Transcript
Speaker: All right, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to another edition of the podcast.
Speaker: And my guest today is David Feinberg of JustWorks.
Speaker: David, welcome.
Speaker: Thanks for being with us today.
Speaker: Thanks, Pat.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: It's good to be with you.
Speaker: So we, this is going to be really easy.
Speaker: This will be almost painless.
Speaker: We're going to get into a lot of like your tax and financial records and personal stuff, but nothing you can't answer should be pretty easy.
Speaker: I was going to say nothing the IRS hasn't asked for already.
Speaker: Exactly right.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: No, as we always do, we do this on two tracks.
Speaker: We do the David Feinberg story and then the David Feinberg in the PEO industry story.
Speaker: So and then we vote at the end to see which is more interesting.
Speaker: You know, that's sort of the thing.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So you began in New York City, right?
Speaker: You're born in New York.
Speaker: I was actually born in Philadelphia, but moved to the New York area when I was young at three.
Speaker: So I have some Philly roots, but none that I admit to.
Speaker: I consider myself a New Yorker through and through.
Speaker: But yes, if you want the full answer, I was born in Philadelphia, but consider myself a New Yorker.
Speaker: Who knew?
Speaker: And we've just lost all our Philadelphia listeners, but that's why.
Speaker: We got more New York listeners.
Speaker: So that's still pretty good.
Speaker: So New York grade school and then found your way eventually to college.
Speaker: I always forget the name of that school is down south.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: It was the, some people joke it's the Harvard of the South, but it is Duke University, or some people call it the University of New Jersey at Durham, because many of us Northerners made our way south of the Mason-Dixon.
Speaker: But it was a great experience.
Speaker: I was really, beyond the basketball team, it offered a lot, not the least of which was the opportunity to really, having grown up in New York and around New York City,
Speaker: experience North Carolina and what the South had to offer was really special.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so was the team any good while you were there?
Speaker: We were, um, we made it to national championship.
Speaker: We lost to, uh, Yukon.
Speaker: I graduated 2000.
Speaker: We then went on to win an O one.
Speaker: So I wasn't there for any championship, but I was there, uh, for them to make it to a championship.
Speaker: And there's a little known fact, um,
Speaker: You know, sometimes we joke, Pat, I say you have low friends in high places.
Speaker: One of my friends to this day was a manager for the team.
Speaker: So we used to joke he was in charge of getting towels and water during timeouts.
Speaker: But the other part of that is he was also in charge of sneaking us into games.
Speaker: So for those that watch, they might have seen folks camping out and these stories about all the trials and tribulations students went through to get into games.
Speaker: I was fortunate to have the right friend in the right place.
Speaker: So that was not me.
Speaker: He was an important guy to know.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Actually, a dear friend of mine, Emily Coleman, was the manager years before, I think, when you were still in grade school.
Speaker: But she was there for the Christian Laettner and Grant Hill years.
Speaker: And it's great.
Speaker: So, yes.
Speaker: And to go down a complete rabbit hole, her daughter, I want to say, was ill a number of years ago.
Speaker: Her daughter is probably early teens right now, was ill when she was a little kid.
Speaker: It was an infant.
Speaker: uh and the first call she got was from uh coach k yeah that that i having seen it in arm's length um you know he's written books on leadership and just seeing how he treats his current players and their family and how they take care of one another it's um
Speaker: It's pretty special.
Speaker: And like I said, I've not experienced it firsthand, but through my buddy and having had the good fortune to see a lot of Duke basketball games and be at some events, it really is a great group.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she had something, because again, she'd been out for a while at that point.
Speaker: She'd been out of college for a while and then got married, had a baby.
Speaker: So it had been some time and word reached him that her daughter was ill and he called her right away, which is great.
Speaker: So what did you study at Duke?
Speaker: I studied public policy.
Speaker: How'd that work out?
Speaker: Well, I guess I kind of made a full circle.
Speaker: Like here, now being in the PEO industry, there is a lot of public policy.
Speaker: But it was kind of a decision by default.
Speaker: So a few things went on.
Speaker: Because it was a liberal arts school, the tracks were liberal arts in nature.
Speaker: I knew I didn't want to be an econ major.
Speaker: And public policy was interesting in that it had some statistics requirements, some econ requirements.
Speaker: obviously some public policy requirements.
Speaker: So it felt like this nice mix of different interests and didn't necessarily pigeonhole me.
Speaker: The lesser known fact is that I went from computer science double major to computer science minor to no computer science degree whatsoever.
Speaker: So having worked now at JustWorks, which we are a technology forward PEO, I joke with our engineering staff that I'm a frustrated software engineer and they will let me nowhere near any of the code.
Speaker: That's probably a smart, smart decision.
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: So what on earth is the tangled path from public policy to the PEO industry?
Speaker: So what was the first job after graduation?
Speaker: First job, like many of my peers, there was the career fairs and all the investment banks showed up.
Speaker: And so like a lemming, they seem to be hiring.
Speaker: They're paying good wages.
Speaker: And I found my way to Morgan Stanley.
Speaker: I guess what's a little bit different is most people, when they think about investment banking, they think of just that investment bankers, long hours, pitch decks, all that.
Speaker: I knew I didn't want to do that.
Speaker: And I knew I didn't want to do sales and trading.
Speaker: So I found this niche.
Speaker: Well, it's not even a niche, but equity research.
Speaker: And so the easiest way for folks to think about it, the full name is Sellside Equity Research.
Speaker: But if you ever watch CNBC and you hear Morgan Stanley upgrades a stock or downgrades a stock, those are the teams I was on.
Speaker: And so I did that at Morgan Stanley to start my career.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: it was really fortunate for a number of reasons one i got access to the c-suite really at a young age and i didn't fully appreciate it so got to interact with um some real and again don't think i fully appreciate it but some titans of industry at a young age got to spend time with them um and then any names we'd recognize today um
Speaker: I'm showing my age, but it was like Motorola, Nortel, Lucent, companies that don't exist anymore.
Speaker: But at the time, that's Internet 1.0, they were the ones building the backbone and the infrastructure.
Speaker: And so to spend time with their CFO, their CEO, their chief operating officer was pretty impactful.
