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RUNNIN' VEGAS - The John McNamara Sports Podcast
Talking all things Las Vegas sports-from UNLV to the pros, and everything in between.
RUNNIN' VEGAS - The John McNamara Sports Podcast
Hard Lessons, Real Wins 🔥 | John McNamara & Shane Viggiani On Discipline And Growth
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Welcome And Meet The Guest
SPEAKER_00Hey guys, with John Mac from our host, Mr. Ron and Vegas. We're talking local sports, business, real stuff. You guys like us to subscribe. Follow us on Ron and Vegas Podcast today. I got my special guest, Mr. Shane Viggiani, owner, Ampere Electric. What's up, John? How you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks for bringing on, man. Thanks for having me. Super excited to have you on and learn more about you. Tell us about where you're from, what's your
Family Roots In Electrical Work
SPEAKER_00story.
SPEAKER_01Man, okay, let's get right into it. So I was born in Los Angeles, raised between LA and Vegas. My parents split up when I was three years old. Mom moved to Vegas. Dad stayed in LA. So during the school year, I'm in Vegas with my mom. During the summers, whenever I'm not in school, I'm in LA with my dad.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Grew up, my dad, I grew up, was born on Ampere Street. So Ampere Street in North Hollywood, California. I'm assuming that's that's how we ended up. My dad ended up, my mom and my dad ended up naming the business Ampere Electric. They started the business right before I was born when they just moved into that house. My brother had just been born. So he was a small electrical contractor, commercial, uh, him and like one other guy. And so I grew up really tools on with my dad. In those days, you go to the job sites and work with your dad and grew up doing that, really seeing the the trade side and the small business side, was really exposed to that a lot from a young age, which I think really shaped who I ended up becoming.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so did that, grew up doing that. Some of my fondest memories were on the job sites with my dad or at the house doing projects at the house. Uh went to school, got out of school. I would have liked to walk into my dad's business. Uh growing up, it was kind of a thing
Prison Reality And Hard Lessons
SPEAKER_01that I wanted to do. Uh well, I turned 18, it was 2008. There wasn't a lot of construction moving, great recession.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01My dad packed up his bags, moved back to Argentina where he was born and raised. His youngest son was a man now, so I'd had to figure it out. So, with that, bumped my head a lot. Uh by the time I'm 20, I'm in prison. Yeah. Was was always uh an enterprising guy, just chose the wrong enterprise, got involved in selling drugs, and ultimately ended up in prison when I was 20. Got did a year in prison, which helped shape a lot of the ways that I look at life.
SPEAKER_00Uh do you mind talking about that? I mean, I didn't expect you to go this direction, but what was like your biggest biggest lessons from that year?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, going to prison when you're you're a kid, you're 20 years old, um, it really it's a real eye-opener. You're in there with lifers that'll never get out. People, people that make mistakes go down the wrong path, and it you you learn really hard lessons. Prison is whatever you think it is, it's 10 times worse. If if you're like a regular guy and and you have something going for yourself and you're living a good life, you go to prison, it's a it's like hitting a brick wall. I was before that I lived a good life, I had money in my pockets, whatever I wanted, I had. So it was a long way to fall for me at that time. If you're already in the streets and stuff and you're homeless or whatever, maybe it's an upgrade. But yeah, for me, it was ten times worse than I'd ever expected it would be. Um it's it's it's a lot of misery, it's violence, it's the constant threat of violence at all times. It's uh it's not a fun place to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I bet I bet your nervous system was going crazy. I it sounds terrible to me, but I yeah, the fact that you said it's 10 times worse than that is true. It's hell.
