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CWJJ Episode 135: Jim Francis

Thursday, September 29- Jim and James sit down with Jim Francis (EN Engineering) and talk all things Pipeline Safety. Jim Francis also shared his love for movies, painting, and his family.

Quick Links:

James Cross on Linkedin
Jim Schauer on Linkedin
Jim Francis on Linkedin

Episode Transcript

 [0:00] [music]

Jim Schauer:  [0:24] Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this episode of “Coffee with Jim & James.” James, I got to tell you got a new mug. I’m happy today. We have a great guest, a friend of ours in the industry. We’re going to talk about everything from SMS to top‑100 movies, to painting. This is going to be robust.

James Cross:  [0:42] We’re going to cover a lot of ground today. I’ll tell you what, over the next couple of days, we’re recording with some rock stars, and Jim Francis is one of those. Jim, welcome to the show.

Mr. Jim Francis:  [0:56] Glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Jim:  [0:59] It’s a pleasure, my friend. Tell us how your day is going right now Jim. What’s Jim’s day look like right now?

Mr. Francis:  [1:07] Well, it started off pouring down rain, and then the sun has come out. I got a bird’s feeder outside my window. It’s, it’s sort of a beautiful thing. I get to watch all the tensions come and go. So it’s been productive. It’s been diverse. It’s not been a bad day at all.

James:  [1:23] And for those that are sharing, or watching us on video today, full disclosure, Jim said, “I would have a full background, everything hung up. I just moved.” He’s not in a prison cell, I swear. He is just decorating

Jim:  [1:41] I’m in a large basement somewhere, actually, in Southern Indiana.

Jim:  [1:45] OK. I got to ask a question, Jim. Let me just connect the dots. You were with Vectren Utilities. Then thus became CenterPoint in the past. Now I know you were in Indiana, did you ever move down to Houston with CenterPoint or not?

Jim:  [2:02] I’ve moved a couple of different times when I’ve been acquired a couple of different times. Way back, when I first started, I worked at Dayton Power & Light in Ohio, and then back here in [inaudible] . I moved to Indiana, in Evansville area, and I lived there for about 15 years. Then, one CenterPoint acquired Vectren, and I moved down to Houston for about three years.

[2:20] I was moved over to EN Engineering and came back to Indiana, where of many my friends were, and my wife ended up getting a job up here. It’s been good to be home. Good to be back.

Jim:  [2:32] Yeah, that’s a good thing. Growing up in the Midwest, there are definitely things about the Midwest that I miss. I will say that, but Florida life is pretty good for me. Texas life is good for me too, so I like…

James:  [2:44] Can’t complain. So I’m basically the third wheel on this CenterPoint train, I felt. It seems the first time for me.

Jim:  [2:52] No, it’s not, but you know, James, when we do these podcasts, I was actually thinking about this today, “Who’s going to have more fun? You or me?” just because Jim Francis and I have a lot of things in common, and you’re just a sponge for the industry. You just want to keep learning more and more about everything, so I don’t know, maybe it’s going to be fun for all three of us.

James:  [3:14] Yeah, we’ve heard great things about Jim Francis from our friend, Steve Allen. He was excited to hear you were coming on today, so why don’t we just get right into it, Jim?

Jim:  [3:25] I am ready if you all are. Jim, a topic that is near and dear to your heart ‑‑ SMS. Why did you ever get into SMS Consulting? The whole bit. Everything that you do with it, lead us, unpack that a little bit. Bring us into your world.

Mr. Francis:  [3:45] Yeah, it’s funny. So I’m a believer that things happen for a reason. You get people put in your place. You get experiences. You get things that get thrown at you. And when I look back at my career, and it’s actually 30 years now, which is kind of crazy to believe that that’s the case, I look way back to when I first started.

[4:06] I was designing transmission pipelines, we were looking at records, I was building GIS systems, and doing system planning. Every time somebody would leave the business, I would get their job. And so I was going right away into managements and land services. All kinds of things, that you think, “Why am I getting this?”

[4:25] Just because I’m the new man on the block, maybe that’s the why they gave it to you back then. But when you start to fast‑forward, you start to look at all of the experiences in the things that you have. I had the opportunity to manage an operations division, and that was fascinating.

[4:42] It gets you into customer service. It gets you into construction, the engineering side of things. You deal with labor relations. Sort of the litany of all things that kind of come, you have the emergency response activities. You start to understand and appreciate damage prevention.

