#18 Lance Uggla: Creating a Multi Billion Dollar Growth Story

In this episode of Stratospheric Leaders, Georgie sits down with visionary trend anticipator, entrepreneur extraordinaire, masterful business builder, consistent culture carrier, intuitive deal doer, and the ultimate shareholder value maximiser – just a few of the words industry peers use to describe Lance Uggla.

Lance was Founder & CEO of Markit - a company that started with a handful of employees in a barn in St Albans and grew into a $44 billion global leader in critical information, analytics, and solutions and culminated in one of the largest M&A deals in history with S&P Global.

An incredible episode for those who want to tap into a visionary mindset:

Episode Takeaways:

Continuous improvement is non-negotiable for leaders.

Don’t be driven just by big transformations. Small consistent gains compound over time.

Innovation has no hierarchy. Good ideas can come from anywhere in the organisation

Excellence is a habit not episodic.

A bold vision requires relentless execution. A vision by itself is meaningless.

Measurement is critical for success and accountability.

Measure the pulse of your customers and people regularly. Happy people and happy customers equals a strong financial performance.

Being an entrepreneur requires extreme commitment, relentless focus and personal sacrifice. It's not for the faint hearted.

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Show Links

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Transcript

0:00

Hi, I'm Georgie Dickens, host of Stratosperic Leaders, the podcast where I get to have inspired conversations with extraordinary leaders from across capital markets. Join me to hear their game-changing strategies, the personal stories and powerful standbites behind the Stratospheric success. Every episode packed with wisdom, insight, and real-world lessons, the stuff they simply don't teach you in business school. If you want to elevate your game and most importantly those around you, this podcast is for you. Enjoy. In this episode of Stratospheric Leaders, I am delighted to welcome back Lance Buglin. Lance founded market and later led IHS Market through major growth and its eventual acquisition by SP Global for $44 billion. And I want to use the words of rich handler Steve O of Jeffries to describe Lance. As he puts it, Lance is a visionary trend anticipator, an entrepreneur extraordinaire, a masterful business builder, a consistent culture carrier, a maniacal client pleaser, a successful and intuitive deal-doer, and the ultimate shareholder value maximizer. And most importantly, he said, along the way, Lance has never lost track of his number one priority, his family. And he also defines what it means to be a truly loyal friend. Now, Lance, as somebody who is deeply humble, and I think humility is such an important leadership characteristic, I do have to ask, how does it land hearing the words of Rich? Well, uh, those are humbling uh words to hear. And uh, you know, over the years, uh, Rich has been an active supporter of me through my, you know, business uh growth and ultimate sale of IHS Market Tes and P Global. He's become a personal friend. Our families are friends. And so hearing him say that in you know, the foreword of this book uh is very humbling and uh, of course, very appreciative as well. You and I learned to work together for a number of years. Uh, you were one of the founder CEOs that I profiled in Stratospheric Leaders. And what really came up for me in our conversations were the lessons, the sound bites you shared. And I truly believe that um one line or a lesson can change the way a person sees the world and it has the ability to shift everything. Which is why last year I called you at the beginning of 2025 and I said, Look, I would love for us to compile your top 250 lessons and put it into a collection, which we did. And we have our book called Raise the Bar. And so today I wanted to take us through a series of the lessons that you shared and really unpack what does that lesson mean to you and expand? What does that look like, lived and breathed? And we have to start with the title because anyone I've spoken to within IHS Market, I remember saying to them, what is a mantra that Lance uses or used to use? Raise the bar was the one that persisted. So can you speak to me about raise the bar? What does that mean? That's one of my favorites. And I do love a tagline uh attached to any uh great strategy. But to me, raise the bar always meant never accepting today's standards are good enough. And that you have to have continuous improvement, and it's non-negotiable. And I I thought about it uh when we did this book, and it really, you know, how do you raise the bar? You know, you're constantly setting clear objectives, uh, clear standards, and then you deliberately increase those as the capability grows together. And I think it's about excellence becoming a habit. It shouldn't be episodic. Leaders must model, you know, and and model themselves by that uh uh standard first, and then the organization. And if you can achieve the constant raising of the bar for yourself, it's gonna be much easier to lead and raise the bar of the company. I feel we may have another book coming after this because there are some more one-liners that are coming out, but excellence being a habit, not episodic. I I love that. And I know when you and I um spoke when we were putting together the book, it it was raise the bar and then widen the