Wayne Worthington 0:00
All right, the swim coach had said that there’s no such thing as luck. But luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And so if I can increase these variables of preparation, and opportunity, they result in higher frequency of things that we call luck.

Anne Bibb 0:14
Welcome to Unexpected Journey, the show where each week top professionals share work wisdom and life lessons about their careers and what they have learned about human experience in the workplace. I’m your host, Anne Bibb. Today we are joined by Wayne Worthington, the Chief of Staff at High Operator. He is also a Marine veteran with a passion for merging artificial intelligence and the human spirit. He has a wealth of experience in corporate strategy, innovation, recruiting, and team leadership. Before we begin, don’t forget to subscribe and leave your comments below. Now, let’s

Anne Bibb 0:53
get started. Welcome back to Unexpected Journey. Today, I have the pleasure of chatting with Wayne Worthington, who is not only the Chief of Staff at High Operator, but he is also a Marine veteran, which is near and dear to my heart as I have an active duty marine son. And so that is super special to me. Thank you for your service. And thank you for being on the show today. Yeah, and

Wayne Worthington 1:19
thank you for the support. It’s always encouraging to hear that from from anyone and everyone. And also happy to be here, really looking forward to this conversation with you, and certainly a listener of the podcast.

Anne Bibb 1:32
I appreciate that. We all appreciate that. You’re one of the reasons that we’re able to keep it going and keep everything going. So you have been with high operator for a while we actually had your boss on the show, she was on episode two. And so we got to learn a little bit about what Hi operator was doing. But you know, it’s been a minute. And y’all have been doing a lot of new things. And you were one of the first BPOS that I had the chance to talk to you that was really jumping into the AI game, and was doing some interesting stuff with it. And one of the interesting things that you and I have talked about was really the data driven approach to outsourcing. And I’d love to hear more from you on what that means and what data driven outsourcing means to you.

Wayne Worthington 2:23
Yeah, well, data driven outsourcing. You know, in the contact center, I hear often that folks will say it’s a treasure chest of data. And guess it is it is, but in the legacy methods that are used by almost everyone that treasure chest is locked and buried. Because the data is too dirty. It’s too dirty, because agents are the ones that you ask, Hey, you have to tag this. And here’s a new tag. And here’s a new change. And so that data isn’t great. And so it hi operator, we are an AI first BPO, a software first provider, with humans and the tech our agents in house. And so that makes clean data for us makes very clean data. And so what does that mean? I know that perhaps when Liz was on here, she said, we’re a bunch of data nerds that found ourselves in customer service. And we do everything we can to let that lead us to where we need to be inside of organizations that we support.

Anne Bibb 3:21
One of the favorite phrases that she used was the human in the loop and it’s still like to this day sticks with me was that your agents were the human in the loop of your AI centered technology. And it just was like, Oh, the human in the loop I don’t eat just to this day still resonates with me.

Wayne Worthington 3:37
Yeah, well here, I mean, we we really believe in building an organization that finds the perfect balance between tech and people. And we happen to deliver that inside a customer service today. And so human in the loop, like what is the loop while the loop can be servicing customers, but it’s also inside of our technology, which enables those to happen. And when needed, the person’s there at the intersection that humanity place that a person needs to decipher a situation or to help it along, shows up. So when it comes to the data, the data piece of things here is that we tagged data all over the place. And we go back and review those things to see what’s happening. And you know, sometimes we’ve been wrong on certain situations and policies and procedures. But a lot of the time we use it to continue to refine our models refine the behavior of our agents of the customers of the policies to start to squeeze out the most efficient system, the most efficient partnership and also when that meets business goals, because that’s what all has to come back down to it has to come back down to the p&l and that can sometimes become distant in the legacy BPO situation.

Anne Bibb 4:55
So I’ve worked with legacy BPOS Gosh, two only 527 years. And the phrase people process technology has been a part of my Innate System, my system for years. But what I find interesting is when I listened to Liz and I listened to you, it’s almost like it’s technology process and people the way that you function, and I find it fascinating.

