Defining the Product: How Marketers Can Break the Higher Ed Sea of Sameness

Kevin Tyler

Hello and welcome to Higher Voltage, a podcast about higher education that explores what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change in higher ed marketing and administration. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler.

Welcome back to Higher Voltage. I’m excited for the conversation we are having today. I’m pleased to welcome Tony Proudfoot to the show. Tony is the Vice President for Marketing and Strategic Communications at Western Michigan University. He has also held marketing leadership positions at the University of Arizona, his alma mater of Ball State, and the Indiana University System. He has been with Western Michigan University since 2018. Tony, it is so great to have you on Higher Voltage today.

Tony Proudfoot

Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation. I appreciate the opportunity.

Kevin Tyler

Awesome, me too. So today we’re going to talk about what feels to be a recurring theme in higher education marketing. I first met Tony several years ago at a small gathering of higher education CMOs that were meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. It was an opportunity for the CMOs to share success stories, some obstacles that they were facing, and solutions to some of the things that they were experiencing on campuses. During that event, Tony raised what I thought to be a very compelling point about the necessity of chief marketing leaders on campuses to have a bit more ownership of the product of higher education. And so today we’re going to talk about what that means in higher education, what exactly is the product, and some thoughts around how we can get more control — or at least a seat at the table — to inform what we are selling as marketers and how it can be successful in those roles.

My first question for you, Tony, is just kind of level set. As marketers, we know the four P’s of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. And our industry has been very heavily focused on the promotion part for about three decades. But I’m curious from your perspective about the product P. Is higher education a product? Is it a service, or is it something altogether different?

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah, it’s a really great place to start. Just reflecting back on that time we had together, I think this is such an important conversation to have. We all know that the domain of what we ultimately offer really lies with the faculty. But now is a great opportunity to partner up with these people who are in such noble professions, and also the staff across our institutions, to really think about the value of what it is that we’re bringing. And I think marketers have a unique value that they can bring to that conversation.

So is college a product? I’m confident that our students would say, “Yeah, I’m paying you to educate me and validate that learning with a credential.” I think taxpayers and employers would say, “I expect you to produce a talented workforce in return for the public support that I’m offering.” But I also think that our current students who are literally on our campus now, they’re going through a transformative journey, and that’s an experience. So I think they’re kind of feeling college as a service when they’re here. And when our faculty work alongside business and community leaders to solve problems, that kind of feels like a service too.

But I think first and foremost, what we can’t forget is that higher education is an institution — like family or faith or government. Education is one of the organizing constructs for social life in relating to each other in civil society. And universities play a crucial role in shaping and nurturing and fostering opportunity and prosperity. That’s one of the things that gives our society social stability. So while that may seem like a very lofty place to start when we’re starting a conversation about marketing, it has really big implications for our conversation.

When you start to think about the trust of higher education and the value proposition, the reality is that we’re institutions and we have very complex stakeholder groups — more complex than any other organization or sector or institution. And so the most important thing that we can do as marketers is to understand that. We are expected to turn that new knowledge that’s transmitted to our students into very clear and simple value for those who are invested in the institution. So I think it’s all of those things, but the most important piece is that marketing is the science of exchange. We are in a unique position to help universities understand who is on the different sides of that exchange equation, what they’re looking for, and how to make sure they get their needs met.

Kevin Tyler

I think that was such a great way to describe a very complex assortment of issues and considerations in a nutshell. Obviously this is not a new thing, but I really appreciate you covering the fact that there’s so much ownership around higher education brands from so many different directions — from alums to current students to local communities — and without really being very clear about what that ownership is born from, it makes our jobs so much harder. What we see sometimes is kind of this spray-and-pray approach, because there are so many different types of people we’re trying to attract, whether it’s financial gifts, budget allocations, et cetera.

I think you laid a really great groundwork for the rest of our conversation today. I would love to dive just a little bit deeper into the product piece. As marketers, I wonder if you could share what makes marketing in higher education uniquely difficult that we might not have already covered.

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah, so I think we’ve started in a great place, and there are three key things that make higher education marketing uniquely difficult.

