Sarah Newcomb is an applied scientist, behavioral economist, and the Founder of the Thrive Financial Empowerment Center. Her work bridges the gap between research and practice, adapting the findings of academic research for practical use in personal financial management.
In this episode, Sarah shares her own personal story and how it led to her current work - exploring the connection between mental and financial health, particularly among our youth. We discuss the need for empowerment-based and trauma-informed financial education and how understanding the psychology behind behaviors leads to both understanding and empathy. And she shares some practical insights on the things financial counselors, coaches, and advisors can do to give their clients agency.
Show Notes:
1:22 Sarah's money story
7:14 Utilizing academic findings for practical use
9:39 Young people and their mental + financial health
14:45 Empowerment-based financial education
23:58 Moving away from the contamination narrative to a redemptive one (and what that means)
27:47 Sarah's new financial empowerment content
30:28 Sarah's final 2 cents
Show Note Links:
Statistics:
Want to get involved with AFCPE®?
Here are a few places to start: Become a Member, Sign up for an Essentials Course, or Get AFC Certified today!
Want to support the podcast? We love partnering with organizations that share our mission and values. Download our media kit.
Sarah Newcomb is an applied scientist, behavioral economist, and the Founder of the Thrive Financial Empowerment Center. Her work bridges the gap between research and practice, adapting the findings of academic research for practical use in personal financial management.
In this episode, Sarah shares her own personal story and how it led to her current work - exploring the connection between mental and financial health, particularly among our youth. We discuss the need for empowerment-based and trauma-informed financial education and how understanding the psychology behind behaviors leads to both understanding and empathy. And she shares some practical insights on the things financial counselors, coaches, and advisors can do to give their clients agency.
Show Notes:
1:22 Sarah's money story
7:14 Utilizing academic findings for practical use
9:39 Young people and their mental + financial health
14:45 Empowerment-based financial education
23:58 Moving away from the contamination narrative to a redemptive one (and what that means)
27:47 Sarah's new financial empowerment content
30:28 Sarah's final 2 cents
Show Note Links:
Statistics:
Want to get involved with AFCPE®?
Here are a few places to start: Become a Member, Sign up for an Essentials Course, or Get AFC Certified today!
Want to support the podcast? We love partnering with organizations that share our mission and values. Download our media kit.
Welcome to Real Money Real Experts, a podcast where leading financial counseling and coaching experts share their stories, their challenges, and their advice for helping people manage money in the real world. I'm your host, Rachel De , executive director of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education for A F C P E.
Speaker 2:And I'm your co-host, Dr. Mary Bell Carlson , an accredited financial counselor, or a F c and the President of Financial Behavior Keynote Group. Every episode we're taking a deep dive in the topics that personal finance professionals care about, helping clients, building community, and your professional growth. Today's guest is Sarah Newcomb. Sarah is a behavioral economist and founder of the Thrive Financial Empowerment Center. As an applied scientist, Sarah adopts the findings of academic research for practical use and personal financial management through writing, speaking, and coaching. She teaches people to build lives that they love with the resources they have. Her work has earned dimensions in Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes her Money and other outlets. She is the author of Loaded Money Psychology and How to Get Ahead Without Leaving Your Values Behind. Welcome Sarah , to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Mary.
Speaker 1:So Sarah , we all know that personal finance goes beyond the dollars and the cents that it's about people. And so we like to start off our show by asking about your own money story and what led you into the field and into this work.