Speaker: I guess the name most people will know, I vividly remember I had the good fortune of introducing John Chambers, who ran Cisco.
Speaker: But that was because my boss couldn't make it.
Speaker: And so he was like, here, please read this.
Speaker: And so that's what I did.
Speaker: Yeah, but research was interesting because obviously there was the access.
Speaker: I learned financial modeling and the route I took, which was a little bit different, most analysts will get very entrenched in one industry and do it their whole career.
Speaker: I covered about 150 stocks, both at Morgan Stanley and then later at Goldman Sachs.
Speaker: And that was across probably half a dozen industries.
Speaker: So whereas many of my peers became deep, deep students entrenched in a given industry, I would say I became more of a student and an expert in how to analyze industries.
Speaker: What are the commonalities and what would you look at?
Speaker: So that was V1.
Speaker: And as a spoiler, that's also when I first got introduced to the PEO industry.
Speaker: I was going to ask you, what was the first mention that you heard of it?
Speaker: So when I moved to Goldman Sachs in 2005, I was given the remit to cover HR stocks.
Speaker: And we were the first group at Goldman to use an offshore team that we had in India.
Speaker: And so the idea is if we could find businesses that had very similar business models, we could get some economies of scale in terms of how we analyze them.
Speaker: So very quickly, I keyed in on, and this is probably for those who have been around the industry, not too excited, but they might not be happy to hear this, temporary staffing companies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the Manpower's, the Kelly's, what's now True Blue, but was labor ready.
Speaker: And I was getting ready to launch and to go put my report out.
Speaker: And they said, well, you don't have enough market cap.
Speaker: There's not enough stocks.
Speaker: And I said, well, there's these two companies that I think they're kind of like temp staffing, but they're called a PEO.
Speaker: One's called Jevity and the other one's called Administstaff.
Speaker: And true story, they're like, well, throw them in.
Speaker: You might as well learn about them.
Speaker: And so when I picked up...
Speaker: The staffing industry, I covered Jevity, who's now obviously part of Trinet, and AdminiStaff, who's obviously been rebranded in Sparity.
Speaker: So that was my first introduction of the industry back in 05.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: I should just do a head count of how many podcast guests mentioned Jevity.
Speaker: I always say it's the Garden of Eden.
Speaker: It's sort of like everybody traces their DNA back to Jevity at one point or another.
Speaker: It's amazing that the connections to Jevity are unbelievable.
Speaker: And from there, everything, it seems to, you know, grew from there.
Speaker: So, okay, yeah.
Speaker: So you sort of first became aware that there's a thing out there called, you know, PEOs.
Speaker: So then how long after, you're Goldman at this point, how long after, did you go directly from there to JustWorks or did you stop in between?
Speaker: No, I stopped in between.
Speaker: One of the epiphanies, probably too strong a word, but we'll use it for here.
Speaker: But one of the epiphanies I had, I spent, call it 10 years behind an Excel spreadsheet telling folks how to run their business.
Speaker: And I have a very...
Speaker: There's a very vivid memory that I have.
Speaker: I was spending time with the C-suite of Waste Management, trash company.
Speaker: And I made an offhand comment, something to the effect of, well, if you cut $20 million of expense, I think you'll actually get two turns on the stock and it'll pop.
Speaker: and I don't remember exactly who, and I don't remember the exact words, but I remember the sentiment.
Speaker: It was either the CFO or the chief operating officer turned to me and said, yeah, why don't you tell me who to fire?
Speaker: And I said, you know what?
Speaker: That's actually the conversation I want to be part of, not the firing part, but it's very easy to be in an Excel spreadsheet and shave a number here or boost your margins there.
Speaker: But the interesting thing to me was really how that all came together.
Speaker: And so I had
Speaker: that kind of started to light a fire about me wanting to get into an operating role.
Speaker: And so, you know, the fast forward version is I got my MBA, and I was given the opportunity.
Speaker: And that's when I first got exposed to entrepreneurism, to go build a small group self funded health plan.
Speaker: And I did that for about five years, and then transition my way back to the PEOs and to JustWorks.
Speaker: And you got your MBA from where?
Speaker: uh, Columbia.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: Uh, my wife is quick to tell everybody it was an executive program.
Speaker: So I was only there on weekends.
Speaker: I am quick to remind her that nowhere on the degree does it say executive program.
Speaker: It says full MBA.
Speaker: So our, our wives are like the, uh, humility police.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Well, you know what, if she listens to this, she should get all credit because I was working a seven day week and towards the end, um, she was actually pregnant with our first child.
Speaker: So, uh,
Speaker: All credit goes to her because that was certainly not an easy point in our life, given all the changes that were coming our way.
Speaker: She's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, I was going to ask you, and she is.
Speaker: You absolutely married up.
Speaker: I can attest to that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We'll get to that later.
Speaker: I was going to ask you, so you did that.
Speaker: You didn't quit working.
Speaker: You got your MBA while you were working.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Well, that schedule's working.
Speaker: It was a seven-day-a-week work week, no time off.
Speaker: It was interesting.
Speaker: When I was going to the MBA, a lot of folks said, I said, what do you get out of it?
Speaker: And there was a few things.
Speaker: One was a network.
Speaker: And I kind of recognized that by doing the executive program, I was probably giving up on that because I wasn't spending all that much time.
Speaker: But the other was a lot about time management and prioritization.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And having come out of a world in banking where everything was a priority all the time, I really did learn that.
Speaker: So I learned how to structure my days and my weeks.
Speaker: And I knew that, you know,
Speaker: Monday through Thursday were for Goldman, Friday and Saturday were for Columbia, and Sunday was back to being for Goldman.
Speaker: And I just knew that and I could structure my week around it and it taught me that.
Speaker: The other part was prioritization.
Speaker: Having spent as much time as I did in finance, I also had something called the CFA designation, which
Speaker: Plainly means that I was adept at reading income statements, balance sheets, and cash flows.
Speaker: And there was one of the entry-level classes for business school was accounting.
Speaker: I was accounting 101, and I had done that for 10 years.
Speaker: So I very nicely walked into the professor, and I explained my background, and I said,
Speaker: I'm respectfully not going to come to your class because I can use that time differently, which is going to afford me better results for my MBA.