[4:57] I’m never spending a night out on Main Street in Downtown Dayton after somebody excavated a hole, and then somebody else proceeded to drive their car into the hole, which then broke the gas line and the waterline. And then, subsequently soaked the gas lines up with water, and then a low‑pressure system.

[5:16] So, you get those experiences when you have that moment to work in operations, and then you continue to fast‑forward, and all the compliance requirements. When I became a director, I actually got greeted within the first few days of my job with a pipeline safety incident, a house explosion.

[5:35] That’s how you meet people like Steve Allen, by the way. As you start to work with commissions and you start to work with the Pipeline Safety Divisions, you start to see the risks and the things that happen through the course of all of that. And then you end up with integrity management, an OQ, and DIMP.

[5:51] Ultimately, that stuff all starts to build together, and then you’re fortunate enough…And I was fortunate enough to work for a company that decided they were going to commit to 1173. They put it on my desk and said, “Go figure it out,” and we did. It worked out really, really well for us.

[6:08] You can see the value to the field folks, and you can see the value to the company as a whole. That’s where Steve and I, for example, started building our relationship. That’s really the background of it, and that’s how I got into it.

[6:21] I remember one of my colleagues, Nancy Conder, and I, worked together to figure it out. I kept telling her at some point, “We should be consulting around this. There’s some things that we have to offer to figure this as a whole, and this would be a good opportunity for us.” I was given the opportunity to come to EN and do exactly that. Thrilled to do it now.

James:  [6:41] Jim, you mentioned 1173. This is off‑script, so you don’t have to answer it. You can just tell me to move on, but I’ve talked to Steve about it. I’ve talked to a lot of folks that run in the same circles. How close do you think we are of that being, not a recommended practice, but a full‑blown something that everybody’s going to be adopting?

Mr. Francis:  [7:02] It’s funny because it feels like, the states are starting to pick everybody off. I think maybe it’s slowed a little bit. Initially, it seems like several years ago, four or five years ago, an incident would occur or something would happen, and it would become sort of an expectation at that level, which I think is fine. It’s a good way to do it.

[7:21] I think the states then can start to align with the cost recovery and some of the other challenges that people have, but it’s probably the next big incident that happens. The whole idea behind it is, let’s get out in front of this. Let’s mitigate risk without waiting for the incident to occur.

[7:38] If we can get ourselves a little more accelerated around that, then maybe we don’t have to be faced with it, it’s a requirement and we all have to do it.

James:  [7:45] You bet. Jim, you’re obviously an SMS champion. When we think about the difference that implementing SMS does for operators, in your opinion, where should operators be spending their time, money, and resources?

Mr. Francis:  [8:04] The two elements of 1173, the two goals and objectives that they highlight are to reduce risk, and improve the safety culture. Clearly, when you start to execute the process, they go hand in hand. If you’re going to start, you might as well start in that area.

[8:21] If you start in risk management, as an example, and you start to build out the processes around that, it naturally forces you into other areas. Now, you’ve got to engage your stakeholders. You got to go out and talk to your employees. You talk to your contractors. You talk to the folks that you’re working with, the public, and others. You talk to your regulators.

[8:40] You start to gather information from these folks, and you also then start to create this opportunity for them to be engaged in the solutions. Somebody, somewhere, has got to mitigate that level of risk, and can you find people that understand the process? Well, nobody understands it better than the person and executes it every single day.

[9:00] Naturally, that’s the area that you start to grow in, and then that creates a need for building a learning environment. You’ve got to be able to have some way to be able to educate the workforce. There’s no better way to do that than to start to execute SMS.

[9:17] It takes leaders to be committed behind it all. Clearly, that’s a part of the process, but if you’re going to do it, that’s the area to start with this. Risk management’s kind of a catalyst for change, and it’s the accelerator of the whole thing.

Jim:  [9:32] Jim, you hit on something and I want to unpack this a little bit. You mentioned an environment to learn, sharing information, and such like that. Steve Allen has taught me so much over the years about SMS and PSMS. The one thing he says is it’s a journey, it’s not a destination.

[9:51] Steve is a huge proponent of committees, task force, items like that where people can share, and you hit on it too. You have 30 years of knowledge up in that noggin of yours. I don’t have as much. I have little over two decades, but still, there’s going to get a time where we hopefully can retire, at some point down the road here.

