Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Someone in the United States dies by suicide every eleven minutes. So when we started the work on our nonprofit organization, we said it's a race against time.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Well, Jeff, hey, thank you so much for spending the time with us today and eager to be on this show. I know that we got connected by a mutual friend, doctor Anthony Yani, over at Astellas. He said just incredible things about the work that you're doing in mental health and mental health advocacy for the folks who are listening. Jeff is the founder and chairman of an organization called Rural Minds that is advocating for mental health services and support to rural communities. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show with us.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Thank you very much, Brandon, for the opportunity. I appreciate Anthony connecting us and I'm looking forward to our conversation.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Jeff, I know that you've had a really interesting career. I'd love to maybe just start with your story, tell us about your career and how you ended up where you are today.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yes, certainly. So I have spent the majority of my career working in the biopharmaceutical industry, predominantly in positions that are related to corporate affairs, communications, government policy, things of that nature. Three years ago, due to a family tragedy that happened in my family, I started the nonprofit that I'm representing here on this call today. So it's interesting, after having spent the majority of my career working for companies where I was working with patient advocacy groups, I am now representing a patient advocacy group. And I'm seeing the other side of the importance of patient centricity and how important advocacy is in the healthcare space.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: What are your focus areas at rural mines?
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Rural mines is the only not for profit organization in the United States focused on mental health equity for the 46 million people who live in rural America. Many people don't realize that 14% of our population in the United States lives in what is considered rural America. Many times, people in rural America tend to be hidden because of the nature of the environment. When a family tragedy occurred several years ago, it became very apparent and became very personal to me that something needed to be done to address the inequity that exists in healthcare in general, but specifically in mental health equity. So rural minds was launched as a result of that. And again, we're not quite three years old yet in our evolution, but we're very proud of the impact we're making and a number of the inroads that we feel we are making. There's a huge issue in rural areas and it's only growing. It became exacerbated during COVID as you could imagine, but another thing that's happening is because of the fragile infrastructure that already exists in healthcare and rural America, we now have a greater issue because people are moving to rural areas, because they can do their jobs from anywhere. So we started to see an influx of people leaving suburban areas and big cities, moving to rural areas back when Covid hit. And so it's putting an additional pressure on an already fragile healthcare ecosystem.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: And tell me about these almost kind of like dual worlds that you've occupied between working in pharma for quite some time and now working with rural America. Like, how have you kind of bridged the gap between these two?
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Well, quite honestly, everything has come full circle, because the piece that I haven't mentioned yet is that I grew up on a farm, and I am speaking to you from my family's farm that has been in the family for many generations. So I am a farm kid. I am from a long line of farmers. My undergraduate degree from Cornell was actually in agriculture. And I started my career in the communications and corporate affairs space, working for agricultural companies. And then mid career, I became involved in the biopharma space, and I went to work for my first pharmaceutical company as a patient advocate working in the HIV and AIDS area. And so I learned a great deal about the industry in an advocacy role such as that. And then I've had the good fortune throughout my career to work for corporations that have large biopharmaceutical businesses, but some of them have also had agricultural businesses. So it gave me the opportunity to really bridge both worlds and both pieces of my life. So when my nephew died by suicide on our family farm a few years ago, I decided that it was time to put my experience to good use for people living in rural areas who are struggling with various forms of mental illness, in substance use disorder, such as my nephew was many people in rural areas because of the stigma that exists. Struggle in silence my nephew did until he was found dead. We had no idea whatsoever that he was struggling with mental illness. And of course, by the time we realized, it was too late. And my family's story is not unique. And it became very apparent after my nephew died, who was a farmer, by the way, that many other farm families in this part of upstate New York, where we live, had suffered very similar circumstances. But because of the stigma, nobody felt comfortable talking about it. It's one of the areas of healthcare that still is in the closet and is still in the dark. People talk about cancer, people talk about diabetes, people talk about heart disease. No one wants to talk about major depression, schizophrenia, or opioid use disorder. So we are now trying to drag this epidemic, and it is an epidemic, out of the dark and make sure that people understand this is an illness just like the other illnesses I've mentioned. And there is help, but a, you need to admit you need help, and b, you then need to know where to go to access healthcare, which, again, is an issue in rural America.