Speaker: And they're really appreciative of it.
Speaker: And I did the homework and didn't skimp on it, but I wasn't going to sit in the classroom to hear stuff that I lived day in and day out.
Speaker: And so back to prioritization, you know, as a skill set, it was just a very vivid memory of how that came to me.
Speaker: And how long did you keep the schedule?
Speaker: How long did it take for this to?
Speaker: 20 months.
Speaker: It was like one summer.
Speaker: Yeah, that's.
Speaker: And then we had a baby.
Speaker: So it was like, it was like, hey, you got the time.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, it was really easy.
Speaker: Yeah, you got the time.
Speaker: I also already I also told all my professors I wouldn't be coming to class, but they didn't receive it as well.
Speaker: I only was able to do it once.
Speaker: And by the way, I would say that one of your strengths, I think everybody knows that you're not only our board member, but soon to be vice chair, secretary, treasurer, is with us, I find that you prioritize really well.
Speaker: You're like, when do I need to be there?
Speaker: What do I need to do?
Speaker: Not that all our meetings aren't important, but I think you do a really good job of prioritizing your work with us.
Speaker: Like we never feel like, you know, we have to do without you on a call or something like that.
Speaker: If it matters, you absolutely get there.
Speaker: So, yeah, that prioritization, whatever you learned clearly stuck with you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Flattery will get you everywhere.
Speaker: Well, it's true.
Speaker: I'm going to hit you up for money at the end.
Speaker: So what?
Speaker: OK, so then right out of Columbia, did you go to JustWorks?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So in Columbia, I met my former business partner.
Speaker: And at that time, they had a family PBM, a pharmacy benefit management company, a small one.
Speaker: And in response to the Affordable Care Act, we came up with the business idea of bringing self-funded health plans to smaller businesses.
Speaker: Now, today, it's pretty common.
Speaker: But at the time, it was...
Speaker: I guess as cutting edge as one can get within health insurance.
Speaker: And they were willing to allow us to build this business on the back of the PBM.
Speaker: And so it was really wonderful in that it was safe because there was an existing infrastructure and it was part of the business and we really were given the opportunity to build it out.
Speaker: And I learned
Speaker: I mean, really everything about building a business from ordering copy paper.
Speaker: There's like a famous story where I was in a rush and I ordered a case full of resume quality paper for a copier because I just wasn't paying attention.
Speaker: It was not something I had had to contend with in the past.
Speaker: And, you know, I'll only make that mistake once.
Speaker: It was really my first experience hiring at scale, managing at scale, um, making systems decisions at scale.
Speaker: And so it was really, um, I'm really appreciative for having been afforded that opportunity.
Speaker: And I did that about five years, as I mentioned, it was a family run business.
Speaker: Um, so kind of reached its natural progression, which I was expecting and, um, had gotten, had grown it to scale.
Speaker: It was profitable.
Speaker: and chose to, after consultation with my wife, said, I think I have one startup in me, one real risk, series A type of experience.
Speaker: And so I started networking, and that's when I made my way to JustWorks.
Speaker: So what was that about?
Speaker: Did you meet Isaac first or later?
Speaker: What was the doorway into JustWorks?
Speaker: So again, unsolicited career advice, I have found that any career transition takes a minimum of nine months.
Speaker: So it was nine months of networking and you never know how any one meeting is going to pan out.
Speaker: And I'll spare the listeners the series of meetings that led to what I'm about to describe, but it was about five different meetings, none of which felt particularly interesting.
Speaker: And ultimately I started talking to one of our board members who works for a venture capital firm named Thrive.
Speaker: And I thought I was going to talk to them about Oscar Health.
Speaker: Oscar Health was a brand new health insurer here in New York, also formed in following the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker: And in the course of our conversation, he mentioned, oh, by the way, I've invested in this thing called a PEO.
Speaker: And this is a true story.
Speaker: And I said, oh, God, those are horrible businesses.
Speaker: Why would you ever put your money behind it?
Speaker: And he said, you know what?
Speaker: You got to meet Isaac.
Speaker: Isaac Oates, who's our founder.
Speaker: now chairman of the board.
Speaker: And I said, sure.
Speaker: And that's the very fast forward version.
Speaker: I guess when I came to meet Isaac, there were three things about how JustWorks was building our business that really appealed to me.
Speaker: And now, obviously, I'm a big believer in all things PEO.
Speaker: But at that time, the three things that stood out to me, first, we were building our own software.
Speaker: I think many of your listeners will agree that the software needs in the industry have changed dramatically over time.
Speaker: Ours is cloud-based architecture.
Speaker: We were gonna own it fully integrated and I liked that.
Speaker: Two was our go-to-market.
Speaker: We were going to market with a fully remote sales and service team
Speaker: and trying to invest in technology.
Speaker: And so when I think about how I consume products, whether it be travel or banking, that's what I'm used to.
Speaker: I'm not talking to people.
Speaker: I'm going into the bank very infrequently, depositing checks via my phone.
Speaker: And so building a solution that was going to meet the needs of those modern entrepreneurs.
Speaker: And the third, and it gets said a lot,
Speaker: but it really was important, was culture.
Speaker: Isaac really taught me the value of a leader who lives our culture.
Speaker: I mean, we've got our values, coges, compassion, openness, grit, integrity, simplicity.
Speaker: Anybody here at JustWorks should be able to tell you that.
Speaker: And the way I describe it is, first of all, they're clear.
Speaker: Second of all, the definitions are clear.
Speaker: But third, and this is the part that really resonates with me,
Speaker: I don't always agree with every decision that gets made here, even in my role as a leader, but I do know how those decisions are made and I know how they're judged.
Speaker: And that makes showing up to work so much easier.
Speaker: There's no ambiguity.
Speaker: You don't know.
Speaker: You, you,
Speaker: You know what things are tied back to, and it allows you to operate much clearer as well as to lead people to set expectations.
Speaker: So those three things were what led me to, well, obviously JustWorks took a chance on me, but for me to pursue it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so you moved right in and into what role?
Speaker: So Isaac is...
Speaker: He's, he's, he's created a lot of things.
