Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey Joe, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, man? Good, George, Good to see you. As always, you as well. I'm really excited to talk to you all about the Houston Safari Club Foundation, the convention coming up. But you know, with a lot of my guests I like to kind of give people a little bit of introduction on who you are. So I want to go back to the beginning, Tell us a little bit about where you're born and raised and kind of where you got your zest and love for the outdoors, and then we'll kind of, you know, fill in the blanks from there.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Sure, sure. So I grew up in a small town in northeast Louisiana known as Monroe, or Funrow as we used to call it, literally right across the river from the Robertson family, the Duck Commander, duck Dynasty guys, and so I've always been aware of those guys. And I lived in central Louisiana for several years and then we moved up to where my grandparents lived in Northeast Louisiana and yeah, so I my foundation was more so in around fishing and frog gigging and duck hunting and that sort of thing and never was really involved in deer hunting and big game stuff as a kid. So actually my mother, who was a single mom at the time, introduced me to the outdoors. She grew up on a farm and she it was always puzzling to her. We'd be driving down the road, I'd be sitting in the back seat and I'd look out the window and she used to always tell me she said I don't know what it was about you, but you would always look out the window and go that looks like a good place to go hunt, that looks like a good place to go fishing, and I'd never done it as a young, as a young child, and so it finally got a kid.

Speaker 2: 1:46

I had a mom that worked two jobs, but on Friday afternoons during the summer and spring, when I came home the car was loaded with crickets and worms and fishing poles and we went out and fished all you know Friday afternoons. And as I got older she started asking some of the men in the neighborhood hey, you know, would you take my kids squirrel hunting, or whatever rabbit hunting, and picture, you know, a 10-year-old me walking through the swamps of Louisiana wearing white shrimping boots because that's all I had and chasing squirrels and rabbits until I got to the point where she would drop me off on a you know natural gas pipeline and drop me off in the morning with a lunch and a breakfast and pick me up at sundown and I'd come out with a sack full of rabbits and squirrels.

Speaker 1: 2:27

That is awesome. What a great intro, and I know that area is very game rich, so that was very exciting. So you, you, you have this love, you kind of family, help to to nourish that and foster that. And I mean now you're at this point where you're helping to nurture and foster that for people all across Texas with the Houston Safari Club Foundation in multiple facets. But I kind of wanted to maybe also bridge that idea of like, how did you get into working in this outdoor sector and then how did you eventually find yourself working as the executive director with Houston Safari Club Foundation?

Speaker 2: 2:59

Yeah, it's a weird story. I'm actually. A lot of people don't know this, but I'm actually a registered nurse. I started in the medical field. I did mostly dealt with cardiac patients during my medical career and I always had a vision that, you know, nursing changed when I first started nursing years and years ago. You know, you had nurses and you had aides on the floor, so nurses could spend time with the families and actually take care of patients and the aides did everything else as far as feeding and daily care. That changed, you know, with nursing shortages and the way hospitals did things and I kind of.

Speaker 2: 3:33

From that point, I was like, well, if I can't really be a nurse and give my patients, you know, no-transcript for 10 years. And this is again. This is a global, international company. And I was just talking to this gentleman and I said, hey, I heard you're involved with this organization, tell me about that. And he said, well, actually I bought it and so it was a whitetail-based organization based here in Texas. And I said, oh well, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 4:30

And he called me up one day and said I need you to go over here. I just bought this company and I'm looking for somebody to go and kind of clean it up, make it more profitable and run it. And I said, well, that sounds pretty cool. And I said, well, I'll think about it. He goes. No, he said I need you to go do this. So it was kind of an ultimatum, if you will, and it was a great entryway for me to move from what I did professionally in my background in marketing, sales and operations to apply to the outdoor world. So I did that for several years and that was kind of how I got into it and then eventually ended up here in 2014 as the executive director of Houston Safari Club Foundation.

Speaker 1: 5:08

And so for those who aren't really familiar, maybe hearing about it for the first time, I'd love for you to kind of walk us through really. What is the Houston Safari Club Foundation, some of the tenants and kind of main structural points of you know reference of like what you do? I mean, because there's youth education, there's grants, there's so many things going on. We got the convention but there's a lot of awareness, education, conservation, that at its core, and I mean a wonderful organization. I want you to kind of give a little bit of a one-on-one, just kind of, and then we can kind of dive deeper a little bit from there.

