(Part II) Try Before You Buy: Jared Ambrosier, Chief Procurement Officer, Michigan.

In part II, Jared discusses his approach to leadership, the emergence of artificial intelligence in contracting, and Michigan's procurement code, and he plays the world-famous Key-Takeaway-Game

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Transcript

Kevin Minor:  0:05

Welcome Pulse Takers to the NASPO Pulse Podcast, your go-to source for all things state procurement. I'm your host, kevin Miner, and again I am thrilled to be here today talking with you. Part two of our interview with the Chief Procurement Officer of Michigan. Our interview with the Chief Procurement Officer of Michigan, jared Ambrosier. If you haven't already stop, go back to episode one. Listen to that. First, we talked to Jared about their 2022 George Cronin Gold Award for the competitive proof of concept process. We talk about how, in 2019, jared's office was named the number one procurement office and what contributed to that. We also talked to Jared about the people in his office and who he recruits and how is that successful.

Kevin Minor:  0:54

In part two the episode you're listening to right now we talk about Jared's theory on leadership and his leadership style. We talk about the emergence of artificial intelligence. We look at Michigan's deep dive into their procurement code and much, much more. Before we do that, you know what I got to tell you Make sure you check us out on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google or wherever you get your podcast, subscribe to us, naspopulseorg, and make sure you check out the Pulse blog. All right, enough of that. Part two, jared Ambrosier, let's take the pulse. When we touched on your theory, we touched on how you view leadership a little bit and your experiences that have kind of formed your leadership style. Can you just elaborate? Can you just expand on that just a little bit more for us?

Jared Ambrosier:  1:47

Yeah, you know I, this was a question that I really thought hard about. It's a big question. You know what is your leadership style and you know, thinking back, I've worked for some really good leaders in my career, um, and I've tried to adopt pieces of each of them that would made them great, um, you know, when I think back to when I was in the private sector and our chief operating officer was on the floor of the manufacturing plant every day, um, you know, just talking with people, getting to know them, joking around with them, um and so that when he had an you know an issue or a problem or an ask, he had that relationship with staff already. Um and so talking with staff is a big, you know, piece of um. You know my style. I have a um, what I call procurement council, um, which is four staff members that meet with me once a month and we talk about whatever they want to talk about. I like that. I try to sit out in our common area when I'm in the office. You know, take my laptop, sit out in you know one of the chairs and just kind of hang out there. You know one of the chairs and just kind of hang out there as long as I don't have meetings going on. I try to kind of be out with people so they can be visible, you know, chat to them about work or just personal stuff, it doesn't really matter.

Jared Ambrosier:  3:15

I really focus on collaboration, especially with my senior leadership team. I try to build consensus. So it's not that I don't want to make the decision I have no problem making decision. But, as someone who doesn't have a problem making a decision, if you're making decisions in you know, by yourself, independently, you're going to miss things right. Your perspective is going to be very narrow and so I tried to build consensus in my decision making. You know, getting everybody on the same page, allowing people to question those decisions or the direction of the decision. Once the decision's made. I want everybody on board but I want to hear, you know, different people's. I want everybody on board but I want to hear different people's thoughts while that decision is being made.

Jared Ambrosier:  4:11

I try to focus on the vision and the big picture items. I try to stay out of the day-to-day and I try to delegate to empowered staff to do what needs to be done. They're going to elevate to me what needs to be done. You know they're going to elevate to me what needs to be elevated. I may provide comments along the way on some individual things, but that's all. They are their comments, their questions. I want you to think about this. Did we consider that? Okay, you guys make the decision. So it's, I think, leadership, my style, is not set in stone. I'm constantly trying new things, you know, trying to take a different perspective, a different style, depending on the situation. Depending on the situation and as a young leader, I think I'm still evolving in my leadership style, but really try to focus on understanding where people are coming from, perspective and long-term growth for the department.

