Episode 65 - Mentoring 1,000 Entrepreneurs with Alan Clayton
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Today’s guest is Alan Clayton, who is, get this—a Global Roaming Mentor. Is that a cool title or what? After 10 years in marketing/logistics at WalMart UK, Alan co-founded an international coaching consultancy, turning vision into action for leadership teams, including managers at Motorola, Unilever, ATT&T, and others.
Following that, Alan embarked on 20 years of startup experience working on his own ventures, culminating in what he does today as a mentor for SOSV. Today’s episode will capture his story and his passion for mentoring the whole person.
Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: So along the way at Wal-Mart, and then you ended up in Motorola and GSK and a bunch of other organizations at the center of an organization you end up finding yourself struggling to manage people and mentor others. How did that how did you talk to us through that progression and how that how you started to realize that you had something to impart to others?
Alan Clayton: So I think part of that came through like me. I met my wife working at Wal-Mart and then and managing the people there was interesting. So I probably had a team of 10 people working for me at that stage. But like I say that my sense of working in a very big organization was there was a kind of limit to what you can do. And some of the people that I came across and some of the ways business was organized didn't really kind of sit very well with what I thought life was supposed to be about or what what I wanted to do. I mean, in the world of sales and marketing, it's a lot to do with like people and, you know, community and, you know, buying and selling and trading and telling stories and all all the people and ideas stuff, basically. So if you think about left brain and right brain people, you know, I'm pretty sure at that stage I was clearly identified in my own mind as a very right brain kind of individual. So what happened was I left Wal-Mart at that stage and actually the first thing was I set up a children's book publishing company with a friend. So this was into entrepreneurship on a very small scale. And second step beyond that, because I didn't have a stake in that particular company. We published and sold a lot of books. But the first thing that I probably did was to go on to the mentoring thing was I in my own world, I set off to pursue a vision which was very clearly to go live in a particular part of the UK known as the Lake District, like amazing part of the countryside, Coleridge and Wordsworth and all the poets grew up. I spent ages walking around climbing hills in that part of the world, so I knew that's where I wanted to live. Secondarily, I needed to earn a living. And so I won't tell you the whole story today. But I basically bought a small hotel because I desperately wanted to have some community kind of place where I could live and work and contribute to others. So this business where I actually converted a very successful steak house into a not so successful vegetarian restaurant back in 1990.
Henry Kaestner: I'm imagining right now I just have to interject. I'm imagining John Cleese in Fawlty Towers right now.
Alan Clayton: Right. So so this is it. So to this day, running this business, which was known as the great little teashop, it was it was partly vegetarian restaurant, partly coffee shop. But the important thing for me was that I wanted to put something back into the environment and to have groups of people do this. So we ran conservation holidays for people, a level above students who want to sleep on a church hall for the weekend. But to for people like me who want a glass of wine with dinner and a hot shower after going out building footpaths up the hills for the day. And so this was this was my business. Now, the challenge is being a left right brain individual. I didn't actually have any money to do this, so I had to borrow more than 100 percent of the money in a world where interest rates were 15 percent. And I can do math, but like that was the challenge that that business faced. So what happened was that I got together with three or four of the other individuals that I've been involved with in the kind of personal development world in the workshops there. And we decided to set up a coaching consultancy. So the idea was, you know, I had this incredible personal experience. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have believed I could do it. So to to to buy a hotel with no money and to set up an enterprise like that of the like that I did that was a demonstration to me of actually how much most of us are capable of so much more than we think. And so armed with that experience, two or three people we got together as maybe we could put a sort of sort of executive coaching type program together and go back into big business and multinational companies and basically share some of those techniques and tools and processes, but also backed up by the experience. And that's how the coaching thing became became a thing and the mentoring. So, you know, starting from scratch again, I had to sell executive coaching programs to the likes of Unilever research from scratch, which, you know, because of my setting up my own business experience before that, like, I managed to do that. But looking back again, it's like, you know, how did I do that? And all along, you know, as I look back now, God had a plan. God was taking us from like a church community to church community as we moved around the country a little bit and each time. Those were very different and very kind of supportive and ran very much in parallel with everything that was going on in a in a kind of work life.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so I'm going to hand this over to William here in a second, because I know he's got a ton of questions to ask you on this. But before I do that, I just want to ask you one thing, because that's a very interesting background. That is not the usual path to what somebody would think is executive coaching experience in big business. Lots of bureaucracy going off and doing it on your own and running this this restaurant and hotel. What changed about your executive coaching? I think I might know the answer to this about taking a risk, but maybe I don't. What about your time as a proprietor as a as a business owner, entrepreneur? What changed your perspective of how to coach people at a place like Unilever that you didn't have, having only been in a big business?