gap, which I really love because it's raising the bar, and then when you're getting out ahead, it's it's widening the gap with your competition. No, exactly. And uh I probably got a little bit of widen the gap from uh being a regular user up the tube in London. And uh I love that phrase. And and I I felt that when you are out in the lead with a product, uh telling people to raise the bar sometimes is difficult. But when you say let's widen the gap, let's make our lead even better, uh, it was something that became very um uh available and something that I I could lead uh from as a platform. And it was always around um incremental progress, uh, but continuous. And don't be don't be always uh driven just by big transformations. That small incremental improvement, fantastic. Build momentum through all your daily improvements, your processes, your product gains, um, your decision-making uh cadence, small consistent gains, and then those compound over time and uh the advantage grows. I I think people often don't recognize, to your point, that compounding, the small, consistent, the momentum. Like that, that that extrapolates. And I think people sometimes look for transformation, but it's like be consistent, like that pays dividends in the long run. 100%. 100%. And I I think we've seen that actually with the British uh cycling team when they went on to win so many medals, uh, gold medals, Olympics, uh, you know, Tour de France, uh, all the various events. And I I think the leadership there was all about incremental improvements to gain, you know, the ultimate win. Okay, so I want to take us to our second quote, and I'll I'll read it out loud. And then again, what does it mean? And and I'd love for you to expand on that. To build a great product, bring key market players in as design, equity, and industry partners, when they are co-creators and not just stakeholders, the relationship deepens. It aligns the product with real market needs to create lasting impact. Yeah, well, this was really one of the premises of uh market, and it became even more important uh through IHS Market, working with automotive companies, uh uh industry leaders in energy uh uh and the financial markets. You know, the best products that we ever uh were able to build were co-created with the ecosystem that we existed within. So don't build anything in isolation. And I found when customers, partners, and industry leaders helped us design the products and have real economic or strategic alignments with us, um, you end up reducing all your blind spots and you accelerate the adoption, you ensure you're relevant, and then that co-creation deepens commitment and uh overall lowers your execution risk, which uh ends up being a more successful product. It's interesting because that to me is like common sense, but often not common practice. You know, that importance or that that focus on strategic alignments, um, you know, you said they're um to ensure you stay relevant. And it's interesting how many people don't do that. Yeah, well, we've seen that with many great products that uh wane over time as markets change around them, customers' demand changes, um, speed of processing, technological improvements. You know, you need to be thinking of all of those um uh eventualities that happen around a product. And uh, you know, through that, those continuous um looks at yourself from the outside in order to be better uh play an important role. And uh I I think it it should be obvious, but to execute the obvious is hard work. And uh, you know, a lot of people say all the right things, but then they're not willing to measure themselves against that execution. And I think that uh you'll probably ask me a question about measuring, but for me, measurement is everything. Well, look, you mentioned the word execution, and many people have great ideas, um, and execution is everything. And you when you and I were in conversation, you talked about the bold vision, and I think you know, let's underscore the word bold, like dream big, but a bold vision requires relentless execution. I mean, again, common sense, not common practice. Um, speak more to that. When I think about um that statement, a bold vision requires relentless uh execution, it really means to me that vision by itself is meaningless. You need discipline follow-through. And that's critical. So, how do you how do how do you take those bold ideas and then translate them into priorities, translate them into milestones, translate them into accountability? And execution then becomes you know the credibility where you earn your strikes, you actually achieve something. And and you need to be consistent, you need to have speed, you need to have ownership. All those things are are measurable. And putting measurements, whether it's 10, 100, or 1,000, and then following through and you know, looking at those results on a very, you know, regular cadence, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, to make sure you're executing, uh I think critical. And uh for us in creating IHS market, measurement was, you know, a you know, it was just a normal course of business. Everybody did it. And if if people listening were saying, okay, what are the three key things that are non-negotiable when it comes to measuring, what would you say are the top three things that for your business certainly were the key, the key items? It would be the inputs to revenue. Okay. And the inputs to revenue are visiting customers, making calls, attending conferences, building