SPEAKER_01It's complete hell. Yeah. Um a lot of what they say it is isn't true, a lot of what what they don't say, you know, you don't really know that there's other sides to it. One of the big misconceptions about prison is you go in there and if you're a pretty guy, you're gonna get raped. Yeah. That's uh don't drop the soap. That's always the joke, right? Right, right. It's not like that. Okay. At least in Nevada, it's not like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, the only guys that are doing that are like you get a guy that goes in and he's gay and he are on the streets, he walks around with long hair and he's acts like a woman. They go in there and the lifers will will partake in that and they'll punk them out. They want it, they're not really punking them.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01But there's that side of it, but no, they're not going around raping people because they're weak. Yeah, they might steal your shit or something like that, but right. Um a lot of maybe what they don't talk about, you hear a lot of the food is terrible in there. In jail, the food is terrible. In prison, the food's actually fairly decent.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you get three meals a day. When I went in, I was a skinny guy. I was always a skinny guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I was eating one meal a day when I was before I went in. Then you get in there and you're eating three meals a day, plus your commissary, plus
Fitness Discipline And Respect Inside
SPEAKER_01you're working out like a madman. Yeah. So one of the great things that I got from it was my love for fitness and nutrition and stuff like that. I actually got in prison. So I went in at like 150, came out a year later at 170. Um, so that was really good. That that stayed with me the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_00That's great. So you're working out. Was there anything else you did for your mindset? Because I imagine that obviously it was very tough on you, but was there anything to kind of keep you together to because that's a sounds like it was a long year, but you yeah, you program, you you you you get in your your routine, doing your workouts, you learn a lot of structure that way, a lot of discipline.
SPEAKER_01Um the the respect that you learn in there is is very very powerful. Um I've seen whole yards almost erupting riots over a bouncy ball. So principles and respect. I learned a lot of that in there. Um what else? Well, I first of all I appreciate just being vulnerable. Yeah, just just having that time where it's you're there and a lot of times you're alone in your own thoughts and you're in the cell for 23 hours a day. You get a lot of time to to reflect and to think and uh to to reset. And if you let it, it can be a really good thing for you. If you don't, you can come out worse. But for me, I took a lot from it. It was just a year, it wasn't, but it did, it did, it was a big moment in my life, for sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, it seems like it. I mean, gosh, talk about um we'll speed up here a little bit the moving forward in your life. But yeah, now you've grown an incredible company that's one of the best in the business in town. So tell us about that, you know, and uh yeah, it's a pretty impressive story because in a very short time, because when you and I we do we don't know each other that well, but we're just getting to know each other. And in a very short time, your company has really just blown through the roof. So it's it's it's very impressive. So I'm excited to hear about that and your culture and about gratitude, everything you talk about on your website, because it seems like um I'm impressed. You got over 2,000 Google reviews and 4.9 ratings. So you've you've really systematized it pretty well. Appreciate
Business Failures Before The Breakthrough
SPEAKER_00it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh get out of prison, get get into a bunch of different things in my 20s, uh, had a lot of different businesses, small businesses, failed, failed, failed, had a had three major failures uh in business before I ended up in this business. And then I get into this handyman stuff. So I I found a niche and I started doing this handyman stuff kind of by coincidence. Yeah uh starting and I was really good at it. I would just figure it out. Okay, whatever it was tile, paint, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, pulling weeds, I would do it all. So that gave me a really well-rounded understanding of construction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um after doing that for a little while, contractors board came and they're like, you need to uh you need to get licensed for something because you're kind of advertising for these specialty trades, you're not licensed for it. So I decided I was either gonna go general contracting, because by that point I was doing like whole home remodels. Wow. So I was either gonna go GC or electrical with my family roots. I decided to go electrical. Uh good decision, I think, because GCs, there's a lot, it's a lot bigger stakes. I think if you come into it with a lot of money, it might be easier to float that type of an enterprise. Electrical on the service side, a lot smaller jobs. It's easier to float and build a stable business than general contracting.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, so went studied, passed the test on my first time, electrical contractors exam, got my contractor's license in electrical.
SPEAKER_00What does that detail? How long does that take? If somebody's out there that's thinking about being an electrician, any advice you give them and like what's the time frame, trade school, all that?