Alan Clayton: Right. So there's a very simple answer that basically it was the idea that if I could do things that I didn't believe I could do before, then maybe I could help other people to do their equivalent so that the big the big a ha was. Most of us are capable of doing more than we can. And obviously what large organizations are desperately trying to do is encourage that that staff that in this case, they're kind of fast track managers to really become the potential leaders of the future that they have inside themselves. But they didn't really have a process to help bring that out. And I think that's what you know. So there was the tools and the practice, the practicalities of it. But again, you know, so encouraging is a lot of what I spent my days doing. And that's in the early days. That's really what I was doing for people that Unilever had earmarked as leaders of the future. And my job was just to kind of push them back out. You can do this, trust me. You can do this because even an idiot like me can do it.
William Norvell: That's a good that's a good book title right there. I don't know if you're I don't know if you're looking to write a book, but even idiot like me can do it is that's got a ring to it. Just throw it out there
Alan Clayton: Ok. note to self
William Norvell: if you know, I only take two percent of the royalties for the idea. Alan, so you've been able to explain to tell us to bring us up to date. What do you do now? I know your title on LinkedIn because I saw it and I was like, that's what I want to be one day and I don't even know what it means. You call yourself the global roaming mentor. Tell us what organization you work with, what that means, and kind of what you do with SOSV.
Alan Clayton: So after the coaching in in the likes of Unilever or Motorola, my wife and I moved to Ireland, which is where I am today. So that was 23 years ago ish. We then started up a couple of other businesses. Somebody invented the Internet for me. And so I thought what we should do is have a build a business where you could earn money while you're asleep. So we built a company called [...], which was essentially a fair trade chocolate company online. We sold chocolate worlds from part of the price of which went directly to hunger relief projects in Africa. So we partnered with a charity and honored at the time. So that was another business. Then we started bringing Fairtrade Foods into Ireland and putting them into distribution and so on. And then I met a guy called Sean O'Sullivan who came to live in Kinsale on this lovely town in Ireland. And Sean, successful entrepreneur, originally from New York, came here. We met. He invested in another company that I set up, which is a rather fair trade kind of food company. And after two years of doing that, Sean said to me, well, what S.O.S Ventures is going to do now is we're going to run accelerated programs and we don't need you to do is bring this kind of people in ideas, mindset, all this kind of right brain set of skills and characteristics, if you like, together with a lot of the tech entrepreneurs we're about to invest in. And I want you to do that for all the startups that we're going to invest in. So that's why I go back 10 or 11 years. That's how I suppose we started. We started running accelerators along very similar lines to textiles and other people. We started doing it in China because that's a place that nobody was doing it. And and yeah, so so that's only then shows that when you need a job title. And so basically I just made up so the programs all over the world. So I guess it has to be global. I would doing a lot of traveling, which I kind of enjoy. So that's the roaming bit. And essentially I visit all of the programs every year. I meet all the founders and all of the companies and provide some kind of assessments and processes to help them become better entrepreneurs over time.
Henry Kaestner: Well, now I understand why it's called SOSV, right. Although I get that, you know, it's the amount of investments and the amount of entrepreneurs. That you invest both time and money in is staggering. It's very significant. Tell our audience a bit about that.
Alan Clayton: Yeah, it is. So in the last 10 years, it's like last October, I think we got a thousand a thousand start ups that we've invested in roughly 20, 30, 40 million dollars a year across all of those companies. The companies have come from over 75 different countries, but it started with the program, which actually is celebrating 10 years birthday this year called China Accelerator. So China Accelerator is a software accelerator program for entrepreneurs coming from anywhere. Most of them are not actually Chinese. It's kind of cross-border Internet helping software entrepreneurs, trying to build a market inside China or around Asia. And so in, you know, typical accelerator style, we would we would recruit 10 or 12 companies in a program the entrepreneurs would come to in the early days, a place called Dalian in China City I'd never heard of, which is obviously twice the size of the country I live in. And we ran the first program. And then because we were in China, people said people started applying to a software program, but they wanted to build hardware. So and you can't really do that in Dalian and nor even in Shanghai, where we moved the China accelerator program to. But you could probably do that in Shenzhen, down just next to Hong Kong, obviously. So that's the inspiration for the second program we set up, which is known as Hack's Hardware Accelerator. So that was the second program. So, again, we were running two cohorts of each of those programs every year. So each program is you know, we're probably investing in 25 to 30 companies per program per year. And at that stage, seven years ago, there were the two programs. And then we set up a biotech program out of San Francisco about six, seven years ago now. And we also ran a European version of that program for four or five years. And that has kind of moved, if you like, to New York. So now we have a program in San Francisco and a clone in New York. We ran a food program out of New York for a few years. And the China program has a spin off in Taipei, outside of China firewall, if you like, which is really for mobile only startups that are looking to scale into Asia. So if you add all that up, there's sort of five main programs running twice a year, 10, 12 companies per program. We actually also have a block chain kind of program out of New York as well, which is invested in probably 30 companies in the last two or three years. So if you add all that up together, it's a thousand companies, ten years, a lot of money. And me.