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit more about the differences you're seeing or the differences that are experienced in rural America versus, let's call, like, maybe in, like, more urban America, because the conversation feels like it's almost front and center now in urban America. Where's the difference? What's the experience like?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Well, it's been very eye opening for me the past two and a half years since we launched rural mines, which was when I moved back to rural America. Up until then, because of my career in the biopharmaceutical industry, I was living in places like New York City and Chicago and working in LA and very urban areas. But I decided that when we launched rural America, if I was going to be as effective as I need to be in this role, I needed to be living this lifestyle. I needed to be fully immersed living in a rural area again. And I must say, even though I grew up here, I've been gone so long that it was a very difficult transition, adjustment moving back, because there were many things I took for granted living in an urban area, such as healthcare at your fingertips, which does not exist in rural areas. To give you an example, this is an anecdotal example, but certainly something that drove home the fact that I was living in a much different area. Now. When I moved back to our farm two and a half years ago, I waited eight months to get into a primary care physician because of the shortage of primary care physicians. Fortunately, I wasn't ill. I was trying to establish a new patient relationship. If I had been ill, I would have had to go to the nearest emergency room, which is not easy in many rural areas, because many rural hospitals are closing or being consolidated. So that was the first sign to me that I was no longer living in Manhattan anymore, and that I needed to adjust my expectations and understand that in many ways, I'm living in a healthcare desert, as many people are in rural areas. The stigma I cannot stress enough and why we are so focused at rural minds around storytelling and sharing narratives. Because growing up in a rural area, especially on a farm like I did, you are taught from a very early age to be very self dependent, to be self reliant to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, to not talk about issues you're having, certainly not to talk about mental illness. Growing up in an area like this, if you are struggling with feelings that now we realize are a result of depression or another form of mental illness, you just try to suppress them, which you know is not sustainable. If you're living with cancer, you can't suppress that without medical intervention. You certainly can't suppress mental illness or a substance use disorder by just pretending that it doesn't exist or wishing or praying it away. You need help. But people are very hesitant to ask for help in rural America to start with. But because of the stigma around mental illness and the fact that even today, in this day and age, it's not considered an illness, it's considered a character flaw, it's considered something you should be ashamed of, that in some cases, you perhaps brought on yourself, which we know isn't the case. People don't understand. In many cases, there's a genetic predisposition to this, just like any other illness. And in my family, we have countless examples of now understanding it is in my family composition. We instinctually knew this before my nephew's suicide, but nobody talked about it. It was only when my nephew died that we realized our family had an issue, and we needed to do something about it. And that's what planted the seed for what is now known as rural mines.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: And tell me how you think about supporting the community. What are the big pillars that you're trying to put it to place?
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Well, as I mentioned, Brandon, storytelling is critical because we feel like we need to put a human face on this disease. We need to humanize it. And that's why when I give talks like I gave earlier in the week in Denver, I start out my talks, telling my family story, talking about my nephew's struggle and my nephew's suicide. And inevitably, I will have people come up to me after my talks. Many of them are in small towns across this country because we are a national 501. But people come up to me and share their own personal stories and their family stories. And in many cases, people say, you are the first person I've ever told this to because you were courageous enough and transparent enough to share your family's story. I now feel comfortable sharing my story. Another thing that happened, which really led to the formation of rural mines was after my nephew's funeral. Again, he died by suicide. We had people in this farming community where I'm talking to you from today, who suggested we make up another reason why he died. People did not think we should be talking about suicide in this rural farming community. And it was due to my mother's courage who said, this is going to stop with my family. This has been going on in this farming community too long, and no one will admit it and no one will talk about it. So I am going to, in memory of my grandson, who I love greatly, ensure that other families know that they are not alone. So during his funeral, I was asked to give the eulogy, which, as you can imagine, was a very difficult thing to get through, because my nephew was 28 years old when he died. He was a father of three year old twins who, on the surface, appeared to have everything going for him, but yet he was suffering in silence. So we talked in detail as much as we knew at that point about what led to his death and the circumstances around his suicide. After the funeral was over, we had other farming families, such as my family, lined up for hours to tell us their story, many