Wayne Worthington 5:26
Yeah, it is, I think, listen, the great metaphor that I found on how we’re approaching this problem is that of an assembly line, the assembly line, really, that we attribute to Ford, and Henry Ford, was a huge unlock for humanity with productivity around machines. And so with that, that’s a technology first delivery solution. Let’s put everything in order, let’s have robots do things. And when necessary, a person comes in now, all of that technology is backed up by people and engineers that build it, and bring the humanity to the system. Now high operator, we have built a virtual assembly line, our system serves as the integrator of all the different disparate systems of our clients, we understand the necessary actions and steps. And these are the robots on the assembly line, that we can dial up and down automation as appropriate. And then let people do the necessary step as appropriate. So this is different. In Legacy The person is at the bottom, they do custom builds, every time people policy technology, I think as the order you shared there. And we thought that we revolutionize the space by creating the virtual assembly line, which puts the tech first, then the policy and the people that then help to usher it along and support that to be more productive, and bring this unlock, like we had in the Industrial Revolution. We’re bringing that type of

Anne Bibb 6:54
I was there wasn’t that great Wayne, you know?

Wayne Worthington 7:01
To this, so it’s different, right? It’s so different than sometimes. It’s hard to get across, I mean, the world is so dang noisy. I know that I contribute to the noisiness also with sales emails and things like this, but something so revolutionary, like conceptually, we see it, it’s moving so

Anne Bibb 7:21
fast. Oh, yeah, moving so fast, and it’s changing so fast. To keep up with that change. You have to be noisy. If you’re not noisy, you’re gonna get lost in the noise.

Wayne Worthington 7:33
That’s right. So it’s a balance. I mean, I have folks that we have great business partnerships now with, it’s because I’m, I was so annoying. I message them, like 15 times on email or LinkedIn. And then finally, they’re like, sure when I’ll see it. And then their jaws hit the table. They’re like, wow, how did we niceties really, I was like, I was trying, I was knocking on your door for so long. Thank you for coming. So yeah.

Anne Bibb 7:57
So, you know, talking about this, and how is it creating more effective customer retention strategies by building and flipping the script, right from, from people process tech to tech process people? How is it? How is it helping with that customer retention?

Wayne Worthington 8:14
Yeah, so customer retention, we find it an amazing use case that we’ve created a dynamic Winback calculator for one of our entertainment and media clients. And so they what we found, and this is the data first situation here, there’s no intuition at high operator, it’s all the data is we found that of seven components of a profile inside of this organization that two of them were predictive of behavior of wind back one was the account length, how long and how loyal the client must they be. And then they also was the percentage of a discount, not the real number, right. So it could be a greater number, but different percentages in these things. And so when it comes to retention, we then finally tune these models to say, okay, and you’ve been here for two years. That means the behavior of people in a perfect A B testing situation, they will be retained if we offer them a 60% discount, because that results in a 55% probability of retention, which then hits this arc curve, have your margin, right, if you give this much back and all the rest, we want to fine tune that to meet the goals of businesses, which can vary, depending where they are in the growth phase of an organization. It could be we want the most users, so bring them at breakeven, or we want the most margin and most revenue retained. There’ll be less people but a greater revenue retention. So customer retention, revenue retention, these start to deviate a bit. And that’s how we focus on it with a specific like subscriptions based model or customer retention with that. That’s one unique use case inside of that but when it comes to our general e commerce we find that great service helps keep people around.

Anne Bibb 9:54
So along those lines, what are some common patterns or trends that you’ve noticed in HKUST? From a behavior that really influenced those retention strategies,

Wayne Worthington 10:04
from our behavior, what we see as being indicative or having the greatest correlation to higher SES, which we also see then correlated to retention, right? It does get busy inside of the assessment here between correlation and causation here, right? Because you had to have great products for people to come back to them. There’s that’s where the heaviest attribution of customer retention is, but sees that we see the greatest connection with first response time. How soon can you get back, and then we go into the right response after that, which those have to go together. Those can’t be separated in full, but to meet people’s expectations, in channels. And so meeting customers quickly, meaning customers quickly and properly inside of channel expectations, is where we see the highest correlation with better CSAT which then has the highest correlation to retention.

Anne Bibb 11:04
So can you share like an example of when you tailored a strategy based on a customer’s unique goals?