Speaker: Um, one of them, I, I think he's just really, he's an incredibly thoughtful person.
Speaker: And that gets to like, it was June of 2015.
Speaker: And I thought, I was like, I got it.
Speaker: I'm getting, I'm going to go in.
Speaker: I'm going to meet with him.
Speaker: I'm going to get my job offer.
Speaker: And we're going to go.
Speaker: And we went in and Isaac was like, congratulations.
Speaker: We'd like to hire you as a 1099 consultant.
Speaker: And I was like, what?
Speaker: I'm like, I got two kids and job.
Speaker: Like, I don't, I don't want to be anybody's consultant.
Speaker: I'm looking for a full-time job.
Speaker: And where Isaac had been really thoughtful is I positioned myself and my expertise in and around health insurance and had recognized the need for us to upgrade our master health plan.
Speaker: The time we were working with Empire Blue Cross.
Speaker: And I said, you know, I can get this done.
Speaker: I can get a master health plan done, which, by the way, was was a little bit of faking it till you make it.
Speaker: But one of the things he said to me is he said, you know, if you don't do this,
Speaker: I don't know what to do with you and your skillset, but if you do, you've written your job description and you've, you know, proved your value.
Speaker: And I thought that very accurate, not pretty accurate.
Speaker: And I think it aligned our incentives and it allowed me to really focus over the summer of 2015.
Speaker: And thankfully, um, you know, those that know we are, we have a master health plan with that, and that started way back then.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And allowed me to get a full-time job.
Speaker: I think I even got the job offer the day before my birthday.
Speaker: It was like a birthday gift.
Speaker: So it was great.
Speaker: Great birthday presents.
Speaker: Terrific.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, so what did you start at?
Speaker: What was your title?
Speaker: Do you remember when you started?
Speaker: Director or no VP of partnerships.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I got to make it up.
Speaker: I'm sure it's in my life.
Speaker: I'm sure.
Speaker: I mean, that's the beauty of being at a startup, right?
Speaker: You get a few things.
Speaker: You get to make up your first title.
Speaker: And my email is David at JustWorks.com.
Speaker: If there's no last name or anything like that, I will own that until the end of time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so you guys, you didn't have any worksite employees yet, right?
Speaker: You were zero.
Speaker: We had a, no, we had about a thousand when I joined.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The focus was on New York.
Speaker: As I mentioned, our, our master health plan was with Empire.
Speaker: I had to educate the team that, you know, Blue Cross was not a single entity.
Speaker: And so that while Empire was a really valuable partner, it was not a nationwide Blue Cross and that we had we had,
Speaker: Aspirations to be a national PEO.
Speaker: And as such, we needed to find a national partner.
Speaker: And so that was, that was B1.
Speaker: And I remember like our first renewal season when we, we moved all of our enrollees from, um,
Speaker: from Empire to Aetna, we literally were in a conference room and every company was represented by a sticky note.
Speaker: And it was like, you know, there was an Empire column and there was an Aetna column.
Speaker: And then there was a series of things along the way.
Speaker: And we were physically moving sticky notes.
Speaker: So there was this like very visceral visual representation of how renewals was going.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker: Fun's one way to describe it, I guess.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: So how many worksite employees today, ballpark? 170,000.
Speaker: Okay, so before I get to the journey between 1,000 and 170,000, is the culture, you know, is near and dear to my heart, right?
Speaker: And, you know, at Stanford, they always quote Drucker, you know, culture, each strategy for lunch, right?
Speaker: And so what were the principles, again, that define your culture?
Speaker: You went through them?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Oh, sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: No, I wanted you to spend some time on it.
Speaker: And you can find them on our website.
Speaker: So they are compassion, or excuse me, camaraderie.
Speaker: I even started off wrong.
Speaker: And there's a story behind that.
Speaker: The sea change while I was here.
Speaker: But camaraderie, openness, grit, integrity, and simplicity.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: And so obviously those together make coges, or that's what it spells out.
Speaker: So that is a nonsensical word.
Speaker: But if you're within the four walls of JustWorks, you'll hear it.
Speaker: Easy when you have a thousand worksite employees and how many internal employees did you have when you joined?
Speaker: When we joined then I was like, when I joined, I think we had about 40 employees.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So how many today?
Speaker: Over 1200.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So how do you keep the coges going from 1000 or from 40 to 1200?
Speaker: How do you, how do you maintain that culture and grow?
Speaker: Not easy.
Speaker: I think a few things.
Speaker: One, clearly defined values, tying as much as you can back to it.
Speaker: When you talk about customers, when you measure performance, however you can incorporate those values, bringing them to life is important.
Speaker: And then the other part, and I learned from Isaac, is culture and values are really top down.
Speaker: And Isaac lived and really represented Kogis to many people.
Speaker: I don't remember where I read it and I'll get the numbers wrong, but I'll get it directionally right.
Speaker: There's something about scaling businesses and there's this tipping point.
Speaker: And I don't remember if it was like 500 employees or 800 employees, but the idea is that at a certain scale, and it's smaller than where we are today, culture's baked.
Speaker: And that changing it at our scale of 1200 is next to impossible.
Speaker: So to answer your question, today, it's more about maintaining it as opposed to changing it.
Speaker: And I would say early on, it was really about instilling it.
Speaker: One of the things that I really had to learn and that I've embraced was around openness, which I know to many of your listeners might sound like
Speaker: You have to think about it in the definition that we use.
Speaker: And it's not that I was secretive, but the world I grew up in, a lot of decisions and information were on a need to know basis because potentially they could be destabilizing.
Speaker: If everybody knew what was going on with certain things, it might be.
Speaker: it might make them feel uncomfortable or not secure coming into work.
Speaker: And so that you had this fine balance and really Isaac pushed me on that assumption.
Speaker: And many of the things that I think initially I was reticent to be so open with, um,
Speaker: He encouraged me to be open, to get up in front of the whole company and to talk about it, to articulate why it was sensitive information.
Speaker: And really the organization surprised me in how they handle the information.
Speaker: You know, there are times where there's pretty, um,
Speaker: I was able to share with a large group things that I would have formerly thought were sensitive.