William Norvell: And and and a lot of mentoring, I would assume, as a global mentor.
Alan Clayton: So there is a bit of structure to it, which I probably didn't point out.
William Norvell: So this is great. I want to get into the entrepreneur investor relationship a little bit. What walk us through kind of what America's mentoring is a word. You know, I mean, I feel like it gets thrown out a lot. And and I personally have a view that almost every every other person I talk to has a different version of what that word means. And especially in the investing landscape, when someone gives you money, are they are they supposed to be your mentor? Are they supposed to help you find a mentor? Is that what a [...] Role is? If so, what does that look like? I would love for you to dove into that a little bit.
Alan Clayton: OK, so so I have a kind of particular answer to that. So one of the things that I studied all looked at over the years is the whole field of neurolinguistic programing, which worked until now, until natural language program was invented a bit later. That's the only MLP I've ever heard of. Anyway, so in the world of neurolinguistic programing, there's a model known as neurological levels. And without drawing it or explaining it in detail, the way I can relate to mentoring is, you know, we all we're all very busy with our To-Do lists. And if you know, the clue is in the word, the things that we do are obviously our behavior and the way you kind of control or organize your behavior, if you're if you need someone to do it for you, you have a supervisor. So supervising operates at the level of what we're doing. Our behavior, if you like training, which is another word, is often in the mix. Training is a bit training is what you're doing when you're basically equipping somebody with a set of skills. So you teach somebody an ability or a competence to do something which is thighed. The next level up, the next level above that, which is really are kind of values and beliefs, if you like. That's what I think of as coaching. So coaching is a relationship where the client is trying to get from A to B and they need to know where and B are. And the coach is the person who comes along with a set of process tools so they don't have to be an expert in the domain. If that is a good idea that they're not, they have to be an expert in process. And so that's coaching. Mentoring is kind of a level above that. So all I know about mentoring is like I think about it like this, to be a good mentor, you just have to be human and you have to be able to sit in a room with another human being. And as a mentor, the only thing you have is the best interests of your client at heart. If you can do that, you'd be a good mentor. So in the end, in the startup world, in the investing world, those things do get confused. So sometimes mentoring is basically supervision because this person is telling you what to do. Let's not mentoring. Sometimes they're, you know, they're just making connections for you. That's not really mentoring either. That's just making introductions or they're just giving you the money, which is not mentoring, obviously. So, yeah, it's a it's a really interesting topic. But know for me, mentoring is essentially just sitting down with another human being. And the key is for you to have their best interests at heart. I mean, you know, if we think about this as a faith conversation, you know, Jesus is a great mentor. Jesus only has our best interests at heart. He has very little idea about what, you know, some of the things that got in my mind or the world that I live in in detail, he hasn't got time to supervise me or even coach me. But he's an amazing mentor.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so, yes, is this is a faith conversation, the reason why I'm so interested in talking about this, because I think that there's an increasing number of Faith Driven Investor that are coming into the the angel world and many of them have already been there. And there's some amount of I was going to say that on one level, some angels think of themselves, fancy themselves as venture capitalists, and they're looking for 100 percent markup in the next year to the next institution around can get done. And and they think of themselves as venture capitalists, except that they don't have to raise outside capital. And I think that they can be oftentimes a recipe for a challenge and that it presents pressures onto the entrepreneur that may or may not be helpful, that are likely mostly not helpful. However, the reverse part, the glass half full part of this is that we as investors have a unique opportunity of coming into the life of an entrepreneur and to encourage them, to mentor them, to disciple them. Even maybe discipline is a part of you know, maybe you can unpack that a little bit about the spiritual formation and how to love one an entrepreneur and what that looks like, the special role of an investor that has skin in the game. They have a vested interest in the enterprise. That is the passion of the entrepreneur. And yet, if you do it right, you can be an encouragement, but you can also help the entrepreneur in and in loving on them. Can you love on somebody as a mentor once you unpack that a little bit and help me to go where I'd like to go?
