Patrick Donoghue: Worth it. I think the surprising and fun and rewarding aspect of it was building it, right? Had I joined XYZ mortgage company or XYZ commercial lender, the process has already been built out, right? Here, I got to take a big part in building those out in how I envision them to be. And make that work in a way that we could grow. And I came as an operations director. And that put me right squarely in the development phase of how we take, that's the [00:02:00] manufacturing phase. How we take it from the sales point to the closing point. And we really did need someone at that point. It's been very rewarding, not without a lot of headaches and turmoil, but we worked through it. And like I said before, I called you on October 30th, 2016, saying we did 20 loans. We do that regularly now. And I would also say that infusing what we could from a technology standpoint into that process was really unique to Groundfloor. Because we didn't use an out of the box system. We built our own. And there's something to say about spending your career building something, and I find that rewarding.

Brian Dally: Yeah, I can identify with that. You tell the story about calling me about the 20 loans. I do remember that as being quite a highlight. I didn't remember the date. But you did. What were some of the biggest challenges [00:03:00] along the way, and are there any stories that stick out in your mind that you can share that give people an inside look at what it's like to build something like you helped to build?

Patrick Donoghue: Well, there were so many challenges that were rewarding. I definitely remember coming to Groundfloor and needing to explain what a closing settlement sheet was. And simple things like that, which was a little eye-popping, but it made me more valuable, I guess, to some extent. But, I think that, and, honestly, the people are for me is where, the group that we've attracted has been the most meaningful part for me. And watching those core people develop in their careers and have every much of an influence on it that I did, that's really meaningful. And I would say, what I remember is the landmarks. I remember hitting a billion in repayments very much. And I remember you and I high fiving that. And, it's easy to give it out. It's harder to get it back. Right? So, that was very monumental. And then any milestone eclipse, like a hundred in a month, or, I think we had t-shirts that said 200 in a month. And so all of those rallying cries. And some of the downturns, like in COVID and what we experienced, and that's been challenging. So, it's all been very rewarding though. Even the challenges.

Brian Dally: In the early days, I think we made so many culture and people mistakes.

Patrick Donoghue: I'm glad that you said that.

Brian Dally: Those were painful. And those are on me. Those are not your mistakes. Those are my mistakes. And I learned a lot from them. Can you talk about how the culture changed over those years? And what you experienced, maybe in the industry? Because I learned the industry can be a hard scrabble, rough sort of culture in a lot of companies. I think we were on the verge of importing a lot of that into our company and then we changed direction. But can you describe how the culture has changed inside the company and why that matters?

Patrick Donoghue: I mean, the puzzle piece was fintech and mortgage people. How does that work? And it didn't always. But I think it attracted, from the real estate side, it attracted smart people that saw the difference. I think our culture's highly intelligent and that's one of the things that was attractive to me when I joined. I think by and large we've retained the sense of a good [00:06:00] community. We honor transparency, we honor authenticity and commitment, and I think that has largely held true throughout the years. I think that you took a firm stand on that in about 2017, and I think we've been highly consistent with that since that time.

Brian Dally: I think Patrick was on a phone call that I was doing from, not proud of this, I was doing from, and Kieran, if you're listening, you may remember it. I was on a ski trip in Park City. I was on vacation with Kieran, and he was probably, gosh, he must have been 12.

Patrick Donoghue: Yeah.

Brian Dally: And, the lifts open at 9. We're ready to go. I'm trying to wrap up a meeting as it's coming up on 9 o'clock. I'm on my phone, in my ski gear, with Kieran. He's ready to roll. And it was a real wake up call for me because here I could not get off this call. You were on it.

Patrick Donoghue: Yep.

Brian Dally: You were not one of the bad actors on it. Thank you.

Patrick Donoghue: [00:07:00] But people were screaming at each other...