Hi, I'm James Bevor. I'm a PhD student at Oxford University where I research satellite cybersecurity and today I want to talk about something called space situational awareness or SSA SSA is a type of data that we use to solve a problem, which is that space is getting crowded Today there are tens of thousands of satellites and pieces of debris and other objects in orbit that will whizz over your head every hour and As space gets more congested over the next decade The number of objects is going to increase dramatically with the addition of constellations like one web blue origin and star link Changing the way we think about lower orbit as we put more satellites up there The biggest challenge will be dealing with increasing risk of space debris collisions Space debris are just like bits of metal or rocket fragments or other things that fall off of the satellite During operations. There's part of a space mission and they move at orbital velocities So if they collide with the satellite they can cause it to break or even disintegrate depending on the size of the collision And it's a second case that can lead to something that we call a cascade effect We're by a piece of debris crashes into the satellite which creates more debris which crash into more satellites And in the worst case scenario when space is as crowd as it's going to be the next decade a Debris cascade can severely constrain our access to either a particular orbit or even the space as a whole And that debris is not going anywhere. It can remain an orbit as a threat to satellites for decades or centuries depending on where it is So to deal with this we use space situational awareness data I'll talk about how that works and who gets it and then I'll talk about why a cyber attacker might target this critical data as A route to cause harm to specific satellites in orbit We'll run through a scenario where we actually kind of play through one of these attacks in orbital simulations And then I'll close by discussing mitigations that both industry players and governments can use to protect and bring more trust Into the SSA environment So SSA as a concept is very simple at its core. It's just Understanding what's out there whether that's a satellite or a piece of debris or even a comet or an asteroid depending on how you define it It's essentially a catalog of everything in space and where it's going and we use SSA in every step of a satellite mission From the moment that we decide which orbit that we're going to launch our satellite into the moment we retire our satellite into a graveyard orbit and try to avoid crashing into other satellites when we turn it off and Two particularly important uses of SSA are conjunction analysis and intelligence purposes You use SSA to figure out when your satellite is going to collide with a piece of debris So that you can steer it around it and this is not trivial because pieces of debris move They're affected by friction or collision with other pieces of debris So you need to constantly be updating your catalog so you know when you need to steer your satellite and where Additionally, I mentioned intelligence purposes SSA is really useful if you want to know if your adversaries are say launching a spy satellite that overpasses your territory Or testing anti-satellite weapons So it's perhaps unsurprising that the dominant source of SSA data today is the US military which operates the space surveillance network or SSN The SSN consists of a bunch of ground stations around the world with either radar systems or electro-optical telescopes And even some satellites in orbit that are constantly scanning the sky for space debris The reason this is distributed across the globe is because to get a good catalog of space situational awareness data You need multiple observations of an object from multiple different vantage points in different parts of the planet and The US military gets a huge advantage from this investment They're likely the only entity in the world who have access to ground-treat information Describing debris objects measuring 10 centimeters in diameter or even smaller. However, this edge does not come cheap We don't know exactly how much the US military spends in the space surveillance network But we know that the most recent upgrade to the system exceeded six billion dollars and then in fiscal year 2015 alone I spent one point six billion dollars on procurement. This is all to say that this is not a trivial effort This is not picking up a telescope warmer and looking for pieces of space debris This is a very complicated technological endeavor that is beyond the means of even most nation states to pull off The next most sophisticated SSA capability is probably Russia's through the Russian space surveillance system We don't know quite as much about like what kind of objects they can see or what size But we do have a sense of the network's capabilities because we know where the ground stations are and they're primarily in former Soviet territories Or countries that were friendly with the USSR of prior to its collapse This makes sense as a lot of the groundwork was kind of late for the system during the Soviet Union But in recent years Russia has expressed skepticism and third-party data from like the US military and has been shoring up their own Internal capabilities including through the launch of satellites like this one, which was widely expected to be a space surveillance system Although the Russian military is not confirm this One other thing I just want to note while we're talking about Russian space situation awareness There is a civilian network that is ostensibly a collaboration between scientists and universities It's not super active today and depending on who you ask it's like deeply tied to the Russian Academy of Sciences and kind of the Russia civil military apparatus for space power or it's entirely independent In either cases at least worth noting that there are some civilian efforts to get space situation awareness data as well as military efforts associated with Russia The final network I want to talk about is China's they run a system through their PLA should you support force unit Interestingly the PLA SSF is also responsible for China's offensive cyber operations and a lot of other high-tech things that China does in military context Their network is relatively small They are not remotely comparable to Russia or the United States in terms of what they can see in space and This makes sense because unlike Russia and unlike the United States China has never really