Speaker 3:I got into this work because I found myself at 28 years old. I had, my parents had struggled financially all my life. I had struggled financially ever since leaving high school. And you know, I had to wait until I was 24 to even enroll in, in college full-time because I, that's when you can take out student loans without co-signers in the us . So at 24, a lot of my own life's dreams had already sort of passed me by because I didn't have the money to pursue them formally. And I ended up anyway at 28 graduating with a degree in math because I love numbers. And here I was, you know, married, expecting my daughter a degree in math and I still couldn't get my finances together. And I was like, you know, it's not numbers because I love numbers. It's not, it's not problem solving because I love problem solving. Something else is going on. And so I decided that I was gonna leverage that math degree to go to a graduate program for personal financial planning because I thought, look, if I was tired of being poor, because if you've ever been poor, it is exhausting. It's, it's truly exhausting physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And I wanted to get free. And so I thought, look, I will learn how the pros manage money. If I can understand the fundamental theorem of calculus, I must be able <laugh> to figure out how to, you know, manage , uh, my money. And so I ended up being a full-time mother during the day and then full-time student at night. And I went to Bentley University for program, a master's program in personal financial planning. And my, my plan was that I would learn how to manage money and then get a good paying job. And once I had some money, I would know what to do with it, right? That was the plan. <laugh> , and much like math became my major in undergrad after I just was taking all these electives in advanced math and they were like, why aren't you a math major? Very similar in grad school, there was an elective called Psychology in Financial Planning, and it was taught by Jim Grubman, who people in the financial therapy world will definitely know that name. But it was the first time he taught this class. It was back in 2008, 2007 or 2008, and was the first class of its kind because instead of talking about interest rates and asset management, we were talking about emotions and classism and how every single one of us has a relationship with money that is largely inherited , um, usually unexamined and affects all of our day-to-day interactions with money, whether we are conscious of it or not. And it was through that course and actually doing the exercises, the homework for that course where I had to write my own financial narrative, I had to ask some probing questions of myself about my attitudes toward money and my experiences with it. And that was when I realized that my relationship with money was so unhealthy, it was such a, a mix of fear and worship because of my upbringing and because of my experiences with not having it and, and all the, you know, missed opportunities and broken dreams and trauma from that, right? So that was when I started to heal my own relationship with money. And I realized, well, it was never about the numbers, it's always about the stories that we're telling ourselves because of those numbers and those stories are so powerful. And so that was when I decided I didn't wanna actually manage other people's money. It's a very valuable thing to do. But what I wanted to do was to really dig into this question of, you know, are there systematic ways that we kind of get in our own way financially? You know, I had read Rich Dad, poor Dad, and I knew about , um, I knew about like all the books about The Millionaire Mind and Think and Grow Rich and all of that, right? There's all these books out there about how to think Rich. But what I wanted to know is looking at real science, no offense to those books, but looking at like scientific journal studies, have we determined if there are ways of thinking that keep us poor? And so I decided to do a doctorate that combined economics and psychology to look at this question of what do we know about the simple, changeable habits of mind that can either get in our way financially and cause a negative feedback loop, or help us financially and cause a positive feedback loop? And so that, that's my origin story of how I got into this. I just, it was me search, like many people start with me search , and then I realized I can't be the only one that is like ambitious and hardworking and smart and stuck and not knowing why. And so I just put me on a mission to help other people get unstuck or avoid getting stuck at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can relate. And I think many of our listeners can relate to learning this and recognizing this is a gift that I learned and I want to share it with others. And I love that you've taken that passion now and are sharing it with people of all kinds of backgrounds that maybe are stuck. Sarah , you have a really unique background as both a behavioral economist and an applied scientist. Can you tell us more about why it's important to utilize academic research findings for practical use? Especially in our field of personal financial management, there's
Speaker 3:Unfortunately such a rift between academia and the, the private sector. And I think a lot of it is really just a language barrier. You know, the academics speak their own language to one another, and there are language barriers. I even found, you know, between psychology and economics, the language barrier, it's not even just in the jargon, it's in the math. You know, psychologists are using certain statistical techniques and economists are using other statistical techniques and they don't really respect one another's methods. So interdisciplinary research gets stymied because of that. Anyway, I feel that things, you know, we learn so many valuable things through careful, rigorous study in academia, but then these findings stay within these tiny little circles of brilliant people, and they are not incentivized because of the way that academics work. Um , they are not incentivized to find practical uses or apply their findings to the real world. And then in the private sector , uh, the people building products and services are really not incentivized to do long-term deep, robust research. And so I think we've, you know, it's important to build the bridge with people who can speak both languages so that you can take what's being learned in the lab and then figure out how to put it out into the wild in a way that the things that we build are just better informed. They're more up to date with the, with current knowledge of how people and systems work. But I think it takes respect for interdisciplinary work and it takes a respect for the difficulty of doing that translation from academia to, to the private sector.