Speaker: Now, I would say, I think that was early on, now that we're 1,200.
Speaker: We've swung a little bit back the way I was initially indoctrinated, but it certainly stuck with me.
Speaker: And it's something I've learned and taken with me.
Speaker: Yeah, I've spent 10 years in the federal government and a little bit different, but the same result, which is everything's public, everything.
Speaker: And it's so unnerving when you first start, but everybody knows exactly what everyone makes.
Speaker: Everyone knows what everyone's salary is.
Speaker: All your documents, government and the sunshine law, everything's foiable.
Speaker: Meetings can be open to the public.
Speaker: It's a little unnerving, but it's a really great lesson.
Speaker: for the future, right?
Speaker: It really is the things, the lessons it inculcates in you, I think at least served me well going forward.
Speaker: And for you too, and obviously, like you said, the business you came from, you couldn't broadcast everything you did, but that was in your DNA, right?
Speaker: It was just, it was in there.
Speaker: And then moving to a culture like this of openness, it's probably a little unnerving, but now I'm guessing you probably couldn't go back from that.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: If anything, it's actually...
Speaker: One of the nice, and I don't know if it's intended or unintended consequences, is it really forces you to think about how back to other values, like if you're going to be open, well, you better make sure that the decisions you're making, first of all, are full of integrity.
Speaker: That's the I. And they're simple to explain.
Speaker: And so it forces you that if you're going to be in a position where you're going to share information,
Speaker: Is it information or are these decisions that you're comfortable standing by, which I mean, the default is yes.
Speaker: And can you explain them in a simple manner?
Speaker: Because if you can do those two things, then people are going to build trust in you.
Speaker: Um, but you can imagine if you're overly long winded or if it's unclear why you're doing things, that's going to sow doubt.
Speaker: Or if the decisions you're making, um, aren't full of integrity.
Speaker: And I would certainly not encourage anyone to do that, but that obviously, um, uh,
Speaker: undermines any trust that people might have in you.
Speaker: And so those things coming together really helped.
Speaker: Like for me, they reinforced
Speaker: getting that out of my DNA.
Speaker: And then the, yeah.
Speaker: So overall, very much a positive experience.
Speaker: And to your point, like I think it would be really tough for me to go back to where I came from.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So track the growth from a thousand to 170,000 worksite employees.
Speaker: What was that?
Speaker: A couple of weeks?
Speaker: It took the growth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've been here eight years.
Speaker: So yeah, it's been eight years.
Speaker: It's been a rocket ship.
Speaker: So how and what, yeah.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: What's it like?
Speaker: And how'd you get there?
Speaker: I mean, you get there one employee at a time, but that's significant growth.
Speaker: I think, I think it's the three things I talked about.
Speaker: I think owning our own software has allowed us to scale and make changes and
Speaker: where and when we need them, as opposed to being reliant on someone else.
Speaker: And that's, you know, there are many businesses in our space who've had great success gaining scale, working with other people's software.
Speaker: One is not better than the other.
Speaker: In our instance,
Speaker: owning that software, being able to respond to the needs of our customers allowed us to be nimble and grow with great speed.
Speaker: You know, one of the more recent examples is when COVID hit and there was all the PPP loans and the required documentation, we were able to do all that development work relatively quickly.
Speaker: Pardon me, because we were only building for ourselves.
Speaker: We only had one customer to worry about.
Speaker: The second is that go to market.
Speaker: We really hit the market where it needed to be.
Speaker: You know, our,
Speaker: for our demographic, and that is changing, but at least during this period of time, we were really hitting entrepreneurs who are used to dealing with sales and service that was remote.
Speaker: They weren't expecting someone to come knock on their door.
Speaker: They weren't expecting someone to come in their office to do onboarding.
Speaker: They were comfortable making these larger financial decisions, you know, working with someone remotely.
Speaker: And that's, I'm not sure that that business model, at least at that point, had ever been
Speaker: really tested within our industry.
Speaker: And the last, and you hear me keep coming back to it as our values.
Speaker: One we didn't talk about as of yet was grit.
Speaker: It's a lot of grit, a lot, a lot.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: What's grit?
Speaker: Ah, I mean, it's doing it.
Speaker: It's, it's not just hard work, but it's doing with everyone else.
Speaker: Like there was a period of time was one selling season.
Speaker: We all have our selling season on the fourth quarter.
Speaker: And I was in charge of workers' comp underwriting.
Speaker: And so you heard my background.
Speaker: I've spent a lot of time in and around health, but all my workers' comp experience was here at JustWorks.
Speaker: We were short-staffed in terms of underwriters.
Speaker: And a few things happened.
Speaker: One, I was able to pick up the phone and call our head of sales, Rob Lopez, and say, hey, man, you know, I know you guys got a ton of leads and we're kicking butt and taking names, but we're not going to be able to get these through underwriting because I don't have the people.
Speaker: And I know it's going to come in at a detriment to you, but can you lend us some talent?
Speaker: And so he lent us two sales development associates, like really our entry level position.
Speaker: One of whom now is a senior manager within my team and is part of our, is part of our,
Speaker: some leadership efforts we have here.
Speaker: And so they, they showed, you know, this grit in terms of their ability to be flexible, recognizing the bigger thing.
Speaker: And the other part, and it's not to pat myself on the back, but it's like leading, it's leading from the front is I was underwriting with them.
Speaker: I didn't know the first thing about underwriting, but I was working with our carriers.
Speaker: I was working with our team, helping where I could, whether it was preparing submissions or, you
Speaker: it was being in the trenches and getting it done.
Speaker: Now, it's not something I aspire to.
Speaker: I think one of the things we've learned is there's this balance.
Speaker: Sometimes you don't want to over-index on grit.
Speaker: That's what causes burnout.
Speaker: But showing people how to be flexible when to dig in and particularly when leaders can be doing it alongside everybody else, I think that really...
Speaker: I don't know that that's a succinct definition of grit, but maybe that's how I would, if somebody were going to tell me a story, that's how I would tell them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's sort of like, you know it when you see it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It is one of those things.
Speaker: So I always like to ask, what's, and this is a flip side of the same question, you mentioned your demographic.
Speaker: So what's your better mousetrap?