had much opportunity to expand beyond its borders And so it doesn't have those four deployed military bases for putting up telescopes So what they've been doing is pretty clever They've been deploying these ships, which are essentially mobile SSI stations They take out international waters so they can get that global perspective on the skies and Compete with these other space powers despite having significantly less territorial reach If you're not one of these three countries You may have your own smaller network The EU is the next biggest and then basically any country with a space program has some degree of SSI capability However, there are also some commercial actors that are starting to sell SSI data They'll claim that they've made some pretty significant technological breakthroughs to start us is unclear how true that is Or to what extent they could ever match like the US military's capability But at least there's kind of a shift towards privatization that's starting to emerge in the sector In reality though today if you were on satellite Chances are you get your SSI data through a website like space trap dot org or from someone who buys it Who gives it from this website and then resells it to you? Space trap dot org is a public website that's run by the US military and anyone with an account can log in and get access to Space situational awareness data that's pretty high quality for your charge The fundamental idea here is that if you share a signal with people you prevent collisions in orbit and you protect the environment They're like terms of service here where you like check a box That says I promise I don't work with the military or whatever, but fundamentally the US government doesn't care Well, it would be nifty to see a North Korean satellite get destroyed by a piece of space debris if the resulting cascade from that collision Threatens critical US communications missions or navigation missions It's not worth the collateral damage risk And so there are strong incentives right now to share high quality SSI even though it cost an inordinate amount of money to get access to So right now the primary format for sharing this data is something called a two line elements that were a TLE TLEs were designed to fit on two 80-column hutch cars and the format has basically not changed since It's very rare in cybersecurity that you access a system that's like that was compatible with punch cards So I know this is a pretty interesting aside There are some efforts recently to update the format because you actually have only so many objects Contractors like an ID field and a two line element set and it's starting to fill up as space gets too crowded However, the core idea is probably always gonna be the same The two line element set is intended as input to what we call a propagator Which is essentially a model of how things move in orbit and two line element sets are not physically meaningful on their own They're like tied to physical properties, but they're not directly descriptive of them But instead they're intended as inputs into the system And so a two line element set is meaningless without a propagator and a propagator is useless without the two line element set If you use them together though You are able to predict where an object will be a orbit with an accuracy of about a kilometer over 72 hours Which is pretty good. It can get better in some cases and slightly worse than others But that's a good kind of rule of thumb for accurately There are other formats that are available You can actually get better data from the US military if you sign a special data sharing agreement with them This agreement is super palatable if you're like a commercial space operator, but it's less attractive if you're a foreign military And this kind of starts picking into the trust problem here, right? So at its core There are only a few people a few organizations in the world who know what these objects are and where they're going if everyone else Has to trust whatever they tell them So this makes it kind of an intuitive target for a cyber attacker So why would you target SSI? Well, these databases are highly centralized, right? They're only a few in the world and if you change a line one of them You can affect what thousands of organizations think outer space looks like and those organizations probably can't catch you They don't have a capability. They don't have the billions of dollars investment Needed to double check where a small piece of debris is at any given point in time And so they kind of just have to have blind faith that the information in the database is true about what's in space Because they can't see it themselves So as an attacker if you want to harm a satellite I say hiding a degree collision and causing it to crash You have essentially bikes on a computer somewhere that you can change to have a very hard physical effect blowing something up in outer space If we're thinking about ways to blow up satellites and you prepare deploying a couple of zero days against a database Which isn't trivial but certainly feasible versus building a national space program developing anti satellite missiles Building with a diplomatic follow-up from that and deploying them accurately It's pretty clear why a cyber attack after might be a more attractive way to target a satellite So let's talk about a couple of threat models the sort of people who engage in these attacks and what they would do and why So the first I think is the most intuitive and that is the owner of the repository decides to start lying to people Since they're the only ones with access to a lot of this information They're the only ones who sensors pick up these objects if they start lying It's very unlikely They'll get caught in the act and they can deceive whoever they want about the state of orbit this comes at a cost right if they get caught in the lie their database is no longer trusted and People maybe are unwilling to rely on it and they accidentally collide with legitimate degree that they don't believe other But at its core is something they could do And a nation's data factor who doesn't run one of these databases might say hey I want to discredit this database We would be great if you have to know that they spend billions and billions of dollars on an SSA network And nobody believes what it says and they could do that by say just making the sensors less accurate with malware Doesn't need to be particularly targeted. It just needs to change the measurements that are coming off of those radar Sensors such that