Wayne Worthington 11:12
Do you mean MC, the specific ones, the Winback? I would say in sets, really,

Anne Bibb 11:16
the biggest one that you’ve tailored is that Winback? Calculator? Yeah, that’s

Wayne Worthington 11:21
the biggest one that we can see be applicable across organizations, because of a subscription models in the background. When it comes to increasing first response time. And then meeting those expectations. It’s so generalized across our clients, that nothing has had a massive change for us, right? When it comes to timing, a different piece of things it was we have seen about a 15% lift in CSAT, using our generative AI on the conversation and the text that’s delivered to customers. So I don’t mean to be trailing too much here, right? Because there’s so many factors that go into a great customer experience. So

Anne Bibb 12:06
yes, there are so many factors. So many.

Wayne Worthington 12:09
And it’s, it would be wrong for me in a debt, like in a data sense to say, Oh, this one thing changed everything. Now, we do see a direct causation. By using generative AI, and macros that we use and designed for our clients that is delivering a 15% lift, we’ll see that. So what does that mean for people listening? What that means is we take the macro from our clients, and the specific response, along with the unique data used for like whether that’s the price adjustment, unique thing for the customer, we send that off to generative AI which rewrites it and takes into k into consideration every unique component of that conversation, like you mentioned, it was for your dog. The AI then rewrites it capture those components. And because the message is being delivered as if someone with a doctorate in English literature or English language and wrote it that is resulting in a higher CSAT.

Anne Bibb 13:15
So it’s taking just to reiterate, it’s taking this standard macro that would be used on every single call, but it’s customizing it to that specific call chat.

Wayne Worthington 13:28
Yeah, that’s correct. That’s right. So if you’ve had a chance to use GPT chat, GBT, the free one from open AI. And let’s say you write an email, you could drop it in there and say rewrite this for me with empathy. And Chad Djibouti is going to take that message and rewrite it for you and polishes it quite a bit. And so we do that. But then we also because of our virtual assembly line, take all the unique components, the person’s background, what they’re talking about in the message, the specific item that we’re talking with them about customer service, and put that all in. And so then it rewrites it in an incredibly unique, empathetic and polished message. That seems like someone spent 30 minutes preparing for a customer when we do it in seconds.

Anne Bibb 14:14
And because let’s say I’m the customer, right? So it recognizes because of what I have in the system, because I’ve been a customer for five years, and that I’ve called in 15 times. And all of this is already in the system, it recognizes that I have the dogs I have, you know what my dog’s names are blah, blah, blah, blah, anything that has already captured it recognizes it, and tailors what is the standard macro to my specific case, because of that. That’s exactly right. That is incredible.

Wayne Worthington 14:49
And so if you’re in a message, let’s just say the dogs for example, you’re like where I ordered these dog bones for my dog’s birthday? Where are they? Standard customer service? would say, hey, and thanks for emailing in, I looked up your order, it’ll be there in five days done because this customer service rep is trying to get through volume

Anne Bibb 15:08
as their copy paste out of the macro form, right? Exactly.

Wayne Worthington 15:12
That Hi, operator, we take your background, we take the message that you said it’s for your dog’s birthday. And it’s going to rewrite and say, and that’s so exciting. This is for your dog’s birthday, we’re sorry to hear that it’s not there. And thank you for choosing us to celebrate them. It will be there in this amount of days, let us know there’s anything we can do for you. And that little twist goes from good to great. Being a conversation

Anne Bibb 15:36
doesn’t feel like I’m just a number. At that point, it feels like I’m an individual. It does. And that to me as a customer. I’m reading that email. And not only does it not feel like a copy, paste, it feels like you’re recognizing me as a person and you’re recognizing my dog.

Wayne Worthington 15:58
Exactly. So now think about how these actually exploit each other, you would think that that would be more expensive, you would think that that would take more man hours to do to have have a hyper customized message. The Hyper customized message is delivered with less man hours, with less time and more technology. So we can deliver a greater product and a greater service at less costs faster. And with that lift in all the CSAT piece. And that’s what happens. When you flip the script. You put technology at the core that’s supervised by humans.

Anne Bibb 16:36
Where do like I know that just in the last six months to a year, high operator has really grown substantially, especially with generative AI? Where do you see it going? And the next 1218 months?

