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All right. How's everybody doing today on the OpenStack Summit Boston? Good? Good. Before we start, I wanted to get a show of hands in the room. Who works for a small or a medium-sized organization that's interested in pursuing OpenStack for production workloads inside of your respective organization? Awesome. So hopefully we can fill in some of that stuff for you today in this presentation. The title of it is Free My Organization to Cloud Native Infrastructure. But before we go there, just a little bit about us. Hello, everyone. My name is Steve Black. I work for East Carolina University, and I am a systems analyst slash programmer. What I really specialize in is virtualization. So whether that be traditional virtualization or public or private cloud virtualization, I've had about seven years experience in IT with the last year and a half really focusing on public and private cloud. I have a really heavy background in VMware, Linux, and OpenStack. At work, I am known as go to lunch Steve because I never leave. Some people get there before me and leave before I do. So it's kind of interesting that I really have dedicated the last few years to really pursuing open source technology in OpenStack. Great. Hey, guys. David Kane. I work for Red Hat. I'm a senior solutions architect in the Global Partners and Alliances Organization. So I work with Red Hat's key OEM and service provider partners on building solutions, specifically cloud solutions. I've spent about the past 14 years working in IT with a cloud infrastructure focus. So a lot of what I say I've taken from the School of Hard Knocks, I would say. A little fun fact about me. I really love vintage machinery. I like to restore old cars, which we'll talk about that in the presentation some more. Old hand tools, anything older than 40 years, just like the quality and everything associated with that. And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, my handle is up there. So quickly, the agenda that I want to run through today with everyone for this session, I want to introduce East Carolina University. Talk a little bit about the school, its mission statement, how many students it has, as well as its business and technology challenges. Steve will take you through that. And we'll lead up to kind of a decision-making process that their organization went through to actually say, yes, we're going to adopt OpenStack in our respective environment. I'll take you through what are solutions specifically for OpenStack and why you should care and what these are, a little bit of a definition. And then Steve and myself will take you jointly through proof points and results since the deployment of OpenStack at East Carolina University. Some advice for you, this track is evaluating OpenStack. So we do have some advice for you in your respective journeys, those that raise their hand, as to how to begin this journey to cloud-native infrastructure, as well as a little taste as to some of the next steps in ECU's deployment, what some of the things that they're looking at next. All right, everyone. So I want to give you a little bit of background on East Carolina University. We are the third or fourth-largest four-year university in North Carolina. We have around 30,000 students and around 5,800 faculty and staff. Specifically, the department I work for is called Information Technology and Computing Services. And what we do is we provide a lot of the public-facing services that the university offers, as well as not only hosting those, but we also do a lot of development on those platforms as well. The slide needs to be updated a little bit. That says 150 employees. It's really around 200 now. And my team has about five people on it. So let me talk a little bit about the business challenges of why we went and pursued OpenStack. Specifically, we have cost and budget. Most problems in the industry are time and money, right? So the way that the university works is we have certain budgets that we really can't go over. And a lot of our budgets reflect around fixed assets, right? So we own and host most of our stuff. And that leads us to time, right? So as an organization, we have time constraints on certain projects and things. So a lot of our time was spent automating and orchestrating a lot of things we do with OpenStack, including other technologies. And we are also a siloed organization. Anybody in here in a siloed organization? All right, you guys know my pain, right? So one of our biggest concerns was customer service, right? Being in a siloed organization, we have challenges of interacting with a bunch of people to provide a very complex set of services, right? So we provide services to like 12 different colleges and we have bunches of platforms, right? So we're not just like a single vendor shop. We have everything you can think of. So when our customers demand something, we either have to be specialized in it and it might take us a little bit longer to get some of those processes started. And another big part is because we do provide those services to so many people and we have budgets for every little thing. So as ITCS, part of the organization, we may have a budget, but if we provide services to say a college within the university or another department within the university, they have budgets to deal with as well, right? So it's really difficult to manage your fixed asset resources along with providing service to those customers. Also as a university, we have to worry about data privacy and compliance. So we do have HIPAA data, PCI compliance, we have to worry about and student data as well. So we don't like to interact