The first is that we’re living in a time when the value equation has changed. College has become exponentially more expensive for a very simple reason: public governments have shifted the burden of paying for education from the taxpayer to the student. Here at Western Michigan University, over the last 20 years or so, we’ve gone from having about 75% of the cost of education being paid for by the state to now about 75% of the cost of education being paid for by the student. We are fundamentally a tuition-dependent university. And so that shift has great implications for the expectations of our students. The reality is that this shift has greatly outpaced any actual increase in the cost of delivering an education, but our students and their families don’t really care about that. All they know is it’s a lot more expensive. So the challenge we have as universities is we’ve got to find a way to level up to that greater cost for families without adding cost as institutions. That’s a pretty serious trick to be able to accomplish.

The second is that I really think that within higher education, marketing has its own branding problem within the academy. Marketing pros know that marketing is really an agnostic business tool that can be used for something good or for something ill. You can think of it as a tool like a hammer — it can be used to construct something beautiful, or it can be used as a weapon. The reality is, whether you’re watching Mad Men, or you’ve seen marketing in the tobacco industry or predatory lending, or even closer to home, private for-profit higher education — those are stark examples of how marketing has been used for ill-gotten gains. Within our institutions, I think that’s kind of what some of our internal stakeholders think about when they think about marketing, and so they want to distance themselves from those ideas. So we as marketers have to reassure our faculty, our staff, our leadership and our trustees and shared governance partners that we are equally committed in our lives to the same noble pursuits that they have. We have a little bit of an uphill battle in helping colleagues understand that we are in this fight with them, and we are not going to forfeit our values to be able to advance what we all believe in in terms of the value of higher education.

And then the third big thing is that universities — we’re 900 years old, and we are purpose-built to be at arm’s length from the trends and political pressures of society. That’s really what academic freedom is all about. It’s about the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of truth without the political or fashion pressures of the day. That’s been part of our tradition and part of where our value comes from, and it’s really important. But that intentionally built tradition makes it hard to respond to where we are today. It’s an intentionally built skepticism that is also a little bit challenging. And so those who are bringing money to the table — families, students, parents, taxpayers, friends, and donors — they’re expecting responsiveness. And they’re expecting it from institutions that are really built on values of independence. So marketers are really in the middle trying to resolve that tension between not losing our values but also being responsive to the needs of society today. That’s really, I think, where the unique difficulty comes from for marketers of higher education, different than any other sector or industry.

Kevin Tyler

 I couldn’t agree with every single word that you have just said more. I appreciate the intention with which you describe that, and I think they’re really great points to raise. The only piece I would add is, I think another challenge is understanding where what we do on a campus fits in culturally into people’s lives, and how we talk about that from a cultural perspective. Because we have the culture of higher education, which can sometimes — I wouldn’t say be in opposition, but cause some friction between what modern culture looks and feels and talks like. And I think there is a real opportunity for higher education to figure out what it is culturally that it is offering to people’s lives and lifestyles and livelihoods, and talking about it from that perspective. The way that you laid that out, I think, was absolutely brilliant.

I love the flow of this conversation, because it’s just like one thing leads into the next. And I would love to talk about the perspective of the marketing discipline — like our expertise as campus marketers. I think about it as understanding the science of human behavior, so you can understand what to sell or give or say to a person, when. But when we’re talking about this whole thing around product, what is it about the marketing discipline that offers value or relevance to the challenges that universities face today?

Tony Proudfoot

One of our professors in our marketing department said that so elegantly — that marketing is the science of value exchange. I don’t think there are fewer words more elegantly put together that describe what it is we do. And if that’s what we do — this is our moment. Right? Because our unique position as marketers at the university is that we can serve as the integrators, the aligners, and the translators of value across all of our stakeholders. Ultimately, if we can find that alignment across faculty and students and staff and donors and business leaders who are hiring our graduates — the reality is, we’re really, really close, but we are living in a very divisive time. If we can find that alignment, the trust in higher education will just go through the roof. But we have difficulty finding that alignment because of those issues of ownership that come from very important places, very noble places, but are sometimes getting in the way a little bit. So I think what we can bring as marketers is credible and trustworthy facilitation of that conversation to really align those value streams at a time that higher education and society really needs it more than ever.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah, 100%. It’s not news to anyone listening to the show, or to either of us here, that there are lots of different headwinds and obstacles in front of and around the higher education space. What would you say are some of the organizational obstacles or headwinds that prevent a university from fully realizing the value of its marketing function?

