in the right direction. And that's good because I think they feel empowered to some extent, which is great.
- [23:16]
Host
Feeling empowered is important and I know that there's manufacturers out there who want designers to feel that way. There's three in particular that support this podcast and make it all happen. Let me tell you about Kelvix doesn't move fast. They move with purpose, helping the design world turn ambitious ideas into seamless, buildable realities. The Kelvix team works at the pace of your project, delivering tailored solutions backed by people who know how quality, timing and and precision elevate the final outcome in every spec and every collaboration. Kelvix proves lighting is more than illumination. Lighting protects design intent, sharpens the details that matter, and brings spaces to life with clarity and ease. See what's coming next, from breakthrough products to standout projects@kelvix.com or in their social channels. And another manufacturer that I respect and enjoy working with is Lead Flex, where linear light is designed to do more than illuminate. It's engineered to shape how spaces are experienced. Rooted in British manufacturing, LED Flex works alongside lighting designers, interior designers and architects worldwide, supporting projects where detailed precision and execution matter. They're not just a manufacturer, they're a technical partner providing bespoke solutions, rapid prototyping, commissioning and long term support from early concept through final handover. If light is integral to your architecture, choose a partner who stays with the project. Learn more@leadflexgroup.com and stick with me because I want to make sure we both know and can agree. Every designer knows the success of a space depends on what actually shows up on site. And that's where Diode LED comes in. Lighting performance isn't an add on, it's the foundation of every successful linear lighting project. Designers need solutions that carry ideas smoothly from specification through installation, and Diode LED is built to support that reality. With industry leading inventory, reliable delivery and responsive support, Diode LED keeps pace with real project timelines, not theoretical ones. Real solutions for real projects, no matter the scale. Learn more about what's happening in Reno, Nevada@diodeld.com I think empowerment's huge, right? If you scan for 20 seconds, you know what you know about what it's grown into, what's fundamentally set the culture of your company to be able to let anybody walk through an open door.
- [25:51]
Thiel
I think it's. It's very clear that we're not a command and control team and that we're. We're intentional, we're entrepreneurial, and we're a consensus building team. So through that process and something that's bubbling up for me is we still, with everything that we're talking about, we still. Of the time we spend, Carrie and I and everybody else in the company, we still spend a lot of time thinking about lighting design. So as much as this conversation is about strategic thinking and culture and all that, what drives us is that moment that we sit with an architect and we say, okay, or an owner or a developer and we say, close your eyes and tell me about the emotion you want to feel when you step into this space or the memory you want to take away once you've experienced it. We spend a lot of time celebrating that too. We are very ambitious with pursuing awards because we want our team to be recognized and celebrated. We do experimental things that we bring in and because we're very client focused and we drive the process with. This is a long term relationship. We even go through processes where we look at clients and say, that client is really not valuing and respecting our team and our team is not feeling good about working in that environment. Let's move away from that relationship and let's seek an even better relationship or
- [27:40]
Carrie
try to remediate it. Let's make it a better relationship or
- [27:43]
Thiel
give it a shot through some. Through some honest communication. Right. Which is something we teach ourselves with each other. But we also, as. As a result of that, we learn how to do that with our clients.
- [27:55]
Host
What's honest communication?
- [27:57]
Carrie
Sorry, I gotta make Radical Candor Crucial Conversations. Two books you should read.
- [28:04]
Thiel
Yeah. So it's basically approaching. It's approaching a conversation where if something's not going right, you approach the team or the individual with open curiosity about what their experience of the situation or the relationship is. Express your feelings and how it's landing for you and then seek together a solution. But you have to do it with not an intention to manipulate, but a real intention. So first you have to set your own intention and then approach the conversation
- [28:41]
Carrie
with an open heart. Yeah, I think a lot of times it's establishing. And honestly, those are two good books that anyone should read. They're really, really good. Radical Candor and Crucial Conversations. Maybe read Crucial Conversations first and then Radical Candor. What do you think? Either way. But they're really helpful in Terms of establishing why you're having the conversation to begin with. And it's because you care, you respect and value the person and the relationship that you have or the scenario that you have. And you want things to go well in the future. And so you want to have a touch point because you want to come together, feel better about each other, whatever, work through some conflict, whatever's happening. And so by establishing a sense of safety first, then you can have a more direct conversation, but with the intention that you want the best for the person, you want the best for the outcome of the situation. And I think by establishing that, then there can be trust. Right. And it's hard. You also have to be able to receive feedback. That's really hard.
- [29:51]
Thiel
That can take some practice. So we do role playing on that sometimes, but maybe that circles back around to how do we create this culture? We really telegraph. We've learned how to interview and have conversations with and have a sensibility of whether people feel that it's consequences, consequences, consequences all the way or it's a win, win conversation. And so with all of these things we do internally, we've also learned how to assess that, communicate our interest in that, attract that the people who are attracted to that kind of leadership style.