student data with like production data and stuff like that. So we really have to be aware in our environment how to separate these things and manage them efficiently. So when we were starting our journey, we were looking at a few different platforms, one of them being public cloud. And I think we got a quote for some of our window service to go in to a public cloud and we were looking at around $50,000 a month. That is really expensive, especially when you have a budget, right? And that wasn't like all of our main infrastructure, either that was just kind of a little subset. And that can be very difficult for our organization because those budgets happen in a fiscal year. So if we had a higher demand for resources, we wouldn't be able to meet that, right? If our customer just wanted like 20 more of something, well, we quoted you on this, we can't expand that good in a public cloud because we just don't have the budget, right? So we looked at externally managed hosted services. And what that really means is a service may be a platform. So one of our biggest platforms is our ERP, our enterprise resource planning platform. It's called Banner. If you've ever been to a university, you've probably seen Banner before. And what that does is that does everything from student registration to paying for books, paying for classes, looking up tax forms, transcripts.  So there's a bunch of services that make up the service. And if we were to host this on say like a public provider, we've had this for over 10 years now. And we've done a lot of customizations and programming and development behind the scenes to add new features to it. We were afraid that my mic might not work. So we were afraid that a lot of these features that we had wouldn't be compatible or supported if we went with a vendor provided solution, right? So we're always kind of hesitant to go to an externally hosted solution because we can't actually control that, right? Then we had the option to stick with traditional virtualization technologies. We use a wide variety, KVM, Rev, RevM, VMware. I mean, we have a lot of technologies that we use, right? And so as a price point to manage these technologies, it was getting really slow, right? So if you go and manage one thing at a time, it's kind of slow. But if you can improve resources for a bigger set of customers, then it'd make things a little bit smoother in the future, especially when you roll over hardware or make upgrades, right? And something else that we wanted to pursue was microservices and containerization. And a lot of our platforms, 10 plus years old, we can't really containerize everything overnight, right? So you want to host on an environment which really empowers you to be able to do your containerization or microservices. And also, when we were looking at solutions, we thought, wow, Private Cloud really seems like a solution that would be really good for us. Because it's scalable and flexible. So when we were looking at Private Clouds, we looked at a bunch of different vendors. I mean, there's a lot of them out there, right? We're a really big red hat shop. We're very familiar with a lot of the software and the open source projects. So when we were looking for a solution, we really had a focus in mind to, hey, can we really find hardware and software that fit together really well and incorporate all these things into our future services? So before we talk a little bit about what ECU eventually went with, I want to talk a little bit more about how customers view OpenStack solutions. So that was in the agenda slide, what are these and why should you care? And I made an XY graph right here with risk on the X-axis and return on investment in the Y-axis here. And I'm a car guy. So do it yourself or type thing. I mentioned I like vintage machinery. I have a 51 year old car that I've been restoring over the past four or five years and I have an intake manifold from one manufacturer, an engine from a different manufacturer, suspension system from yet another. So I've essentially put together something myself and I support it. One can make a similar parallel in building or starting an OpenStack journey right there. Certainly a lot of major players that have adequate staffing and resources to have a do it yourself attitude where you put all of these individual parts and components together. Yes, you can build something, but maybe there's a better way for organizations that don't have the staffing or the resources or the ability to pay for consulting agreements for stuff like that. So I want to introduce reference architectures, moving a little bit more to the right on the scale there of lower risk and more of a return on investment. And that's kind of an overloaded term right there. So when you say reference architectures back to the car analogy right there, I'll make the analogy that a reference architecture is a playbook. It has components built into it from vendors, a hardware and software vendors, but it does not accurately reflect maybe step-by-step directions or actual validation of that software stack on that hardware stack with a joint roadmap between those entities and writing that reference architecture. So one of the things that I want to introduce as a follow-on to that, maybe a reference architecture plus plus, is a flexible solution. So a flexible solution encompassing everything that I just described, but very much more prescriptive guidance, automation that comprises that and purpose built configurations that have been known to work, known to scale and include companies with deep partnerships and deep engineering relationships and collaboration over a multifaceted stage. Now going back to what I