in tears, saying that we have never felt like we could talk about why our grandfather died or why our brother died. But because of your family's courage and the fact that your family has been in this community for generations, is well known and well respected, we feel that if you can talk about it, so can we. And that's when the floodgates opened. Brandon. And again, after having been in the biopharmaceutical industry for my entire career, and after having worked for companies that do research in mental illness, I thought I knew quite a bit. But until it becomes personal, like it did in my family's situation, and until it impacts somebody that I greatly loved and will always miss, you don't realize how much you don't know. So I started reaching out to many contacts I had in the pharmaceutical industry, including other advocacy groups that are advocates for people living with mental illness. And my first question was to them, after telling them what had happened in my own families situation, I said, what are you doing for people in small town America? What are you doing for the indigenous community? What are you doing for people who live on farms and in ranches and in fishing communities and mining villages? And basically, my question was met with silence but respect and with an offer to help. The admission was that they didn't really know a lot about the 46 million people who live in rural areas, but they realized there was an issue. So it was really at the urging of other advocacy organizations and with their moral support and with the benefit of their knowledge that we embarked on establishing an organization now solely focused on issues and topics around mental illness in rural areas. So it's been quite a journey. My nephew died 14 years ago, but we specifically waited until his twins were old enough to understand why we were doing what we were doing, because we knew they were going to hear stories such as the one I've told you today about their father's suicide. And we wanted to make sure that they were old enough to be able to somewhat comprehend what had happened. You can't explain suicide to three year olds like they were at the time of their daddy's death. And even today, they're teenagers, and it's hard for them to understand, but they're old enough, and unfortunately, they've had friends and schoolmates now die by suicide at, you know, this tender age. Because we've got a growing issue amongst youth, especially rural youth, in this country. Young people in rural America are 45% more likely to die by suicide than young people in suburban and urban areas. It's a shocking statistic that every time I tell it, I get goosebumps because of the inequity that exists. Wow.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing that. I think I'd love to just kind of peel the onion on here is what it's like being on the other side of the advocacy equation now representing a specific group. Now you've seen it from both sides of the table. What's it like?
[00:17:39] Speaker A: It's a very good question, and it's something that I was talking earlier today to one of my colleagues about. I truly feel that the many years that I spent in the pharmaceutical industry were preparing me for the work I'm doing now. I truly don't believe that I would have been able to establish a nonprofit organization and understand the intricacies of how these operate and how you go about developing partnerships. If it hadn't been for the experience I had gotten working for other mid to large size pharmaceutical companies, especially those involved in the mental health and substance use disorder space. So the work I'm doing now, I hope, has been very well informed from being on the other side and being surrounded by very smart people who are working day after day to bring about the next breakthrough in mental health care. We've had quite a dry spirit of innovation in mental illness until recently. I'm encouraged by a number of the development plans that are going on right now and some of the new medicines that have been approved recently. But it appeared that for many years, the industry lost sight of the fact that we had a growing issue in this country and around the world, for that matter. In mental illness. And it seemed like at times, everyone was more focused on cancer or Alzheimer's or cardiovascular disease. And certainly there's nothing wrong with that. And I am so glad and grateful that the industry has focused on those areas. But we were not at the forefront of research programs in many cases, until recently. And so it's encouraging for me, with the partnerships that we have now with a number of the leading global biopharmaceutical companies, to get an inside, behind the curtain peek at what is transpiring. I think Covid, quite honestly, actually brought this to the forefront because the incidence of mental illness amongst all populations, not just rural populations, skyrocketed once people were shot in and didn't have access to social interaction. So I think that that was what really one of the turning points was, in addition to some of the wonderful work that's being done in the advocacy area by other organizations and certainly by rural mines. But I can tell you, Brandon, I've had a really wonderful career, and I think back to every single job I had in healthcare and how blessed I was to do the kind of work I'm doing. But the work I'm doing now is what touches me at the very soul of my existence. And it's not only because it's keeping my nephew's memory alive, but I see the impact we're making. I hear the stories, I travel around this country, and I see what a need there is. But I also am encouraged by the progress we are making and the fact that people are finally starting to talk about this now, which, again, is our premise. You've got to start talking about this.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: What do you think that pharma companies don't understand about working with advocacy today, and then, in particular, working with rural populations and mental health to just get your lay of the line there?