Kevin Minor:  5:19

Sure A lot of trust and empathy. It sounds like yeah a lot of trust.

Jared Ambrosier:  5:24

You know I have developed a really good team, and it's not all me.

Jared Ambrosier:  5:29

You know this team has been put together over the years and I have relationships with all of them going back, you know five, seven years, and so I can have that trust. Right, they know what their jobs are, they know what they're supposed to do, and we can have that relationship of you know. Hey, sharon, you're working on this. Do you have any questions? Do you need anything from me? Good, okay, cool, hey, pam, you know what's going on in sourcing. What do I need to know? Okay, this is my need to know items. Good, you have everything else, that's fine. So, yeah, there is a lot of trust within our team and it's because those relationships have been built, you know, over the last.

Kevin Minor:  6:15

You know five years Right right Shout out to payment sourcing by the way.

Josh Descoteaux:  6:22

Keep doing what you're doing. Well, jared, what you were talking about about leadership and the last two years have been especially challenging and going back to what you were saying about training and elevating the profession, building that trust and relationships with your folks that has to start somewhere and you always need that reliable, you know resource pipeline. So I wanted to know kind of your relationship with Michigan State. I know that you have a deep connection with Michigan State and what have you learned about new graduates and what they're looking for in a career?

Jared Ambrosier:  6:56

Yeah, that's a really good question. I do have a very deep connection with Michigan State. It, home for me, has been a big part of my life, you know, being 15 minutes from campus, we're there a lot. In recent conversations with graduates. They want what a lot of us want, you know. They want the opportunity to grow. They want the opportunity to learn, to be challenged, to contribute.

Jared Ambrosier:  7:25

I think one of the big items with today's graduates is that they want to be more than a number. They want to know personally how they are making an impact. Where are their contributions important? What's their potential, their growth, the plan for them? I am somebody that I try to shy away from millennial, boomer, gen X, what have you? I don't love that theory around the different generations because I think there is I think there's a lot more consistency about what people want than than what is kind of led to by separating people by generations. But I think today's graduate is they are individuals, they are unique and so when, when they talk about their roles, both in their internships as well as their desires in a future career, a lot of it has to do with how can I make an impact? How does this fit my brand as a person. How does this contribute to me growing both professionally and personally?

Josh Descoteaux:  8:54

That's really neat and I think the leadership, your leadership, has to adapt to all of that and the exciting kind of innovative things that you guys are putting in place definitely is an attempt to meet the new generation of procurement professionals.

Jared Ambrosier:  9:10

Yeah, absolutely. You know procurement professionals coming out of college today have more opportunities in front of them than anybody before. Right, supply chain roles are in incredible demand. Yeah, and when we think public sector, we know we have challenges in recruiting. You know whether. Are you developing those relationships? How are you selling your office, your role, the job? Yeah, and how are you providing a pathway for somebody to to grow, whether that's in your office or somewhere else? I don't have a problem with bringing in um somebody for a year or two years and, you know, getting value out of them for that time period and then them going on to a new role. I don't have a problem with bringing in a student for six months. That doesn't convert to a full-time position. That's fine. They. They have value in the time that they're in the office. Let's get value out of them while they're here and let's prepare them for their next role, whether that's within our office or somewhere else.

Josh Descoteaux:  10:34

Yeah, yeah, go ahead, josh. I was going to say part of that benefit of the procurement profession is the experiences that you get. No matter how long that you're there, you're seeing how things work. You're seeing a lot of those skills or a lot of those classes that you were just like well, I'm never going to use this really come into play. Those things are all applied and that's what I have definitely experienced in my procurement profession. It's just like if you are well-rounded or you're a jack of all trades, or if you're just curious about things, you know those are the things that really are a good skill set to have when you're dealing with procurement, when you're kind of delving in and starting your career out, like you said, getting value from the, from your interns, or you know people that are fresh into the job market or them getting the value out of that profession as a stepping stone or a foundation to go on and do bigger and better things. So I think that this profession is very ripe for that.