said about do-it-yourself, like I said, I'm a car guy. I love to customize things. I'm not saying that you can't customize your deployments, but what we found and humbling myself working with great engineering teams in companies like this or even customer deployments, I found that customization up to the enthmost scale is kind of an effect of a penalization in scale. And one of the things that I would say, specifically for a flexible solution or your specific journey, is started a known boundary. Take the customizations that are unique and inherent to your individual organizations, but start at a boundary where you know everything works and you can get up and start it and you can actually be productive with that. Hold on, give me a slide. So I want to add to that a little bit for all the people who raised your hands. Who of you actually went out and built your own open stack and it worked perfectly and you were able to scale and it just works beautifully? Yeah, that's what I thought, right? So when we were looking for this flexible solution, we said, look, we don't have a lot of time and money to spend into researching and developing this solution to be able to be flexible. So one of our concerns was, how do you actually have a solution that you know will scale properly, right? So with our solution that we purchased, I've seen other customers actually be able to scale that, so I kind of trusted that. Also, you have to put a lot of trust into people who are providing those services to set you up with a flexible solution, right? So if you buy a car, you buy it to travel, right? And Dave was talking about he likes to build cars and change out all the parts and things. Well, me as a customer, what am I gonna do to it? Well, I'm gonna change out the tires, I'm gonna add spinners on the side, I'm gonna change out my seats, right? I'm gonna add features on top of this flexible solution and I need that to be supported, right? For compatibility. So when we were looking for the solution, not only did we buy it because it was proven to scale and work, but because we wanted to add to it and that was a very good price point for us. So as to the solution that ECU deployed at their site, I'm introducing right now the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Red Hat OpenStack platform, and this is technology comprising of Red Hat, Red Hat OpenStack platform, Red Hat stuff storage, as well as systems and servers from Dell EMC, specifically the PowerEdge R630 and the PowerEdge R730 XD, those are available as well as the FX2 modular blade-based architecture today, and that includes the Open Networking Dell EMC switches and the core architecture is a 10-node starter kit deployment with 10 gigabit networking, everything highly available, starting at a half-rack of systems. The team itself, I'll introduce a slide here in a minute, but really the ideal use cases for this are infrastructure as a service, containers as a service, scale out, software-defined storage, but tests and development workloads, but also production workloads. So really this is an ideal starter case to really the technology stack to start an open-stack journey, and what does that look like from a logical architecture perspective? So I mentioned everything in the infrastructure layer at the bottom of this picture here, but the software layer on top of that, deployed by Red Hat OpenStack platform director, that's Red Hat's management and orchestration tool to do that, that deploys Red Hat Enterprise Linux, arguably the most successful, longest Linux distribution for the enterprise there, 17 years in counting, as well as Red Hat stuff storage for the block storage, arguably one of the most popular storage solutions for open-stack. But I mentioned before the reference architecture, this is where a solution like this is different. We also have a cloud orchestration layer on top of that. The team jointly, Dell EMC and Red Hat, prescribed and validated deployment guides to have Red Hat OpenShift container platform, that's our containers as a service project there, comprised in the reference architectures, as well as Red Hat CloudForms. So these guys validate very, very well our joint engineering work that we do together. Been doing this for about three and a half years right now, and we include things on the side, I have certified extensions, I mentioned these, having validation of Red Hat CloudForms and OpenShift on there, as well as professional services engagements involved with this. So for those organizations that may not have the staffing or the capacity to deploy this, Dell EMC and Red Hat go on to the customer site and actually work with the customer, get them up to speed with getting this deployed, rather quickly, I heard a statistic at the keynote at Red Hat Summit where Steve was on stage saying that they took their deployment from three weeks down to three. So that's also a portion of both the professional services and this automated deployment tooling, which Dell EMC and Red Hat have announced as Jetpack. So this is tooling that accompanies the reference architecture that really helps stand up and deploy things in a validated and repeated manner very, very quickly, and then they're turned over to the customer after the engagement there. So I can stand up here and spouse on stage all day about the benefits of this, but really what you guys care about, Steve, how did this help your organization? So Dave is showcasing all the benefits of a flexible solution and specifically that solution. When ECU went to look at this solution, like I said before, we weren't looking at just implementing OpenStack, right? We were wanting to improve performance, time to