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Well, I started my career in the human health space as a patient advocate, working with the AIDS community. And this was in the earlier days of the AIDS community, where I had been a volunteer and was doing a lot of community work in the area. And this pharmaceutical company, which I will always be grateful for, heard about the work I was doing. And they knew I was an agriculturalist, they knew I was a farmer. They knew my degree was in agriculture. But they also saw something in me that they liked about the approach I was taking in the community. And so they took a chance on me, and they hired me, and I spent a number of years working there to advocate for the HIV and AIDS community within the confines of a major pharmaceutical company. I was getting compensated by the pharma company. But my people, the people I represented was the AIDS community. And that is what really made me realize that working in the biopharmaceutical industry is where I belonged. And then fast forward. I had the good fortune of working inpatient advocacy at a number of other pharmaceutical companies in a number of other therapeutic areas, including mental illness. I am proud of how the biopharmaceutical industry works with patient advocacy organizations. Clearly, we all make mistakes, and there have been some stumbles along the way. But if I think back to where we were during the AIDS epidemic, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, I should say, because we still have an AIDS epidemic, we've come a long ways, and I think the pharmaceutical companies have learned a lot about how to work with organizations because of the patient involvement. I think there's still a lot of work to do to help pharmaceutical companies understand the unique challenges of rural America. However, for example, as I mentioned earlier, the waiting time to get into any kind of a healthcare provider is draconian. It is just much longer than it should be. One of the other issues that we have that many people don't understand is that during the COVID epidemic, and certainly now, even after we're through the brunt of it, hopefully we're still using telemedicine, we're still relying on visiting our healthcare providers, such as you and I are talking today. That doesn't exist in 30% of the households in rural America. 30% of families in rural America have no access to broadband. It's not that they can't afford it, it's just not available. And so that's one thing that we are advocating for and are very active, is to ensure that people know we've got to do better when it comes to some of this technology that people in suburban and urban areas are now relying on. Because if. If you can't get to a doctor, because there isn't a doctor available readily, and you can access a doctor over a computer screen like we're using today, then you've got a real dilemma. And that's especially exacerbated in some states that are vast in geography. You get in states like Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, where people literally may have to drive four or 5 hours to get to the nearest healthcare provider, and that might just be their primary care physician. We have a real shortage of mental health providers in this country, which is something that, again, we plan on exploring. But people in rural America cannot just take a subway or jump on a bus or walk a few blocks to get to the local clinic or a local doctor because it just isn't feasible. Transportation is an issue in rural areas. Many people aren't well enough to drive. And if you can't drive in an area like where I'm talking to you from upstate New York, you can't get anywhere unless you get a ride with someone because there is no mass transportation. So access to healthcare is a huge issue. We have an issue with insurance. A lot of people in rural areas are uninsured or underinsured. I had a gentleman approach me after a talk I gave recently who said, I'm a farmer and I don't have insurance. I'm living with both diabetes and depression. And because I have to pay for my medication out of pocket, I have to make a choice. And he said, I know my diabetes will kill me if I'm not taking my insulin. He said, my depression will likely kill me as well. But I have to take a chance. I had to make a choice between being treated for depression or diabetes. No one in this country should have to make that kind of decision. But those decisions are being made by tens of thousands of rural Americans each and every day.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: So help us find a path forward here. Jeff, a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast are drug developers on the research side of the world, whether directly on sites, working with patients every day, or at the biopharma companies, thinking about how best to conduct research. What advice would you have for them as they think about designing the work they do so that they can better engage rural communities and connect there?