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah, so I think we have a few. Marketing in the industry is super hard — it’s a difficult discipline to work in. But one of the things that we face — that manifests itself in its own way in higher education — is that everyone’s a marketer. Marketing is often seen as the maker of things. We make ads or brochures or websites, because that’s how our campus partners consume marketing. So they consume it and that’s what they think marketing is, and we kind of really focus in on that promotion P of the four P’s. But really the value that we can bring at this moment is in strategy — the discipline of making choices — and audience insights, and competitor analysis, and performance dashboards, and the alphabet soup of SEO and AEO and GEO and LMNOP, and market segmentation, and the alignment we just talked about a little bit. So we really have to be strong advocates for being more than just making things. We are the people who really are the voice of the consumer. There are some who do not like that word, and there’s another C-word that they like even worse — or dislike even more. But the reality is that a lot of marketing is in Excel spreadsheets and databases and dashboards and Google Analytics. I think there’s a misunderstanding of what marketing is, and as a result, I think a lot of institutions and leaders are leaving, frankly, value on the table.

The other headwind is that education is not only a noble pursuit, it’s also a really high-stakes endeavor. We are stewarding one of society’s most important institutions as leaders in higher education. And when you put those ideas up against the misperceptions of marketing that I talked about before, you can confront some truly understandable skepticism. There’s a sense that if we buy in to marketing as an institution, somehow we’re going to forfeit our values, somehow we’re going to forfeit academic freedom, we’re going to forfeit that the faculty own the curriculum and what it is that we actually do to create and transfer knowledge. So working against that skepticism is a very serious headwind. As marketers, we really have to work consistently and constantly to reassure, through demonstrated behavior, that we understand higher education’s role in society, that we value that role, that we’re trying to advocate for that role, and that we can clarify our value without sacrificing our values.

Kevin Tyler

I love that. The first point that you raised made me think of the hundreds of campuses I’ve worked with on marketing and branding initiatives and how what felt like every single one was differently situated inside of the campus ecosystem. There were some who were at the cabinet’s table informing and advising the president in very strategic ways, and there were others that were buried way into some odd department for whatever reason somewhere. Depending on where marketing is situated is essentially how much influence you have, or what the perception is of the function altogether on campus. I have heard no less than a million times that, “Our department is a bunch of order takers, and that’s just what we do — we just make the things that people tell us to make.” Oftentimes it’s like, well, we have to show leadership in the strategy so that we can reposition the department and the thinking and then the work among our own immediate campus community, because otherwise we’ll just stay in the basement of whatever department building we are in now. And I think that’s a really hard hill to climb, but one that is so important — especially in places or in times like we’re in now, where we’re the protectors of reputation, we are the translators of culture, we are the strategists, the ones who teach the discipline of making decisions, which I love that phrase. The work that we do could not be more important than it is right now. And I think that campuses who aren’t understanding the value of the marketing function are going to be in a pickle here soon, if they don’t understand us soon.

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Kevin Tyler

Where do you think the higher education product or offer could use more definition or clarity? I was reading a piece recently, I think in Inside Higher Ed, that posited that it was a bit more of a packaging problem. I’m curious about your thoughts on that as well.

Tony Proudfoot

Hmm. That’s a really interesting perspective. I really feel for students who are navigating the college choice journey today. We are a sea of sameness, and it’s really very difficult to tell us apart. It feels a little bit to me — not to compare what we do to toothpaste — but you try to buy toothpaste or spaghetti sauce or any other number of consumer packaged goods, and there’s 150 choices, and which one do I want? It can be overwhelming. While I think it would be easy to separate the various categories in the sector for a student — you’ve got powerhouse public research universities, you’ve got mid-major universities, you’ve got small privates — choosing among those categories is probably pretty easy. But choosing within those categories, that is, I think, a tough chore for students. Which is kind of ironic, because we’re inundating them with messages about why we’re better than the university down the street, right?