Wayne Worthington 16:59
Our company or our technology? Both? Yeah. It’s moving really fast. And so we have very quickly in the last six months, begun pilots and are shaping pilots with enterprise and publicly traded organizations, because there’s a great combination of market forces, that our solution is a great fit for this time. Those Those situations are this the banking crisis, whether you know, you want to say it’s upon us or not with the squeeze on money, it’s tight right now, it’s not free, like it used to be. Everyone needs to save a squeeze on access to talent, it’s tough to hire, people are interested in also bringing things back to a near shore and onshore situation. And the last is that there’s been a rise in digital fluency of consumers. And so you mix all these together, and high operator is sitting in a perfect spot for all of that, when it comes to the technology, we have built such an infrastructure inside of this virtual assembly line that high operator is, is that we are able now to do end to end software that AI that many companies do that are broken up and fragmented. And so you’d have a multi vendor solution where you’d have like auto tagging with idiomatic. You’d have summaries and support within an organization like Salvi, you have chat bots with ADA, because we build our infrastructure. With this, we’re able to do all of those components for a brand. And also we’re rolling out right now what we’re still figuring out what to call, but a super chat bot. The super chat bot uses generative conversational AI, it feels like a person. It doesn’t misbehave because of how tight we’ve built guardrails. And then also it does the tier zero tier one FAQs, and tear to stuff like price adjustments, exchanges, returns, and things that most often have an agent and a loop. Were beginning to be able to fully automate. And so in the next six months to 24 months, let’s say I think that high operator we’re going to have a it’s going to be a wild rush of growth

Anne Bibb 19:15
can be a wild ride, for sure.

Wayne Worthington 19:17
And one thing that’s interesting too, and it’s it’s not too good to be true, because tech enables it is that the way we come to our partners is that we want to earn business. And so we set up pilots to do these at so cheap, you could go on your company card, we’re talking the first month, no minimum. And then like a $2,000 minimum, something like this to pay for some of the huge investment we’re going to put in on engineering. And then from there, once we get access, you only pay US per resolution.

Anne Bibb 19:51
There are not that many outsourcing organizations out there right now that have no minimum. I can only think of one other one And then from a contracting perspective, do you have like a requirement with regard to a year? Or how long are your contracts?

Wayne Worthington 20:13
Look. So right now, where we are, is that we go month to month to start in this pilot phase. And so are

Anne Bibb 20:23
the only so I now know two to two outsourcers that have no minimums and no contract, like your long three year, that’s amazing,

Wayne Worthington 20:35
we’re so radically different, I just need let in, I need invited to the table. And then once we get to the table, we then build the relationship. Now here, here’s what will happen to for the listeners that I hope to work with one day that are listening, is we want and need to displace 10 agents worth of work, I need it to be healthy relationship for me. And for you. So about 10 agents worth of work, we want to grow to in the first three to five months of time, because you got to we have to learn each other. So once we grow there, and then contracts go both ways. So it’s month to month, after we become comfortable each other and it’s working, we want to extend that we want to extend it for us and for you. Because it’d be terrible. If we had to walk away from someone and they weren’t prepared. That’s not okay. So we start off with a like, it’s too good to be true. It’s not the tech lets us do it. This, the fundamentals let us do it. And from there, we want to earn business. So let us in if we can work together, it will work. If not, we’ll find out together.

Anne Bibb 21:40
That That sounds fantastic. And we are going to have a link on the screen right now. Because I do know also that you’re doing for this show a free consultation as well. So there’s a link below that has a free consultation link. So if you are interested to talk to high operator to get that free consultation, then please go to that link below, put your information in, and then either Wayne or one of his team will be in contact with you. Absolutely. You were a marine for a while. And then after leaving the Marines, you took this kind of interesting journey before going into BP Oh

Wayne Worthington 22:25
wait, everyone grew up wanting to be in

Anne Bibb 22:29
actually know. Like, what, what made you take that journey. I mean, you were at Korn Ferry. And then you just kind of print this really odd route to get to where you are today. And you’re excelling. And you’re doing fantastic where you are today. So it all kind of makes sense when you look back. But it was a very interesting journey. So I’m curious as to how you took that.

