If you need some encouragement to write in your own voice, this could be just what you need. Norm Laviolette could have called his book Developing a Creative Mindset: instead, he stayed true to his roots and wrote The Art of Making Sh!t Up.
In this conversation we discuss finding your voice, taking control of your life, and seeing what comes up. And also softball coaching, because improv, creativity and business success are all based on noticing unexpected connections and having the courage to act on them.
LINKS:
Improv Asylum: https://www.improvasylum.com/
The Art of Making Sh!t Up: https://www.theartofmakingshtup.com/
Norm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/normlaviolette
Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bookstothesky
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
This Book Means Business – the mentorship programme: https://alisonjones.lpages.co/this-book-means-business-mentorship/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club Summer Reading List 2019: https://alisonjones.com/the-extraordinary-business-book-club-summer-reading-list-2019/
Alison Jones: Hello, and welcome to the Extraordinary Business Book Club. I’m here today with Norm Laviolette, who is the co-founder and CEO of Improv Asylum, IA Innovation, and Asylum Gaming and E-Sports. He came to a career in comedy and teaching circuitously after a career in marketing and PR in New York City, and Military service with the Massachusetts and Vermont Army National Guards, having graduated from the Vermont Military Academy’s Office of Candidate School, which sounds very grand. He’s the author of the Art of Making Sh!t Up (sorry Mum): Using the Principles of Improv to Become an Unstoppable Powerhouse. Welcome to the show Norm.
Norm Laviolette: Well, thank you for having me, and I really like the fact that, in one breath there’s a title that sounds very grand, and it’s followed immediately with The Art of Making Sh!t up, which does not sound so grand.
Alison Jones: But I want to talk to you about this. Partly because you just made me swear on my podcast, which – now I’ve lost my clean Apple rating – that’s a thing. But it’s just so interesting, I’ve got a whole slew of books with me at the moment, with various degrees of profanity in the title, and you actually do address this, which I thought was really interesting. It’s a note on the use of the word shit. Tell us why you decided to use that really, really consciously, rather than for example, Developing a Creative Mindset, which is the alternative that you put forward?
Norm Laviolette: It really comes from the culture that I grew up in. I grew up in a very blue collar, low blue collar world. My mother worked in the auto industries, in the factories, my dad was a truck driver. I was surrounded by people who spoke like this. And I think that, at least in my work as it relates to the artistic end of improvisation and comedy, there’s some really wonderful theory books out there, and they can speak at a very high level. And I can do that as well, but for me it was like, “Well, no, I want to put this in a vernacular that is how I grew up, and that is more of a every man, every woman way of speaking.” And so I was very conscious in saying, “I don’t want to write that very highbrow piece.”
I consciously want to write something a little bit lower brow, if you will, that is truly in the voice of how I grew up.
Alison Jones: And that’s actually how, I mean, particularly in tech companies, it’s how we speak to each other, isn’t it? It’s much more arresting. I mean, how many books do you see with ‘Developing Creative Mindset’? There is something arresting and appealing about the bluntness of the four-letter word, there’s no doubt about it.
Norm Laviolette: And beyond the four-letter word, I look at it as, will my Mom want to read a book discussing the creative mindset? No. She’s going to make fun of me about that. She’s going to go, “What the hell is that,” right? I make shit up for a living. And while yes, it’s said comedically, on the other hand that is true, and so that’s why I was very conscious in speaking in that kind of voice.
Alison Jones: Your Mum sounds awesome, by the way.
Norm Laviolette: She is, yes.
Alison Jones: Now you are not going to have any problem whatsoever convincing me about the value of improv in business. I did an improv workshop fairly recently. I was just blown away. The listening, the trust, the vulnerability, it’s just brilliant, and I’ve spoken recently to Brendan Barnes, who runs the London Business Forum, big advocate of improv, and Neil Mullarkey. Do you know Neil?
Norm Laviolette: I do know Neil, actually. Ireland, I believe, right?
Alison Jones: Say again.
Norm Laviolette: I do know Neil. He’s in Ireland I believe. Correct?
Alison Jones: No, I don’t know. Neil Mullarkey’s based in the UK. He does the Comedy Store in the UK.
Norm Laviolette: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Neil Mullarkey. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Comedy Store, Comedy Store Players in London. Correct.