Speaker: What's JustWorks better mousetrap?
Speaker: And what's your key demographic, if you can say?
Speaker: Um, today, any proprietary information?
Speaker: No, I don't think there's anything you couldn't get off the website.
Speaker: It continues to be, you know, a remote go to market.
Speaker: We've got a self service funnel so folks can service people who literally don't want to talk to anybody on the phone can sign up for a PEO account, which I think is a rarity.
Speaker: You're the PEO for introverts.
Speaker: Yes, right.
Speaker: That's not our tagline, but I can see it being the case.
Speaker: It is now.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So our go-to-market continues to be this remote sales and service and also meeting our customers where they are.
Speaker: So they can text us, they can contact us via Slack.
Speaker: We are one of the first in the industry to pioneer 24 by 7 support.
Speaker: So people knowing that they could reach a live human being as well as all the others, which again, if you think about
Speaker: You're flying and you got to make travel plans.
Speaker: You have that expectation.
Speaker: You're banking and you want to make a change.
Speaker: So we're just meeting people where their expectations are.
Speaker: So owning our own technology makes us masses of our own destiny.
Speaker: Go to market is hitting the modern entrepreneur where they are.
Speaker: And at least until this point, it's typically been a white collar demographic.
Speaker: So higher compensated knowledge worker.
Speaker: But I don't think it's going to be that way forever.
Speaker: I think if you think, you know, I use this example.
Speaker: So my step family is involved in an HVAC business and grandpa's still involved.
Speaker: He shows up once a week.
Speaker: And because of his relationships, he still works with a bookkeeper who writes many of the checks by hand.
Speaker: And at this point, my contemporaries who are the third generation are involved in running the business.
Speaker: And when the time is right, they will swap out and they will look for their own service providers.
Speaker: I don't know if PEO is the right fit, but I do know that they are used to banking and travel and doing all the things remote.
Speaker: So they have a workforce that's in the field.
Speaker: They're going to modernize everything.
Speaker: They're going to use cell phones for tracking.
Speaker: They're going to use iPads for getting time and tracking.
Speaker: And so I think there was a time where
Speaker: you people equated just works with millennials or with with tech startups but i i think that's a false narrative i think the way we're going to market it's not for everybody i don't pretend to say it is but i think you're going to see a lot more industries um embracing the way that that we go to market yeah yeah and um how's business business good um
Speaker: Cashflow break even, 1,200 internal employees, 170,000 worksite employees, all grown organically.
Speaker: We've certainly seen our share of the economic headwinds, but we've continued to grow throughout the slowdown.
Speaker: Haven't raised money in two years.
Speaker: So it's nice to be in a position where we can make decisions for ourselves.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: No, that's that.
Speaker: That really is great.
Speaker: And just by the way, you know, I came to you guys a number of years ago and I just seen the movie The Intern and your offices reminded me of that office.
Speaker: They were in some meeting and a dog like scooted along the floor in front of me.
Speaker: I was like, OK, I guess that's how this is going to go, which is great.
Speaker: So the culture was palpable.
Speaker: It was when you walked in, you'd feel the culture.
Speaker: It's just sort of a different vibe.
Speaker: And I also remember, I think I had to wait for hours to see Mr. Feinberg.
Speaker: I was waiting outside in the waiting room for a very long time.
Speaker: But I got a chance.
Speaker: I got a chance to look at all the marketing materials.
Speaker: And it was really fun and hip and clever.
Speaker: And, you know, it just wasn't like womp, womp, womp.
Speaker: you know, outsource your HR.
Speaker: It was funny and fun and hip.
Speaker: And that's great.
Speaker: And I think you guys have continued that vibe, but it's really, it's been fun to see that in terms of, you know, for us trying to promote the industry, like, hey, look at this.
Speaker: You know, we try to get that out there.
Speaker: It's been pretty good.
Speaker: um so what's uh i i'd like to i always like to ask what's the outlook for the industry right i i live in a bubble a and i'm biased but my bias i always say is based on on data my bias isn't based on wish you know and cross fingers like hey let's hope this goes well uh yeah you've been in the industry long enough uh what's the outlook what do you think well i'll give you i'll give you the macro and then maybe yeah to some numbers
Speaker: I mean, we joked about it, but it's true.
Speaker: You're going from a guy who PEOs were an afterthought in 05, who in, I got to do the math when I joined nine years ago, 2015, told an investor that PEOs were a horrible idea.
Speaker: Someone, as you mentioned, who's like in line to be the vice chairman of the National Association of PEOs has levered my career for eight years to the industry.
Speaker: Like, I think the future is bright.
Speaker: I think given COVID, given hybrid workforce, the value that PEOs bring to remote workforces, the increase that we're seeing in legislation and requirements around compliance requirements around employment, both at the state and federal level, like the value prop has never been higher.
Speaker: So that's kind of the big trend.
Speaker: The other secular trend I would have, I have an...
Speaker: I have a theory and you can't articulate it.
Speaker: Well, the Feinberg theory, we'll call it.
Speaker: Maybe theory is too strong, but in conversations with folks who have been around a lot, my understanding, and I think Mike Miller, he might've been on your podcast or was a different one.
Speaker: He said that the PEO industry started many, many years ago when a bunch of doctors wanted to get a 401k plan together.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: So you think about that's where we started.
Speaker: Then when I was looking at the industry in the early 2000s, I was to understand that the first or a leg of growth in the 1990s was a lot around workers' comp.
Speaker: And then if you think about the 2010s, a lot of the growth was driven by the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker: I think we're at another one of those inflection points.
Speaker: I think post-COVID, I think the value prop, well, it's always been there.
Speaker: I think the value prop of the industry around compliance and HR is coming to the forefront.
Speaker: I think the remote workforces, I think how the industry showed up for our customers during the pandemic, securing triple P loans, what we're doing around ERTC credits and like all the work we're doing for small businesses to put money back in their pocket.
Speaker: And by the way, PPP loans weren't your wheelhouse at that moment.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And I think that's why I'm bullish on the industry.
Speaker: I see more and more of that.
Speaker: And I see it showing up.