Kevin Minor:  11:33

Yeah, yeah, and I really like how you brought up, you know, that the title boomer or millennial or Gen Z, z, that doesn't really matter as much, and I like that because I hate, you know. I feel like that's so toxic and visceral now and it doesn't help us at all and I think that people excuse me, I think that people, no matter where they are in their career, they want to see, they want to see output and they want to see impact and they value that far over even salary now, which is something that we're that you know, I think we're finding, especially in younger people and people coming out of college. So I think it's really interesting that you you bring that up, because that really changes the workforce, that really changes your leadership, that really changes how you run your staff and your office.

Jared Ambrosier:  12:21

Yeah, absolutely. You know we've had a lot of different types of people be successful in our office. You know whether those are, you know, transplants from different careers that have, like, pivoted into procurement, whether that's procurement professionals, people early in their careers, people late in their careers, people that we've passed on initially and then we've hired later, people that have left our office and came back. You know, recruiting is a constant status of building and maintaining relationships, right, you never know when somebody you pass on may circle, or someone who passes on you may circle back and say, hey, you know, I am interested in that rule now. You know I'm at a stage in my life. I'm at a. You know, this is what I'm looking for. I want to work life balance. You know, whatever you know, you never know when they might circle back to you and say I do want to come to your office.

Jared Ambrosier:  13:18

And I think what we see in common for the people that have been successful, it's they have an ability to operate autonomously. You know, within the rules, sure, and there are people that can solve problems. You know, josh, going back to like your jack of all trades, like procurement, at the end of the day, is problem solving. And if you can solve problems, you know I can teach you how to run an evaluation team or be a project manager, or I can even teach you how to do strategic sourcing and develop a strategy. If you can't solve problems on your own, you're going to struggle, and so we try to put people in positions to succeed based on their skill sets, their know, their experience, where they're coming from in life.

Jared Ambrosier:  14:09

And you know we take all kinds. You know we have people early in their careers. They've jumped over to us. We've had people late in their careers that are looking for something, you know, before they retire. We've had people grow in our office. You know, over a course of a time, really lots of people can be successful in procurement. So I don in our office. You know, over a course of a time, really lots of people can be successful in procurement. So I don't think, you know, we should really pigeonhole ourselves into any like one size fits all type of recruiting efforts sure, um jared, I'm much more of a uh problem creator.

Kevin Minor:  14:41

What kind of job should I? I'm really good at creating problems.

Jared Ambrosier:  14:47

Hey, but some of the best solutions come out of the problem. Right, like, I think, having that perspective of what are the problems out there? Right, maybe not the problem creator, but the problem identifier to be able to say like, hey, I see this problem out there. No one might be crying about it now, but it's going to be an issue in the future, how can we be proactive in finding a solution for that problem down the road? I think is a big part of what my office is trying to do.

Kevin Minor:  15:19

Sure, yeah, and I think that's what I think you just kind of showed why you're in the role that you're in, because I just gave you a hypothetical problem and you kind of solved it right in front of us. I think that's really impressive. You know one thing and this isn't necessarily a problem, but it's something that's scary and it's something that we have to talk about, because it's becoming more prevalent and it's changing the way that we work and the way that we create and solve problems is artificial intelligence, and that's something that I know that you're a proponent of, and I want to know how you think that AI can help procurement officials with their work. How can we solve problems with AI, and what do you think that's going to look like in 5 and 10, 20 years?

Jared Ambrosier:  16:05

Yeah, no, I love this question. It's a fun one. It's a fun one. I think AI is exciting, scary, transformative. You know, questions all kind of wrapped into one, whether we're looking at, like you know, the, like the chat bots, like chat GPT, which has been in the news and all over LinkedIn, you know over the past couple of months, or you know machine learning, you know predictive analytics, natural language processing. There's a ton out there. Um, I will say a lot of it is vaporware and will not come to fruition or won't come to fruition in the way that you think it will.