providing services for customers as well. So what we were looking at is integrating a lot of tools additional to this. So when we looked and we communicated with Red Hat, what all tools can we integrate with the solution, right? So we're looking at Ansible, Puppet, we're looking at Red Hat Satellite Server, and we really wanted to integrate everything and maybe even have a single pane of glass in the future for self-service, right? So this solution has really let itself for us to be able to pursue that. So I wanna talk a little bit about our current standings. At the beginning of that project I mentioned earlier, we had around 10 services spread across 20 traditional VMs that we wanted to migrate over. So since then we have added additional 10 services to that. A lot of that time savings was spent making cloud images or like virtual appliances, you may hear them called. So we're able to deploy those really fast. Now we're at about 100 instances. So we have two data centers, two separate clouds. So 50 instances per site, right? And we also have OpenShift on OpenStack now and that happened about two or three weeks ago. So we're just starting out with that and starting to containerize some of our services. So comparatively to the initial deployment of the Dell solution, we met at about 70% capacity, right? So our first three months of using the platform we hit about 30% and we were starting to develop more and more and our customer demands got really high and we started to need to scale out, right? But I talked about earlier we had those budgets, right? So we were able to purchase some RAM and some more storage and we were able to grow, but now we need to add more compute nodes, right? So at our current capacity we are at 50% capacity. When I get back in a few days they plan on me adding some more compute nodes. So I gotta do that when I get home. But what are the real results of having used the technology, right? So I talked early about our capital expenses. We were able to reduce our capital expenses by 10 fold. That goes for hardware, software licensing and some of the other costs associated with that. And also we have operational expenses which were a lot of time and management, right? And we were able to reduce those by about eight fold. That's pretty impressive. If you go to your boss and say, hey, I can turn $5 million into a $500,000 expense. Who wants to do that, right? That's like guaranteed job right there. Also, along with that, notice that we've adopted a lot more automation and orchestration, right? And that's really helped our time. So I wanted to provide a few little statistics on that. So if you look at the graph on the right we had time to build VMs. So this is kind of a comparison on the way we were traditionally doing things and the way that we're doing things now. So you can see our biggest bar over there is server assessment. So when ECU provides a service to a customer we have to make sure we meet all those compliances and that we know exactly what the customer wants and then we have to get certain things from some of our silos like storage or network or firewall requests to be able to do these things, right? And then the actual build time was around four days. And that's kind of slow. Now that we've been able to incorporate all these things and kind of streamline some of those procedures we've been able to hand off a VM in about half a business day. So what that really means for me and my team is I can launch an instance in about 10 minutes and be production ready. So what I mean by that is actually working in production. So 10, 15 minutes to launch something in production that's pretty impressive. However, we can improve that even more by doing self-service, right? So we're starting to allow some of our internal customers to do that and that has gone fairly well so far. I talked earlier about having to get stakeholders on board, right? And the best way to do that is to give them a button. People love buttons. Click, click, click more, more, right? So our customer service has gone way up. Our customers love that we're able to do all these things a lot quicker as well as resource management. And what I mean by that is I was really referring to management of the infrastructure, right? So if you're doing infrastructure as a service compared to traditional technologies, your resource management becomes easy because you just set up quotas for your tenants, right? And that makes it really easy. So when you go into projects, you know, hey, I have this much resources left. I can easily gauge how much my customers are gonna need. And if they ask for more, I just change some numbers, right? And it happens. And then I just have to request things later on. So having stated that we've adopted new technology and that we've had somewhat of success, I would say, I have a few words of wisdom that I would like to impart. The first part is the easiest way to adopt new technology is convince management that they're gonna save a lot of money. I talked about the 10-fold. If you can bring that to your boss and say, hey, look, this guy did it, we can do it too, that's a pretty good argument. So if you get management on board, change generally starts with one person having an idea, right? But one person can't change everything. So you really need to onboard people in the organization. So that could be stakeholders, your own teammates, saying, hey guys, let's try this. And then go to the other silos. If you're in a silo like I am, go to the other teams and say, hey look, let's come together, let's collaborate, and let's see what we can make happen. So that becomes a little bit easier. So some other advice from an operational