Speaker: I then look at, depending on whose numbers you believe, I've heard as much as 15% of the market is on a PEO, which obviously the inverse of that means 85% of the market is available.
Speaker: And so I think you have the secular trend.
Speaker: I think you have plenty of opportunity in terms of white space, folks that are not on the PEO.
Speaker: I joke, if I can...
Speaker: The problem, and Andy Lubash was probably sitting there nodding if he's listening right now.
Speaker: It takes longer than an elevator ride to convince somebody they need a PEO.
Speaker: We got to figure that out.
Speaker: It's not an elevator pitch.
Speaker: It's like a...
Speaker: I don't know what the, I don't need a full car ride, but I need more than an elevator.
Speaker: But if I can get that, I, time and time again, it says have somebody email me.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's exactly right.
Speaker: Well, you need a long elevator, like, you know, Empire State Building elevator, right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's what you need.
Speaker: And are you funny, because I talk about this all the time in theory, but I think it's true in practice.
Speaker: Are you finding that your small clients are now no longer just in New York or New Jersey or Connecticut, but these small clients now have employees in like 10 states post pandemic?
Speaker: Our average customer has employees in four states.
Speaker: And that's changed, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's people picked up and went everywhere.
Speaker: Now, obviously you, I shouldn't say obviously, you probably need to be in a knowledge worker type of environment where you can pick up and work elsewhere.
Speaker: So, you know, using my HVAC example, you can't be servicing the New York, New Jersey area and be based out of Montana.
Speaker: But I do think if you look again at small business trends in the U S we tend to have, there's, there's a secular trend towards more knowledge-based work.
Speaker: And that permits people to work wherever they want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I keep saying like, you know, that juxtaposed with the increase in states and localities legislating.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like New York, no matter what block you're on, you've got a different minimum wage or what borough you're in.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And then that's just playing out across the country.
Speaker: So you've got that.
Speaker: You've got paid leave.
Speaker: You've got everything else.
Speaker: So you layer that onto the fact that people were in one state.
Speaker: Now they're in four states that increases the peril for them and, and the risk.
Speaker: And to me, the value prop, I think, and you guys probably are seeing that play out, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, we absolutely are.
Speaker: I think the industry is as well.
Speaker: It's not just the JustWorks phenomenon.
Speaker: How do you think you've been in the industry long enough?
Speaker: How is it, but not that long.
Speaker: How has it changed since you've been here?
Speaker: The industry.
Speaker: Well, I think the same undertone that I experienced is actually what led to how I've seen it change.
Speaker: I know that's a bit obtuse.
Speaker: But what I would say is when I joined in 05, I went to my first Napio annual conference.
Speaker: And again, rewinding the clock when I was in finance, I would go to a bunch of conferences.
Speaker: They were closed.
Speaker: You try to network with someone, they see you in a suit, they saw a bank name, nobody would talk to you, even if you're just trying to learn about their product.
Speaker: You know, Napio and the PEO industry is quite different.
Speaker: I showed up in Scottsdale in 2015 and anybody would talk to me.
Speaker: I actually, I think I poor, I think it was Dale.
Speaker: I cornered him and I mean, he just talked to me for like 30 minutes.
Speaker: He didn't know me.
Speaker: He didn't have to spend time with me.
Speaker: And it was pretty incredible.
Speaker: And so at that time, you know, there was a lot of folks who'd been in the industry a number of years, but the fact that they were so open to mentoring and bringing people in has encouraged myself in particular, JustWorks as a company, and there's been other new entrants to really come in.
Speaker: And I think it's made space and opportunities for the next generation of operators and leaders to come in.
Speaker: Now, I'd like to see more of it.
Speaker: I think it's, I think,
Speaker: I think what's interesting is I think the industry is, is really encouraging that change.
Speaker: We need now need to find the people who are willing to step in and take up that state.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: I met you in Arizona and Isaac, cause Denise Stefan from the then shoot over Aetna and she's like, have you met the just works guys?
Speaker: I was like, no, it's like,
Speaker: Come to the bar.
Speaker: So we went and I met all you guys there then.
Speaker: And it was great.
Speaker: And I just remember, you know, that you guys were like excited and really pumped up.
Speaker: And she was too.
Speaker: And she's like, let me tell you, these guys are the real deal.
Speaker: And sure enough, sure enough.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So the flip side to the outlook question is headwinds.
Speaker: What storm clouds, if any, what are the headwinds that this industry's got to be thinking about?
Speaker: I mean, I know that's something you do with your Napio hat on, too, in terms of strategic planning and what we need to be thinking about.
Speaker: Like, yeah, what are the headwinds we should all be aware of?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There too, I don't think it's any revolutionary.
Speaker: I don't see anything that's emerged that I think would be a surprise to the listeners.
Speaker: First and foremost, it's the regulatory and the legislative environment.
Speaker: Particularly if what I said is true and we're going into a world where multi-state compliance is important, then all of those legislative changes, all of those regulatory changes, the difference between red states and blue states and among agencies at the federal level, they matter.
Speaker: They matter a lot.
Speaker: And
Speaker: The flip side to our success through COVID, getting recognized for triple P loans, the work we're doing around ERTC is that regulators know who we are.
Speaker: And so that, I don't think of it as a headwind, but what happens at the regulatory and legislative front has always mattered, but it feels like it matters that much more.
Speaker: And then the other part is a bit of a blessing and a curse.
Speaker: And we talk about this at the board level is consolidation with the industry, which I think with it comes a lot of good things.
Speaker: There's scale.
Speaker: I think large companies have certain advantages, obviously over small companies, not to say small companies don't have their own advantages.
Speaker: But back to my point about welcoming new entrants and new people in the more consolidation you have, there's fewer of those opportunities.
Speaker: So how do we encourage more people to participate?
Speaker: New PEO entrance, things of that nature.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's that's interesting.
Speaker: And, you know, we we get startups every year.
Speaker: But then we're getting, you know, a lot of those are getting the other smaller companies, midsize companies getting bought up along the way.
Speaker: So what's your advice to somebody new?
Speaker: So the next David Feinberg, who's out of Duke, who's full of wind piss and vinegar, says, hey, I want to get the PO industry.
Speaker: You say run.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: What's your advice?