Alan Clayton: So it's great that you introduce the word discipleship because I just quickly thinking, I mean, mentoring and discipleship and discipling probably seem to me like roughly at the same kind of level in the same kind of things. The thing that that I'm just the two thoughts in my mind. One is like what makes it what makes a good relationship between an angel investor and any other investor, really and an entrepreneur is is the idea of a shared vision. So something in a sense that both parties have consciously committed themselves to. And when I say committed, I mean so you could there's a difference between being committed to something and being dependent on something. So sometimes as an investor, we sort of we're committed to the business, but we're actually dependent on getting a return on our money. And so the you know, somewhere along the pathway, the the shared vision or the common interest slightly diverges. And ultimately that's going to cause the issue. So if people are genuinely committed to the end result, then, you know, by definition, both parties will do whatever it takes. They will sacrifice whatever it takes based on what they have, their own resources and their own skills to get to the end result. Often, you know, even though, you know, in the short term or consciously, people think they've done that, sometimes it turns out that they haven't. Does that make sense? So for that reason, I believe that, you know, that relationship discipling and or mentoring or whatever between the investor and the entrepreneur absolutely can work and should work.
Henry Kaestner: Where do you see opportunities and, you know, you do a lot of mentoring, you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, some large number of those entrepreneurs have other investors in their cap stack, other angels, other direct investors. Where do you see common mistakes that an angel direct investor would make as they interact with the entrepreneur that they've invested in?
Alan Clayton: So it's funny because, I mean, in many ways, when I saw [...] investing because it's at the very early stages, we're not that unlike a corporate angel investor, if you like. And so the challenge in my experience comes when the business led by the entrepreneur starts to grow. Obviously, other investors get involved. And let's you know, if I was to think of ourselves as the angel investor, we we get a bit crowded out. So other investors come along, invest bigger sums of money, eventually bigger stakes in the company and sort of without realizing it or anybody consciously planning this, they they seduce the entrepreneur. If that's the right word or distract the entrepreneur, they become a more important influence, certainly in the practicalities of the business. And so, you know, if we're left with only a small stake in the company, there's a limit in practical terms to to what we are an angel investor can do. So the danger is that the other the other investors that come along maybe don't quite share the same kind of end result or the same vision.
William Norvell: That's interesting, I mean, so I want to switch switch gears just a little bit, one of the things I've seen you write about before, and I'm sure we'll link to, is I want you to have a chance to mentor some of the investors here and, of course, maybe how they would interact with entrepreneurs as they come in. And, of course, we have entrepreneurs listening as well. Could you talk a little bit about your concept of pitching in pairs and walk us through that concept and kind of what you've written on that?
Alan Clayton: Yeah, so, yeah, so so I mean, I've done a bunch of selling in my lifetime and I've helped other people try and do that as well. And whether you're selling your wares or whether you're pitching your business to investors, it's pretty much the same thing. It's all a negotiation between human beings. And one of the things that I learned is that if you go to a meeting with an investor or indeed with a customer on your own, there's generally there's too much to do. So we all talk often about the fact that if you have your first meeting with an investor or indeed with a customer, the best thing that you can possibly walk away with at the end of that meeting with is a friend, because it's very unlikely that you're going to walk away with a deal. It just happens that at any meeting in those sorts, there's really two things to parallel activities going along that it's very difficult to be master of. It's difficult to be master of both. So on the one hand, you have the sort of task at hand, which is get the investment, get the customer deal or whatever. And that involves showing up on time, having your presentation ready, making sure you get the answers to the preplanned questions that you have leaving on time, basically going through really the left brain side of the whole process. But in parallel, there's this kind of somewhat more unconscious thing going on, which is called building a relationship, you know, engaging with another human being, getting them excited, because, as we all know, we we have more kind of governed by our emotions than our intellect. But to have a single person in a meeting trying to concentrate on getting the deal done and making a friend is pretty difficult, even even technically. So what you what I've always learned to do is like two people going to the meeting. One person's responsibility is to try and walk away with the deal done or the outcome. And the other person's responsibility is to make sure we leave with a friend. So it's been kind of technical terms, that means somebody is sitting in the meeting doing nothing other than just keeping an eye on this other human being in the room. So it's all about kind of body language, all of those kind of practical things, and noticing whether this person looks uncomfortable at all, noticing whether this would be a good time to crack a joke, noticing whether this would be a good time to call a time out and have a cup of tea or change the subject completely. So their job is just that kind of, you know, right brain humanistic approach to life. And the other person is the more organized get the deal done, the kind of closing approach to life.