Speaker 1:Sarah , you've been speaking recently about mental health and financial health, especially with respect to our young people. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're seeing there? So this
Speaker 3:Has become really important and top of mind for me. So I wanna throw some statistics at you, and they're not very encouraging, but just looking at, this is what I call the statistics of disillusionment. But in 2021, more than four in 10 students felt persistently sad or hopeless, and nearly one third . So 29% experienced poor mental health centers for disease control and prevention, youth risk behavior survey. That's where these numbers are coming from. And this is in 2021, they found that more than one in five. So 22% of students seriously considered attempting suicide, and one in 10 attempted suicide. So you line 10 kids up, any , you know, 10 random kids up on a wall, and two of them will have seriously considered suicide, and one of them will have tried. And before you know you , well, this is general mental health, but when we look a little bit deeper, there's a 22 paper from in the Family was, what was it, in Frontiers in Public Health in September of 22. And those authors said they found that this is a quote, c ovid 19 related family economic hardship was significantly associated with higher odds of adolescents reporting anxiety, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation. And this association was stronger among adolescents with low to middle family economic status. So what I see in these statistics is that the financial stress of adulthood is it has already affected our kids. And we've got a generation of people growing up in under an extreme, extreme economic uncertainty. And I think, you know, you ask these kids about their future and they're gonna tell you, I don't have one. So just a few more depressing stats for you before we we move on. <laugh> , right? So this is from the Deloitte Global 22 Gen Z and mil and millennial survey. So they found that two thirds of stress teens reported that their financial future is a significant source of worry. 29% of Gen Z and 36% of millennials cite the cost of living as their greatest concern. And 72% of Gen Z and 77% of millennials believe that the gap between the rich and poor is widening. So this is the, the, I think it's important for us to understand sort of the financial or economic landscape that our kids are growing up in, and whether whether what they see is reality or not. 'cause you could argue, but this is their perception, is that they're, they're going into a very, very uncertain and, and difficult world. 54% of high school students said they're worried about their financial future. That was the junior achievement, teens and personal financial survey. So there's just so much disillusionment. I think we have an epidemic of despair. And it's not just finances, it's, it's also, you know, there's, there's a whole kind of , uh, there's a whole bunch of different things in our world right now that are stressing our children out, but money is definitely not the least of them. And so look at that. And I, I think about what does this kind of, you know, having grown up poor, I can, I can definitely relate to some of this stress, but I recently was reading , um, a man's search for himself by Rolo May , he's an American psychologist, and this is back in the fifties, he said that , um, when a group suffers continuous anxiety with no agreed upon constructive steps to take it's members sooner or later turn against each other. And that's where I think we see that already. I think we're seeing people just, just losing it, you know, it's, it's happening every day, and it's not just kids, but it's happening to our kids. And so I feel like we have this existential anxiety that is really linked to our economy, and I want to help the next generation to get out of this hopelessness. And I think the only way that we can do it is it's not through math. It is through empowerment based financial education. It is through reaching across these really very real difficulties and figuring out how to get individuals and our whole society, frankly, on a hero's journey to, to change the tide. And, and so I think that there's just a huge need, and I think it's getting more urgent. So
Speaker 2:You've definitely painted a bleak picture about mental health and financial education. I want to hear, you said a couple of things that really resonated with me, and one is, I wanna know what is empowerment based financial education and what is a hero's journey?