Speaker 2: 5:46

Right, so the name is somewhat of a misnomer. Houston Safari Club Foundation has been around since the early 70s. You know we were actually a chapter of Safari Club International and way before my time this chapter broke off and said they wanted to do things you know independently. And so the name is a little bit misleading in that, you know, a lot of our members have never been on safari. We have a lot of members that just hunt quail in Texas, or dove or whitetail or ducks or whatever, and I have people that approach me and go oh, you work for a hunting organization. Well, I have to correct that in that I work for an organization that gives back.

Speaker 2: 6:21

We are focused on conservation, education and promoting the future of hunting. The affinity of our membership, of course, is hunting. All of our members love to hunt. They're diehard hunters and conservationists and I like to use those terms in tandem because you know, hunters are the best. As you know, more than anybody, hunters are some of the best conservationists world. They're the ones who get active, they're the ones who spend money to support wildlife and habitat management and those sorts of things.

Speaker 2: 6:48

So the name is a little bit of a misnomer If you've never been on safari. If you've never planned on going to Africa, never been to Africa, it doesn't matter. We welcome hunters of all skill sets, of all levels of their hunting journey and what we are about is giving back. In fact, you know our tagline is we Hunt, we Give. If you go to the website, it's wehuntwegiveorg and it takes you to our website, and so we raise money to give it away, like most nonprofits. And where we give it away is we do conservation grants at home and abroad. We buy everything from motorcycles for anti-poaching patrols to moving sheep in West Texas and the mountains of West Texas, and so we do a lot of different conservation grants and youth education grants. And then we have our own youth education program where we actually take kids hunting and fishing and we're expanding that over the next year. We've actually hired a full-time person on staff here and we're going to expand that program to not only be taking kids in the field but presenting educational modules in the classroom in front of 4-H groups, in front of FFA groups and that sort of thing, because we want to reach as many kids as possible from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different upbringings.

Speaker 2: 8:03

And then kind of our benchmark program, george, is our scholarship program the Dan L Duncan Scholarship Program it's our name of our scholarship program was founded by a gentleman who was one of the early founders of Houston Safari Club Foundation and he wanted to support students that are majoring in outdoor education related majors wildlife management, range management, biology and help them with their education. So that's our benchmark program. We scholarship 25 students every year, typically at the master's and PhD level, but some undergrads, and they get a check in their hand. It doesn't go to the university, it goes to that student. They've completed a stringent review process. They've completed applications, they've got their academic advisors that provided referrals. So we know they are dedicated to habitat and wildlife management as part of their future careers and that's something we're really proud of. All of our outreach programs, that's probably one that we're more known for and so, yeah, it's pretty cool. We raise money any which way we can to give it back in those three areas.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Well, and I'd love to talk about the idea too of how, when someone comes in and gets involved, there's a lot of different levels of being able to be a member, right, and I kind of want to walk through that and give people the option, because whatever level you get into even at the very base, lowest level there in that digital membership, there those money is really going towards some amazing cause. I mean there's millions of dollars in grants and scholarships that you guys have done. I mean it's incredible. But I'd love to kind of talk about that for someone who wants to get in and maybe just try out, you know, one of those lower level memberships or those who may want to do a partnership and sponsorship levels that are higher up. If you can kind of walk through those tiers and maybe what that represents as membership, yeah, so you hit it there.

Speaker 2: 9:46

You know we've done over 4 million in grants. We've done over three million almost four million in scholarships now, and then we have a. We have a pretty robust conservation or grants budget as well. But we wanted to be able to reach We've actually kind of restructured our memberships in the past several years. We wanted to reach everybody at every level that wants to be part of who we are. So, you're right, we have a digital membership in which you get the magazine. We have a beautiful magazine that we produce quarterly, but you get the magazine, our newsletter and all the other benefits of membership. Being a digital member, that's 50 bucks. You know that's for a full year. If you want to step that up, there's one, three, five year memberships. There's there's corporate memberships where if you and a buddy have a company and you want joint memberships, we do two memberships like that and all the way up to life memberships, which run about 1500 a year. So you can get involved at whatever level you want to or whatever level you care to pay for.