Speaker: I've come full circle.
Speaker: Well, if I think about what really led to my success,
Speaker: First and foremost, it was like surrounding myself with a really wonderful group of advisors, whether it be formal or informal.
Speaker: And so the example, as I mentioned, go to an APO annual conference, seek out people who've been there.
Speaker: They are going to talk to you, maybe not at the conference, but they'll follow up with you.
Speaker: There are advisors to this industry, whether they be insurance brokers, attorneys,
Speaker: You name it.
Speaker: So this is more in the higher category, but there are great people who service this industry, who have years of experience and can really fast forward your knowledge.
Speaker: So look at the Napio website, look at the, I forgot the exact link, but it talks about those providers that serve the industry.
Speaker: And some of JustWork's biggest relationships came from me going to that provider directory and cold calling someone.
Speaker: And, you know, and, and it was as simple as that, but trusting in that and using it.
Speaker: And once you're, once you're registered, you have access to the directory and, and it allows you the opportunity to really network with some talented individuals.
Speaker: And I think that's, that's really where I would start.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker: Yeah, and the website, I'll put in the plug, navio.org.
Speaker: They can root around from there and see if they find it.
Speaker: Okay, so favorite question, last question.
Speaker: What is something people don't know about you?
Speaker: And I'm going to steal the most obvious one that I know people don't know.
Speaker: that David and his wife Katie are inveterate jigsaw puzzlers.
Speaker: And while everybody else was enjoying the beach in Kauai, we were indoors doing a crossword puzzle.
Speaker: I think back to that all the time.
Speaker: Like, yeah, I hear Hawaii's nice.
Speaker: But I was indoors because you found...
Speaker: goddamn puzzle.
Speaker: And we just kept doing it.
Speaker: And then Norman Paul joined us and that's it.
Speaker: So, you know, me, I'm sort of like the 30 to 40 piece puzzle guy.
Speaker: You're like the 15,000 piece puzzle guy.
Speaker: You do ones that are the same color that are round and like black belt, like completely different categories.
Speaker: So I'm going to steal that right from you.
Speaker: You can't use the cross, the jigsaw puzzle thing.
Speaker: Cause that's something people don't know about you, which is real and like next level stuff.
Speaker: So proving that you have no
Speaker: life.
Speaker: I just want to get that out there.
Speaker: No, I'm comfortable with it.
Speaker: So what's something we don't know about you?
Speaker: Well, there's two things.
Speaker: You know, we do a lot of these icebreakers at JustWorks.
Speaker: And I think there's two things that perennially people point out, but they're surprised to know about me.
Speaker: So the first is I drive a pickup truck, which I think is a lifelong New Yorker.
Speaker: Nobody expects.
Speaker: Is there a gun rack?
Speaker: Once you share that within the industry, there's a lot of people who drive pickups, by the way, you know, and New Yorkers.
Speaker: Steve Politis, your incoming chairman, pickup driver as well.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You're swapping stories.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You got a gun rack in the back of this thing or not?
Speaker: I do not, but I just installed the cover myself.
Speaker: That was like the most handy thing I've ever done.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: There are horns on the front, you know, like steering.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I drive a pickup.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then the second, which I guess kind of goes, seems to go hand in hand is I hate golf.
Speaker: Most people just assume that.
Speaker: for a number of reasons that I am an avid or I enjoy the game.
Speaker: But so much so that like last year at the annual conference, we were in Palm Springs and, you know, it's like, I guess that's where you want to go if you want to golf.
Speaker: And I got many invites and I said, no.
Speaker: And as a matter of fact, some poor soul indulged me, got up at the crack of dawn and we went mountain biking.
Speaker: So I took advantage of mountain biking in Palm Springs.
Speaker: I did not play golf.
Speaker: So those are two things that I think often surprise people.
Speaker: Those are both surprising.
Speaker: I knew about pickup.
Speaker: You know about the golf.
Speaker: And so you can you can use this if you want.
Speaker: I share your loathing of golf.
Speaker: And whenever people ask me, do I golf?
Speaker: I say I prefer men's sports.
Speaker: No, that wouldn't work for me.
Speaker: So, and the mountain biking has been without incident all these years, right?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: It's been injury free, except for that one time that I broke my collarbone in Arkansas.
Speaker: So if you see me, I'll spare you listeners that story.
Speaker: But if you want to, you have to buy me a drink at an APO event and be happy to tell you.
Speaker: I think I've done that.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, so David, thanks for your time today.
Speaker: This is great.
Speaker: You really were not the last interviewee.
Speaker: There are going to be plenty more to come.
Speaker: Oh, good.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: David, again, is our incoming vice chair.
Speaker: So he'll be chair in a year.
Speaker: So you only got to be nice to him for another two years.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: SVP of risk and insurance.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: Is this title?
Speaker: The two things nobody wants, right?
Speaker: And
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: SVP of risk and insurance.
Speaker: And I got to say, it's funny, you know, as you make your way up, I guess I would say here at Napio, you know, people ask, you know, OK, hey, what's the deal with this guy?
Speaker: And people ask me.
Speaker: And I say the thing about David that's maddening to me is he gets dropped into like the Federal Government Affairs Committee chairmanship.
Speaker: He gets dropped into these foreign worlds about which he knows nothing.
Speaker: And after whatever presentation, he asks the exact right question.
Speaker: It's amazing to me.
Speaker: It's like, does somebody give you these questions to ask?
Speaker: Like, how does he know it?
Speaker: And you just seem to intuit this stuff.
Speaker: So you're always great and insightful.
Speaker: And you bring your brain to every meeting and we're better for it.
Speaker: And so I really do appreciate it.
Speaker: And it's just been great.
Speaker: You know, we've overlapped for, I guess, my entire time here, pretty much.
Speaker: And you've been on the board for a big chunk of that time.
Speaker: You've still got a couple of years left.
Speaker: We're not done with you yet.
Speaker: But it's just been great.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, David, thanks for being with us today.
Speaker: David Feinberg of JustWorks.
Speaker: And buy him a drink and he will tell you the story about his broken shoulder mountain biking in Arkansas.
Speaker: So, David, thanks so much.
Speaker: Thanks, Pat.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