SPEAKER_01So you need you need four years documented uh leadership experience. I got
Licensing Path And Passing The Exam
SPEAKER_01a lot of that through through growing up and through my handyman stuff and different things that I'd done through my 20s. Um then you take the contractor's exam. For me, I buckled down and I studied for three hours for four hours at night for three months. Uh went in, took the test, passed it my first time. It's an open book test. It's all in the National Electrical Code Book. It's a big book. You're not supposed to memorize the book, but you're supposed to know how to navigate the book. So interesting. Yeah, so what's the thought process behind that? Just you gotta know, like, if they're asking a certain question which code article to go to, and it might push you to another code article and you're going back and forth a little bit till you till you zero in on the answer. Yeah. Because you'll never remember the book front to back. It's impossible. Okay. It's about knowing how to navigate the book.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Even when you when you get out and you're using the book on the day-to-day, it's about knowing how to navigate the book, not memorizing everything. Okay. So uh passed it, and that was a big watershed moment for me. I think I cried when I passed the exam because I was like, that's it, like this is my ticket. This is the the first thing that I had done that was legit, that I loved to do, and there was a there's a good future ahead for me in it. So really, really stopped for a second and and uh appreciated that moment. And then that's it. I had my contractor's license. I already had my company, it was Ampere contracting because I was doing a bunch of different things, got the DBA Ampere Electric, and then hit
Reviews Strategy And Ditching Yelp
SPEAKER_01the ground running.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, the first thing that I noticed when I started the business was there was kind of a hole in electrical services in Las Vegas. There wasn't any like big companies doing it. We'd had a company in town before, Blue Apple, that came in really hard and did a lot of advertising and made a name for electrical in the valley, and they they went for a few years and they ended up selling and and packing up and got absorbed into another company, and that ended up they ended up folding on that, but that's like a whole different story.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um so I even with the handyman stuff, I I saw that if you got reviews, you you could essentially like write your own ticket with your reviews. Keep getting reviews, you can establish trust, people will call you. Um, you'll look bigger than you are. It's kind of like a rule in business. If if you look bigger than you are, you'll be what you that size business that you want to be. So really focused on the reviews right away with the business. Got on Yelp, started getting the reviews and getting some work from Yelp, and then they would yank your reviews. I found that on I found that out early on, and so that rubbed me the wrong way. So I moved from Yelp to Google, started building my presence on Google, and I saw that I could get a review. At that point, it's just me in the truck. Me, my dad was in town at the time, me and my dad in the truck. And I found out I can get a review, one or two reviews every day. And if I keep that pace, I could be the highest-rated company in town in like it was like a year or two. So I set out to do that. Um hired an apprentice right away. I didn't want to. I didn't want the liability of am I gonna have enough work for this guy? Can I trust him with my customers? So my dad ended up pushing me to do it. This this guy had hit me up. Hey, you looking for an apprentice? I just finished trade school. And I was like, okay, my dad pushed me. I went and interviewed him and I hired him on the spot. And uh him and I would go around, we're getting reviews, we're getting work from Yelp, from Google. Um, and then he would he was learning, he was fresh out of trade school, he didn't know anything. So we'd go out, we'd sell the work, do the installs, and after about six months, he could do a lot of the installs on his own. So we would go sell, start doing the work. I'd get him to a place where he could finish the job. All right, cool, you finish, collect the money, I'll go to the next one, sell the next one, and he would follow me around like that. And then quickly within a few months, I hired a journeyman, like experienced journeyman, knew how to do some things, and then another apprentice within the first like six months. That's when I kind of realized like it's scalable, you know, just keep adding pieces.
SPEAKER_00Hey, just uh word of vice, never change your address on Google. Well, we had hundreds of Google reviews, and they took them away when we we moved to a different location. Really? So, yeah, so be careful with that one. I was like, oh, this guy's got 2,000 reviews, he's crushing it. But cool enough. So you started um you started adding people.
Leadership Growth And Culture By Respect
SPEAKER_00How is it to be a leader? Because I mean, being an electrician and being a leader are two different things. Yeah. Seems like you thrive with it. Yeah, I think I've done well with it.