[10:12] And we have to think about those two generations that are right behind us. And how do we get that information? What are some of those platforms that you see are beneficial that we could get people to recommend to people to get engaged and involved with?

Mr. Francis:  [10:29] Clearly today, the AGA, for example, there’s great sharing forms. Things like the Peer Review program. You get the API and some of the Avenues that they have to come in and do. …what evaluation and those are one way to certainly share about it.

[10:47] I got to be involved in executive‑level conversations around incidents and things that would occur and those are all great. But once again, we start to think about, like you talked about the number of people that are transitioning in the business.

[11:01] My 30 years, your couple of decades, 5 years, 10 years from now, we’re not going to be sitting there having these kinds of conversations, so somebody else behind us is. How do you start to accelerate their understanding and their learning? And then you go back in time.

[11:14] It’s interesting when I talk about 1173 a lot of times, I start with 1965. Because people don’t remember what the driver was behind Pipeline Safety Code and how it came to be.

[11:28] There’s an interesting incident in Natchitoches, Louisiana that talks about pipeline exploding, stress, corrosion, cracking and all these other things that we see in Integrity management. And how do you get from that to where we are today? Part of that is discussing the history along the way. San Bruno and Bellingham and all these incidents created change.

[11:47] There’s forums out there that exist. Whether it’s going through an AGA conference, or things like what you guys do. Or, you might bring your clients in and we might bring our clients in, but I’m not sure that we’re having a conversation with all of the levels of the organization. Maybe that can be?

[12:04] Certainly, Executives talk about it and then they try to bring that back to the workforce. But how do you ever get an operator to talk to an operator? That’s a piece that sort of fascinating…I’m not sure that we’ve scratched the surface on that yet, and maybe that’s where we start to get sort of that next level.

[12:20] Let’s not talk about instance, let’s talk about risk. Things we’re doing to improve…Let’s make sure that we’re getting the feedback from those people that never understand how to deal with work.

Jim:  [12:30] Yeah, and I’ve seen that. Just me popping real quick James. Jim and I were at AGA New Orleans, a couple of months ago for committee and board meetings, and all that.

[12:40] We ran into each other, and those days were very intensive. Sitting in committees, where a lot of people are sharing in my committee, which is Supplemental Gas LNG/CNG, and how we can use it on the Grids, that’s my past.

[12:55] It was just amazing to sit in there with 40‑some people in just that committee alone. And all the sharing, the walls went down and we had operators from all over the United States that were involved in that. We were just trying to share best practices, safety tips, safety items, ways to do things more efficiently, and it was really wonderful to see.

[13:17] Again, that was 40, and we can imagine how many people are in our utility space right now throughout the United States. Just to get that out, but good point. James, I didn’t mean to jump.

James:  [13:28] No, no, I was just going to mention. Think about what we just saw at the Louisiana, Gas Association pipeline safety conference, right? It was very similar to what Jim is describing. Just people coming together and talking about things. There were inspectors and regulators and all kinds of folks in the room.

[13:48] But it was very refreshing, and it wasn’t just Louisiana. We had six‑seven states, at least, with authority there and that was refreshing to see.

Jim:  [14:01] That was your first time there.

James:  [14:03] There were a lot of great groups out there doing a lot of awesome work.

Jim:  [14:06] They really are.

Mr. Francis:  [14:08] I was following you guys on LinkedIn and seeing all the posts and I kept thinking to myself, “AGA must do a great conference. Sort of made me want to be there with all the things that were going on.”

[14:20] It’s interesting that one of the challenges is trying to understand, what’s the best practice around this? And how do you start to have that conversation so you can recognize it?

[14:29] I remember years ago, I went to an AGA best practice event, and it was really good. We were talking around Emergency Response and‑but you read the whim of whoever happens to be there in the middle of that conversation. There might be four or five operators and you’re talking about the best practice among them. Not the best practice in the industry.

[14:46] And so having that bigger conversation with 40 people are‑that part of it is where the evolution of SMS and the evolution as an industry starts to really make change. We never have to go to the point of putting new regulations in place. Not as [inaudible]

Jim:  [15:04] And I agree with that. I think Regulators’ last week, James and I’ve been to AGA and spent a lot of time with friends, as well as Regulators from a lot of the Gulf States, were there. And when the regulators hear a lot of the chatter and talk about initiatives that people are doing in the industry. I think it does energize them because they want to support that, they want to support those dialogues.