the predictions are inaccurate or if they have a space program They could launch objects that are deliberately designed to do nothing other than be like difficult to track with radar or electro optical telescopes To kind of discredit the overall utility one of these databases Finally if we're kind of talking about bread and butter cybersecurity just some rando who wants to have a database somewhere Fundamentally, this is just a line in the database military databases are hard to hack but they're hardly unhackable and Additionally, this data doesn't just go directly from the military this satellite It's often sold to third parties who repackage it and sell it to like individual satellite operators to incorporate into their integration Processes and so if you compromise one of those later recipients databases, you may have a similar effect That's a little bit more targeted and a little bit easier to walk So when we talk about messing with this data, what does that look like? What do you have to change to achieve what kind of goals and what can you achieve? So we're going to run through a very simple attack scenario Our attackers goal is to cause harm to a specific satellite orbit There's two ways to go about this the first one you probably already guessed If we see in that database that there's a piece of debris that will collide with satellite in the future We can tamper the contents of that database to make it look like that piece of debris is no longer a threat The results of the satellite operator moves along blissfully ignorant of impending doom until a satellite collides with a piece of debris That seems to come out of nowhere From a physics perspective, this is trivial. If you change any Component of a two line element set, there's a really good chance that over a 72 hour forecast window That a debris object is going to be in a radically different place and no longer pose a threat to the satellite So we want to focus on a slightly more nuanced version of the attack. That's a bit more challenging and a bit more pernicious So the idea here is we create a ghost collision We take a object that doesn't collide with a satellite and we tamper it just a tiny bit to make it look like it will The effect is that we call these guys in at 12 in the morning to deal with an emergency and engage in a debris avoidance This burns fuel in the satellite and causes mechanical wear and tear it increases the cost and decreases the lifespan of their space missions This is a more credible attack than you might initially think You might have trouble imagining the US military's hiding today blow up an Iranian satellite and passing away data But it's not that hard to believe that someone would just kind of tip the scales a tiny bit so that Iranian space missions are Particularly unlucky with regard to how many debris objects they have to dodge And over time it has a kind of slow burn effect that we've seen the nation's base use in other contexts like stuck net Which caused mechanical wear and tear on centrifuges for nuclear Power slash weapons program and you might imagine a similar thing targeting a space program So how do we go about doing this? Well, first we're going to start with some assumptions to keep the simulation very simple for today The first is that we'll assume the database is already being compromised Either the owner of the database is the one telling lie or someone has deployed a hearing. We're not fundamentally interested in how you compromise the database We're going to target data in the two-line elements that format. This is a little bit Not real world in the sense that people tend to use more precise MRIs for their conduction analysis but two-line element sets are publicly available which makes it easier to work with for research purposes and Fundamentally if you can tell a lie with data the format that data is in doesn't really matter We're going to say that people trust the output of their conjunction analysis in relations in the real world If you see a collision you may call up the US military and say, hey, you double check This is actually going to happen We'll assume that either that double checking process has been compromised You just say the US military is the attacker or the victim doesn't do that for some reason and then we're going to define a Collision pretty generously as a password in one kilometer. You can do this much smaller We've had success with past as well as 100 meters But the reality is that a wider zone of collision increases the likelihood of finding a candidate quickly from a computational complexity perspective and in this case To see life on that sets are only that accurate anyway more precise is kind of meaningless So here's our target It's in a radium satellite over the Atlantic Ocean and it has an orbit that looks something like this and We're going to try to modify an element in this debris field of 10,000 objects taken from space track or To see if we can make one look like it'll collide with the satellite over the next 72 hours To filter down these objects because we have a lot We're going to only measure the time of closest approach for objects that pass within this sphere So let's go ahead and see what that looks like in the lab So what we're doing is we're looking for debris objects that pass within that zone And then we're seeing what I pass closest to the satellite The intuition here is that an object that already looks like it will pass closely Would be easy to tamper with to create one of those phantom collisions that we're trying to generate Because you'd have to only make small changes to do this orbit say a couple hundred years in one direction or the other Now the size of our debris field here is 10,000 objects. You can do this with a larger debris field It just takes longer to hunt down candidates But you're also more likely to find a good candidate that passes closer the bigger the debris field So there's a bit of a trade-off between how much computing time you want to put into this and how accurate of a collision you want to find Here I'm propagating for just a couple of days I think 48 hours or something and we're going to take our top five candidates for manipulation and try to tamper with them So if we look at the results here We see that our best candidate passes within 3.8 kilometers of our target, which is excellent This means we only have to modify this object's orbit by three kilometers in the correct direction And it'll look like it's going to collide with the satellite even when it's not so that's the scale of why we