Can you kind of walk us through your injury timeline?

I've had, uh, quite a few years in a row of injuries.

It seemed everything started by the time I reached 60 years old.

I had, I had, uh, sold my business and moved, uh, from New- upstate New York down to Florida, and I, after completing a stint as a, as a tennis coach for Skidmore College and retired down here with my wife.

And that was about nine years ago I came down to Florida, and I was looking forward to being able to really devote myself to training and playing competitive tennis and becoming the best player I could be.

And uh, I'd taken real good care of my body up until that point, pa- point, and since I was, you know, working behind a desk and not out on the court like all the guys I was competing against, I thought maybe my body was gonna be in great shape going forward.

Their wear and tear would show up and not mine.

Hmm

So Eric, uh, I know you've been successful for decades, but what made you realize that just doing what you've always done wasn't gonna be enough and that you actually had to do more to improve your game?

My goals when I initially started playing national tournaments was just go play a national tournament, see how it works out, see if I can compete, where do I stand with all these, these guys.

And I went and I played and saw that this is something I could do and that I can compete.

But I started with, with, with very reasonable, realistic goals.

All right, let's just play.

Next thing is let's see if I can get a national ranking.

And then each age group I kept on trying to move up in my- in the rankings.

I'm not looking to try to improve anything." How, how would you respond to that belief in a way that they could still be hopeful but be honest?

Why is that not necessarily a concern for you in the same way that just sort of the more humdrum aspects of just a slowing consumer, uh, would be?

Yeah, I think that's a very thoughtful challenge, Lisa.

I mean, if you look at, at the, the broader marketplace right now and you look what's really developing from a, you know, a core spend standpoint, we need to see a, a development beyond, you know, AI and cyber spend.

That's something that is a very played-out thesis.

Again, we're weary of being involved for too long.

Uh, I think that that's something that, that gives us, again, some level of skepticism about the rest of the, uh, the market's participation.

One thing that I want to really emphasize that I think is probably undercovered is, is that cash flows are actually becoming more valuable.

What are you actually going to hear that will give you a sense of whether this market has baked in too many rate cuts or has gotten a little bit overly excited about the pace of the easing cycle that's ahead?