Henry Kaestner: So, Alan, I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm actually surprised that I've that we've never talked about that at Faith Driven Entrepreneur before, because that is absolutely the value of a partnership. Right. We at Sovereign's Capital Love Investment Partners. We think that there's so much about God sending us out in twos. There's iron sharpening iron, and there's just really something about being in the throes of business together. You can look at [...] and look at all sorts of different great examples in the Bible and literature. And yet when people ask me for practical example, I come down to just this. When I think about the key business meetings that we had had, it began with how many times will come out of that meeting where David says, I think we need to go back in and we need to change this part of the proposal, because he noticed the way that he crossed his arms differently or just was able to read something that I completely didn't see. It's not as if I was blind. I was watching what he was doing, too, but I didn't pick up on it. And he's able to understand, David, to be able to understand the interplay that I had and how he would respond in. And there's something very valuable there. And I'm glad you mention it, because I think most entrepreneurs miss it. I also think that there's there's great value on the investor side. I think that many investors will take meetings with entrepreneurs one on one. And yet when I have a meeting with Luke or any one of my partners at sovereigns, we're able to pick up different things about the entrepreneur, about their command of the business plan or the competitive landscape, or just where they're uncomfortable about different things. That helps us to pick up on yellow flag for integrity or how they talk about their faith or a whole bunch of different things. It's almost impossible for just one person to pick up. And when you're thinking about putting an investment capital behind somebody, that's a really good chance to make sure that you've got somebody else who is there providing counsel who is able to interact. That's different than having an interview with an entrepreneur, then coming back to an investment committee and getting all clinical. We're investing in people and we can't do it all ourselves and picking up on all the signals and all the clues. And we need to
Alan Clayton: I think the other thing I usually explained to me was like, if you do walk out of the room without a friendship, you won't be going back. But that's why in real life, if nobody's going to invest in someone they don't like and nobody's going to buy anything from someone that they don't like, because there's plenty of logical reasons that we usually make up, if we have to, to get get that done so that, you know, as long as there's a working relationship, all bets are on potentially good.
William Norvell: So that one of the last things I'd love to ask, that's that's really interesting. So I do feel like at times, you know, I do this and I've seen other people do it, you know, there's a chance to romanticize an investor entrepreneur relationship and say, hey, I am going to be a mentor. And I and I just care about their wellbeing and all of those things. I'm interested. Do you think that's possible and still be a fiduciary? Do you think that's a unique role that you get to play where someone has set you up in a position to love entrepreneurs within the portfolio differently than the lead investor? Or how do you think about that? How do you think about that? Is that's something to pursue for everyone? Should they set someone up like you just just kind of walk us through how you would think about doing that throughout these relationships?
Alan Clayton: Yeah, it's funny in a sense, because you could argue that I'm like a nominated mentor for all of the all of these companies. And the truth is, when I meet them all, but I probably spend like half a day with all of them and sometimes in groups, and then the relationship continues with some over a period of time. So that's the idea of mentoring. I mean, in large companies, again, mentoring is often confused because the mentors are nominated by the company and given to the mentees, whereas the best way that mentoring works is for the mentee to to choose their own mentor. You know, I think one of the things that I talked about a lot in in church that that I'm familiar with in San Francisco, that at APEC is the idea of a wisdom table. Now, the people that you have your wisdom table, if you like, you choose them to be that they don't choose to be there. So the mentor mentee relationship, you know, should be one where the mentee gets to, you know, invite and choose their own mentors, not the other way around. So, I mean, the other part of your question, I think maybe that I have a gift. I have some gifts that allow me, like in a financial I don't really have any very I don't have any significant ax to grind in terms of the financial outcomes of these relationships. So, like, what else is there? So the rest is is the is the human side of things. I mean, you know, life is about living in community and, you know, pursuing a dream or vision, building a kingdom
Alan Clayton: As a mentor and a disciple for somebody motivated by their faith. What are the challenges that U.S.A., our struggle with that might otherwise surprise somebody? How would you characterize maybe maybe that's an unfair way to characterize the question, maybe it doesn't matter where they surprise somebody or not, but what are the attributes that you pick up on an entrepreneur from having mentored and worked with thousands of them that you might impart to a investor that may have only had 10 interactions with entrepreneurs before? And what are the things to be alert for? What are the some common needs that they have that otherwise you might not pick up until the fourth or fifth meeting, but maybe you could ask some questions earlier on to draw things out.