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, first of all, I would hope that as pharmaceutical companies are reaching out to diverse communities as part of their clinical development program, that they remember that rural America is one of those underserved populations. I think all too often and again, I saw this firsthand when I was working in the pharmaceutical industry, is that you immediately go to racial identity or you go to gender identity. But the fact remains there's 46 million people, very diverse population, by the way, who live in rural areas, who need to have a voice and need to be at the table when drug development is being undertaken to fully understand the challenges, like I mentioned, some people have to drive hours each way to get to a local hospital. So if you're working on a product that has to be infused at an infusion center, just know that people may have to drive 10 hours a day to get to that infusion center. And you also have to understand that pharmacies aren't readily available. A lot of small town pharmacies have gone out of business. And so people are relying on either mail order pharmacy, they're relying on going to the big box stores or even grocery stores in rural America that now have, you know, small pharmacies in there. But just being able to get your hands on the medicine, you need a problem. The other thing I talk very openly about are patient assistance programs, pharmaceutical companies. And I know this firsthand because I've been there and I've been at the table when these programs have been discussed. Patient assistance programs are readily available. But inevitably, every single time I go to a rural area and give a talk and I bring up these patient assistance programs, people become very wide eyed. They have never heard that if they can't afford their medicine, it could be made available to them by contacting the healthcare provider. You know, physicians providers are way overworked right now. And, you know, back in the day, maybe they would tell their patients about this, and some clearly still are. But I am hoping that pharmaceutical companies and the pharmaceutical industry in general, the trade associations, will continue to promote these patient assistance programs and ensure that people like we advocate for know that there is help, especially if they're underinsured and can afford these programs themselves. So I think what people will find is if they really understand and reach out to the rural community, that people such as my family are more than happy and willing and anxious to share their struggles and share their obstacles and what they face. But nobody's really asked them. It's a part of our population that has been underserved. And, you know, quite honestly, I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed. I knew better. I grew up in a rural area. But did I advocate for people in rural America when I was working in the pharmaceutical industry? Probably not nearly as vocally as I should have. So that's with what remaining time I have left on the face of this earth. I am hoping that I can help bridge the gap between an industry that has been so good to me and people that I now consider my people, people that I grew up with, my family, my neighbors, and ensure that there was a mutual understanding. It goes both ways, Brandon. People in rural areas many times don't have a full understanding of what the biopharmaceutical industry is about. They just see the high prices of drugs, and they don't understand the drug development process. We just yesterday did a webinar, which is on our website, on the ramifications of the Inflation Reduction Act, Ira. And the impact that's going to have on rural Americans. And we got a lot of questions from people in rural America who didn't understand a lot about how this industry works. Many people find it hard to believe that 90 plus percent of the drugs in development will never make it to market. That's just mind boggling to them. It's unlike any other industry that they have access to. So I feel I have a dual purpose in the work I'm doing now. As a lifelong healthcare guy who understands somewhat of how pharmaceutical companies should operate, I feel it's my responsibility to make sure that people in rural America understand that. Because if they understand that, I think a lot of things will start to come into view and clarity much more greatly than it would. Conversely, it's my role working with the biopharmaceutical companies that we have the good, honor and privilege of working with as our partners now to help understand some of the intricacies life in small town America and the fact that people have a whole different set of challenges than they have if they're living in an urban or suburban area.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: I think this is like a great place for us to start to converge here. Jeff, as you look to the future, we've talked about some of the great progress that is starting to be made, some of the progress that you're trying to make. What research, what advancements, what technologies are you most excited to see become more common place?
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Well, at a very basic level, as I mentioned to you, the expansion of broadband and telemedicine into rural areas. And I know it sounds very basic because it's, you know, a fact of life in non rural areas.