Speaker 3:First of all, the reason why I think we've gotta change the face of financial education is because any, any time someone feels powerless there , we internalize barrier . There are, there are these internalized barriers to learning because we shut down and we shut off. And so you can't go into a room and try to teach people who already feel like the deck is stacked against them. You know, you go in and try to teach them about compound interest. I mean, come on. You know, they're like, I don't, don't teach me the rules of a game that I can't win. Just, just, it's not worth it. And so then these kids, they check out, they're, they're, you know, these are the, the ones who are not, you know, they're the people who need it the most, are the least responsive to it. And so we've, I think we've gotta change the way that we're teaching to reach people before we can teach them, you know? So, so what that looks like is recognizing empowerment based and trauma informed education recognizes that when people have experienced, and you know, they have lived experiences of helplessness, that, that it has to be acknowledged, validated before it can be overcome. There is a , a really great quote from , uh, Kurt Goldstein who's a psychologist. He said, to deal with anxiety, to constructively use its energy, we must first acknowledge it, we must level with it. And Bobby Parrish , um, is the founder of the International Association, association of Trauma Recovery Coaches. And I love , uh, what she said, trauma is the great disconnector, and that the power of rewiring the brain is in compassionate connection. And so we've got, if we wanna get education, financial education to actually reach people who need it the most, we've got to connect first compassionately because their trauma has disconnected them from themselves, from the information, from the financial system, all of it. They just wanna , they just want to , you know, disconnect from all of it. Uh , so that's why I think there's a need to get educated about, about trauma. But then what empowerment based education looks like is that the first thing you do, the first thing you teach, and the first thing you give people hands on experience with is personal power agency. And this can look in the classroom, this can look like having, can look, there's a number of different ways, again, that, that researchers have found and done studies and found that these methods work to help increase someone's internal locus SubT control to help them feel more personally empowered. It can be things like student generated quiz questions, because that gives them power in some area of their life that matters, right? So you're, if you're in a classroom, student generated quiz questions, that's an empowerment based trauma informed technique, right? So these aren't, like, this isn't, you know, it's not hard. Things like involving students in establishing class rules, student self evaluations , student maintained personal progress sheets, things like that are, are ways that teachers, educators even, I don't know. I mean, I think advisors and coaches could find ways to, to apply these kinds of things with clients who are disempowered. You know? So empowerment based means you help someone first tap into their own power. They've got to feel powerful in their own life. Like what they do makes a difference or else all is lost. So the hero's journey, if you've ever read Carl Young or, or even , uh, Joseph Campbell or seen Star Wars, these things are all connected <laugh> . There is this, this sort of archetypal journey that , uh, that the hero in pretty much all human, all great human epic tales throughout time, there's, there's sort of a pattern that it takes. And it's where, you know, this, this sort of un uh , what is it , it's like an unlikely hero the person identifies with, has, you know, is set out on this journey to become, realize their inner greatness. And the hero's journey has specific stages in lip , you know, literature and art and all that. But the way that this really connects with human psychology is that there's, there's a bunch of research on what's called narrative therapy. And this, there's starting, oh gosh, I think it's back in the sixties , seventies, maybe don't quote me on that. But there was, there was a really great study where they found that people, they collected people's life stories, right? They're having people like write their story, but these are specifically people who have had really, really difficult time . Like they're very at risk and, and past at risk with, with difficulties in their life. And what they found was that the stories people wrote could sort of be grouped into two categories. One category they called the , um, the contamination narrative and the contamination narrative. Like any story has three parts, a beginning, middle, and end, right? And so the beginning and middle of the contamination story and the beginning and middle of the other kind, the redemptive narrative, they both have the same beginning and middle. It's only the end that's different. Okay? So if, if someone has adopted within themselves a contamination narrative about their financial life then, or their life in general, it's gonna sound a little bit like, you know, I was going along and then this big ugly thing happened and nothing is as it should be, as a result, it contaminated my timeline. You know, my life is, everything is contaminated because of the big ugly thing that happened. That's the contamination narrative. The redemptive narrative or redemption narrative has the same beginning and middle. I'm going along and this big ugly thing happened, and it was big and it was ugly, but it forced me to change. It forced me to grow. It forced me to evolve as a person. And I now more than I was