Speaker 2: 10:40

The cool thing that I hear from time and time again about this organization is that people join it because they want to learn more about hunting or international hunting. Some of them join it because they want to network. There's a lot of people that have made really good business contacts in this organization. So they'll talk to somebody and Bill owns a pool company and this guy owns a home remodel company, and then they partner or they refer business to each other or people pick up clients. So it's really a. It's really a I hate to use the term family, but it's really. You know, once you start to meet members and come to monthly events and volunteer, taking that membership to the next level not just being a member and getting a magazine, but get involved, you know. And if you live far away, you don't have to be involved, just come to convention once a year, whatever. But we do something typically every month, whether it's a shooting event, a hunting event, a speaker event there's always something happening going on. Speaker event there's always something happening going on.

Speaker 2: 11:31

But it's a great way to connect and network with other people who've done things maybe you didn't do, who have resources, maybe that you need, and or vice versa. And also we don't do an outfit or referral service, but I can't tell you how. Time and time again I've heard stories, horror stories, where people go. I spent all this money. I flew halfway across the world and it was a nightmare, and so that network that we have with the Safari Club Foundation allows people to talk to other people and go. I'm going to go to New Zealand for the first time. Who are some outfitters you went with and what were your experiences so they can save them a lot of headache? Or what are the permits, what do I have to do to get there, that sort of thing? So it's really a pretty comprehensive opportunity for people to get connected on so many different levels.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Good point, man, and that's so true that there's a lot of organizations where I've been a part of them too. You write that check, you get membership. Maybe you get the newsletter digital, you know magazine or whatever and that kind of feels like it. But there is, I think. You know, when you said like maybe you didn't want to use the word family, but that is an approach and something that I see within this. There's a community that comes together where you can share those types of resources, those kinds of friendships, being able to go and do one of the you know, like some shooting out of the range together and these events where you like, learn together and with each other. And I think that's a very huge foundational thing for this organization is that there's always something going on, there's a heartbeat to this right, and that's another thing too, like the newsletters that are get that they come out like that's huge. At the very least, everyone needs to go and sign up for those on the on the website.

Speaker 1: 12:57

But then you also have a podcast. I heard you have an amazing host that you guys have there, uh, hunting matters, and I'd love for you to chat about that too here in a second. But these are things that you know. A lot of organizations, there's a I mean, there's such an educational platform to all of this and there's a lot of different ways to get it. You can get the Hunter's Horn magazine. You can get you can turn into Hunting Matters the podcast, the newsletters, these events, the convention there's something for everyone and I think that there is a magnitude of information that will be beneficial for anyone who decides to be a member, and I think that's one of the key things that drew me in and has drawn so many of friends and people I know in the industry to being supporters of the Houston Safari Club Foundation. So if you will maybe just talk a little bit about the podcast too, for a second, and kind of, you know when did you know how long have you been involved in that? And you know kind of a little one on one on that, if you wouldn't mind, sure we.

Speaker 2: 13:51

So I did want to point out because you made me think of something. So the digital memberships people get a digital copy of the magazine, no-transcript. And to be quite honest with you, I'm old school. I like a good, beautiful magazine, I like a book in my hand and we're very proud of our magazine. It's a very high quality magazine. It's award winning. We've won multiple awards from Marcom and all kinds of different organizations and we're very proud of that. I'm proud of the team and staff that puts that together. But if you're a digital kid, I'm an analog kid in the digital world from some perspectives. But yeah, we try to reach out and communicate with people on all different levels magazine newsletter and the cool thing about the magazine it's not just first-person hunting stories. I like to do medical. I like being a nurse. I like to have a medical article. I like to hear about members' stories. I like to do medical. I like being a nurse. I like to have a medical article. I like to hear about members stories. I like to give legislative updates. We like to do a culinary article. We like to do travel articles. Even if you're going to country, you're like, be cool if I could pair a hunt with, you know, an excursion for a week off in some part of the country. So we do all those things and the magazine's a little more, you know, comprehensive, to offer people, you know, information on a variety of different topics.