Jared Ambrosier:  16:47

Chat GPT can do some really cool things. It can also give you some really good sounding answers that are completely wrong. That like, if you don't know better, you would read through it and you'd be like, oh, that's a great response and it's completely made up with no factual basis behind it. Um, so AI is not there yet. You know AI is not taking your job. Tomorrow, in five years, you know it could change a lot of what, what we do and how we do it.

Jared Ambrosier:  17:21

Um, just kind of thinking for a procurement professional. Do and how we do it. Just kind of thinking for a procurement professional. You know, could you use AI to score a contract right and tell you what the risk score is of that contract? Could you use AI to review a contract to say does this contract have this term in it? You know, maybe it's taking a look at all your historical contracts and it's telling you you know this, this contract, their terms aren't compatible with your terms today. Right, it's missing. X Y, z. Chat GPT today can write a statement of work. I asked it to write a statement of work for janitorial services and it wrote me a pretty solid statement of work Interesting.

Kevin Minor:  18:02

I was wondering about like a single building.

Jared Ambrosier:  18:04

Yeah it can do it. It can look up rules and policy for you. So I asked it to look up some rules around, like how does the federal government handle disabled veterans in their procurement process, and it was able to pull me out the information directly from the FAR, so it could be used as an enhanced Google. You could use predictive analytics to estimate, based on historical data, how long something could take. So, based on this RFP, we anticipate it taking.

Or, based on this category, we anticipate this RFfp taking this long. Sure, we, we can do that today. Um, that is, it's not even that really that difficult. Um, you know, it could automate some low price awards. It could automate some of your just your bidding opportunities. Now, all that being said, I view it as you just like the tractor replaced, you know, the horse and plow for farmers. It increased productivity. It's not replacing the job.

Jared Ambrosier:  19:15

I do think that the process, the bidding process specifically, will be replaced by AI. I think you know, at the end of the day, whether that's 10 years, 15 years, the process of, like, putting an RFP out to bid, receiving bids, will be like an automated process of some sort. So what remains? Where do we need to pivot as an industry or as procurement professionals, and what I think remains is relationships. So your relationships with your customers, your relationships with the supplier community, those remain Absolutely. I do not see a world, at least in the near future, where you have an AI customer talking to an AI procurement professional talking to an AI supplier. Right, there's going to be some human in there somewhere that has to manage the relationship.

Jared Ambrosier:  20:20

I think developing strategy for how we source things is very likely going to be a human activity. Still, you know, developing pricing models may be done by the AI, but it's not going to be done in a vacuum. Right, you're going to be. You're going to be putting the inputs, you're going to be evaluating those different options, you're going to be setting the strategy and I think, at the end of the day, like we talked about, it's problem solving. You know those ad hoc I have a need today how do you help me get a solution? Procurement is going to continue to have to be kind of those ninjas out there that are jumping on problems as they pop up. You know problem solving, brainstorming and putting solutions in place quickly. So, while AI, I think, will help us and is a little scary today, I think it will help us increase productivity and help us deliver better contracts, better procurement solutions in the future.

Josh Descoteaux:  21:29

All right, jared. Well, I know that Michigan has taken a deep dive into Michigan's procurement code and I'm really interested in this subject and what you guys did, because I feel that in the procurement space it was always just like, well, that's our policy, that's our process or even that's our statute, and you need to do X, y and Z because of ABC. And if some people didn't necessarily know ABC but were just kind of repeating what they thought ABC is, you might have an opportunity to be able to really dig into what those statutes are, what they mean, how they are interpreted, how they were interpreted back in the day and where those processes ultimately came from. That might be inefficient. So I really am interested in kind of what you guys did, kind of just the theory behind and the strategy behind, kind of like looking at it with a fresh set of eyes and being able to draw out some new policies from those statutes that already exist.