For some work that I’ve been doing here at Western, I’ve been studying Playing to Win, which was written by former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley and former Dean at the Rothman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Roger Martin. And they reinforced something that we as marketers just really know intuitively, which is there are only two ways to gain competitive advantage: you can become the low-cost leader, or you find differentiation. Differentiation is really what — you get a twofer. It helps students make choices, and it also builds value and credibility in your brand. So I think CMOs deliver the greatest value when they facilitate conversations and institutional progress toward differentiation. It can’t just be something that we say. It has to align with what students and our other stakeholders actually experience at our institutions.

I’ve spent over half my career, as you mentioned earlier, at power four flagship universities, and the other half at large publics like Western. What we see today is that in every state, the flagships are just gobbling up market share. For them, I think it probably is a packaging exercise. But for everybody else, I think developing the offer, the service, the product, the what-you-get, means going from being very good at several things that we’ve been good at for a long time to being truly exceptional at something in a special way.

To give you an example here at Western, we focused on what we call experience-driven learning. It’s a little twist on experiential learning. There’s a lot of universities who say that they’re great at real-life experience or real-world experience. But the path we’re on is about ubiquity — ubiquitous excellence. The goal we’re getting to is that every student will have a transformative experience-driven learning opportunity. The standard marketing practice would be, if we just focused on promotion, what we would do is we’d go on a campus and we’d collect all those stories and tell them in all the different channels and ways that we have to tell them. And we’re doing that. But we’re also doing more.

So for example, I, as the vice president, and my team have partnered with the provost and academic affairs and the faculty senate and our cabinet to pursue what area of ubiquitous excellence we’re going to focus on. Experience-driven learning is one of those areas. It’s more than just talking about it. We’ve actually put up more than a million dollars in venture grants for our faculty to develop new and truly excellent experiences. We have a cold case program. Our students have helped Michigan State Police solve seven cold case murders. Seven murders. That is incredible. These are 18- to 22-year-olds who are solving cases that nobody’s been able to solve before. And we have tons of other experiences like that. So what would happen if every student got an experience like that?

Here, part of delivering on the promise is that our faculty senate has actually developed a unique definition that articulates what Western students get from our experiences here. Experience-driven learning focuses on three key areas: one, it has to enhance learning through application; two, it has to shape professional purpose; and three, it has to empower students to do more than get a job — it has to help them create a meaningful life and a meaningful career. So now today we have a work group of faculty, shared governance partners, and administrative leaders who are all working to sharpen and elevate that core offer.

A lot of universities offer experience-driven learning, or experiential learning. But I would think about it this way: think about cars. With today’s safety standards and consumer protections, they’re all fundamentally safe and all fundamentally reliable. They basically all perform the same function. So how do you choose among them? Let’s take Hyundai as an example. In the late ’90s, Hyundai was known as lemons. They were not reliable cars. So what they did was they were the first to introduce the 100,000-mile warranty. That was their core differentiator. Even today, their position is America’s warranty leader. And it worked — that pivot led to some of the biggest sales gains in the industry after they announced their 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty.

The confusing piece is that people think you have to differentiate on everything you do. You don’t need to do that. Hyundai still has wheels and engines and steering wheels and entertainment systems, but they focus in on warranty and reliability. What you really have to do is just focus on that one thing that is something you’re going to do better than your competitors and that is undeniably valuable to your core.

Kevin Tyler

I think that is incredible. In thinking about the experience-driven piece that you’ve mentioned, and in thinking about the conversation that you started in the room back in Atlanta, Georgia — I’m curious if you had a hand or a seat at the table in thinking about how that would be organized and then told into the world. Because I would love to see how the marketing function can start to shape those kinds of conversations on behalf of the institution.

Tony Proudfoot

Sure. So it’s actually an interesting story how we got to experience-driven learning. We got to the end of our most recent strategic planning process, and we said, “This is a really great strategic plan from an institutional health, accredited, HLC accreditation standpoint. Are we doing the things that we say we’re going to do? How do we judge ourselves in terms of quality?” But the itch had not yet been scratched — which has become a new and growing itch, admittedly, in the last five years. We’re not sure it really gives us that competitive advantage. It doesn’t really tell us what’s the hill we’re going to take. So we used it as a foundation.