Speaker 2: 15:15

The podcast we've been doing for quite a while now. I think we're at 230 plus episodes. It's a weekly one hour podcast. We interview people from all over the world, all walks of life. I interviewed a guy you know who's actually rowing a boat across the Pacific Ocean to raise money and I interview outfitters. I interview people who are chefs. We had one young lady on who has overcome tremendous obstacles that she incurred as a high school student in a car accident and she's hunting out of a wheelchair. So you know we talk to people from all walks of life on the podcast, that anything affiliated with the outdoors we'd like to talk to them. And you know I'm like you, I like to hear the human interest stories. So yeah, we're proud of that. We've been doing that for over 230 episodes and it's on all the major podcast platforms and we do audio and video as well.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Oh, and it's very entertaining and educational, which is kind of right at the sweet spot for everything I want to learn. I want to learn something and walk away from it, but I want to have that heartbeat and that feeling of being able to kind of connect with those people and the guests. And you guys do a tremendous job. It's a wonderful podcast, so make sure everyone can tune into that, and I'll have all the links below to everything we're talking about too. So if you guys are trying to write something down or you're in a car, don't worry, just check out the show notes for that, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Moving forward, I want to talk about the annual convention, because today, when this drops, it'll be a six month mark until the convention doors open. People flood in all some amazing exhibitors, events, galas. Let's just walk through, man, for those who have not been to one of the conventions with the Houston Safari Club before, tell them what is it that they're, you know, going to experience, you know, and I mean it's super affordable. You guys have some really great things. I think it's like free for kids 15 and under, really family focused, but yeah, like just walk us through that to kind of give people an idea of what to expect there. Yeah, like just walk us through that to kind of give people an idea of what to expect there.

Speaker 2: 17:06

So convention next year is January 23rd through the 25th 2026. It's in the Woodlands, texas, which is just outside of Houston. If you're flying in for it, you're literally 30 minutes from Bush International Airport out to the venue. We have it in north of Houston because the Woodlands is a really cool community. If you want to bring your family to it and they don't want to go to the Expo all day or they want to go out and do something else during the weekend, you walk out the doors. There's probably 30, 40 pubs, restaurants, shopping, so really cool walking shopping center and things to do. It's all right there and it's a very safe community. So we do our convention in a hotel Expo Hall type venue at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott. So the expo is on two floors and then your hotel room is right there in the venue. So you really never have to leave if you don't want to. But if you want to go out, there's tons of stuff to do in that area. You can park your car for the weekend and you're done. You can walk around everywhere and so the different components of you know we start really we start moving in. For people who don't understand expos, we start moving in. I think the hotel staff moves in on Wednesday. We have exhibitors come in on Wednesday, thursday and Friday morning set up. The expo runs Friday morning all day, saturday and Sunday until three, and then at night we have banquets. So Wednesday night we have an exhibitor an exhibitor. We love our exhibitors so we really like to do stuff to make it worth their while and they're really great supporters of ours. So Wednesday night we do an exhibitor, volunteer exhibitor and volunteer appreciation party at Conroe Taxidermy, not too far, and we shuttle people to and from the hotel. There's food, there's drinks, it's just a big social get together.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Thursday night is our annual hunting and photo awards. Friday night's a little more casual, laid back, kind of country Western theme. We do a dinner. We usually have some sort of entertainment, we do a couple of talks and things like that. Oh, let me back up. Thursday night we've got a keynote speaker that's coming in. We're going to announce that soon but you guys need to go to the website to stay tuned for that and entertainment updates. But Friday night's laid back, casual. We have food, we have drinks, we have a live auction. We try to minimize the mic time because people are there to have a good time. So we try to get all that stuff kind of out of the way on Thursday night and do all of our acknowledgement awards then.

Speaker 2: 19:29

And then Saturday, our ladies group, the Gazelles, have a brunch and luncheon. It starts at 1030, ends around two and it sells out every year. People come in, they grab a cocktail, there's a big sign auction, a live auction. Usually entertainment it's put on by the women, but there's men and women there that fill the room up. And then Saturday night is what we call our gala. It's a black tie optional gala, a little more formal, but listen, formal in our world. I've seen camouflage tuxedos, I've seen all sorts of things. We're not stuffy, it doesn't matter, just come and have a good time. And then that's the night.