But that's something that, to me, is low hanging fruit that will certainly help a number of people that I encounter and work with every single day. So there is legislation that's currently tied up in the chaos that is our federal government right now because we're in an election year, of course, that has provisions for expanding broadband. It's called the farm bill, which has been stuck in Congress for over a year now. And there are provisions in there that will help with this work. So I am hopeful that that will become law and that it will eventually be something that will help the people that we advocate for. I'm also very encouraged in not even three years, the number of biopharma companies that have proactively reached out to us to bring us in, to have us sit down with their research people, with their clinical development people, with their sales and marketing people, with their patient advocacy people, to help them understand the intricacies of what we deal with and the life we lead in small town America. I've had some very honest, very genuine, very heartfelt conversations with people all over the world. I was in Portugal recently, meeting with a large pharmaceutical company, and they were in tears as I shared some of the hardships that people face in this country and in this world. Every country in this world has a rural area, and I am now talking to a number of organizations in other countries about how they can partner with us to make sure that their rural populations aren't left behind. So I think that the work we're doing is resonating, and we do a lot of media work. I mean, I, again, am a career communications corporate affairs guy. That's what I've done both in agriculture and in the pharmaceutical industry. So I enjoy doing media interviews. And we spend a lot of time doing media interviews with business publications, with general publications, with television and radio stations, on podcasts such as your podcast, to make sure that the non rural population understand that there are a lot of people out there that haven't had a place or a voice until hopefully recently in some of the work that we're doing. There are a lot of other groups in the country that advocate for people in rural America, but none of them have been focused on mental illness. So we've developed a number of partnerships with some of those organizations that have been trusted voices of rural America, and we're now being brought in as the mental health experts of the rural areas to help them better understand and advocate for the people that are their members. So, again, I, you know, can't stress enough the storytelling we've started at what we call a speaker's bureau, where I'm hearing all of these stories as I travel around this country. And we're now aggregating those into the speaker's bureau. So that when we get a call from the New York Times or from NPR or whatever the outlet is, who want to talk to a female farmer living with alcohol use disorder, which sounds like a needle in the haystack. But we got that request recently, and we had somebody in our database that we were able to connect with this media outlet who did a beautiful media interview. So these stories are so poignant, and they are so powerful, and these are the stories that the general population need to hear. These are the stories our policymakers need to hear. We're in a, you know, fight right now, and it's very interesting being in the middle of this presidential election, a lot of the noise in the system, if you will, about how to best reach people in rural America. And, you know, I've been very outspoken and very passionate about what they need to do. And they basically need to reach out and listen and not pretend that they know the answers. Because if you're coming from San Francisco, you can't fully understand what people in my town of 500 people in upstate New York face, and vice versa. People in small town America don't understand the struggles that people in big cities have. I am, you know, again, also encouraged about the research that's now being done, at long last, in mental illness, which I think, again, is a therapeutic area that was put on the back burner for many years, certainly because we've had one health crisis after another. We had HIV and AIDS. We most recently had Covid. It seems like just when we felt we were starting to make some inroads, another major pandemic came crashing through the gates, and some of the work that would have been done in areas like mental illness were put on the back burner. But now that I'm working as closely as I am with some of these biopharmaceutical companies, companies that I'm sure are your listeners, I'm grateful and I'm encouraged and I'm very enthusiastic about the commitment and the dedication that the men and women who work at these companies are putting forth each and every day to address this pandemic we are facing.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: Well, Jeff, powerful words. Is there anything that we haven't spoken about today that you really want to hammer home?
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Well, I want to make sure that people do go to our website, which is ruralminds.org. we have a tremendous amount of resource on our website. We're very proud of the fact that because we're so young again, two and a half years old, that we've really focused on our website because we know that's where the people that we advocate for go for information again, if they have broadband. So we're doing a lot of social media work that hopefully is driving people to our website. But because we partner with a lot of other nonprofit organizations, because we partner with for profit biopharmaceutical companies and agricultural companies and academia and a number of other organizations, we have tried to bring in their material as well. We're not proud. We are in an epidemic in that every eleven minutes, someone in the United States dies by suicide. Every eleven minutes. So when we started the work on our nonprofit organization, we said it's a race against time. We can't be developing all these new programs and new platforms on our own. We need to make sure that what already exists is getting in the hands of the people that we advocate for. So we gladly promote work that others do because we feel it's a service we can provide to our people who may not have been aware of what existed until they encountered rural mines. So again, I would also just ask respectfully that pharmaceutical companies, remember, there are 46 million people living in areas that have not been noticed before that have been forgotten. And we are as sick and have as many diseases and illnesses and in many cases more than people in urban and suburban areas. And it's something that we are hopeful people will factor in to their drug development programs.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Well, Josh, thanks again for taking the time today, sharing your thoughts, sharing your experiences, sharing your stories. For folks who are interested in learning more rural minds, ruralminds.org comma, please give Jeff a visit and support the really incredible work they're doing.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Thank you very much. Brandon. It's been a pleasure to talk to.