[15:27] They want to support that process. And instead of being the person that says, “Here you shall, or you should do this,” rather they’re like, “That’s a great idea.” When I heard that, I was like, “That gets me excited,” because they’re saying yes, keep going, folks. Keep going.

[15:42] And PSMS, again for me, I’ll go back to Steve Allen and it never ends. There’s never a final. You don’t get to the point where you say, “OK I completed it. We’re done.” It’s Everlasting and that’s an exciting thing that you always want to re‑assess and look at it on how you can keep evolving and doing better.

Mr. Francis:  [16:01] It’s funny because Steve Allen and I, started that conversation back in 2015, and part of it, not really knowing what we were doing. It won’t take much to figure it out as we go collectively between his staff, our team, and we collectively work together on it and there was a point in time where we did a continuous improvement event. It was around 811, inability to call.

[16:26] And in that event, we had Steve or one of his team members. We had excavators. We had the folks from Indiana 811. We had our team. We had our locators. It was a cool event. It demonstrated the “What’s possible in this if you start to engage all your stakeholders in the right way?” and it was at the end of the day, we didn’t necessarily walk away with all the action.

[16:50] Indiana 811 had some. The excavators had some. Steve had some. We all had something to do. It was powerful, I guess in the way it’s supposed to be done.

Jim:  [17:00] Man, that’s exciting. OK, Jim. I have been waiting for days to ask this question.

James:  [17:07] I know you were going to do this.

Mr. Francis:  [17:09] What?

Jim:  [17:10] I knew you were going to do this.

Mr. Francis:  [17:12] Oh, I’ve been waiting with a ready. Bated breath. Anyways, you have a top 100 movie list, OK? I want to dive in the gym, more on the personal side because there’s some interesting facts that have come about that I’ve just learned. We have a top‑100 movie list that’s ongoing. Is that Correct?

Mr. Francis:  [17:31] It is. [inaudible] makes an Excel spreadsheet.

Jim:  [17:34] Oh, you do not. You do?

Mr. Francis:  [17:37] Oh yeah, I have an Excel spreadsheet for that.

James:  [17:40] EN has an SMS program for it, it sounds like.

Jim:  [17:46] It’s the quality control process around the movie…

James:  [17:48] Romance. I’m so sorry.

Mr. Francis:  [17:50] [laughs] I actually have this Excel spreadsheet that every year I get to January I copied the prior year’s over, I go through this exercise and validating that, “Do I still like these movies or not”? Then I update the list. It’s funny, I started this when my son was born, my hope, who’s now 23 years old.

James:  [18:12] Oh, wow.

Jim:  [18:13] Wow. It’s been a while.

Mr. Francis:  [18:16] Yeah, it’s been a while. My list actually goes back 15 years, but AFI came out with their top‑100 movie list of all time. “Citizen Kane” was number one. I forget what was number two. Just go down the list of all these epic movies.

[18:29] I thought to myself, I’ve never watched these movies, so I rented Citizen Kane. I watched it and I was like, “Eh,” and I rented the next one. And I finally got to “Lawrence of Arabia,” and I can see why people, think it’s one of the top 100 movies, but I was like, “Eh.”

[18:46] So, I got a six‑pack, I sat down on a Friday night, three o’clock in the morning. I only had, myself a list hammered out, and I’ve been maintaining it ever since.

Jim:  [18:55] So where does Point Break land on your list?

Mr. Francis:  [18:59] It doesn’t even make the honorable mention.

James:  [19:01] Does Pulp Fiction make it?

Mr. Francis:  [19:05] No, this is the best part about having the list because people then start to go, wait a minute.

James:  [19:12] Influence it.

Mr. Francis:  [19:12] Pulp Fiction should actually not be on there. That’s a rather common one that comes up when I talk to people. I just never got into tearing team off.

James:  [19:21] That’s understood. All right, so we got to know though what’s in the top‑five engine print. And by the way, this is my love language. You’re my kind of nerd, Jim Francis. I’m really excited about this.

Mr. Francis:  [19:35] Yeah, I’ll send you my list when it’s all said and done. Of course, I was a child in the 1980s. So, it’s a lot of movies there from that era, but the number one movie of all time is “Gladiator”.

Jim:  [19:46] Oh, OK. With Russell Crowe that one.

Mr. Francis:  [19:50] Yeah, that’s the one. I watched that with my father. My dad was never a guy that ever watched movies. And I sat, watched it with him one night and he looked at me after a while and goes, “That was an awesome movie.”