We brought together some of the faculty and staff who had participated in the strategic planning process. We brought together the cabinet and the provost council. So those three groups into one group. And then I was a part of a three-person leadership group: it was myself, it was the provost, and it was the chief financial officer. If you think about design thinking, there are three things that you need to have a really great offer. It needs to be marketable, it needs to be feasible, and it needs to be desirable. Marketable: do your students care? Feasible: is it something you can actually do? And desirable: is it who we want to be? If you think about that three-person leadership team — marketable, you have the CMO; feasible, you have the CFO; and desirable, you have the provost.

So we came together and looked at all of our performance data and case studies and said, “What’s the thing that we’re really good at?” We developed four different potential candidates for places we might want to go, and hills we might want to take. Among that group, we said, “Experience-driven learning is the thing that we are really good at. We can tell people today that we’re good at this, but are we ubiquitously excellent at it? No. Are we very, very good at it? Yes.” So we think this is one of the things that we can simply move to the center of our institution and amplify it and elevate it. That’s kind of how we came to that. I was part of that three-person leadership team, and then since then I’ve played a role with our academic leadership to help nurture the faculty grants along, to help convene conversations about what does this ubiquitous excellence look like. So I’ve been part of the conversation as we go, and helped be the voice of the consumer.

Kevin Tyler

How long — it feels like there’s an accumulation of ownership happening in your role as a representative and leader of the marketing function. Did the experience-driven learning, was that the first time you’d had this much ownership in the story that was being told? And then that led to this new initiative that you’re working on now?

Tony Proudfoot

Actually, it’s not. It’s kind of an interesting story. When I was at the University of Arizona, I was considering coming here. When I looked at the opportunity of becoming a vice president here, and I looked at all of the data that was available in 2018, when I met President Montgomery, I said, “Look, I think the institution can tell a better story, but you are in a state that has too many universities and too many seats. That’s today, and it’s only going to get more difficult every year for as long as we can see. So if you really want to compete, we need to think about how we build a felt experience — how do you build that felt experience that when you talk about who you are, students and faculty and alumni say, ‘Yeah, I experienced it. Yeah, that’s right. That’s my thing.'”

So we started very early on with the then-provost. She and I led our initial design thinking process, where we started thinking about, “What are some of the things that we could do to become a differentiated university?” And what surfaced out of that was three areas: purpose, well-being, and meaningful careers. That’s where we kind of came up with the idea of empowerment — that Western Michigan University should be a place that gives students agency, where they can change their circumstances and they can take control of their lives. We were seeing students who were very anxious. We were seeing increasing mental health challenges. Those haven’t abated. So we asked ourselves, “What is it that today’s students need?” And what it was sounding like to us is they really want agency. They want to be able to know that they’re in charge of their lives and they can create the life that they want to live. That’s really where it began. So I’ve been a partner with the provost and the provost office since I’ve started, and really tried to be that facilitator and convener of the conversation.

Kevin Tyler

We have a lot of conversations on this show about all the problems that exist in higher education and the obstacles and everything else. But this chat gives me so much hope because of how thoughtful and intentional you’ve approached this work. And I’m very hopeful that folks are getting a lot of ideas about how they can either reposition the marketing function on their campus, or just think in new ways about what it can offer to their own campuses.

Tony, I’m curious if you can talk about whether or not the idea of product in higher education is more of an institution-specific opportunity or an industry-wide one.

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah. The data are in, and they’re not good. We could do a whole podcast, maybe a whole podcast series, on falling trust in higher ed, whether students and parents believe a university education is worth it. A lot of that comes down to that flipped value proposition that I talked about. When I went to school, it was not unusual for a president or provost to stand up at orientation and say, “Look to your left, look to your right — one of you isn’t going to be here at the end of this process to commencement.” When you were paying what I paid for a college education, you could maybe get away with that. You can’t get away with that today. Frankly, given the circumstances we’ve been given and what it takes for a student and their family to invest in and persevere through a college education, as a sector, we have to find a way to deliver more value.

The demographic cliff gets a lot of focus, but what’s not getting as much focus is that there’s another trend line inside that, where even the portion of students who are graduating from high school — fewer of them are going to college. It’s a much softer curve, but it’s real. So all the data points are pointing to the idea that we need to do things differently as a sector. I don’t see a path forward if we limit our solution set to only building a better case for higher education, or only building a better case for our particular institutions. We also need to do some self-reflection and think about: are there things that we can do differently? We’re in the business of human potential, and being in the business of human potential is about becoming our best selves. So it seems like there’s nothing wrong with taking a little bit of that medicine ourselves and thinking about how can we become our best selves as institutions to really deliver on the value proposition of these institutions.