Wayne Worthington 22:58
Yeah. So starting at the Naval Academy, I studied naval architecture, which is engineering of ships and Hall design, I mean, the most navy of Navy things you could do. And in the Navy, the people support the system, or it’s all about the ship, the strategic asset. After studying that for four years, I want to go to the other end of the spectrum, where the system supports the people, every tank aircraft is there for the young Lance Corporal. So I studied the system, I then served with the people. And that’s why I wanted to do this, this separation between those. When I got out of the Marine Corps. What I desired the most was a place to receive mentorship, and education, and then earn a long leash. And I had the opportunity to join Korn Ferry, and in many ways received the walking MBA in their global software practice where I recruited screened and placed C suite officers in b2b software. And I’m very grateful for that opportunity. And then went to another firm and did some more. And it’s a greater role inside of the search process. And so for about three years, I was a talent acquisition or talent consultant. That’s fantastic. Now, here’s where perhaps the Marine in me couldn’t stand it any longer, is I wanted to get into the arena. I wanted to be the guy I was recruiting, and not be a consultant on the side. And so I started my own search process. I wanted to find a b2b software organization where I could earn responsibility and have a big impact. And then, you know, the personal side is like, How can I skip the line? I want to get to the I want to be in leadership now. And that’s a chief of staff role. And so I interviewed with Liz, we hit it off, we had lunch a few times to make sure it’s a good fit. And since then, I started as Chief of Staff integrating our organization. Since then, I’ve built a partner program the channel space, and now I lead our go to market and sales. And so it’s been a fantastic journey. To me, it seems very be linear, and allows me to have a very wide aperture and view of the world on where I am today, but a lot to learn a long ways to go. And I remain incredibly encouraged about high operator and where Liz is helping to lead this organization, I get a chance to support her along the way.

Anne Bibb 25:20
That’s a very interesting journey to get there. And I think you’re the first person that I’ve ever met that actually placed themselves from a very impressive

Wayne Worthington 25:36
the roll. So I meet with a lot of veterans, probably once every other week, I’ll meet with a veteran who’s transitioning because it’s a tough thing to do. Oftentimes, the role that you want is not on LinkedIn. It’s not posted. It comes through very robust and expansive, extensive network. That’s not with you asking for a job. Oh, asking for advice. And then to create things. And the way I like to think about this, and is your luck surface area. Right, I just swim coach had said that, there’s no such thing as luck. But luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And so if I can increase these variables of preparation, and opportunity, they result in higher frequency of things that we call luck. All right. And so that’s what I did. And that’s what others can do, too. And I would I would recommend and encourage folks to think about their luck surface area for whatever they want to do.

Anne Bibb 26:32
I love that luck surface area. So how has being a Marine being a veteran impacted your business how you work in corporate because that is very, those are two very different things, right? And, but at the same time, as a Marine mom, I saw how different my son was after he came back from boat. And I saw the success and all of the positives that instilled in him. So I’m interested to know, as a veteran, how you take that, and help you be successful. Yeah, and work life now.

Wayne Worthington 27:18
Yeah, I take full I, man, I am fully brainwashed by the United States Naval Academy and the Marine Corps for not in a way that you’re unable to communicate, and is a bad thing. But as far as the honor, courage, commitment aspect that they preach and teach in all things, Korea to the fundamental things of our country. And the way that the Marine Corps is successful, is to be in to inspire people. Right. That’s what the Marine Corps is inspiring as an organization. And they said, a leader by the commander that I really admire and will always admire, he said earlier is two things, these Greek terms of Eritrea and tailless, Eritrea is true character, something of this this character of perfect integrity and doing the right thing. And then the telos is the vision, the vision of the future, the vision of the mission, what are we doing here, and so I could sell the Marine Corps and what I bring forward is those things, discipline, character, work ethic, grit, this is the true character piece. And then the vision is being able to partner with people put together a team create a plan, a detailed plan. So it’s the character aspect. And then it’s this discipline of the planning process and understanding weaknesses and vulnerabilities and weapon to target matches and how we’re going to approach problems and who’s effective. And how we’re going to do SIOP campaigns are working in virtual domain or the cognitive domain and the physical domain and tactics. All of that gets put together. And I think is one of the best schools for business. Because business is combat businesses competent.

Anne Bibb 29:02
What is your advice to those individuals who either are serving and are considering leaving and moving into a position or have already left are struggling, trying to find something or already working in corporate but are struggling, that transition piece that you were talking about earlier? Because it is difficult, transitioning from the structured military life back into civilian life and finding that that job? Yeah.