James:  [20:00] OK, I have to play this game for just a second. My wife’s favorite movie is “Forrest Gump,” and surely, did that make it somewhere?

Mr. Francis:  [20:08] Oh, yeah, Forrest Gump’s up in the top ten. That’s actually my wife’s favorite movie. So, number two is “Die Hard”. Number three is “Hoosiers”. Number four is…

James:  [20:19] a homer.

Mr. Francis:  [20:21] Well, I grew up in Michigan, I didn’t grow up in Indiana. I watched it when I was living in Ohio. Number four is “Shawshank Redemption,” and number five is “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

James:  [20:35] That’s good. That’s solid.

Jim:  [20:37] A couple of those are my favorites, absolutely.

James:  [20:39] I know that.

Jim:  [20:40] Being a product of the ’80s, James. Some of us are a product of the ’80s.

James:  [20:45] Oh, well.

Jim:  [20:47] He wasn’t even born then. I’m just kidding.

James:  [20:50] That’s not true. I was born in ’79 actually.

Jim:  [20:53] Oh, so you can claim the ’70s then.

James:  [20:56] Really an ’80s baby. I mean, really. And then there’s another cool fact about him that I want to bring up too, and that’s that you recently got into painting. And from what I understand and we didn’t really get to talk about this in the pre‑show. But what are you painting? And what got you into it?

Mr. Francis:  [21:14] What got me into it…I’ll start there…My youngest son has some disabilities. Over the years you try to figure out what kind of therapies might work for him, and we got turned on to art therapy and he’s 19 years old today. So he probably started when he was like eight or nine years old, and the art therapist taught this process called mean therapy.

[21:38] They work through a lot of visual things and try to get their brain stimulated. And then they paint, and it’s unbelievable. What they paint. Unfortunately, I don’t have one of his pictures here to show you. I wish I had gotten one. Anyway, she moved to Florida, and then we moved to Texas. And it’s like “I don’t have an art therapist.” So I thought to myself, “I’ll try to be the art therapist.”

[22:06] Then it just caused me to think, “Yeah, maybe I should try to paint.” I’m painting with him all the time, and maybe I can try it. I did a painting and I painted a barn with a big sunflower in front of it. And I went, “Yeah, that’s not half bad. Then you start to apply your engineering skills and go. It’s not to skill. There’s all kinds of other things you want to do.

[22:23] Then I painted the next bar and it turned out awesome. It’s the best painting I’ve done it. Ever since then, I’ve probably done 40 or 50 paintings since then.

Jim:  [22:33] Do you sell them on eBay? Can I buy one?

Mr. Francis:  [22:36] Yeah, I’ve heard that. People have said, “Hey, if you try, you might get people to buy.”

James:  [22:40] Have you done one of us yet on the podcast? I’m just wondering.

Mr. Francis:  [22:44] No, not yet, but I could. I’ve only done one. Faces aren’t my thing. I’m kind of a landscape…

James:  [22:50] Oh, same.

Jim:  [22:52] You should post some of those, sometime, or maybe after…

James:  [22:55] Hold on. I think he has one.

Mr. Francis:  [22:56] I got two paintings.

Jim:  [22:59] Let’s see them.

James:  [23:00] Right now?

Jim:  [23:01] Yeah.

Mr. Francis:  [23:01] I’ll show you my first one which is a barn. The barns are kind of my thing.

James:  [23:06] Look at that. He said it’s not the scale.

Jim:  [23:09] Is that the one you were…

James:  [23:10] That’s the one you fixed?

Mr. Francis:  [23:12] This is the one which is to scale. It’s not my favorite one. There are others that are a lot better.

Jim:  [23:19] That’s beautiful.

Mr. Francis:  [23:19] I can even draw lakes, and I do some watercolors. Then this one you’ll see I’m not good at faces, but…

Jim:  [23:25] Yeah, little nativity scene. That’s great.

Mr. Francis:  [23:33] I go online, I find pictures and I try to replicate them.

Jim:  [23:37] Well, I tell you what though, for your experience with your family and son, doing that as well as the last couple of years of COVID. I know a lot of us have struggled with releases and trying to get our energy. Something other than honestly working 12, 14 hours a day in front of the screen for the last two years.

[23:57] We’re now getting back out. We’re now doing things, but I bet that was very beneficial for you. Not just for your son over the many years, but for you personally Jim, over the last two years and it’s fun to see that.