have to tell Now this initially sounds easy, right? You just change the bytes But it's a little harder than you would think because we need to get this Specific object into a new orbit over the next 72 hours. We need to change how it's moving through space pretty substantially in the database We also need to have it appear like it'll be in a specific location Right that zone of collision at a specific time when our target satellite is also there And we need to do all of this with only any tiny modifications To the line that database right we want it to look like friction might have caused this object to shift We don't want it to look like someone just believe it around database and created it completely brand new object So this is a pretty hard astrophysics problem I don't think it's unsolvable, but it's definitely beyond me But what I can do is get some check So what I did is I'm put a genetic algorithm Which is essentially a fancy way of saying I threw things at the wall to see what would stick and we define our individuals in this genetic algorithm as Set of characteristics that would change is to four fields in the two line element set and The idea is that in each generation of this genetic algorithm We determine the likelihood that one of these changes gets like passed on to the children of this individual on The basis of a fitness function which was defined as the distance between our Stake ghost debris objects and the target we're trying to collide with at the time of closest approach Now we could have added a stealth metric here to minimize the amount We have to change these fields if we were particularly worried about detection We're particularly worried those being monitored, but for simplicity purposes We set this is a very high bound and just a hard cap Then we weren't allowed to modify any of these fields by more than 10% in practice We modify most of these fields by a fraction of a percent But e-centricity in particular tends to need to be modified a little bit more because of the precision of the format Although you can find collisions within much smaller zones. It comes at the cost of more computational time Once we kind of run our scenario we get an output that looks like this So in this case we found a collision for our target object within three generations That passes in a kilometer of our target if you look at the malicious 2-line element set on the top and the original one on the bottom You'll see that they're pretty similar and if someone wasn't like actively looking for data tampering impacts It'd be pretty hard to identify that this object has been hacked to look like it's going somewhere isn't Let's see what the result of that is in our simulations So we'll see the objects kind of move along just like they did before but over time There's that slight difference such that at the time of closest approach Our malicious debris object passes well within this sphere around the iridium satellite Which is a one kilometer across and so at this point We have caused a collision to appear like it will happen The iridium operator will steer their satellite even though they don't have to and they'll increase their mission cost and decrease their mission lifespan So how do we protect against these kinds of attacks? How do we prevent this kind of manipulation? If you're a satellite operator and you're thinking how do I keep my SSA data secure? There are a couple of things you can do the first is to get higher quality data where you can to enter into those data sharing agreements This particular demonstration was made much easier by the fact that our zone of collision was one kilometer The smaller that zone of collision gets the more accurate your data is the more likely an attacker is to have to work hard With like a larger debris field or more genetic algorithm generations or bigger tampering effects to find a collision That will trigger an alert so you really increase the cost and the complexity for the attacker even if you don't fully get rid of the risk of someone lying to you You might also want to see if you can vet your data, right? There aren't any databases that fully match the US militaries But even something with like 30% coverage at least gives you a second source for truth on those 30% of objects that they do know about And you might think about also comparing your internal data with the public data from the US government So you can say hey my database says a prediction that the US government doesn't even though the source data should be the same That's a pretty good indicator of compromise If you're a nation state actor There are a couple of different ways to think about this if you run an SSA database So if you're the US Russia or China You need to understand that those bites on a computer are critical strategic resource that someone might try to mess with From a cybersecurity perspective They might do this to discredit your information to cause harm to one of your own satellites for someone else's satellites But fundamentally as a nation you have an obligation to recognize the importance of these specific databases as some of the most important space data you hold Additionally, I think it's important to disavow any funny business in SSA Right now the US military has a statement on the website that basically says that the data from space track that word could be manipulated Anytime for national security purposes and they understand the logic behind this But I think standing by SSA data is an important step towards protecting the space environment in the future and Publicly disavowing and ascribing a diplomatic cost to get in caught concealing or manipulating SSA data I think is an important step towards credibly building a system where people can trust what space looks like Finally if you're a smaller country you might not have a full space surveillance network But you may have a couple of telescopes or a couple of radar sensors that you can use to kind of randomly sample and audit Specific objects and say there's supposed to be a debris object there today Is there anything and use that to kind of catch at least some tampering attacks in these databases and get a sense of their reliability? So to sum things up SSA is fundamentally about trust There is someone out there who is the only person who knows the truth about these objects and is telling it to you And you have no way fundamentally to get that physical reality and ground truth information for yourself This trust is intuitively abusable You can change information in SSA database through some very basic orbital physics operations to make it tell Prophecy, but is it true to create a phantom collision or to conceal an impending collision with catastrophic effects? We think that we can fix this by recognizing that SSA is an information target That can be used to cause physical effects in space and so as a result building Responsibility and verification into the SSA process is a key step towards recognizing that trust is as important as truth in these databases Thank you so much for listening to my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions Hopefully I've gotten you thinking about kind of interactions between the physics of space and the cybersecurity properties