Jared Ambrosier:  22:36

Yeah, I think you nailed it in that by nature we repeat what we've heard right, and so we develop policy right, and then we say you know, the policy is the law. Well, no, the policy is what somebody interpreted. The law said, however, long ago, and we've just always done it that way because no one's really looked at it. In Michigan we took a look at our procurement code and we are fortunate that it is pretty open. It is not very prescriptive.

Josh Descoteaux: 23:14 That helps us big time.

Jared Ambrosier:  23:16

Our procurement code requires us to competitively solicit. That is the exact language. It says you know, four bids over a certain dollar threshold you must competitively solicit and that must be publicly posted for X amount of days. That's really all it says about competition. So when we looked at that about five years ago, when we looked at that about five years ago, what does competitively solicit mean? It means that we are engaging with the supplier community in a way that is open and transparent and competitive right, that we are competing bids against each other. That's really all it means.

Jared Ambrosier:  24:06

So what does that allow us to do? That allows us to do a lot of things. That allows us to do a competitive proof of concept. That allows us to issue a request for solution as opposed to a request for a proposal. It allows us to directly solicit. As long as we are competitive and that we're doing it publicly, we can directly solicit from people. It allows us to raise some of our thresholds regarding acquisition. So we established a program where we competitively solicit bids if for disadvantaged business types and we raise the threshold for those businesses Because we are required to competitively solicit.

Jared Ambrosier:  24:56

That means we can't sole source, but it doesn't say that we can't solicit for a sole source. So what we do is, when someone says they're the only company that can do it, we post an invitation to negotiate and we say the state intends to contract with this vendor Because we believe they're the only ones that can do it. If you can also do it, please raise your hand. Now, again, it's allowing us to. We are soliciting responses from the supplier community and if nobody meets, or if nobody kind of gives us a response that's in contradiction to what we had proposed, then we can move forward. So by using, by taking an open look at what is the actual requirement, it allows us to be much more creative in how we meet that requirement.

Josh Descoteaux:  25:59

And what surprised you about some of the policies that were in place that might have been outdated, or did you notice anything that you were just like wow, I can't believe that that was in there, or how long has this been going on where there was a lot of inefficiencies and we should have looked at this a little bit earlier?

Jared Ambrosier:  26:17

Yeah, I think it had been going on for a while and I think you know it had been considered about what we could do. But getting the right administration right to buy in to those changes, doing our whole procurement transformation effort where we redid our entire policy manual also like took a big, a big piece of that right, because then we looked at every single policy. We have Huge. What does it say? Right, is it the right way that it's being said? Does it actually reflect what the statute's saying? All of those things kind of played into this idea of the procurement code.

Jared Ambrosier:  27:00

Is the procurement code? Policy, is policy Interesting, and so I think for many states their procurement code may be more restrictive but it's probably not as restrictive as they think it is. And so you know there are, there may be opportunities to read it differently and that would allow you to do different things. You know we're looking even further at our state code to say, are there even further improvements that we could make, things that we would like to codify that maybe are in policy? You know we've developed policy that says one thing, but that policy could change right, you get somebody in there that you know doesn't like the policy, or you know, you get a legislator in there that says, well, you don't actually have the authority to do that. So we want to codify some of our policies, um, so that they are forever right Enshrined and that they can't be taken away from us. Um. But I would say, you know, even with our, our code today, it is still, um, you know, flexible enough that we can really work within it and, uh, develop efficiencies that are necessary.

Josh Descoteaux:  28:14

It seems like with that flexibility too, um, if somebody is going to take the time to look into those statutes and seeing what the law really says, they better be prepared to look at those policies and really have some time to really reform those, take a deep dive into those policies. That's where the real meat is going to come out of just hey, okay, it might be more flexible than we thought, but what do we do now and I think that that's where the focus should be is are those policies that you were talking about of just a whole refresh of what you kind of designed out of that flexibility, and it needs to be very specific as well.