perspective. Yes, you have all of this awesome new cloud capabilities right here, but having a way to monitor that so you can accurately reflect how much capacity you're using, at Red Hat I'm apt to recommend totally open source things right there. So fluently for log management or for the actual systems itself, actually I'm forgetting the name of it, but have a demon on your system itself so you can monitor how much CPU it's using, how much memory, how much disk space, how much latency right there, and have those metrics captured in a portal like in a graphite Grafana type instance. So when it comes time to ask your boss for more capacity right there, you've got empirical data and you understand and you have a viewpoint into your entire cloud right there. And also charge back, depending on the organization there, some folks have internal charge back capabilities right there. Have that nailed down, even before you do your cloud deployment there because every organization is different how they charge back to get money for resources that they deploy for their customers right there. So just take that into account from an operational perspective. Also your key stakeholders, your customers, your clients that use that infrastructure itself. We talk about digital transformation in such an overused term, but really digital transformation of the technology stack itself. There's also a human element involved in that. Your organizations have to transform as well and start thinking about different ways to either write your applications or service your IT like what we're talking about right now. Push these folks inside of your organization. Show them the realms of possibilities that emerge whenever you have agile development practices, certainly containerization that's an extremely hot topic here. But the fact of the matter is a lot of organizations have so much traditional code written for them. It takes time. And so break things down in a stepwise process and don't try to boil the ocean, at least at the onset there, as well as having specific roadmaps for whenever you do implement a solution like this in your respective organization. As Steve mentioned, you onboard these specific folks. But what we've found that's really helpful is having workshops or having training and enablement sessions. So not only show up at your co-worker's desk, look at all the cool stuff that I can do with this technology, but onboard them, create a participative community inside of your organization, onboard them, and get them enabled. So it's not just you as the stakeholder. You've got an army of people with you to help you make this transition a little bit easier. So what about at the future at ECU, Steve? What are you looking at next? So we have a lot of plans with OpenStack and in general. Specifically with OpenStack, we're looking at upgrading the load balancer as a service V2. Or at Five Integration, I talked about earlier we wanted to incorporate self-service. And having that integration will make it a lot easier for our internal customers. Also with OpenShift, we may look at Manila with CFFS or having Gluster run in OpenShift. That's also in tech preview. So we don't want to go too far into the bleeding edge, but we want to look into it right, because there are some challenges you may face. But knowing that the community will update in about six months, some of your challenges may be solved. So always look to the future. We also are looking into Ironic, deploying instances to bare metal. So that would be very useful for us if we wanted to launch a database on OpenStack. That would be very useful, because databases do not run very well in VMs, especially if you have large databases or clustered databases. Also, we are in the pursuit of CloudForms as our single pane of glass. That's ManageIQ in the upstream for self-service. If we can adopt this and get it running great internally, we would like to maybe possibly extend that out to a few more customers. Specifically, in general, we are looking at providing services maybe to a wider range of customers, possibly students, faculty, and staff with some other options available. And we are also looking at hybrid cloud bursting for our DR strategies as well. Coming from a traditional standpoint, we do a lot of backups and a lot of DR as well for everything we offer. As part of cloud bursting, not only does that apply to private cloud, but also to public cloud as well. So we have a true hybrid approach. We're not going to just stop using other technologies. We want to use all the technologies together. And as part of that, as part of DR, we also are looking into hosting things at another data center as well to really spread our footprint and be more highly available. So we have a lot of things going on at the college right now. Those are just a few of them. But I thought I'd give you guys a little insight onto what we plan on doing in the future. As some closing statements, some of the most important things that I wanted to recommend were to buy in to your organizational stakeholders before you go and deploy this and say, OK, it's here. Now use it. You really have to convince people that what you're going to try to do is going to benefit them. So I talked about onboarding. And one of the best ways to do that is choosing a good solution for you. So for us, private cloud was a very good solution, even though we use a lot more than that. But flexible solutions are a very good option, especially if you are budget constrained. And need to have something right away that you don't have time to put a lot of effort into. So as I mentioned for digital transformation, OpenStack is pretty much the de facto