when the narcissist leads you on the narcissist will mislead you into believing that they are in love with you or attracted to you but they may not be interested in you at all they will flirt with you they will tease you in an attempt to entrap and entice you they will encourage your romantic or sexual interest while they have no intention of continuing this course of action so that you attach to them so that you attribute importance and value to them they become something significant to you where you're thinking of them night and day they distract you from other things in your life that you may be more significant to you and they pick up on certain cues which lets them know just how significant they are like when you're always available to text them or talk on the phone or when you're always asking to meet them but they always say that they're busy that tells them that they've got you wrapped around their thumb it tells them that they've got you under their spell because now they have captivated your attention they have brought you under their influence and control through the use of their seduction and charm to where you can't think about anything else your mind is always on them you're always wondering what they're doing or who they're with because they've gained control of your mind and to the people around you it may literally look like you're under a spell it may look like your mind is somewhere else you're constantly in la la land day dreaming about them but they have no intention of continuing their course of action with you it's all about keeping you hooked on them keeping you locked under their control because it makes them feel like they're something significant to someone it makes them feel powerful it makes them feel desirable and attractive and that's all a narcissist is really looking for when they're leading you on they're just looking for attention normally they might buy you gifts or have sex with you as a means of gaining your attention but if you've already demonstrated that's that their seduction and charm is effective on you they're not even going to do that because they don't need to you're already hooked under their spell they already know they've got you all they have to do now is keep you there which isn't very hard for them to do because you're unknowingly doing most of the work you're feeding into this fantasy which has no basis in reality they will act like they admire something about you which they have no interest in or desire for and they will use future faking they will lie and promise something about your possible future to simulate intimacy to get what they want from you at the present and what they want is attention your attention fuels them it gives them narcissistic supply because they know that at any moment you would come running you would be eager to do what they want while they have no desire for you they're completely detached from you a normal healthy person would never intentionally lead anyone on it would not make them feel good it would make them feel guilty and ashamed as though they've done something wrong and then they would stop or they would let the other person know that they're not interested in anything more but a narcissist is never going to do this at least not until they've milked as much out of you as they can because as long as they can keep you wanting them they have your attention and it gives them supply these are people who never got the validation they needed from their parents in childhood so now they're constantly seeking attention from whoever will give it to them and they don't mind deceiving you to get it they don't care about how it affects you they're self-absorbed and they lack empathy they cannot share your experience they're only concerned with their own feelings and needs which is how they're able to lead you on which is how there's nothing to stop them and tell them this is wrong in their minds it's your fault you're stupid for believing that they want you so you deserve this treatment because if you were smart if you were anything better you would stop giving them your attention they don't consider that they tricked you into thinking that they have something of significance and value to share with you they don't reflect on their own actions they just look at what you're giving to them while being fully aware that they are not deserving of it because they know they haven't done anything to earn it but it feeds their inflated ego it makes them feel more important that they actually are which only distances them from you even more because now they think they're better than you whenever you're dealing with a narcissist like this you need to take them off the pedestal you need to realize that they're still human you do not need to value them any more than you value yourself you do not need to make them more important than anything else in your life and when you do that they will chase you because now they're seeking your validation but as soon as you shower them with compliments and praise that's when they're going to pull away that's when they're going to think they're better than you when you're dealing with a narcissist like this you need to hold back no matter how great you may think they are and then they will come to you because there's something for them to chase you're not just giving it away for free but people who do this are not going to be good for anything along to him anyway they're only going to play games with you they're constantly going to test you so you're better off finding someone who is going to be less head work someone who isn't going to mess with your mind thank you for watching i hope this video resonates with you please like comment share and subscribe if you would like to donate my paper link is in the video description