Alison Jones: Yes, Mike Myers’ old comedy buddy. I’ve been talking to them about improv, and I’m sorry because this would actually be a fascinating conversation with you, too, but I’ve had that conversation, so I’m going to be really selfish, and move it onto something else. Let’s just assume that everybody is onboard with how ace improv is for business purposes. I’m really fascinated by the way that you took those improvisation principles and use them as a blueprint for building your business, because we haven’t really talked about that before. Tell me a bit about that. How did you improv your way into business?
Norm Laviolette: I came up as a performer. You said the words, very selfishly, you said those words earlier, and that’s an important thing. Being selfish for things that you want, oddly enough, it’s not at odds with being collaborative, but for me being selfish was I came up as a performer, and very selfishly I wanted to perform and look, for whatever reasons I, early on, came to the conclusion that the only way I was ever going to get anything by way of performance or career advancement was doing it myself. I wasn’t good enough, connected enough, smart enough, talented enough to catch anybody’s eye, so I’m like, “Well, I’ll just do it myself.”
That’s was really the ethos. When we decided to go ahead and open Improv Asylum, it came from a very selfish place, which was, “I’ll make my own stage, and I’ll create my own show, and I’ll create my own bar in a basement theatre in downtown Boston, and I’ll just do it myself.”
That same ethos, though, is improvisational. Which is taking the proactive steps, and taking control of what it is that you can do, and I applied the same thing, I learned that onstage, and I just applied that to my career.
Alison Jones: That’s brilliant, because it is, it’s making something out of nothing, and it’s one step building on another step, and you don’t necessarily have the full vision when you start, you’re just heading in a direction, and seeing what comes up.
Norm Laviolette: Sure, and it’s impossible to have the whole vision. Where I started, when I started this, I didn’t think I would be here speaking with you, and writing books, and working around the world, leading workshops in Shanghai and Dubai. Of course not. When people say, “Could you imagine all that?” I’m like, “No. That was never the plan. The plan was to make some people laugh, and have some drinks with my friends after the show in a bar that I owned, and that really was it.”
Alison Jones: When you put it like that, why wouldn’t you want that?
Norm Laviolette: Sure. I’ll also be honest with you, it never got better than that. It got bigger, but it didn’t get better.
Alison Jones: That’s so interesting. It’s very counter the traditional way of approaching a business, isn’t it? “Show us your five-year plan.”
Norm Laviolette: Show us your five-year? Okay. That’s where it goes back to this idea of making shit up. Of course, we’re all smart enough. I can show you my one, three, and five year plan. What does that have to do with anything in reality? That’s a wish, a dream, and a hope. Projections. “Let’s see your projections.” I love when people ask me for projections. Great. I’ll give you my conservative projections, my medium projections, and my stretch projections. They’re all fake.
Alison Jones: What I loved, actually, about reading your book, I really warmed to you as a child. I would’ve hated to have you in my class, but I did warm to you as a child, because you just had this reckless disregard, where you just do what has to be done, break the system, just make it work for you, and that’s a gift. Most of us don’t grow up like that.
Norm Laviolette: It’s very interesting. Couple things on that end. When we talk about these things out loud, it sounds like that can’t be true, but I’m going to tell you this: literally two weeks ago, I was in my offices which overlook the theatre in Boston in the north end, and the box office person sent up a call, and said, “Hey, somebody left you a handwritten note over the weekend at the theatre.”
I was like, “Great.”
To me, handwritten notes are never good. They’re either complaints or somebody stalking you. Very rarely that it’s a good thing. They sent the note up, and it was a handwritten note, and it was a handwritten note from my fourth grade teacher, that I haven’t seen since I was in fourth grade, and that was a while ago, and it was amazing because in the note, Karen Verdi, Miss Verdi, had come to the show, and I haven’t seen her since that time, and she said, “So happy for your success, and I always knew that you would do something in comedy, even when you were in the fourth grade making me laugh so much that I had to turn my head so that the rest of the class couldn’t see.”
That’s an amazing thing to think about, that clearly that person in some way, shape, or form was supporting me, and the unintended consequences of a little bit of support really is impactful.
Alison Jones: That’s brilliant. I love it. She obviously, I can just imagine, she had it in her head, this kid is either going to rule the world, or he’s going to be in jail. It’s going to be one or the other.
