Daniel Florness

First off, Happy New Year, and thanks for allowing me to participate today.

I was not aware of it.

We're outstate Minnesota.

We're about two and a half hours from the Minneapolis-St.

Paul market, and so it's not uncommon.

It's a pretty tight-knit group up in the Twin Cities, and was not aware of it going out.

With that said, was not surprised by it going out, and it seemed to be pretty common sense of, hey, let's dial down the heat.

Yeah, you know, I think as a leader, one of our tasks are to create some calm in the air.

You know, I think back a few years ago when COVID was going on, it seemed like everybody every day turned everything into a political thing.

And sometimes it's a case of, you know, if you're around a bunch of people that are high at risk in the case of COVID,

put a mask on.

If you're not and you don't want to be there, then go someplace else.

You know, same thing here.

Let's try to dial the heat down and focus on what we're trying to accomplish, not how we can see who can be the most boisterous in the market of throwing ideas out.

And that's on both sides of the fence.

Well, mixed from the standpoint, we focus a lot on the purchasing managers index published by the ISM.

And that's been, you know, sub 50 for 36 of the last 38 months.

So from the standpoint of the economy has not given us any lift, we are getting good traction in the marketplace.

And we finished out the last half of 2025 with double digit growth.

That's really an exercise of taking market share more than the wind is to our backs.