Welcome to Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration, the SBDC Small Business Development Center of Hawaii, VBAC of the Pacific Veterans Business Outreach Center, and the Pat C. Teeming Center for Business and Leadership, all great partners. So today, I'm Terry Funakoshi, your host, and we have an amazing guest, a special friend and amazing woman, Ms. Noella Napoleon. She's president of Advocates Hawaii. Welcome, Noella. Aloha. Thanks for having me. We're great to have you. So, Noella, I want to just find out about your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself.  So this year marks the 24th year that my husband and I and my children have our own beverage and ice cream distributorship here in Hawaii. And it's been a wonderful, thrilling, and challenging adventure. And now, in my second career, I do consulting for small businesses. Oh, okay. So what about a little bit about yourself, your background? My background is, well, I started my career in advertising, working in downtown Honolulu, helping other businesses to promote themselves. And I had a variety of assignments. I really love that job. And throughout my career, I've always been involved in promotion in one way, shape, or form, and also simultaneously, advocacy, just very much involved in Hawaiian culture, social change for Native Hawaiians. And after running my, so I did that. I did nonprofit work for a long time, actually. And then I went into private business when I had my first child. So that was a huge leap back into the private sector. I also taught school at a small Hawaiian immersion school. I was very lucky to be a punny haka haka, they say, substitute teacher. So I got to teach little children all the way to high schoolers, bilingualy. And yeah. So now I've put it all together, and I've decided to help adults. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk business. I know you have a successful business with you and your husband, but I know now you're including the family. You want to talk about that? Oh, yes. So when my husband and I started off, we didn't expect to start a business. It was just sort of the opportunity arose. I was about to have a child. And so we had a chance to buy out another company, a beverage company. And I had nothing better to do. I was on maternity leave. So I thought, well, okay. Hesitantly, we launched out. We started a home-based business distributing beverage products to small little mom and pop stores. And then things grew. We started taking on different lines of products. Then people came after us looking for distributors in Hawaii. Then we went into coffees, teas, ice creams. You know, a few years later, we looked back and we had a business without really having much formal business education. And so it was a wild ride, but here we are 24 years later. In the first three years of business, we were just growing by leaps and bounds. And we were nominated for one of those fastest 50 awards by First Hawaiian Bank, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and Pacific Business News. So it was great, you know, and it's been a struggle and a thrilling challenge at the same time. Right.  How's that going? Oh, it's great. Yeah. When we shot our first TV commercial, they were babies. They were in our first real commercial on TV, and they were just little ones, and everyone had a role to play. My nieces and nephews, and now they're actually helping us to run our company. So my one son, my oldest son, Aiku E, he's the manager of catering. And my other son, Kekahu, he is the manager of our social media and our sales. And so now we're all working together. It's really awesome. Great. Yeah, I love it. So I know that you have all your family support at home and in the business. And so that allows you to also be a business instructor and a counselor. So you want to tell us about that part of your job? Yeah. So it's interesting because when I was 10 years into my business, of course I had a lot of friends and family. This is Hawaii, right? People come to you. So they would come to me for help on how to start a business, how to register their business, a lot of little things. And so 10 years ago I thought, well, maybe I can be a consultant and do this for a living side job. But as soon as I tried to set out and do it, then of course nobody was interested. So I just threw it to the universe and I thought, well, I'm not ready.  Even when you're 10 years into your business, that's sort of just getting the engines revved up, honestly, now that I look in hindsight. So when I was heading for 50 and my baby was ready to graduate, I told my husband, you know what? Now I'm going to try again. So I started improving my resume and bringing that up to speed. And I just threw it out and I was looking for an opportunity to help others launch their business. Lo and behold, I found the Patsy Main Center. We found each other, I should say. And it was amazing. I didn't even know this was a thing. They hired me. The Patsy Main Center hired me. And so I started my career. My company's name is Advocate Tawaii. And this is my second life career, my encore career, so to speak. And so I still run my company with my husband. I'm still in business. But now I get to do what I love. So this is a me time job. And I find that a lot of women, especially once we raise our kids, we're looking for that thing, either to pick up our careers where they left off, or just saying to ourselves, I've raised my kids and now I want to do something that gives me meaning, right? So it's really a privilege and an honor. And every time I'm able to share the good, bad, and ugly of business, which is what it is, right? I feel very rewarded. I learn a lot from our clients. Well, that's great. I know we have some pictures that the viewers are going to see. And I've had the privilege of working with Noella. And she is an awesome instructor and business counselor. I think with the Center, you've had more than 100 people come through your courses. And they all love it. And there's so many success stories out there from the people that you've taught. And you mentioned Encore. So Encore entrepreneurs. I mean, a lot of women we see today getting into the field that they love. Can you tell us more about that? And how do you feel about doing it? How long have you been teaching? Doing this? Well, this is actually my third year as a business consultant. And it's amazing. I want to say this. In our clients, I see this proving itself out time and time again. You actually have a wealth. We have a wealth of knowledge inside of us. When we hit a certain point in our life, Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. And imagine as mothers, as career women, we have way more than 10,000 hours in whatever we're doing. So it's thrilling because it's very validating. And I find that a lot of women actually don't realize how much they have to give, how much knowledge, skills, and insight, and wisdom women really have. Women out there, you have it. It's all inside of you. You just have to capture it.  