Norm Laviolette: It really should’ve been in jail. The odds would’ve told you, if you were a betting person, you definitely put it all on that jail cell.
Alison Jones: Along with the improv stuff, which you bring as these brilliant business lessons, I love the way you just take those lessons from life, and you’re also a girl’s softball coach, right?
Norm Laviolette: Yes, yes. If I could give it all up and just do that full-time, that’s what I would do.
Alison Jones: You do this brilliant thing in the book, where you just deconstruct lessons for business and life actually, and certainly how to manage from how you coach softball for girls. Tell us a little bit about, for one thing I don’t really know softball. I’m from the UK, I’m sorry, I don’t really understand softball games. A little bit went over my head, but what was that thinking behind that? Was it deliberate? “I know, I’m going to pull this in.” Because I love the scatter gun approach that you took.
Norm Laviolette: It was deliberate in the sense that I didn’t, or should I say couldn’t. I wasn’t going to write just this technical treatise on what it is that I do. I had no interest and that.
Alison Jones: I can see that was never going to happen.
Norm Laviolette: It was very funny, because even within the publisher, when Wiley approached me about writing a book, their first question was, “Do you have any interest in writing a book?”
My response back was, “What are we talking about here? Are you telling me you would publish a book I would write? What are we discussing?”
Once we got into the conversations, I did say, I’m like, “Look, I’m probably going to write something that’s a little bit weird and different than what you get, or what you typically put out there.”
Because ultimately in the writing process, or should I say the creative process, because that’s really more where my expertise is, I can only create what in the way I create, and if I try to do it to a voice, or to an idea that is artificial, for me it just would never work. That’s how I approached it. When it came to the idea of softball, softball is just baseball, but with a larger ball, that are played by girls and women, as opposed to hardball and baseball.
Alison Jones: Oh, well, that’s just made sense of two Americanisms for me at the same time. Thank you.
Norm Laviolette: It’s cricket for girls. There you go. I’ve had the absolute privilege to be able to coach my daughters in sports for a long time, and it’s the best thing ever, and one of the things about baseball or softball is it’s one of these sports that goes slow. It’s not soccer or football, where it’s constant action. The beauty of it is there’s a tonne of downtime and community that has to happen, and as I coach, as my time coaching, I started to see just the worst in humanity come out from coaches and parents, and as a professional communicator, and a professional team builder, because that’s what I do, we build casts onstage, I just watched all this counterintuitive actions that people would take, that were really working against their result. For example, when you play baseball or softball, there’s a batter, and somebody will often hit the ball up into the air. Well, the object of the other team is to catch that ball in the air, to register an Out, which is a good thing. When a ball is hit up in the air, it’s a stressful situation for any kind of kid, 10, 11, 12 years old. They’re already freaking out whether they can catch it or not.
Alison Jones: “This is coming to me, this is on me, this is my job.”
Norm Laviolette: Right. What does every parent sitting on the sidelines start to do?
Alison Jones: “Catch it. Catch the ball.”
Norm Laviolette: Right. They start to scream, “Catch it.”
Which makes it harder for them to have their child get the result they want, because the kid already knows they’re supposed to catch it, and now, by screaming and yelling, and then you have all the coaches yelling it, everybody’s yelling “Catch it,” they want them to catch it, the best thing that everybody could do to get that result would be to shut up, and let the kid catch it. That was kind of a thing that went off in my brain, which is there were so many of those kind of lessons in dealing with sports. I say softball, but it can be anything. It’s like, no, I really wanted to explore that kind of in a fun way.
Alison Jones: Do you think that is one of the gifts of improv, maybe, that that ability to quickly see connections between things?
Norm Laviolette: It is, and I think that you say it’s a gift, I like to say that it’s a developed skill. I like to demystify the stuff, because whenever I hear words like ‘gift’, that already scares me, because that starts to tell me that it’s magical and other people can’t achieve it.
Alison Jones: Interestingly I didn’t mean it as a gift that you have as an improv performer. I meant a gift that improv gives you.
Norm Laviolette: Yes, on that level, absolutely. On that level, it is a gift. It is a gift that it gives you, because improvisation really, once you’ve learned the skillset of it, it’s all about jumping on unexpected connections. That’s what it is, and what training in things like improvisation allow you is to shut off the sensor that says, “That’s stupid,” or “That connection doesn’t make sense.”