infrastructure as a service nowadays to build private clouds. Consider using a flexible solution, like I mentioned, to help accelerate your cloud journey there. The motions of doing it yourself while attractive, not all organizations are massive retailers or massive telcos that can really embark on putting all these pieces and parts together. So choose something from a known baseline. And yes, customization is great. These are great platforms that services a kickstart to helping you start your cloud journey and transformation. Yep. So I'd just like to close and say that investing in cloud native infrastructure has allowed us to show very great gains. We've saved a lot of money, made our customers happy, and we plan to do more so in the future. Specifically, we were in a reactive state where we had to meet demands all the time, just reacting to demands. But now we're able to proactively look at other technologies and look towards the future. And really, if you can start your organization to look towards the future instead of just reacting to your customers, it'll be really helpful and it will help you grow. So a few resources that I wanted to post out here. The first URL, the title of this track is Evaluating OpenStack. This URL is a portal that Red Hat, Dell EMC, and Intel share that can give you a POC in your respective environments there. You just have to fill out a form, look at some resources that are on there, and someone will contact you if you're interested. If you don't like salespeople, if you just want to see the reference architecture, what we talked about here, to make up your own mind and do your own self-research for now, the URL is the second one there. And it's about a 30-page document there, very, very descriptive and prescriptive. And the rest of the documents associated with this solution are up there in the same website there that you could look at, too, the extensions and everything else that I mentioned there. So with that, we have a good amount of time for question and answers. If you will, step up to the microphone so that this is being recorded. So before you went with the solution that included some custom packaging and support from Red Hat, did you have a chance to experiment with any of this on your own, like different? And I say I'm comparing, let's say, because Ubuntu has a version of OpenStack. So does Red Hat. Then you have CentOS, which I guess it would be the same flavor, except you'd be providing your own support. Yeah, so it's really easy to go out and test OpenStack and these other open source technologies because they are open source. So if I didn't want to go with Red Hat or Dell, I could potentially go out there and deploy any form of OpenStack or even an upstream project. So the answer is yes. We did look at other technologies as well. And the reason was because we mainly had a site license for a lot of licensing. It was really accessible to us. But I can go out there and deploy Ubuntu OpenStack on my laptop in about five minutes, right? So we did have the opportunity to test other things. And we did. But since we had kind of already paid for it, that's what we decided to go with. You mentioned planning for self-service with Cloud Forms. Wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what sort of services you might offer to students versus faculty and staff. What sort of services or apps or environments might be suitable to offer self-service? So that's a dream right now, right? So that's a very challenging approach. So I'll answer that in two parts. We're looking at self-service for internal production use. And that's going to be our main use case to different environments well, right? Not just OpenStack, Public and Private Cloud, just pretty much any technology. But also, because we have OpenShift integrating containers, you can request a container or infrastructure if you really want it. We want to provide what the customers want, right? We don't want to just say, here it is, use it. So Cloud Forms is a good gateway to tying in a lot of those features. And separately, to answer the question about students, faculty, and staff, really they have demands for a lot of things, right? And we're just starting to assess what they may want. So we're looking into a lot of different options. And I can't really answer that fully right now, because we don't really know. That would be a very possible solution. He said labs for classrooms. Yes, that would be possible. How did your backup solution change between before going to OpenStack and now with how did you talk about that process? Yeah, so specifically our backup process, we had snapshotting capabilities in a traditional virtualization environment, as well as backing up bare metal servers as well. And so a lot of the services that we migrated over did become virtualized, right? And so I talked earlier about having cloud images or virtual appliances, right? So one of our backup strategies is if it's a virtual appliance and you've automated it, do you really need to fully backup everything? Well, yes, we have multiple copies, different places, right? So we have two data centers. Of course, we have a DR backup strategy as well, so we have it stored there as well. And if we wanna do snapshots, we can do that within OpenStack. Or if we want to do a more traditional customer wants a more traditional backup strategy, we can also backup those VMs fully as well. How did you manage the adaptation phase of this? Were there any resistance by system administrators, faculty, were there any... A second part to the question is self-service. Once you implement self-service, what type of adaptation phase are you gonna use for that as well too? Right, so