not be not in spite of it, but because of it. And that is the difference between the victim's journey and the hero's journey. The redemptive narrative overcomes and finds some kind of meaning in the big ugly thing that happened. It doesn't negate the big ugly thing. It doesn't say it wasn't big, and it doesn't say it wasn't ugly, but it says that because of the big ugly thing I am now more than I would have been, and not unsurprisingly, when the researchers then looked the health and quality of life of the people in these two groups, the physical health of the people with a contamination story were, was much lower, higher incidences of depression, stress, stress related illnesses, and the people with the same really difficult circumstances, but a but a redemptive personal narrative had lower depression and higher quality of life and, and better overall physical health. And so it, I think is a great example of how we have to, you know, when you have lived experiences that have taught you , uh, that you can't win, that it's too hard, that you're not worthy, that you can't get there, you can make a choice to either believe it or to say, that's not my story. My story doesn't end here. I'm going to get on the hero's journey. I'm gonna go meet this challenge. And you can't do it without help. I'm not saying that everybody can just think themselves out of this. I am not saying that, but there is an inner determination that has to be there. I think as educators, as coaches, as advisors, we can help light that inner flame and, and help people not give up before the game is up. Uh , but that's what the hero's journey is financially. I think it's about us helping people to say, yes, it is tough. Yes, it's gonna be harder for you than this person over there, but that's why you're gonna be so much more proud of yourself when you get there. Sarah ,
Speaker 1:Do you have any advice when we look at these statistics and these ideas and think about that contamination narrative for financial advisors, counselors, coaches out there, when a client comes to them and and they have this contamination narrative, what kind of techniques do you recommend in terms of moving them into that redemptive narrative?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's a couple things that you can do. I think first of all, you don't wanna be like, Hey, by the way, you are exhibiting signs of having a contamination narrative. And we think that, you know, like, I, I don't think you need to go there. You , you've
Speaker 1:Already lost them
Speaker 3:<laugh>. Right, right, right. And it's understanding the, the, you know, the psychology behind these things. It's , it's meant to build understanding and empathy, not so that you can sit there and, and be like, you know, the analyst with their notepad on the other side of the couch. It's not like that. So I think first of all, just recognizing like, oh, this might be one of the things that they unknowingly are doing to themselves, right? So you can subtly help them replace some of those thoughts with new ones. Uh, I love the word, love the word not yet. So for example, I was, I had picked up a couple of people who, a couple of houseless unhoused people and , uh, had taken them for something to eat and was letting them sleep in my garage. And I was, I was talking to them and you know, one of 'em, he, he's, I don't know, in his, his late twenties, he'd been through a lot, but he was on, he had gone through a surprise sobriety program and he was in a job training program and you know, he, he'd been outside for a while, but he, he was very, I don't know, I just, I saw in him, he still had like that spark in him. And he was like, yeah. He said something about like, yeah, you know, life just just hasn't worked out for me. And I said, yet, life hasn't worked out for you yet. And I think we've got many of us that have defeatist narratives in our head. That one word yet can be so liberating. 'cause you realize, wait, I've still got a whole lot of time. You know? Um , and so that's one. And I think another thing that you can do is to really help people who are struggling with feeling powerless just to tap into that physical and emotional feeling of agency. You can have them think about, or, you know, just tell you about a time when they felt totally in control financially or when they felt really, you know, proud of themselves financially, what was one of their, their accomplishments, whether they were really patting themselves on the back or they were really proud of something that they had a goal that they had achieved or something. You know, we've all got ways that we have made ourselves proud, but we don't dwell on them as much as we dwell on the, the difficult times and , uh, and the negative things. And so just helping people to tap into their own sense of, yeah, you know, what I have done a lot. Well, and if they can't think of 'em , you can point out to them some of the great decisions that they've made, whether it's, you know , look, your net worth has gone up, you know, over the last five years that shows good progress, that shows you're going in the right direction. Or it might be, Hey, you know, we've rebuilt your credit score by 150 points, or, you know, look, you've paid down 25% of your debt. Like whatever it is, if they're moving in the right direction, helping them really to feel the , uh, to feel the win and to feel that sense of, of , uh, personal accomplishment because we often just feel so far from the finish line that we just think we'll never get there.
Speaker 2:You know, and there's so much to take away from this. One of the things that you've announced recently is that you're developing new financial empowerment content for financial wellness professionals. Can you tell us more about this project?