And if you're struggling with that, struggling with how to find that thing that you want to do going forward, then I would really encourage women out there, men too. You can come and see the Patsy Ming Center right in the YWCA O'ahu. Come and let us work with you. Let us help you bring those good things out, because I'm finding it to be thrilling myself. Yeah, I know you mentioned the Patsy Ming Center, and they kind of found you, you didn't even know about it. Yeah. You know, and I find that a lot of people don't know about the center. Can you tell us a little bit about the center and how it differs? Sure. So back when I was starting my business, we, of course there was no internet, right? We literally had to walk from state agency to state agency in the city to fill out all your paperwork and become compliant. Well, that all by itself was kind of an eliminator, because you had to really have a lot of gum chin, there's a word, to get out there and find the resources. There was no internet. I can't even imagine. I don't know. I found them all, right? You looked in the phone book is what you did, yellow pages. And so you went around finding the resources, and so flashed to today, now we are easy to find. Back then writing a business plan was very laborious, now there's software for that and there's online subscriptions, you can just easily write a business plan. So the different sites say just in the global perspective is that services are easier to find. Now the Women's Business Center, the Patsy Minx Center is the Women's Business Center of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and it's been around for a long time, right? It's been around for over 30 years, however, again, awareness. In its current version, now that five years, Patsy Minx Center, it is just zoomed right into the future. It is current. It is on point. The Patsy Minx Center, because it's so well networked, we are becoming better known. And so that's the difference. The difference is now it's more than just here's how to write a business plan or register your business. We now understand as women, and I think the SBA is so fabulous in doing this now, we just help people with the whole picture. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's great. The Minx Center does so much good work, so we're going to come back to that. So right now, I'm Teri Funakoshi from Small Adventures in Small Business, and we're going to take a break, and we'll be back in one minute. Thank you. Come back to Adventures in Small Business. I'm talking with Noella Napoleon, and Noella, tell us about your business Advocates Hawaii. Advocates Hawaii is an online platform and a service for adults, really. My interest is in supporting adults through lifelong learning, and so I'm creating this online resource for adults who need to access services for education, self-development, professional development or self-improvement, and also for advocacy. So I'll just break that down. Education because Hawaii is rich, rich with resources. All the community colleges and all of these educational resources that are off the map that are very low-cost or very affordable, and I really want people to know this because so often after high school, all the supports drop away, right? We need resources to help us as adults. So education is big for me, and I believe it is for others looking to get that better paying job or fix a problem, fix an issue in our lives. So that's education, and if you go on to my website, www.advocateshawaii.com, you can find hopefully some educational resources for you. Also self-development, for example, the Patsy Mates Center has the Leadership Alliance, Business Courses, who knew? Go on to my website, and we're there too. All these things for professional and personal improvement. And then finally, advocacy because, you know, we can't always improve every single problem out there. We want to as women, right? But what we can do is learn how to advocate for those areas of social change that we're interested in, that we can have a direct impact. For example, our theme for this year, I have three themes that we're supporting. One is child sex abuse, to try to educate people through one of our clients, Elizabeth Lin, to help people to understand the dynamics of that. Also violence prevention, to help people to not go that extra step and hurt someone or kill someone. That's very important in Hawaii. It's important everywhere. So that's one of our themes. And the third, probably the biggest for me, is bullying. It's school place bullying. So I've created this wonderful PowerPoint. It's on our website, www.advocatoa.com. And you can go on there and pull down this PowerPoint, look at it, learn.  So instead of feeling disempowered by the things that we can't control, I like to try to encourage people to feel empowered by the things you can contribute to, even in the smallest of ways. Right.  Sure. You know, I read somewhere that Hawaii is like one of the top per-capita states that has nonprofits. Are you seeing like a trend in more people wanting to open nonprofits? Oh, definitely. We see business clients coming in, we're thinking they're going to start a business. And you know, a nonprofit is a business. It's just a different type of, it's more of a social enterprise. And absolutely we see many more people wanting to start their own nonprofits for this reason, to jump into the game, to help improve, you know, conditions, not only in Hawaii, but around the world. And many of them are women. Right. And I know that for the MIG Center, you're doing a class, or a workshop in April, April 21st. Yes, it's coming Saturday. Yeah, a program, Launch My Non-Profit. Yes. Launch My Non-Profit. Yeah, what, who goes to that type of class? Why don't you kind of give us an idea? Okay. So, you know, a nonprofit, a not-for-profit business, it is a business. And many people don't understand that. It's, rightfully we need to run it as a business. It's just that the end product is social change, not net profit. And so people come confused about how to get it started, how to put a board together, and just where to start.  