Jared Ambrosier:  28:52

Yeah, I think you know, when we look at public procurement and we compare it to the private sector, there are definitely inefficiencies right sector. There are definitely inefficiencies right. And through our procurement transformation effort and rewriting our policy, we tried to adopt private sector practices when possible and because of that, you know, we wrote our policy in a way that gives us authority where we feel like we need it and establishes, you know, clear guidelines to back up our positions. So, like protests, for instance, you know, in Michigan I'm not really scared of a protest. I have good policy around my protest process. We do it.

Jared Ambrosier:  29:43

It's basically an internal process. I don't have to go to an administrative hearing or anything like that, and our law, our statute, doesn't say that we have to have a protest policy. So we've established it internally because we found the gap there right. So there's that identification of need and sometimes you want to take the legislative approach to fill that need. But we know that that is not always easy and so and then the other hand would be okay, we can't take the legislative approach. Can we build something in policy, within our law, within our rules, to help protect you know our process and keep our process efficient?

Kevin Minor:  30:31

You know, for excuse me for those of, for our listeners who can't see we record these so we can see each other's faces. It just makes the conversation easier and Josh has just had the biggest grin for this entire conversation and I find that really interesting.

Josh Descoteaux: 30:46 Oh, you noticed that.

Kevin Minor:  30:48

Josh, why is this making you so? Oh, of course, I love your smile. Why is this so exciting to you?

Josh Descoteaux:  30:56

It is super exciting to me because I think that there are huge opportunities out there where maybe we know that we're all busy, that the resources that we have are very limited, that we have contracts upon contracts that are piled on. But I think that what Jared is talking about of just being intentional, about looking at the statutes and seeing how you can get creative and seeing how you can model your procurement office to be more efficient. The possibilities could be endless in terms of how you can and what you can unlock. You know not very flexible statutes, but I think that there is still value in looking at those, breaking them down and just seeing what you could do with them.

Jared Ambrosier:  31:57

Well, and I think a lot of our procurement statutes are old right, like Michigan's was written in like 1984, you know really hasn't been updated, and so there's things within your statute that I think you can you, if you have problems with them, you could look at it and say you know, why was this put in place previously? Do we still have that problem today?

Kevin Minor:  32:19

yeah, I was. I was actually gonna ask that's. That's what I was. That was a follow-up question is do you have you personally in your professional experience, have you run into, uh, a code? Maybe that was written like in world war one or two, like a while ago? That doesn't even make sense that you're still using yeah.

Jared Ambrosier:  32:37

So yeah, we have, um, we have some information or we have some legislation that goes back into, like, yeah, the 30s and 40s that we can work within. It's not the worst, so it's not something that we need to get rid of today, ok, but you know, it kind of has that unintended consequence of you know it's been around for 90 years now. For 90 years now, right, like was the? Does the need or does the problem still even exist today? Or are you just doing it because it's legislation, right, that tells you you have to? But the problem has really resolved itself over the years through other operational efficiencies, technology, what have you Right?

Kevin Minor:  33:23

Yeah, has it just always been done that way? Is it now creating a problem instead of fixing one?

Josh Descoteaux:  33:29

Like Kevin, the problem creator.

Kevin Minor:  33:32

Hey, just over here, just fix them and create them. I'm just a machine man. And now, jared, it's time for our world famous key takeaway game. Key takeaways this is the game where Josh and I are going to present you with a takeaway a key takeaway, if you will from our conversation, and you're gonna decide who was listening better, josh or I. And as always, josh, we'll let you go first. Oh, thank you, kevin.