That’s the thing that holds us back from most everything, and when you develop that skill, you start to just see connections and be able to make connections all over the place, where other people maybe wouldn’t quite see them.
Alison Jones: Which of course is the heart of creativity.
Norm Laviolette: Yes, absolutely, and in the heart of creativity, what is the thing that really inhibits you is again that voice, that voice that’s in my head, and that’s in all of our heads, that says, “I don’t want to look stupid, I don’t want to sound stupid, people are going to judge me, people are going to think less of me.”
The trick becomes being able to shut that voice off, and move forward.
Alison Jones: I love that this could actually have been called the Art of Shutting Up the Voice as much as…
Norm Laviolette: Absolutely. “Just stop that.” I have it, and I had it, especially when you start to attempt something new. For me, writing a book, that’s not what I do, and that’s not what I’ve done in the past. Of course there’s that same voice in my head saying, “Well, I don’t know. Do I really have anything to say? I’m going to write it in the way I write it, and is that going to be infantile, and is it going to be juvenile?”
Then you have to shut that voice off, and say, “Hey. Just shut up. You’re going to write the thing you’re going to write, and just put it out there.”
Alison Jones: What does writing look like for you? I’m guessing you don’t sit down with a full structured outline, and write 500 words a day, but I could be wrong. How do you actually do it?
Norm Laviolette: You are not wrong.
Alison Jones: I suspected as much.
Norm Laviolette: Again, predominantly, I create verbally. That’s what I’ve done for 20 years, my predominant skill is to be able to speak, and speak and think at the same time. The challenge for me, when it comes to writing, is my brain is processed to move so fast, and I can’t really type like a normal person, so that slows everything down. From a technical standpoint, I really used voice dictation for most of writing the book, because it was the only way to capture my speed of thought, because I just can’t type. It would go too slow. That’s on a technical level. On how I crafted it, I laugh because, for me again, being a first-time author, and new to this industry, I’m sure I did everything wrong. When the publishers at Wiley, we agreed on the deal, whatever, and they’re like, “Do you think you can deliver a manuscript in six months?”
I’m sure people like yourself or people who are professionals in the industry, I’m sure the response is supposed to be, they say six months, you counter with 18 months, you both settle on 12 months, whatever it is. For me, coming from comedy, and improv comedy no less, they’re like, “Can you do this in six months?”
My answer was like, “Yes, sure. That’s a lifetime.”
I’m sure they were just shaking their head, going, “What’s wrong with this guy? But okay.”
Six months? I’m like, “Yes, sure. That’s forever.”
For me, ideas tend to form in a cloud in my head, and they all start to swirl around, and eventually they start to congeal, but for me the process was, I had some ideas, and then, when it came down to writing, I would sit down, and I would just start to just go. I had some top-line things that I knew that I wanted to speak about or write about, but there was definitely no outline or anything like that, and I’m not advocating for that, I’m just saying for me, no, it wasn’t stream of consciousness, but it wasn’t too far off of that.
Alison Jones: But it’s a coherent book. It feels as though it’s been written almost episodically. I do get that sense from it. It isn’t point one, point two, and then we get to point three, and furthermore… There’s none of that, but what I love is the way it darts around, but the way it builds organically. It is really interesting, but I just wondered how the structural bit went down with the publisher, because they normally want to see a table of contents and all that kind of stuff.
Norm Laviolette: Yes, I will say with Wiley that they have been fantastic to work with, because they basically said, “Write the book.”
When I told them that I was like, “I’m not going to do this in probably a normal way,” they very much were encouraging.
They said, “Write the book that you think you need to write, to the audience that you think will respond to this book,” and after that, they were incredibly hands-off, so much to the point where I was like, “Hey, if anybody has any thoughts or notes…”
They’re like, “Just deliver the manuscript by December 8.”
I’m like, “Okay.”
Alison Jones: I’m going to interpret that as absolute confidence in you.
Norm Laviolette: Well, that’s a generous interpretation that you have. Thank you.
Alison Jones: Actually, what’s interesting of course, is that when you set the tone with a title like the Art of Making Sh!t Up, you can’t then go back to the author and say, “Well, what we’d really like is a carefully-crafted…” You’ve got to have the medium as the message, and you kind of give yourself permission by signalling that tone in the title that, you know what, this book might not be quite what you’re expecting.