relationships. When you do all those things, the revenue comes. What is measuring revenue this quarter versus next? Right? Those are outputs. I always look at the inputs and measure those. It's the same, secondly, on the cost side. So how do you measure the inputs costs? It's how how often are you doing things, how often are you failing failing, what are you spending your money on? Measuring that productivity of uh individuals um, you know, ultimately save you money. And then they drive the final measurement, which of course is earnings. You might put all those in the buckets of financial uh metrics. So measuring financial inputs to me are is really important. Secondly, I'd say measuring the pulse on your customers, and then also measuring the pulse on your people. Yeah. Happy people, happy customers, and you know, strong financial performance. When you put those together, you have a really, you know, successful firm. And and it was really interesting what you said there about inputs versus outputs. It's knowing what inputs make your output true. You know, what the if you know the output you're looking to achieve, you know, what are the inputs? When you talk about the pulse of the customers and the pulse of the people, how do you do that? Is that customer surveys? Like again, how do you take the pulse? Yeah, well, definitely surveying is one of the best ways to, you know, get a good feeling of how things are going in the company. But, you know, if you're asked to survey something, you don't send out the 10 toughest questions that, you know, are going to depress you when you get the results. You send out a handful of questions that uh demonstrate your greatness, and then you send out another handful that you're curious about. Um but ultimately for me, surveying a great view of your trends and your improvements quarter over quarter. So if you survey twice a year, then twice a year, you're on two or three questions, you're seeing if you're improving. And I think that's really relevant. Same on the people side. So people and customers. Um, but ultimately, at least once a year or once every two years, I'd like to hire an independent third party that would actually do a hundred customer visits, meet 200 people in the company, and in an anonymous, thoughtful way, really make sure you have the pulse on what's happening. Because I think we love hearing the good news. We like explaining away the bad news. And uh that's not a great uh leadership uh style. No, I suppose ultimately we don't know what we don't know, which is where those surveys blind spot, so they shine a light on the things that we need to pay attention to. Yeah. And and you know, what whatever you measure is gonna get managed and improved. So ultimately, you know, you've got to make that happen. And getting the right metrics, focusing attention on the outcomes, uh, very important. Aligning the teams around uh the information, find problems early, um, you know, allowing yourself to drive better decisions. Poor metrics create false confidence. That's what I would say. And good metrics create clarity. Yeah, and and to your point, the more you're measuring things, that finding problems early, things become discoverable. 100%. Very, very important. There are many more one-liners just saying that are coming out of this. So which is you can use you can use uh you can use those in uh in the building of your company, George. But they're they are and and I think to your point, this measurement is so critical. And you know, what we measure, what we put our attention on expands. And you said that what we measure gets managed. And it again, it it's all these things, common sense, not common practice. People know they need to measure things, but it's not always done. And look, you your businesses have had extraordinary success. So I think it's it's really uncovering here. What are the secret sources? You know, what have made those outcomes true? And yeah, as an as an innovator, uh, as Rich said, um, an entrepreneur, extraordinaire, and an extraordinary uh business builder, it takes me to a question on innovation. And, you know, one of the quotes that you you you talked about is innovation. You will make mistakes. Um, that's part of the journey, and things are not always gonna go your way. And what you shared is like when these things happen, as they will, like focus forward. Like what matters then is how you recover, how you learn, how you move on. Can you speak more to that? Yeah, well, well, first off, when I think about innovation means you'll make mistakes. I actually think failures inherent to great progress, right? You've got to have failures to be able to innovate at the most important uh, you know, or optimal level. And innovation always requires us to experiment, and experimenting involves uncertainty in everything. So the goal to me was never to avoid mistakes, it was just to make them smaller, learn quickly, and then apply that forward. And so, you know, when I think about the comment of focus forward, it was how do you, you know, be resilient, don't focus on perfection. Resilience is what you want. And strong innovators, they don't dwell on setbacks. Like if you get setback when you're innovating, drive through it, get the insight from that, adapt, make change fast, redirect your energy, and uh start focusing on the next solution. And so recovery speed actually can become a competitive advantage, you know, for an innovative company. Um, a lot of companies don't recover from failure. Uh they have