So what we do through the non-profit courses, we help them put the structure, we put the flesh on the bones, so to speak. And once you enter this course, by the time you leave, it's just a two-day course, you have a pretty good idea of what a non-profit is for, how to get one started, where to find the funding to operate a non-profit, how to put your board together properly, and the regulations that are involved in this kind of business model. Yeah. So if someone takes this workshop, this two-day workshop, and then they start a non-profit, can they come back to the Center for Help? Yes. And what are the services that you provide? Okay. So it's the same as we would do for any business, right? We provide ongoing counseling. We will help you put your business model together, put a format together, put your plan of action together, help you to find the resources to construct your non-profit entity. Once you launch, then as any business, we're there to help you. We don't do the business, but we provide guidance. That's very important, especially with a non-profit, because it's considered a public corporation, yeah? So compliance is an issue that everyone wants to learn about, needs to learn about. As long as you understand those mechanics, then you can be about your business of helping others, you know, helping your community. Right.  I'm wondering, you know, do people, with all that access, do they still come in, you know, and need help with that? Because I see it's very confusing online sometimes. You know, that is the fascinating phenomenon. So in this age of technology, it's amazing to me that we still, as human beings, we crave that warm touch. We crave it.   They're trying to change the world, be better people, be more humanitarian. This generation is phenomenal. And they're actually not, you know, the serial type, all technology. No, I find it to be the opposite. Our millennials and people of our age and older, we're all interested in having technology and using it. But we want that personal touch. We want both, you know. So we're finding in our classes, in our one-on-one counseling, that it's the two. It's technology, but you need the wisdom of another human being to guide you through it and to give you all the nuances. Yeah. It's not just one or the other. It's both. I think that's what we're finding. Yeah, great. Yeah, that's what I heard, that, you know, it's a nurturing center. Super nurturing. And you get everything. And so I'm hearing that there's a continuation. They can come back and, you know, continue their learning or help. I know your second part, is it on grant writing or how to get funds? Yep. So the first part, now two days is sort of an immersion experience, so to speak, right? There's a lot to learn. You're not going to learn everything in two days. But it's a lot better to come and to get the information rather than try to do it on your own. So day one on the 21st is coming Saturday. It's all about setting up a nonprofit. Day two, which is the following Saturday, I believe that's the 28th, it's about grant writing. So what are the important components? What should you have in a grant proposal? So that funders, people who help give money to nonprofits, so they'll pay attention. And so they'll be interested in what you have to offer. And we talk about networking and how important that is in the grant writing process to have support other organizations and other individuals in the community supporting you. And what is that message and what does a nonprofit program look like so that others will come on board and say, yeah, you know what, we'll support you with some funding. Or, you know, you can use that extra room we have or we have a car available. You know, it's all about presenting your nonprofit in a way that solves social problems. And not just that, in a way that people will come and also support you. So that's the grant writing piece. We're not going to write a full grant. We're going to teach you all the important components of a grant. That's very important. I know when I was looking at the nonprofit statistics, I read somewhere that almost 11% of the state has some part of a nonprofit. That's fabulous, actually. And I think I saw over 6,000 nonprofits. Throughout the I-Mans. It's amazing. People just want to get out there and help. So that, all the more, this kind of education is important because instead of launching out and starting a nonprofit, what we want people to do is walk it back and make sure that your nonprofit is constructed in a way also not to over duplicate. There's many people doing XYZ service. You want to make sure you know who they are so that your funder knows that you're not overlooking the available resources. Also, all the people who want to help, we want you to know that there's more than one way to raise funds. There's grants, yes. But there's also, you can be entrepreneurial as a nonprofit. You can, you can sell something to make money. You can get donations. So we encourage people to find multiple revenue streams because it can be very difficult to fund your operation unless you're diversified. And that's where the business piece comes in. You know, the traditional business mindset. So if you have an entrepreneurial mindset and you're a social visionary and you combine the two, that's where we want to get people to. It's to combine the best of business, private business world and social change efforts. Combine the two, that's the most powerful. Okay, so again, let's wrap that up. So when is the workshop? Can we let them know? Yeah, sure. So the Launch My Non-Profit program is divided into two parts. Non-Profit Toolkit Part One, that's this week Saturday, April 21st at the Patsy Meeks Center and we're housed in the YWCA O'ahu next to Eolani Palace. Okay. Yeah, just walking the door Saturday, the 28th. It's part two, that's the ground writing piece. Okay, great. And I know you said the information can also be found online at the Patsy Meeks Center for Business and Leadership, which is MCBL. It's www.mcblhawaii.com and you look under the program, excuse me, .org. www.mcblhawaii.org Click on the program link and you'll find the Non-Profit Toolkit. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Noella, for joining us today. Like I said in the beginning, you're an amazing woman, very generous. I'm so happy to call you my friend and associate. And again, I thank everyone for joining us today in adventures and small business and I hope you tune in every Thursday at 11 o'clock, same time and thank you. Bye-bye.