Wayne Worthington 29:38
Okay, I would say I would recommend three, three things. Three things. First, I would recommend to have gratitude for what that chapter in your life was. It’s not the same as if you go back it’s different. You don’t miss it. You miss the people and the time and the Time has gone. And so you have done a great service to this country. And thank you, and have gratitude for what that gave you. Remember the things that it was good for and what it was bad for. But put it in that place in your life, because now you are in a new chapter. And so I think you must come to terms and have gratitude compared to sense of loss and regret, or that you miss it, and you’ll never get it back is true, you’ll never get it back. But it’s supposed to be they’re supposed to be in that time. And now be thankful and reverence for that to move forward and honor the people that’s that, you know, the shoulders you stood on for that time. So that’s the first piece. The second one is that it’s okay to feel out of place. Because you left, and I gave you such identity, I had a hard time with finding identity, because the Marine Corps gave me this mission that was beyond me. And outside of that, in the civilian sector, organizations don’t do that to different relationship. And so feeling uncomfortable feeling like something’s missing is okay. Because it’s true. It’s okay, because it’s true. And so the second piece of advice here is begin to have as many cups of coffee and conversations with people to find new things to fill your time with, that’s meaningful. Work has a space now, your hobbies have a space now, your friends in your family have a space now. And the last is is and perhaps you can post this link, is it my brother in law, and I recognize this exact thing. And we’ve put together a free course on YouTube, that we call the discovery funnel, a six part series on how to discover what you might want to do next, how to have conversations, how to go out there, there’s the same process I use to find the chief of staff role at Hi operator, and then my brother in law used to find his role at AWS, which he loves now also. And so it’d be the last one is the advice like proactive, so gratitude, it’s okay to feel a little off and begin to make space for these different components to you. And the last is now it’s time to get to work. And we’ll work forward and find people to help you do it.

Anne Bibb 32:13
I love that. Thank you. Yeah. So when Why would people reach out to you? And how would they reach out to you?

Wayne Worthington 32:23
People have reached out to us for I would say, two primary reasons. One, curiosity, on what is the most advanced, growing and effective customer service solution out there. If you’re curious, reach out, let me show you. Let me give you a personal tour of hi operator. And while we’re doing curiosity, it’s worth my time, it’s worth your time. Because this is a huge radical shift in how this is going. We need to learn about it and evangelize the customer service community, one, two business needs if you need to decrease costs, if you need to increase your effectiveness, right. And you also want to have higher productivity. So faster, cost, better, faster, cheaper. All of those are true with high operator. So let us come alongside you earn your business. Those are the two primary reasons how you would reach us. And then how you do it is come on over to our website. We’ve redone it, we’ve put a new language on there to help communicate what this is. Hi operator.com or you can email me at Wayne at high operator.com Reach out to me. So veterans, if you’re in Dallas, I would love to meet individuals in the area also. The Veterans reached out to me on LinkedIn reached out to me on my email, my cell phone numbers on my LinkedIn reach out so that’s the the last two components there’s please reach out to me. We’d love to chat connect you with a really large network of veterans that I know here. And then. And I’m also part of an organization called the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, the deck which focuses on providing resources for people starting businesses. We have a 20,000 square foot facility like a we work area that we’re building in Redbird, which is an Oak Cliff. So we’re focusing on communities that have not had as much support historically. So if you’re a founder, if you’re someone that is interested in supporting founders, if you want to volunteer if you want to be a part of the associate board with me, I am the program’s chair and put on events for this organization. So in your in Dallas, if you want to get involved with startups, if you want to advise people and give insights and help entrepreneurs to be successful in this region, also reach out to me I’d love to connect you with our organization and the nonprofit that I’m a part of.

Anne Bibb 34:41
Perfect. All right, well, thank you so much for joining today. Wayne, really appreciate always enjoy our time together. You got it. And thank you everybody for joining this week. We

Anne Bibb 34:52
will see you again next week. As we wrap the episode up we would like to take this time to thank you for joining us This week on unexpected journey. Our guests information will be linked in the episode description along with a link to our company website, remote evolution.com and our hosts website and bibb.com. Please don’t forget to like, subscribe and share on your favorite podcast app and on our YouTube channel so that you never miss an episode and we can continue to bring them to you.

Anne Bibb 35:22
Let us know your thoughts on what we discussed in the comment section. And once again, thank you for joining us. We hope to see you again next week for another episode of unexpected journey.