Alan Clayton: If if there's one really simple thing that investors often don't ask the founders, it's just to ask them what they do at the weekend, because, like I say, the whole thing is going to rely on a relationship and it takes time to build a one, you know, piece of that that is going to have to be around forever, which is trust. And if you think about it, trust, if you think about the people that you trust, the people that you would give the most challenging tasks in the world to, that you just don't have time or ability to do. Those people are always the people that over time have consistently kept the promises that they made to you. That's why you gave them that job, because you can rely on them. So I don't think there's any shortcut actually to building that kind of trust. The only other way you might I mean, you can find references and talk to people who've been around this person for some time. But I mean, in terms of a direct relationship between the investor and the entrepreneur, it does just take at least a little bit of time. But the fundamental kind of building block of that is, you know, if this person consistently shows up exactly on time, if they're always prepared, you know, if they if basically if they keep their commitments. So as a company grows, you know, what the investors are looking for is a never ending growing revenue stream. So often the startups will present the figures at the beginning of the year and say, well, you know, we're going to turn over a million dollars this year and at the end of the year, what they fail to realize is that if you don't do that without really realizing it, the most important thing that you will lose is, is the trust of your investor. It's nothing to do with the performance of the company or the ability or interest of the investor to invest. It's this kind of trust thing. So the more the two parties trust each other, the more this thing is likely to grow. And I'm not sure there's a desperate shortcut that I know of to to figure that out.
Henry Kaestner: I'm going to suggest something. And we're doing a podcast as an audio podcast so people can't see the video. And so I think that one of the secret sauce sources to you and your effectiveness, because you're known as being very effective at this, is the fact that you have this winsomeness about you and you have a very encouraging demeanor. You smile a lot. You have an expansive expression, and you just buy who you are and you lean in. I mean, even right now, an audio podcast, you're leaning in. And I think that there's so much to the to the body posture and just the fact that I think that it's impossible to spend too much time with you. And I get the fact that you actually are interested in being somebody's friend. There's an integrity there. There's a genuineness there that can't fake it. And maybe there are no shortcuts to being able to be a really good mentor. And yet, if you spent time with Alan Clayton, you get a sense that he actually really does care about you. And if he asked you about your weekend is because he's actually really interested and you've got know, I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable, but you've got to winsome smile and just and I think that that's really key and that's so basic. Right. So basic. But, you know, whether it's a doctor with bedside manner or just people in business, you miss that. You have a genuine interest in another human being which allows you to to do that. You've got an interest in you know, you are interested in the Lake District and and building footpaths and building restaurants and hotels. And you've got this lifelong you know, you're living in a bucolic, incredible town in southwestern Ireland. You're an interesting dude yourself. And so I've been blessed by spending time with you. Why? I'm always asked the same question of all of our guests as we close out. So, William, I definitely want to make sure we do that here, too.
William Norvell: I'll just say I agree with Henry's assessment to save us time here and grateful for your time, Alan. And as we do come to a close, the thing we love to do is try to encourage our guests and our listeners to come alongside God's word in scripture. And so what we ask is, you know, is there is there a place in God's scripture that may be coming alive to you during the season? Could be this morning. Could be something you've been meditating on for a while. But if you wouldn't mind sharing with our listeners where he has, you would be most appreciative.
Alan Clayton: Josh. Yeah, um. That's a really hard question. I think that's
William Norvell: why we love it.
Alan Clayton: Yeah, I know. I guess the there's a word, actually, so when I think of enthusiasm, I'm not great on translating these words, but somebody translated the word enthusiasm to me as an energy from God. And, you know, I think it's a fantastic attribute. And if there's anything I can do by way of encouraging and playing the role that I play, like God's energy, enthusiasm is something that. Yeah, that makes me excited.
William Norvell: Amen, amen, may we all find more of God's energy and enthusiasm this day and through your podcast?
Henry Kaestner: Allan, thank you very much. Grateful to have you with us.
Alan Clayton: No worries. Really a pleasure to meet you guys. And if you can edit that into something that is even half respectable,
Henry Kaestner: I'm sure I'm sure we can be grateful for your brother. Worries for the next time.
Alan Clayton: Thanks a lot. OK, cheers, William. Bye bye.