- [30:31]
Host
Learning and attracting are definitely two good things. And I think it's worth pointing out that sometimes it's just learning about what good lighting is and how you create that. Here's someone who does it. I want to take a moment to recognize a team that understands what every designer already knows. Light isn't a fixture, it's the soul of a space. For almost a century, Targeti has shaped how people experience architecture using precision optics, performance and that unmistakable sense of Italian design to elevate every moment a space offers. Because light isn't just seen, it's felt. It drives emotion, guides the eye and transforms intention into atmosphere. For Targetti, light isn't simply the medium, it's the identity, it's the craft, the legacy and the commitment behind every solution they create. Experience it for yourself. Visit target USA.com now let's jump back into this conversation. You mentioned you spend the majority of your time doing lighting design and not building team and culture, which is obvious, right? You got to do what the business asks you for. It's easy to, as you mentioned, you know, get together once a year and do this. Where do you guys think you found your success in the rhythm of check ins. To make sure that the guidance, the North Star, the mission statements within the team and the company don't fade.
- [32:07]
Carrie
Wow. I guess that's a complex answer. So it depends on what group is getting together. Firm wide. We get together once a year to check in on the strategic plan. Plan. So we do a firm wide update on the strategic plan and the work that we've done and the progress. And we poll people, we survey them to get more feedback on what are like this year. We asked what are the most pressing issues that HLB should be thinking about for the next year? What is it? Because we could be literally not seeing something coming, right. And I think it's important to hear from people. So we do that annually. The leadership team meets pretty much once a year. The board is now meeting another time once a year. So that allows us every six months to basically have in person check ins. We actually get together a lot as a team, as much as we can. Like people fly here and there, so we overlap a lot. But at the same time, like formal get togethers, we also have group advances. So it might be our IT group. They get together and they have an advance. The HR team just had their own advance. The marketing team has an advance. So they get together and do work. Daylighting is planning one right now. Right. And then so they meet. But then regarding the day to day mentoring that's happening, we have two sets of ongoing evaluations. We don't have. It's a mentoring plan, it's a growth and mentoring plan. We don't do your annual review where you get a four page thing that a supervisor wrote about you and you read about it and then show up and have a 30 minute chat about it. Instead what we do is for anybody who's emerging in their professional careers, we have a growth plan and they have a principal and then they have a direct mentor and they meet four times a year formally, but they're in quarterly check ins. And so the whole firm operates on that same quarterly process. And it's basically like a built upon plan so that by the end of the year, so at the beginning they set goals and then they work on the goals throughout the year. And by the end of the year they report on, okay, where are you from a year ago? Great. Now we're, what are the next set of goals? Where are we going to go next? What do we feel really good? What are your foundational skills that are really strong? What can you build upon from there? Where do we see some shining things coming out in you? What's what makes you special? We also ask the question of even the youngest employee, the earliest emerging employee, what do you want in your career? Where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be in 30 years? Because someone might already start identifying with a long term goal or maybe they don't. Some people really can only see a couple years in advance and that's okay. So that early growth plan then translates when someone becomes an associate. It moves into what we call a professional success plan. So it's a personal plan for them where it's a more leadership oriented plan as they get more senior. We're not developing like your calculation and your revit skill sets and you know, are you keeping good notes and things like that. And it's more working with them on mentoring others, working with them on taking risks, working with them on holding themselves accountable and holding others accountable. Harder stuff. And so I would say all of those plans really focusing on the soft skills. And so I would say there's lots and lots of layers. And then we also have. So we just went to bi weekly check ins. We were doing weekly check ins with the leadership team. We're now doing every other week. We feel like we really are focusing on are there too many meetings? I feel like everyone in the world feels that. So we're really trying to get a better handle on that. But at the same time it's important to connect. So you have to have a schedule of connection. Otherwise we're siloed. So I think it's a balance of like how do we desilo or we are desiloed as a culture. We do better in a desiloed culture. That's what we've found for a while.
- [36:18]
Thiel
We had town hall that helped us focus on the business of our business and educating team members about setting goals. When you accomplish the goals, it helps everybody have better software, better computers, better pto, better bonuses, all of that. We felt like we've gotten into a rhythm around that. But we focus more and more on design inspiration. And so that town hall brings us together. We celebrate the holidays that are coming up from all of the different people who are across the firm, from different cultures. So we connect people's stories together, but we also bring outsiders in who are architects and they tell an inspiring story about a project that they've completed or a thought process that they have, that kind of thing. So we're again, we're constantly adapting to feedback from the team about we really want to get together and talk about inspiration about design or we really want to get together. And that was really fun to hear. We just heard from a team that did a competition and what they were thinking about in the competition and how it went and the factors that went into it, et cetera, and what they learned from it and how they were inspired by it. And, you know, I know for sure that there are other teams now that are thinking about, oh, that sounds really great. That was really inspiring. And so we're trying to knit ourselves together, while I think Carrie mentioned the fact that we consider ourselves boutique studios that bring together HLB1 as a whole. So we also want to encourage those studio environments that are appropriately set into the culture of HLB and but also are a result of the compilation of the people who are there, the work they're doing, the clients they're working with, the environment they're in, etc. So it's this sort of pieces to the whole, and all of those components make us stronger as a whole for the strength of all the individuals.