Speaker 2: 20:07

We do our big live auction there as well. So there's auctions every event and we have big cocktail receptions beforehand and we do something kind of unique as far as fundraising. On the floor of the Expo Hall all weekend there's a big grand raffle. You can buy tickets. All weekend we're doing speed raffles this year where there's going to be one item we're going to raffle off just that day, each day of the expo, and then at night we do speed raffles before we open the doors to the banquets, like a really cool gun or something that we only sell 100 tickets for, and we usually sell them out at those events.

Speaker 2: 20:41

And so we don't do auctions all day, every day, live auctions. So we don't do auctions all day, every day, live auctions. We really want the focus to be on our exhibitors and the traffic on the floor and we want our exhibitors to get clients, to be honest with you, to book hunts and buy merchandise and that sort of thing. And then Sunday morning we kind of wrap up with a little mini get-together. We do a life member breakfast, so if you're a life member, you're invited to come. That we usually have an update on the organization, maybe have a guest speaker and that sort of thing. So it's full man, it's, it's all weekend long. And then, uh, sunday night when we're finally done, we um, we actually, uh, myself and the staff take off and sleep for two days.

Speaker 1: 21:20

I can imagine Well, I mean, this is a whole year in the works. You know, we start planning.

Speaker 2: 21:24

Yeah, the day that, the day that one's over the Wednesday after, we're already planning for the next year.

Speaker 1: 21:28

Yeah, no doubt. I mean there's so much that's involved and so many great different exhibitors. Uh, you know, I've I've seen all the different speakers and the people you have come out in the keynotes before. I'm really excited for an announcement. Make sure you guys go and stay tuned for that on the website and you know this is. It's really great and it's very affordable. I think it's a wonderful place. I love the community all around the Woodlands, like you said, safe. There's a great pulse. There are so many things to do, so you can just get lost every day at the convention or you can go and move around as well and kind of have that balance with your family. But very family-friendly man, bring the kids, bring everyone in your family, cause there's something for everyone. There's a lot of games and things for kids too. I mean, what a wonderful thing, man. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Speaker 2: 22:13

I'd be remiss. I got to mention something here. I know you're not going to plug it, so I am. You're going to be with joining us this year and so you're going to be there the entire weekend and we're fired up about that Cause you're going to be doing some interviews there live from the site and and uh and uh. Yeah, I mean, if you guys obviously you got, you have a big fan base, so if you guys are fans of George, you should absolutely come down and say hello to him.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Well, yeah, I'm very excited about it. I mean teaming up with the best here. Man, I'm, I'm, I'll be doing live interviews. I'll be going around to the exhibitor booths and kind of taking photos and videos, short interviews. We'll be doing a lot of live podcasts there and you know, as you mentioned that too, this is the six month mark out from the convention and every month leading up to the convention I will be hosting a podcast, an interview with whether it's maybe a partner that you guys are working with, maybe it's one of the big sponsors.

Speaker 1: 23:05

You know, there's so many different organizations that you guys have worked with, and and exhibitors and and great companies all around, so we're going to dig in deep and chat a lot with those and kind of give you guys a better sense of what's going to happen at this convention every single month. Because you guys can go and get your tickets today and I strongly suggest you do can go and get your tickets today, and I strongly suggest you do Go over and check out the website and again, links are down below because, man, it's moving forward and you want to make sure you get one of those spots, especially if you're any exhibitors that are on the fence. If you haven't already signed up, get out there and get involved. This is the best of the best. It's a wonderful convention and I'm just excited to be playing a small part in this man. It's very, very exciting for me.

Speaker 2: 23:43

We're excited you're going to be part of it. And you mentioned exhibitors. You know we our deadline for cutoff for exhibitor applications was July 1st. I mean you got to kind of, you got to have a deadline that we can work to, but exhibitors can still apply. You know we haven't placed our booths yet. We'll be doing that in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 2: 23:58

But the thing I, when I ask exhibitors why they come to the show, they're like you know they're like well, listen, you guys aren't the biggest. I mean, there are shows out there with, you know, 500 exhibitors plus. And we want all the outdoor conservation groups to do well for their conventions. To be quite honest with you, because if one of us doesn't do well, none of us do well. We all have goals of awareness and wanting to give back to the outdoors. All have goals of awareness and wanting to give back to the outdoors. But the thing our exhibitors will tell us, the ones that come back year after year, is you put numbers through the door, you put good quality buyers in the room, they bought our donations at auction and then they came and booked and they booked other hunts with us or they referred other people, or they were back the next three years in a row. So I think that the audience that we provide the exhibitor is a qualified buying audience. You're going to have tire kickers, just like you do at every show, sure, but their first timer is coming out looking to book their first big game hunt. All the way to people who've hunted all over the world. They're looking for something new and unique.