Mr. Francis:  [24:08] It’s been a good release for me. It’s funny because my wife always says, “I’m jealous. I don’t have that release. I don’t have that strength.” I just bought her a keyboard, so she can play piano.

James:  [24:19] Love it.

Jim:  [24:20] [laughs] That’s good.

James:  [24:21] I was about to say, my wife would say, “You need to go paint.”

Jim:  [24:26] She would put you away James. Say hush, hush.

James:  [24:30] A little bit. Well, Jim, we’re wrapping up here, but we ask everybody or we’ve been asking everybody one question. One of our things we try to do here with this show is to give it all the way. We can’t take it with us when we leave here.

[24:45] Anything we can teach folks, whether it be leadership or ideas or concepts or things about our industry, whatever it is that Jim Francis would want to give all the way. What would that be?

Mr. Francis:  [24:59] I love the question because it prompted my thinking around what that would be. Many years ago, my mother gave me a book and I’m not really an app‑book reader. So she gave me a book called “Falling Upward.” The premise behind the book is we live two stages of life.

[25:16] In the first whatever 40 years of your life, it’s pretty self‑absorbed. You’re trying to figure out who you’re going to be and what you’re going to be. You’re worried about your job and you’re worried about making money and you’re worried about whatever status and all the other stuff.

[25:31] Then at some point, there’s this flip of the switch and you start to realize, I can’t take it with me. I love the fact you talked about that because it’s like you can’t take it with you. It’s guided me over the last, I don’t know, seven, eight years since I finished the book.

[25:49] I actually started reading the book and then for whatever reason, it was too deep for me and I put it down. Then like three years later, I picked it back up and I finished it and then read through like I was reading the comic book. It was simple.

[26:02] There was a message that had a meaning at that time. I think about that and turn to my work and my personal life. It’s like, “What can I give back to others?” That’s part of a lot reason why I consult in SMS.

[26:14] There’s stuff that I can take with me and somebody else needs to know it. We got to be able to help each other. We’ve all got that in us. You guys are doing that. What you do as part of the show is trying to get back to others. There’s a lot of people out there like that. I love that. It’s just to make sure you realize that there’s that value that we all have to give to somebody else.

Jim:  [26:38] Amen, amen. Definitely resonates strongly with myself and James. I tell you that that mindset Jim, that you have again, resonates with so many in the industry where they want to do that. They are doing that and it is for the betterment of the whole industry.

[26:56] It’s wonderful to see and wonderful to hear. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don’t want to end guys. I could keep going and going, but I think we’re at our end. Jim Francis, any last‑minute things you want to say? Anything to wrap up with?

Mr. Francis:  [27:17] Yeah. It is thank you guys for letting me have the opportunity to be on the show. Maybe if you ever want to make it a trio someday, we can go Jim, James, and Jimmy. I don’t know. You guys are doing an awesome job.

James:  [27:28] Yeah. This is over our Jim quota. I think.

Mr. Francis:  [27:34] I walked at a college class that had 5‑10 people in it and 5 of them were named Jim. Too many Jims was not a good balance.

Jim:  [27:40] Even before the show James says, “Hey Jim.” You and I both looked like, “Is he talking to you, or is he talking to me?”

James:  [27:48] In one of my middle school classes, I had a guy named James cross.

Mr. Francis:  [27:53] Oh, no kidding.

James:  [27:54] Seriously, same name. This is the most confusing thing on Earth.

James:  [27:58] Yeah, that’s all we got, folks. Jim, thanks for joining us.

Jim:  [28:03] Absolutely, Jim. Thank you so much.

Mr. Francis:  [28:05] Thanks, guys.

Jim:  [28:05] Absolute pleasure. I’d like to reserve maybe a repeat guest, maybe a couple of them up with a Steve Allen down the road or some…Really nerd out on SMS stuff and get into it. If you’re willing, Jim, we will keep you on the retainer. How does that sound?

Mr. Francis:  [28:22] Sounds good to me. We’ll see you guys at the AGA in the fall.

Jim:  [28:26] I’ll be there. Yes, absolutely. Anaheim, California. Yep, absolutely. Until next week on Coffee with Jim & James, we appreciate you tuning in.

Jim:  [28:36] Thanks, Jim, appreciate you joining us. Thanks, James, for all you do.

[28:40] [music]

Transcription by WatchingWords