a failure, they get depressed, uh, a lot of long faces. You need to come in that next day, and you got to recover. And the faster you recover, the better. And if it takes three aspirins, take the three aspirins and uh, you know, get back to work. Yeah, and and I suppose there can be emotion, but you can't be too emotional because depression, you know, emotions are contagious. As a leader, it's it's that focus forward, learn and move on. Yeah, no, exactly. You use the word resilience, and I and when we were discussing the quotes, this is just as a side, but as you said that it just came up for me. I was asked in a TV interview the other day, and curious to get your thoughts before I I share mine. Are leaders successful leaders, are they more resilient than those who are not as successful? And I'm curious what your thoughts are hearing that question. I think it depends on the type of you know, operation, product, uh, set of products, you know, it depends on the company you're running. But for me, resiliency was critical in terms of the success of IHS market. Um because in every aspect, when you're when you run a winning product, everybody's trying to take market share from you, right? Hence widen the gap. When you're in a a number two or number three product, uh you have a tendency to use price to win market share and therefore, you know, damage the TAM that you're operating in. Uh, you know, instead of creating a better product and offering it at the same price, you create a better product and offer at a cheaper price. And then you try to recover that and both both lose. And so to me, I think it it really resiliency is uh a key leadership quality for the businesses that I operated in. And it it required constant attention to maintain the highest level of resiliency. Yeah. I look at leaders in today's world and the pace of change, you know, we're inundated with new entrants, AI, automation, tokenization, private versus public markets. This there's so much. And I look at leaders, their travel schedules, their their schedules, the expectations that come with the role. And I think there's a there's a baseline of resilience that's higher than others. Uh, because I think physiologically, not everyone, and that's okay, not everyone can operate at that level. No, there is uh, you know, the management of the stress that surrounds the operating environment. I think, you know, if you can handle the stress and manage the stress through other outlets, I think that uh you ultimately will be a better leader. And you know, a calmer leader giving clear instructions is always better than you know, the loud, noisy leader giving unclear instructions. And so to me, it you know, it's important. When you think of change, the change technology, you know, I started in 1986 in a trading room that didn't have Excel Word, um, the internet, cell phones. So you just take those. Like we talk about AI today. All of a sudden people have cell phones, they have emails, um, they have word processing. They don't need to use a calculator and learn how to use an HP 12C, um, which many won't know what an HP 12C even is. But you know, learning how to operate a calculator, a scientific calculator was part of, you know, the training of the late 80s. Um, as we moved to 90s, that disappeared. And then uh object-oriented programming came in. So things were being calculated at a fast, much faster pace. So instead of having to have 20 salespeople, you could actually answer as many queries with 10. So you had efficiencies coming because people could do things faster and be more productive. Uh, you then had moves uh, you know, to um large cloud-based services that allowed you to um reduce costs of you know, costly big um hosted solutions that had all sorts of inherent inherent issues with speed as people wanted things faster around the world, you could move towards the cloud and improve that. And I remember the first cloud decision I made, there were two finalists in the room, Amazon and Michael Dell. And of course, everyone said, you know, Dell's a technology company, Amazon's a shopping platform. You know, who are you supposed to do your first big cloud expense with? And we went with Michael Dell. He sold the business to NTT Data. Um, and along came Amazon investing billions of dollars. And within five years, we made the move to. You know, transform ourselves uh to uh to Amazon Web Services. And um, you know, those types of decisions require a lot of resiliency. Yeah. Because you're spending money, you're making big transformative decisions, and then you're having to change and stay keep everyone motivated uh through another transformation project. So, yes, all important. Resiliency is definitely a great word and an important one. Yeah. And as you said, stress management, knowing your outlets beforehand, you know, you've talked about your on switches, you know, make sure you know you're on switches and you're activating those. When we talked about innovation, we've talked about, you know, failure is inevitable. Um, and also people may make mistakes. And um, you know, you've said when we in one of our conversations, you know, don't waste time blaming people when something goes wrong. And yet often it that's easy to do. So can you speak to me more about how you don't do that, how you don't blame people? And what do you think the outcome is of not, you know, pointing fingers? Yeah, I think it's easy to point fingers and it's hard to take responsibility. And for me, blame kills all learning and