Speaker 2: 24:58

So I'll just say this to exhibitors If you haven't put an application in, you should do it. Don't hold back. Do it now, because in a couple of weeks we're going to be placing and we really try to. Of course, we have a priority point system where we have exhibitors you know they've been with us for 20 years, have certain points because they've accumulated them over the year but what we try to do, not only for the exhibitors but for the attendees, is we try to mix, we try to have a good mix. We don't, you know, we don't want somebody to come in and walk down an aisle and it's 20 exhibitors from the same part of the world. We try to have a good mix from uh, that's representative of all types of hunting, from all types of the world and merchandise and guns and all those sorts of things. So you know, if you're an exhibitor and you're listening to this or watching this podcast, you know put your application in. I mean, you know it's, it's, it's not only is a great show, it's a fun show.

Speaker 2: 25:45

And we also provide lunch tickets for our exhibitors. We have some really cool food trucks. We park in front of the hotel so we feed our exhibitors too. Hey, that's, that's the key, right? If you're working hard, you got to have the fuel. You can't go to the restaurant. I mean, run outside with your food truck ticket, grab some food. Most of them give you a buzzer. When your order's ready, you run out there and grab it again and go back in. You never lose a step when you're working.

Speaker 1: 26:11

There you go, everyone. I don't know how else you can sell that the right way. I mean, it's food to the belly, right? No, it's good stuff. Man know decades and you know the people who are. You know, maybe on that on that fence in the first time, hey, I'm thinking about going to the convention, but they're not a hundred percent sure. Why don't you go ahead and just close it out? And you know, let us know your feelings on those.

Speaker 2: 26:37

Well, we wouldn't exist if if it weren't for the people that support us. Everybody, from members to our sponsors, our corporate partners, our exhibitors all those people are vitally important to helping us maintain what we can do. At the end of the day, we couldn't do it without those people contributing in some form or fashion. It's really cool to be part of an organization that gives back, and that's why I do what I do. And so, if you're thinking about coming, just come to convention and check us out. We also give. We do convention giveaway every year to all of our attendees.

Speaker 2: 27:13

Last year we gave away ammo cans. This year I wish I had mine with me Actually it's probably in my truck Last year. This year we're giving away the rifle rest bag. So I mean, you're going to get a free gift when you come to convention, and you know it's well worth the time to come in and see what's happening to support an organization such as ours. And so I encourage you if you're an exhibitor, you want to get in. If you're, if you're thinking about becoming a member, come on down. But uh, you know, just come on down and say hello and check us out and see what we're about.

Speaker 1: 27:37

So Nice and correct me if I'm wrong, but if you come into the convention, you also get a digital membership for the entire year, right?

Speaker 2: 27:44

Yeah, we're going to give away. When you go to the booth and get your freebie, you're going to get a free digital membership, but that doesn't mean you can't stop by the membership booth and sign up for one, three, five year lifetime membership as well, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 27:56

I think that is super important. I mean, like you said, getting the magazine in your hands, man.

Speaker 2: 28:01

It's important and there's there's all sorts of digital membership to the brother-in-law. You don't like and go and get yourself a full voting membership, yeah, there you go here, I'm going to help you become a better hunter I'm going to get the good stuff, you know, hey, it works all around, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 28:14

Well, joe, thank you so much for joining me today. I cannot wait to continue to work with you and, uh, you know, kind of give people a firsthand account of what's going on in the convention. For those who can't make it and just you know, for those who can't make every single moment there, I will be documenting it all, all the different galas, the events that are going on. So make sure you follow my page, make sure you go over to wehuntwegiveorg. Join today, go ahead and get your tickets, reserve your rooms and if you're an exhibitor, go ahead and go ahead, sign up, get this thing going, be a part of this, because what a wonderful organization and what a great convention. I cannot wait, sir.

Speaker 2: 28:51

Thanks, george, I appreciate your time. I'm looking forward to seeing you here in Houston. All right, you too, you take care, you too, man. All right, bye-bye.