SPEAKER_01Um it's it's taken a lot of development, self-development. You have to change who you are as a person. Uh as you grow and you have more people under you, you have to consistently grow and be that guy that's worthy of having 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever, how many people under you. Um, so a lot of a lot of personal growth. I stopped drinking. I think the first year of the business, yeah, within the first year of the business, I stopped drinking. So no more going out on the weekends and and getting drunk or anything that might divert my focus away from the business and my family. Um I remember early on in the early days, I would get mad at guys and just get the fucking job done. What do you mean you can't do it? Cussing and yelling at guys, and I I've calmed down a lot. My whole demeanor has calmed down a lot in that respect. Um I'm a lot chiller with with how I deal with with problems in the business.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, was that shift? Because was that just from all the growth or not drinking or all of it?
SPEAKER_01It's just like natural. Like you can't, you gotta treat people with respect. And I knew that early on. Yeah, I I've had dickhead bosses in my life, and I never wanted to be that boss. So I've even when I was bad, I wasn't like a lot of the guys that I've worked for. Yeah. Um, but just just trying to keep that top of mind. These these people, they give you their life when when you when they come to work for you, they give you all their time, they give you 40, 50 hours a week. The least you could do is treat them with respect and pay them, pay them a good wage, and make their life enjoyable and and somewhere that they like to go to work and not somewhere that they don't like to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that that philosophy and that that kind of culture that that we've built at the company has really carried us because the the people are everything. So when I started the business, it was how do I help the customer? If I can help the customer, deliver them a good service, be there speedy, be on time, charge a reasonable rate, you know, leave the house clean, and everything that goes into delivering a good service, that's what I focused on because you know, in life, in business, whatever it is, it's all about helping other people. So I was that vehicle to helping other people when I first started the business. Then you get a bunch of employees and you're no longer customer-facing. Now they are your vehicle to help people. So you're helping them directly by giving them a good place to work and all the support and paying them well, and nice clean uniforms, clean new trucks, everything that goes into building a good technician. And if you do that and you treat those people good, then they are your conduit to then uh take care of the end user, the customer.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Is there anything
Gratitude Meetings And Daily Operations
SPEAKER_00else you do? Because it seems like you have a really healthy, positive culture that you've developed. And I I watched your one video and you talked about your team, we go through our gratitudes. And can you tell us more about that? Or yeah, so a lot of it starts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a lot of it starts at the meetings. Um, when I first started the business, we didn't have weekly meetings. So you'd go weeks without seeing guys, and just like any relationship, animosity builds, and it's just you can't operate like that. So we moved to first just having meetings. And at first it was just like, we'll just sit around and kumbaya for whatever we whatever to just to get that FaceTime. Yeah, let's get FaceTime for 30 minutes, make sure you still have all your teeth in your face, and you're you're not showing up with holes in your jeans and stuff, and and and and we could talk about the jobs or whatever. And so then we started refining the meetings, and one of the things that we we adopted was uh gratitude, just going around the room, everybody says one thing that they're grateful for, and then sometimes we'll do a goal. One thing you're grateful for, and one goal. And it can be as simple as I got dry socks on my feet. Whatever it is, just thinking about gratitude, it it reprograms your mind because we're always looking for problems. Um, it's easy to get into a negative mindset, but when you focus on gratitude, it's kind of the secret to happiness. Now, now you're you're happy, you're in the moment, you bring more things to be grateful for. So it's a it's a really nice little life hack that we use to reprogram the brain, and it really sets the mood for the rest of the meeting and the rest of the day. Um, so it starts there at the 7 o'clock meeting, talking about what we're grateful for, um, whatever lessons we have, if we got to do some housekeeping, whatever. Um gotta start early, 7 a.m., huh? Yeah, yeah. So the guys could be out at the jobs by eight, nine o'clock.
SPEAKER_00Cool.