trust. How are you gonna learn if you think you're gonna make a mistake and then get blamed for it? So I think blame is a really poor leadership style. Even if you know what happens, don't kill the learning environment in a firm through a blame culture. And I I think when failure occurs, you know, leaders should focus on systems, decisions, and assumptions. Don't look for a scapegoat. And accountability still exists, but the goal has to be improvement and never punishment. I love that. The goal has to be improvement, never punishment. It's so important. I think people can get caught up in that emotional reactivity, and yet that can have a such a negative ripple in an organization. Another quote I want to take you to, which um is different, but there's a there's a I suppose a thread that links it to is i individual performance. And you know, when you talked about having a growth learning environment, you can work with people on underperformance is what you stated. However, if a person's values and characteristics are misaligned with a company culture, it will be toxic for an organization. They have to be removed. And yet so often another, you know, I've seen organizations they allow that behavior to persist because they're they're that they're big P ⁇ L providers. So how do you how do you how do you manage those um those those toxic individuals? Okay, toxic individuals to me means you have to let them go. Um if they're individuals that um you know are underperforming. You know, when I think of uh values and character misalignment as being toxic, I always said you have to remove it. So culture matters more than talent at any moment in time in a firm. Um and I think that plays well within a uh sports club, a racing team. You know, culture, culture matters. What do you do? You have to, you know, develop the right skills and you know, make sure that you have the values that will define behavior. You know, if somebody's undermining trust or integrity or respect of the organization, um, you know, then the organization wins over the individual. You said that about culture matters more than talent. I I remember reading the all blacks. You know, they said that they have like a no dickhead policy is is their words, not mine. Uh, but they said, however talented you are, if you're not the right cultural fit, if you're not a team player, it doesn't matter how skilled you are at passing the ball or tackling, like there is no place for you in the team. No, I I agree with that 100%. One of where I want to take us to is about the people within an organization. And and you said, look, the best ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. Innovation has no hierarchy. Um, so it's about creating a culture where every voice is valued. Because if you focus solely on the voices at the top, there's maybe some really interesting ideas that you could be overlooking. How do you do that in principle? Well, first off, I don't think you know, innovation's definitely not hierarchical, right? Innovation doesn't just come from CEO and the executive team meeting in a private room. Innovation comes from your salespeople, your tech leaders, your product development teams. It come from everywhere, come from your finance department, uh, uh your legal department. So my view is innovation has to be part of the culture and it should never be hierarchical. And, you know, great leaders have to create environments where people feel safe to contribute. You know, some people in some firms maybe feel like contributing a new idea, they're gonna be shot down, or you know, somebody's gonna feel jealous or you know, concerned about what they have to say. Um, but my view is people need to feel safe to contribute regardless of the role or their title. And ignoring the voices outside of uh leadership often means that you're gonna miss the best insights. I love that. Uh innovation has to be part of the culture. Uh so it's lived and breathed. It's not just a nice word that's emblazoned on a wall or on a website. Like it's it's it's it's an entity, it's a living entity. Agree. So great leaders are defined during the toughest situations. When everything is going right, it's easy. So talk to me about that. Great leaders are defined during the toughest situations. I actually think that leadership is earned when you're under pressure. That's when you're tested. When conditions are easy, anyone can lead, you know, and show up. If the market's growing at 15% around you and you're growing at 17%, you've really only added a couple points of you know, added value. If markets are growing at 3% and you're growing at 15%, you're taking market share. You are the definer in the marketplace. I look at it and I think when conditions are easy, anyone can lead. But in adversity, the real leaders have to show up. They got to be calm, they got to use judgment, they have to have moral clarity. And, you know, in tough times, you've got to earn trust. This is what it matters the most. Yeah, it's so true. It's so and I think it's in tough times where if you are a trusted leader, people will go above and beyond for you. I think it then it really starts to pay dividends. No, I agree with that. I always say to my children, hard work is a minimum. Um, and you said in one of our conversations, to be a successful entrepreneur, you're gonna have to work harder than 99% of people you know. Um, can you speak more to that? If anybody has the thought of creating a new company and bringing it to success, um, is gonna be easy. They're