I'll answer the second part first because of the question in previous. So to adapt to self-service model, we're really looking at hosting internally first. So that'll be kind of more of our POC type of environment where we onboard some of our main customers and let them use it and see if they like it. As far as the second portion, I can't really answer that for faculty and students. That's kind of above my pay grade. However, I would like to say that the adoption of OpenStack and getting customers to use those, we had a very specific project that we were looking on implementing, right? So we needed to find the solution for a specific project. And what we were able to do is we did it piece by piece. So we might have had two or three customers at the beginning and said, hey, if we sit here, hold your hand through the process, try to help you streamline it and make these cloud images is what I've been doing and really help them automate their deployment because if they can't containerize what they want, and really what most customers want to do is containerize things. So it's easy for them so they don't have to deploy instances or VMs. But in cases they can't, if you are able to help them do that, that helps the process. And as far as resistance from administrators or anything like that, no, because everyone should be leaning to the future, right? You should always be striving to find better solutions or improving performance. So if you get resistance, it might be more of a conflict of what solution you want to use. So that would be up to that specific person and you can't force people to do what they don't want to do, right? So you have to really cater to the people who do want to try something new or will easily adopt things. Any other questions? Okay, well I'll be sticking around afterwards right outside if you have any specific questions you want to ask. Thank you. Thanks folks.


Let me start in Baltimore where we saw the christening of a brand-new starter Maybe in Gus Edwards Alice Collins has been your guy all year long But it was Gus Edwards that have seven had ten more carries than Alex Collins on Sunday Is this for real and can Gus Edwards win people championships this season? Unfortunately for my Alex Collins love it might be for real Greg But fortunately for fantasy owners it comes at the right time right the stretch run here We were constantly looking for running back so we could add off the waiver wire This might be a guy that could be a league winner for you look not a lot of people knew a lot about Gus Edwards Heck, I didn't know a lot about Gus Edwards before week 11 Four-year player at Rutgers also spend one year at Miami, but you look at what he did in week 11 He did something that Alex Collins hasn't done all season. He rushed for a hundred yards 17 carries for 115 yards also ran for a touchdown 6.8 yards per carry he was extremely efficient Alex Collins look as much as I wanted Alex Collins to be a thing It seemed like him and John Harbaugh would never on the same wavelength this year They I don't know what the problem is but he didn't have more than 68 rushing yards in a single game this year Gus Edwards broke that in one game when he was given the opportunity with the 17 carries He also saw 62 percent of the snaps 4.4 yards after contact this year for Gus Edwards, and I know it's a small sample size This is a minimum of 30 rushing attempts for running backs this year But to put that in perspective Buck Allen 2.3 yards per con yards after contact and Alex Collins 2.2 yards after contact so Gus Edwards He's a big running back 6-1 to 38. He's that bruiser again He can make things happen after he gets contacted near the line of scrimmage And I think the most telling part of all of this is after the game John John Harbaugh revealed that he wanted This is the north-south runner that he's wanted all season long That gives me a little bit of confidence in Gus Edwards just seeing those comments from John Harbaugh and to put a little bow on all of this Upcoming schedule Oakland Raiders in week 12 Then they get the Atlanta Falcons the Kansas City Chiefs the Tampa Bay Bucks and the Los Angeles Chargers Greg I don't know if this is a thing yet, but I'm gonna make it a thing. We're going with Gus bus We told people a few weeks ago by Alex Collins in preparation of this schedule It may not be Alex Collins and maybe Gus Edwards that gets the tasty schedule for Baltimore You have to love that coming up. So make sure you grab him off the waiver wire


When the narcissist knows you know that's what we're going to be talking about in this one When they know that you figured them out When they know that you know What they are really about Because they try to hide it they conceal their True intentions actions and motives They hide it from plain sight because they don't want you to know They don't want anyone to know and That is the whole point. That is why they do it. The reason why is because they already know That people are not going to accept it They know that They should not be doing What they are doing They already know that and that is why they try to conceal it That is why they hide it from plain sight and they keep a code of silence so of course since they go through such great efforts to hide the abuse To hide what they do, of course if you manage to expose them, they're going to be terrified There's really nothing that they will fear more than that And being exposed for what they really are They don't want to deal with that and that is why they go to great lengths to hide it and Yeah, so they will be worried about you Trying to expose them and that is why they have to get there first. They have to beat