SPEAKER_01What is a typical day look for you and the team? So for myself, I'm going to the office in the mornings at 7 a.m. on some days. Some days I don't come in right away. I take my daughter to school. Now I'm taking my daughter to school every day at 9 o'clock. So then I come back to the office. By that time, the technicians are out, they're out. The jobs by 7, 8, 9 o'clock. Um a technician's life. We have sales technicians that we have about 10 sales technicians that go out and we get the calls from Google or repeat customers, whatever it is. We get the calls, we send the technicians out. They go out, they diagnose, they give estimates. Um if it's something that they can do right away, it takes like an hour or two, we'll let them stay and do it. If it's a bigger installation, we'll bring our in our install department. So we have about between apprentices and lead installers, we have about 10 to 12 of them that come up come in and do the installations. And then we have our commercial side, commercial service. Um, we have one or two sales leaders there and then installers there. And so a sales technician, he'll run three or four calls a day. Uh, an installer, he'll run one install. He might be on an install for a few hours, a day, a few days. Really just depends. And that's that's the interesting part, the capacity planning. Yeah, it's like having enough calls for it's never perfect, but you're trying to get as perfect as you can. Yeah. Having enough calls on the board at all times for your sales technicians so they can have the appropriate number of calls for the day, every day, and then having enough work for the installers where they're not you're not having to push people out three, four, five days on installs. You get installs done within a day or two, and you have enough installs and you don't have guys sitting around. That whole capacity planning element is really, really interesting, and that's one of the biggest things. That we have to work on in the business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it seems like you're doing a phenomenal job of systing your whole business here. Are you still looking to grow and get it bigger? Because you're one of the bigger companies. Okay, so tell us about like your goals
Scaling Trucks Revenue And Marketing
SPEAKER_00and the future. So right now with this business?
SPEAKER_01Right now, we're the largest uh electrical services company in Vegas. Um, from a revenue standpoint, we've doubled our revenue every year. So year year one was 2022, we did 800k. Year two was 2023, we did 2.3 mil. And then 2024, the third year was four mil, 2025 was 7.75, and 2026. I didn't think that we double again, but we're looking at doubling again. We'll do 12 to 15 mil this year. Um, so right now we're the largest service company that's 23. We just got three new trucks today. They're not outfitted yet, but we have 23 on the road right now. We have another seven between the three that got dropped off and four more that are coming. So we'll be at 30 trucks in the next month or two. And we have kind of established halfway established ourselves as the household name in electrical services in Vegas. Um we want to go a lot more to really establish that. Like when I say the household name, like if you if I ask you a plumbing and HVAC company, you could probably think of 10 off the top of your head where you can rattle off a jingle and Mac plumbing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah? Yeah, I think it's like Mac Plumbing. It's a joke because uh J Mac, Jamie. J Mac Plumbing, yeah, because John McDamar, so we had like a uh spoof that it was my company, it's not my company.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, I've seen those guys at a golf event.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so so yeah, so there's a lot of household names and anything from restaurants to soft drinks to food, there's there's names that people know and jingles and stuff. Yeah. So we're going for that in electrical in Las Vegas. The next step in that is radio. We have an aggressive radio campaign that's starting the next week. Um we'll we'll be having the jingles and all the stuff that goes with the radio. I know radio is not as popular as it was before, but there's still an audience in radio.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it seems like it's a little underutilized these days, too, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the older crowd, which a lot of times they're established homeowners, they've been burned before, they just want a reputable company. Yeah, so good clientele. So we're working on that. Maybe from there we do some TV, continue on with the billboards and whatever stuff we can do to get in the community, podcasts, whatever we can do to spread, spread the name, spread the word. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00So, what would you say would separate?
Referral Program CRM Speed And Urgency
SPEAKER_00Because I know it's like, hey, you're a realtor out here looking at this pod, what separates you from everybody else?
SPEAKER_01Well, if you're a realtor out here, we have a nice referral program. So if you refer us 5%, uh whatever we do for the customer, you get five percent. So if you're interested in that, text me, we can get that going. Um, you're referring a good company, we're the highest-rated company in town. We take care of the customer, we're customer focused. You you know you're referring a reliable company when you refer us. So that's one thing. Um yeah, yeah, pretty much.