Kevin Tyler

Absolutely, absolutely. Are there brands in the higher ed space that you feel have fairly clear or clearer definitions of product and are successfully redefining what that is?

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah. So the first one that always comes to mind is Arizona State University. I spent a lot of time listening to Michael Crow deliver reports to the Board of Regents, sitting there as a competitor. What Michael has accomplished in two and a half decades at Arizona State is nothing less than remarkable. He said, “Look, we’re going to be the university that judges ourselves on who we include, not who we exclude.” And every single thing that they do delivers on that brand promise.

In the private sector, I’ve always been impressed with Drexel, a university that delivers a co-op to every student. I think something north of 95% of students at Drexel do co-ops. It is not unusual for an engineering student to do a co-op. It’s pretty unusual for a history student to do a co-op. University of Oregon — 80% of students at the University of Oregon, a powerhouse research university, 80% of undergraduates do undergraduate research. That’s incredible. So there are some really great examples out there.

Kevin Tyler

I’d add Berea in Kentucky. Their founding mission is what they live by and operate by today, which I think is fascinating. I think there are others that just kind of do it a little bit differently and in a way that is noticeable. And I hope that those brands get more attention from a case study perspective so people can see what the opportunities might look like for their own institutions.

I just have a couple more questions. I know that you’re a busy man, but I want to make sure we have a complete and thorough conversation about this, because I think it’s really important. What are some of the unintended consequences or obstacles of taking on this work across the industry, do you think?

Tony Proudfoot

I don’t know that there’s necessarily unintended consequences per se, but hyper competition can lead to perverse incentives and lead you to do some interesting things. There’s an institution in Colorado that had an ad campaign recently that has sparked a lot of conversation among marketers. While I wouldn’t necessarily comment on that particular campaign, what I would say is, as we do this work as marketers, we absolutely cannot lose sight of what our role is as institutions. At the end of the day, our job is to make the world a better place. If there’s anything that we do on a day-to-day basis that’s not making the world a better place, then we are on the wrong path.

There are temptations to cut corners, to inflate things, to exaggerate, to fluff things up that may not be true. The creative challenge for us as marketers is to be real and authentic and compelling, but not to go over the line of being disingenuous or skirt the line of giving up our values, and never losing sight of the important work that our faculty and our staff do on a day-to-day basis. We are the stewards of that, and so we can never lose sight of that.

Kevin Tyler

Absolutely. And finally, Tony, I can’t wait to hear your answer to this. Often we close these conversations with, “What do you think higher education is going to look like in 10 or 15 years?” But today we’re going to do it a little bit differently. I’d like to know what your greatest ambition for higher education marketing is.

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah. My greatest ambition is that I really think higher education marketing as a discipline needs to be the birthplace for higher education’s chief strategy officer — that this is the place where the marketing office, the CMO’s office, can be the integrator across the entire institution and create that alignment across all of the various stakeholders to elevate our institutions. Whether that spins off to another chair at the cabinet table, or resides within MarCom, universities need better strategy. And if they have better strategy, my biggest ambition is, I believe they will serve their students and their communities better. Ultimately, marketing’s greatest purpose can be to ensure that we are fully delivering on the promise of higher education. If we do that really, really well, then everything else will fall in place. So easy to say, so hard to do, but we have the perspective and the skills that are unique to really help institutions fully deliver on the promises that they make to society.

Kevin Tyler

And, you know, to take it further, as you say that — an ambition of mine is that that approach becomes more the course than averse, that it’s not just one or two institutions doing it really well. We all can do it together. Then we can reposition the entire industry in trust and value and all the things that we’re talking about today. Tony, I am so glad that we were finally able to get you on Higher Voltage. This is such a compelling topic to me, and I can’t think of any better person to have this conversation with than you. I very much admire the way your brain works and how you share information. I’m very, very grateful for the time you spent preparing for this conversation, and also having it for our listeners today. Thank you, Tony Proudfoot, for joining me on Higher Voltage.

Tony Proudfoot

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It’s been a real joy.

Kevin Tyler

Same.