Norm Laviolette: I think you’re right. I also think they’re pros over there. They’re also investing in the author, the person that’s writing the book. They know what they got in me. Whether they know it sells or not, the jury’s out on that, but they know I am who I am. They’re approaching me because, at least conceivably, I’ve had some kind of success within my own world, and that says a lot for them to say, “Go. Let the artist go.”
Because that’s scary for them, of course.
Alison Jones: Did you enjoy it?
Norm Laviolette: Sometimes…
Alison Jones: Do you enjoy having done it?
Norm Laviolette: What’s that?
Alison Jones: I said, do you enjoy having done it? Slightly different question.
Norm Laviolette: Sometimes. Yes, I did enjoy it. I did enjoy it, because I enjoy anything new or next. That is definitely what I like, and it’s also a weakness of course, when you always like the new or the next, but I also know that I enjoy that. For me, I really did enjoy the challenge on an existential level. There were definitely times when I was doing it, and that was difficult, and it was less so the actual act of creating, because I feel pretty comfortable with that, but the circumstances that I was creating this book in, which was I was doing it at the exact same time that we were launching Improv Asylum New York City, and I was directing the first show there. That was a nightmare, in terms of I’d be directing a show in New York, and I would say I wrote at least 50% of the book in this middling hotel in Chelsea, that I think was nothing more than a front for the Russian mob. I hope that if I write the next one it won’t be under those conditions.
Alison Jones: Actually, I was going to ask you that. Did you write alone? Because one of the most powerful things about improv is it’s not your problem, in a sense, and I found that incredibly freeing. “I’m not responsible for this scene, I’m just part of it,” and that was great, and it really frees you up to be creative, but when you’re in a hotel room writing your book, it’s all on you, isn’t it? Did you find that interesting? Harder? What?
Norm Laviolette: I found that actually pretty appealing, because you’re absolutely right. Improvisation, it’s a team sport. Obviously your listeners understand these things, but improvisation is a team sport. It’s like playing football, or basketball. Standup comedy, that’s the singular sport, that’s like playing gold. That’s how I describe them. I tend to be a team sport player. I always have been, and in improvisation you do have that joy. You have the joy of your teammates. You also have the lessened pressure of making it all work, because we all make it work together, or, if and when it fails, we all get to commiserate together, and you can deflect off your ego. When you do standup, when it works you have the joy of owning all of it and basking in that in saying, “Look how brilliant I am,” and you then have the deep depths of owning it solely when it doesn’t work.
I think that, for me, at the point that I’m at in my career, 20-odd years in in doing this stuff, there is a great appeal of making sure that I also have the skillset of ownership of my own material.
Alison Jones: I guess that is the flip side. There’s always a flip side of every great thing. The flip side of improv is that sometimes you have a brilliant concept, and it goes because somebody takes the ball off in a different direction, whereas when it’s your book, when it’s your standup routine, you get to develop that thought all the way through, which is its own joy, I suppose.
Norm Laviolette: Yes, it is, and I think what becomes very important, especially at the heart, I love to collaborate, and yet, as your career goes, you want to really make sure that you have the skillsets, and you develop the skillsets to do both, because sometimes you can hide in a group, and staying in a group can be just another defence mechanism in not believing in yourself, and it can become very easy, and feel really good, and yet that can be a way to hide, and even as I teach, or with our own actors on the stage, some of the biggest things that I really push the performers to do, is they need to learn how to be onstage by themselves. They have to, because if you’re looking to progress in our industry, everyone’s like, “Why would I want to audition for this or that”, or “I want to get to Saturday Night Live.”
That’s great. I can promise you that when you audition for Saturday Night Live or television, you’re not auditioning as a group. You’re auditioning by yourself. You have to learn that skill.
Alison Jones: Obvious parallels with business there as well. I love this. It’s got really deep in writing and business and improv. Wonderful.
If I was to ask you, there’s people listening who are in that hotel, writing that book, feeling a bit miserable. What would be your best tip for them?
Norm Laviolette: Lock yourself in there, and don’t let yourself out.
Alison Jones: Really?