Speaker 3:Yes. Empowerment based financial education content. I think , uh, we need more of it. And so I'm doing my best to create it. Some , some of it is like this, you know, talking about it with different people, trying to just spread, spread the word of, you know, being an empowering voice in people's financial lives, helping them to see and feel the positive and, and recognizing that it's so much needed because of all the negative that's out there that people are already feeling. They're just not, they're not gonna let on. So we kind of need to be like shiny, bright lights, being able to say, you know, yes, it's possible. Yes, you can thrive even with where you are, even with who you are, even with just the little that you have. You can, you can do it. We can help you. I think, I think just trying to get more of that out there. But, but also through, through writing and through working with other financial therapists and, and financial psychologists, I'm really excited about a couple of, I can't , I can't disclose yet, but projects that are in the works that I'm, I'm excited about being able to bring this kind of thing to, you know, where it's normally been in the financial therapy world, it's been people who can pay for financial therapy. And so it's been sort of limited to that upper tier unless people are doing pro bono work. But some of us are, are sort of pulling our resources and our talents together to try to create things for employee assistance programs so that, you know, just your average person can, can get access to liberating and empowering financial tools and education. And I've been doing a lot of work with different financial education groups. You know, jumpstart is one of the biggest, but you know, they're , they're national, but also state and local chapters, trying to help financial educators to bring this kind of attitude and content into the classroom so that more kids that feel disillusioned can actually have the opportunity to be introduced to these topics in a way that does see them as a person with a real history and help, you know, reach them where they are and then bring them to, bring them to the, the technical stuff. But not until they've gone through the emotional stuff that so often gets in the way. Sarah ,
Speaker 1:At the end of each interview, we like to ask our guests to share their 2 cents. If you had one piece of advice to leave with our listeners today, what would it be?
Speaker 3:I would say you've got to define the good life for yourself. We, and the reason why I say that is because we so often get ourselves into financial trouble chasing lives that we didn't wanna be living in the first place. So I think if you can get really centered in who you are and what you like and what you love and what the good life means to you, what would a day-to-day just really great existence mean for you? Then you can start building toward that and putting your resources toward that. And you're less likely to fall into all the, you know , uh, lifestyle inflation and debt traps if you're not chasing, if you're not chasing as much. So I think that that's, that's probably my biggest advice.
Speaker 2:That's great advice. Can you tell our listeners where they can connect with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you can go to thrive financial.net or you can find me on Twitter or x I am at financial underscore therapy and I'm also on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Thank you for coming on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Rachel. You can tell that Sarah has so much passion for this area. I really enjoyed hearing her personal story. I've actually never heard it and I love to hear the determination she has to change that for other people. And I think so many of us can relate to that concept of wanting to give back. So I thought that was wonderful. I liked her idea of this hero's journey, and I really liked how, quite honestly, that's because she's walked the hero's journey herself and I feel like she's now paying it forward to others and encouraging others to do the same. Blows me away with how she can really use research and good solid evidence-based information to inform practice. And I think my last but not least favorite part was this idea of, yet that to me was just a powerful word of how life hasn't worked out. Like she said, the young gentleman said, life hasn't worked out for me yet, is how she ended that. And I think that leaves kind of a dot, dot , dot ellipses with all of us in our own lives that there's more there, whether it's in your personal life, whether it's in your work life, whether it's in your research. It's a very liberating concept to be able to say, I'm not done yet. I've made it this far and I've enjoyed the journey this far. Or I've , I've had a hard time in the journey. That's fair too , but it's not over yet. And just continuing on in her work, I thought that was a great way to end, is seeing the future is still there. And Creatable,
Speaker 1:She shared so many just interesting statistics and research studies and reading today. I was rigorously taking notes and we'll put some of those in the show notes today as well. But so many of the statistics and the information she shared were really sobering. And there was something she said about, don't teach me the rules of the game. I cannot win. And I find that statement to be so heartbreaking. But I think a lot of what she talked about is very timely and, and things that we're talking about a lot right now. Trauma-informed education and creating that compassionate connection. And I think it comes back to, you know, leading your interactions when you're working with people with empathy. Leading with empathy, providing agency, you know, giving people the tools that they need to be successful, but in a way that's really speaks to them, that's unique to what actually understanding what they need personally. But most importantly, instilling hope. And you know, as we went through this episode today, hope was such a big word that stuck out with me. And it goes back to what you said, it's changing that narrative in people's minds that maybe not right now, but it's the whole idea of yet it is possible for you, the game, while it feels stacked against you. You know, what is your goal and what are you working towards and how do we help you get there? And so, really fantastic episode. I think the way she described the research and practice gap was probably the most articulate I've ever heard it described <laugh> . Yeah. And I just think there's so much opportunity for both sides to work together to really answer these questions and lead with curiosity and really make some big change in our field. And so, great having Sarah on for our listeners today, these types of conversations and these types of topics. This is what we talk about and learn about every year at the A F C P E symposium. So I encourage you to register. It's open now, symposium this year will be in New Orleans, November 29th through December 1st. And we hope to see everyone there.