starting their own career. So an entrepreneur um, I think has to work, you know, two times harder than anybody else around them. And that success of a good entrepreneur requires extreme, and I say extreme in the uh quotes, extreme commitment. Uh, you have to show up. Um, you got to have sustained intensity, you got to have resilience, which we already spoke about. You got to have personal sacrifice, which is hard to do, and you'll have a lot of pressure uh for personal sacrifice. And it's not just about long hours, it's about relentless focus. Constantly. You're constantly, I remember just constantly thinking about market and IHS market was in every conversation. Every business article I read, I could relate it to IHS Market. Any learnings I had, I could relate to IHS Market. Um, any leadership book I read, I could relate back to IHS Market. So it's a relentless focus, lots of energy and you know, real ownership, you know, over long periods of time. How do you relate to the word obsessive? I think it's a good word. I I think it's okay to be obsessive as an entrepreneur, because if you're not, you're probably gonna fail. Um but don't be obsessive over the wrong things in life. You know, take that obsessive, if you have an obsessive nature towards success and achievement, um, then use it as a uh benefit and win with it. Yeah, I listened to Tote Wolf um in Devos recently speak, and he talked about his obsessiveness. And you know, you've talked about attention to detail. I was I was listening to him for big, I feel like I'm listening to Lance because like the attempt, the things he measures like are extraordinary, the things he cares about. So it's an obsessiveness, but in a such a passionate and such a positive way. Yeah, and I I love it. And you know, one you know, quote in the book that I I loved uh that you referred to me a couple of times was, you know, how involved in the detail? You know, do you overmanage or undermanage? And my view is is when I thought about that, effective leadership, it requires you to adjust to the right altitude, right? What's the right altitude for the problem you're dealing with? And you you've got to understand the detail well enough to make informed decisions. You're you're you're the leader, know the detail well enough so you can make the right decisions. If you can't make the right decisions, then ask the right questions. At least spot the risk. Be close enough, but don't suffocate the teams. That's that then you're doing the opposite. You try to solve the problem, you overmanage, you suffocate. So my view is oversight's never micromanagement. It's just not. It's not micromanagement. It's adjusting yourself to the right altitude to assist the team to make even better decisions. And and with that being at the right altitude, do you think that's something inherently like you, you, your, your intuition tells you what the right altitude is? Or is that something you really have to spend time thinking, you know, what is the right altitude? Like I'm curious where you sit on that. I think you have to know what the wrong altitude is before you can figure out what the right one is. So the wrong one is you're suffocating me. Right? Like imagine the people coming to work every day going, oh God, yeah, great leader suffocates me every day, right? So that's not a good outcome. Or great leader, we're doing well, but he doesn't know any of the detail. Asks all the wrong questions, or she asks all the wrong questions. That's not good. So you need to be able to adjust to the right level for the problem in front of you. And that is never too light or too hard. It just isn't. It's always between the wings of the possibility to either under or overmanage. And for me, it's about that agility, isn't it? It's that that calibration or that recalibration and not a one-size-fits-all. One of the last quotes that I want, and one of our very, very first conversations, you shared this quote, which I'm gonna speak to in a second. And I share it all the time because I think it's so simple yet so valuable. You talked earlier on today about curiosity, and you're clearly like relationships people, whether it's clients, customers, uh, um any stakeholder, it's it's it's about you know building relationships and that curiosity. And you said to build great relationships, be interested and be interesting. Um, can you speak more to that? Because it's a simple statement. Yeah, if you do that well, that has a very big amplification impact. Yeah, I think um, especially with dynamics around people. So if you take that and apply it to customers, right? Customers you need to be interested in them. You're serving them. They're paying you for the products you deliver to them, they want you to be interested in them, understand their business, understand their growth pains, understand their uh challenges financially, you know, be engaged. Then the customer has to be interested in you being in their ecosystem. So that means you need to be interesting. And interesting means that you can show up and relate to the person that you're talking to. And so if you know, I played, you know, you know, World Cup rugby for 10 years, and all I knew was rugby, and I showed up at every customer, and my interesting points were only about rugby, I can tell you you'd probably leave 90% of the world aside. And so to be interesting, you know, you're a great athlete. What does it mean to be a great athlete in 20 other sports? What does it mean to be a great uh musician or dancer or a