Norm Laviolette: But honestly, and I say this because you’re going to want to leave, you’re going to want to quit, you’re going to want to stop, and if you just commit to not leaving the room, even if you’re not writing, but you’re staying on task, and I know that we in the hyper productive productivity world that we all live in with productivity gurus, and this, or that, the other things. Awesome, great, real good. Sometimes you just got to shut the door for six or seven or eight hours, and just stay in the room. Even if nothing’s coming, because now you’re forcing yourself. Look, yes, sure there’s other times you want to switch it up, and you want to go walk around. That’s good. For me, I found something about myself that I had no idea when it comes to writing. I’m a big believer in triggers. If you set things up that trigger yourself to work, you start working, and I found that, oddly enough, I really liked to write in my hotel room in the Russian mob front of a hotel that I was in, I really liked to write with the heat cranked on high.
Alison Jones: That’s bizarre.
Norm Laviolette: It is bizarre, and I don’t know why, but once I got that room cranked as hot as I could get it going, and I was sweating, I don’t know, I wrote. That’s what it is. I’m being funny to a degree, but on the other hand I’m being very serious. You got to lock yourself down, and stick with the task, even when there’s nothing coming to you.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. There’s a Deep Work principle going on there. I’m not sure about the heat thing, and I feel a bit kind of, I’m looking at your book now, and I’m thinking, “This was sweated out, basically.”
I’m finding that my feelings towards the book have changed slightly, but that’s fine. That’s all good.
Norm Laviolette: There was a lot. When I say I put sweat into it, I mean if you wet your fingers when you turn the page it might be a little salty.
Alison Jones: Thanks for that. Thanks for that thought. I always ask people, as well, to recommend a book that they reckon anybody listening to the podcast should read. Obviously, the Art of Making Sh!t Up, obviously, but apart from that what else should people read?
Norm Laviolette: My favourite one was Richard Branson’s autobiography, I think it’s Losing My Virginity. I believe that’s his first one. I love everything Richard Branson. I’m a drink the Kool-Aid kind of guy when it comes to him, because if you look at his career, and if you look at how he built what is obviously a global empire, so many of the same principles that he follows really do come from how I do things, which is he was an artist at heart, and he created, and he started with just a student magazine, and at every turn he did something most of the people said, “That’s stupid. That’s not the way to do things.”
His attitude was, “Well, this is how I’m going to do it.”
He was able to turn off those voices, and those voices, it’s not just psychological. They’re your parents, they’re your peers, they’re your spouses, and in many ways I always say this. They’re not wrong. When your parent says, “You shouldn’t be going into comedy. You should really be getting a good job.”
They’re not wrong. You probably should be doing that, but they’re coming it at from a very different point of view. I really, really love Richard Branson’s books.
Alison Jones: Yes. I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re absolutely right. He improvved all the way through, didn’t he? And when something happened, when an opportunity came, he took it and he ran with it and he built on it.
Norm Laviolette: True. Absolutely. He really embodies the ethos of what improvisation is as an art, and how you can apply it to your business, which is, yes, this is the reality that I’m dealing with right now, and I want to build upon that. It’s that “Yes and” mentality, which is Yes, I’m listening to you, Yes, I understand what’s happening right now, and I want to add on the next part of my business, my career.
Alison Jones: Yep, brilliant. Thank you. Really good recommendation, and if people want to find out more about you, Norm, more about the book, where should they go?
Norm Laviolette: You can go, it’s easy to find out about me at improvasylum.com. That has a lot about me and my companies, and what we do. You can go to theartofmakingshitup.com, and find out more about the book, and I believe we have the domain both with the I in and out of the word shit. If for some reason you don’t like cursing, you don’t want that in your browser, or it’s going to bring down…
Alison Jones: Or your spam filter filters it out, because that can happen, too.
Norm Laviolette: It does.
Alison Jones: Your parental controls can go, “No, no, no. You don’t want to see this site.”
Norm Laviolette: Exactly right. You can find that out. You can certainly purchase the book at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, anywhere that you can buy books, I guess you can get this book.
Alison Jones: You might want to wear gloves.
Norm Laviolette: Yes. I think any time that you meet me, you want to wear gloves.
Alison Jones: So much fun talking to you, Norm. Thank you so much for your time today.
Norm Laviolette: Great. Great to talk to you. Thanks for having me.