Josh Descoteaux:  34:02

Well, the key takeaway You're welcome, josh, you're welcome the key takeaway that I had was the concept of the champions, and I had never thought about this before. It's like you know, when you are innovating and you do have those kinds of goals that you're setting, it's almost like you take responsibility for them but you might not actually be responsible in your day-to-day operations. So that champion is kind of like cross teams or if you're not necessarily responsible, it is just a free space for you to envision, for you to think, for you to have that unstructured time to kind of have those innovative thoughts, and that you are a champion of that concept or that idea, but it's not necessarily your responsibility to implement. So I really like that flexibility and the kind of concept that you bring to your office Boom.

Kevin Minor:  34:53

Okay, all right, not bad, drop the mic there at the end. No big deal. All right, he was listening, we'll give him that for sure. Josh, that was a good takeaway, and actually I was worried you were going to take mine. I'm glad you didn't. So my key takeaway is uh, you know, your Cronin award to your um, your staff and your personnel to AI, and that's just uh, procurement, the, the profession of procurement, uh, whether it be state, whether it be local, whether it be private, is building and maintaining the relationships, and that is something that a robot I don't think will ever be able to do, and it's not lost on me how important that is throughout all these things. That's my key takeaway.

Jared Ambrosier:  35:56

Boom. Well, those are both really good. I think those, those are both, um, you know, things that, uh, we touched on throughout today's uh interview. Um, you know, kevin, I, I think I'm going to give you the edge here in that yours is a little bit more, uh, comprehensive.

Jared Ambrosier:  36:13

You were able to tie it kind of all you know, from the very start to the very end I like that but, josh you, you know, the champions are something that I have found very important because, you're right, it's the, the idea of you are responsible for the like, the concept, or I call them buckets usually like this is your bucket. I think it allows the team to really dive into areas that maybe they don't focus on on a day-to-day and allows them a space to kind of just think what do I want to put in my bucket for the next 18 months?

Kevin Minor:  37:04

What are some additional items that I can add to this bucket to drive forward innovation?

Josh Descoteaux:  37:07

and efficiencies and all of that, mark, I'm a true leader.

Kevin Minor:  37:09

He's making the loser feel special. I know that's fine. Thank you, jared. Yeah, both great takeaways and, jared, we really appreciate you. Sorry, I got to start that one. That was bad, I'm sorry. No, you're good. That was bad, I'm sorry. No, you're good.

Josh Descoteaux:  37:25

Jared. As we close out, we like to ask our guests a piece of advice for our listeners. It doesn't necessarily have to be procurement advice. It could be just advice in general.

Jared Ambrosier:  37:39

So what would you like to share?

Kevin Minor:  37:41

Man that one was not on the interview list.

Jared Ambrosier:  37:42

No, it's not so that one's a tough one. One thing that I would want to share All right, I got something. So, as we mentioned earlier in the interview, msu is very close to me and I have a deep connection there, and you know, with the recent events, with the shooting there, you know I want to kind of rely on, you know what others have said of you know, get to know people around you. We, we live in a society that is very isolated now, and so you know, coach Izzo, the basketball coach at Michigan State, during his speech at the vigil, you know, encouraged people to. You know, get to know the people around them in their day to day lives. You know, even if it's just as simple as like hey, you know, hi, I'm Jared, nice to meet you and kind of break down that isolation. So so that's that's my tidbit for today. Right Recommendation you know, really, just try to get to know people in your lives.

Kevin Minor:  38:46

I think that is some of the best advice we might have ever gotten on the Pulse, and we really, really appreciate that Jared Ambrosier is the chief procurement officer for the great state of pure Michigan. Jared, it was so great to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jared Ambrosier:  39:08

No, it was a lot of fun. I really appreciate you guys inviting me on.

Kevin Minor:  39:12

And Jared, what we'll do is, since you did such a good job, we'll have you back in a couple months and check up on you and make sure everything's still going strong. Yeah, excellent, sounds good. That's the Pulse for today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for listening. Again, make sure you check us out wherever you get your podcast, give us a rating and, of course, make sure you read the blog. I'm Kevin Miner. Until next time you