great writer? And, you know, the way you can develop that point of the ability to be more interesting is to read and study more. And so I think finding time as a leader to make sure they're aware of what's going on in the world, what changes are going on in the world around you, what are the interesting stories, where is their suffering, uh, where is their uh charity required? This is really important. And when you develop those skills uh around the people aspects of your business, either inside or outside the firm, uh, it it will shine through and um allow people to become more connected to you, and therefore uh uh it gives you an ability to create a competitive edge. Yeah, I just I just think it's so powerful. And to your point, I think sometimes we think we're interesting because we know a lot about what we know, but it's again understanding more about the world and uh so that word you use, you know, be relatable. And last question, just as we as we kind of come to a close, and it isn't a quote from the book, but I wonder what's one thing most people come to advice for you on? You know, what are the themes? Well, one thing is different than the themes, uh, but I'll tell you, I'd say that on a weekly basis, I would say people like to pressure test their ideas against something that they consider was successful. So I would say that through the history, you know, if you think the um, you know, there was, you know, just say 20,000 people in IHS market, maybe average 10,000 over the course of the 20 years, um, or five, you say 5,000, and the turnover is, you know, 10% a year. Well, you know, there was probably, you know, close to 100,000 people that went through the corridors of IHS market uh in the time that uh I was leading it. And many of those um individuals grasped the entrepreneurism that market represented at a time in the financial markets or IHS uh market uh represented in this kind of golden information age. Uh and they went on to do interesting things. And so the most common thing that I find I'm asked to do is to, you know, have a discussion like this where you know somebody starting something new uh is looking for, you know, somebody to be a sounding board against an idea that they're interested uh to take forward. And I think when that happens, I feel very privileged that people would consider me to have that conversation with them. And so most of the time I say yes. I can't do that all my time, but I at least weekly I say yes. I think today I said yes twice uh um uh from individuals that pass through IHS market corridors in different parts of the world. And I look forward to those conversations. And uh at least probably 10 times, I've invested alongside those individuals and been mentors and advisors as they grew those new um opportunities. And uh, so it's a privilege to be asked. Sindhu, one of the individuals who he put something on LinkedIn about the book and he credited you as he started two very successful businesses and he said, you know, all his the entrepreneurial spirit and all the uh I suppose the strategies that underpin entrepreneurial success, he he he credits you with. So it doesn't surprise me that people come to you for that, for that, um, to be the sounding board, uh, to be the challenger and to hold the mirror up to them. No, I like doing it. And I I usually have two questions. You know, I want to understand is what's your moat? To me, the moat, the wider and deeper the moat is, the better opportunity for success, right? And I don't want the moat to be just first mover or um price. Those are things that uh to me can be beaten. It's got to be an idea, and then you've got to, you know, be able to demonstrate how you can make that moat even wider or even deeper. And then I want the numbers, the science to work before I get described all the art. So to me, um, science is math. Does the math work? The TAM, the pricing, the cost structure, what you're trying to do. I just want to pressure test the math. That takes me like 15 minutes, and I can know if the math works. And then ultimately you want to apply that math. Now I want to hear the art. The artist has to come out. You know, what what's the what's the passion sound like? What is the um, you know, do they have a, you know, a multi-tenored path to success that uh, you know, has uh you know the right amount of opportunity in it for them to win. And I I love hearing it. When I don't hear it, I'm happy to tell them that uh they've got to go back to the drawing board and do some more work. Yeah, being the truth teller. Well, this is I do feel like there's a new book that we are building already. I think today we've planted the seed because there are so many other wonderful sound bites that have come up. So I hope this is the start of many more conversations where we can explore the insights from the book and really unpack them because I come away from every conversation feeling up-leveled, energized, inspired. And I know everyone who listens to you and who's worked for you feels the same. So thank you for the gift of your time and for just being so gracious in sharing the how-to with us. Thanks. I appreciate all your time, Georgie, and your focus on raising the bar as well. So thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks, Lance. If you want to see the full episode, please do look at Apple and Spotify under Stratospheric Leaders, or go to YouTube where it'll be under Georgie Dickens. I hope you enjoyed the full episode. There are so many great sound bites shared.