SPEAKER_00I like your little uh well, when we first met too, you had your the the text right away, so the customer service is like right on your CRM system. Yeah, that was really impressive running my own business because we do the same thing with our clients, but it the customer service is like immediate versus hoping somebody's gonna get back to you, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. That's one thing that we really we really pride ourselves on is from the second that phone rings, these leads are not cheap. If I'm getting leads on Google, the majority of it comes from Google. We're paying 50, 100 bucks just to make the phone ring. Then we got to book the call. We got an 85% call booking rate. Um, that's assuming that they're calling for our services. If you hit my Google and you're asking for a and you and you're really you're looking for a plumber and not an electrician, I'm still paying for that. So the ones where they're actually in the market for an electrician, I'm at 85% call booking rate. Then we got to get out to the home, uh, convert on the call. So the capitalizing on the marketing there and answering the phone right away. So when I'm paying for that lead, I know that we're we're answering the phone right away to be able to book the call, it's huge. So we're booking the call, uh, and then from there we're getting a technician out uh that day or the next day, unless you want it out further out than that. And then when we sell the work to you, we're doing the work that day, the next day, maybe the day after. That's great. That's always the goal. A lot of companies, they talk about I'm booked out three weeks, and it's crazy, I can't find labor, and da da da systems in place. They're they're they're saying it kind of like in a braggy way, and I'm like, that's nothing to brag about. I wouldn't even tell anybody if that was what I had going on. I'd go right to the lab and try to fix that. Yeah, you have a hiring problem, you need to hire more people, trust more people, enable more people, elevate more people to do what what they can do to thrive. In return, you'll be able to serve your customers, train those people, invest in training. A lot of people don't train, especially here in Vegas and Electrical. So we're big on the training. Um, and so yeah, yeah, definitely trying to move move with urgency. It's the age of Uber. Uh, people are not waiting a week when when they have power problems. They want you out there now.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That's like any service, right? It's yeah, if you can't service like within 24-40 hours, I'm already moving on. Like, that's a big problem. Like these home warranty companies sometimes we work with. It's that you get like a third company and then it takes all this time. I'm like, I could find somebody. Like, I just start making calls. I'll find somebody to get it done. So I'm the same way. Like, as soon as somebody can give me overcommunicate with me and get the service done in a reasonable amount of time, I'm happy. I'm good. Whatever that price is, I gotta get it done. So it seems like you obviously have figured that out, and that's why you guys are so reputable. So, besides business, I got you for
Family Boxing Travel And Closing
SPEAKER_00another two minutes. What do you do for fun?
SPEAKER_01That's it, man. I got my daughter, she's two, my wife Marisol, uh, my son's two months, so I'm with them. Um I'm with them, and then whenever I have a chance to kind of let out some steam, I go to boxing twice a week, and that's my outlet. Oh, cool. Um, it's where I get out all my aggression, get my get my fitness in, and uh have my me time, and besides that, you know, hang out with friends as much as I can. There's four pillars to a man's life. He can't have all he can't have more than three at any given time. There's friends, there's family, there's career, and there's health. Interesting. I got career, I got like most guys our age, I got career and family and health. I'm gonna go to the gym or else I'll explode. Me too. I fall off on the friends part. Like a lot of guys our age, I fall off on the friends part. It's harder when we get older. It's harder. Yeah. When you get old, old, then you go come back to that when you're a kid. Of course, you're all about your friends, but uh yeah. Cool.
SPEAKER_00Well, that makes sense. You got any trips coming up?
SPEAKER_01Anything fun going on? Going to Greece in June and then Italy in September. Awesome.
SPEAKER_00That's something annual you do, you travel out of the country.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we like to take a big big trip in the summertime. Lately, it's been Europe. Uh, we still are kind of on a Europe kick.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, that's awesome, man. Well, you work hard, you deserve it. Appreciate it. Well, man, we're gonna wrap this up. Thank you for being on. Really appreciate it. If you guys need an electrician exchange your man, guys, this is running Vegas. Took care of itself today.