you to the punch So before you get the chance to run and tell someone what's really going on and what they've been doing to you they're going to go around to everyone and Say things about you. They're going to make false accusations They're going to start a smear campaign against you. They're going to discredit you So that even if you do go to anyone and try to tell them the truth By that point no one's going to believe you Because they've already been manipulated or they may be narcissists as well But this is the game that they have to play. This is what they have to do To lock you down as their source of supply And to prevent anyone from finding out the truth and the reason why It's so covert and so systematic It's because they already know that any normal same person Who finds out about it and they're outside of their group of flying monkeys. They know A normal sane person is not Going to accept it. They're going to think that it's wrong Just as you thought it was wrong Because when you thought that it was wrong you were right so yeah in a way they do fear When they know that you know they do feel threatened And they will go out of their way to protect their false image from being exposed But that's not always the case I Mean I think most of you you won't be dealing with this type of narcissist The more malignant sociopathic even psychopathic narcissists The ones that are very overt and grandiose If you know Their true nature To be honest, they're not going to give a shit. They're not even going to care because someone like that it's likely that Everyone already knows exactly what they're about and No one really cares. They still accept them. So That kind of person If you expose them for who they are They already know they've got everyone wrapped around their finger They've got everyone under their spell Well, they're surrounded by people who are just like them. So if you try to expose them They're just gonna be like so what? Who cares what you're gonna do about it because as far as they're concerned Anyone who They value who they care about Is not going to care about what you have to say If they do then they don't need them.   They don't need you Doesn't matter who you are how great you are.   They already know what they're doing They just don't want to keep talking about it. They don't want to hear it They'd rather just play pretend in the imaginary world as though everything is okay and Yeah, they're fine with that They just look at it like Who needs the truth who needs reality? When I can just create my own world and call other like-minded people into it Even though those people may be fake, but they do still desire to have something real and that is where you come in because It's much more powerful when you have a real person to validate the illusion You could have a million fake people in your world But deep down, you know, they're all fake anyway, so it doesn't fuel it It doesn't do anything to support the illusion It's much more better for them when they can trick a genuine good person And to believe in that it is real That's what provides them with the most fuel And just that one person can provide more than a million people That's how powerful it is But yeah, that's really it's lower level narcissists They will at all costs they will do everything in their power to conceal The illusion and to prevent you from exposing them They will be very worried about that because they already know that any normal sane person is not going to accept it But when you go any more to the higher levels of narcissism, grandiose narcissists, overt sociopaths Malignant narcissists, psychopaths These types of people the higher up you get They're really not going to care It's not really going to make any difference It doesn't matter how much dirt you have on them. It doesn't matter how Sick and twisted their lies are and you expose them They'll always find some way to turn it into a joke and Believe it or not by the end of it everyone around is just gonna be laughing about it They'll see it as something humorous and they may even be engaged in it as well They're very influential. They can redefine anything They really can it doesn't matter what it is. They can turn it into something laughable They really can Because they've already got so much support You know grandiose overt narcissists. They are surrounded by People who Respect and admire them But it's almost like there is nothing that they can do wrong There's nothing that they can say or do people will still love them and That tends to be because in some ways They are also productive in a way they are and they do often do things for The good of other people So in some ways they are very likable. They're very charming and charismatic Which of course is very different to the covert narcissist What's people sometimes sometimes call the shy narcissist? Those types of narcissists they don't tend to have many friends many people who understand them So of course they have to conceal it then Because they're not really doing anything for anyone. There's no reason for anyone to really like them. So Of course, they have to cover it up. They have to create this code of silence when no one's allowed to talk about it And anyone who's real They have to be exposed. They have to be threatened intimidated Coversed they just have to keep it quiet because For whatever reason, they're not likeable people. They're just not very charming and charismatic So They're very different to the higher level narcissists who are more skilled more manipulative more charming When we're talking about the grandiose narcissists the overt sociopaths psychopaths Mostly psychopaths not not so much sociopaths But yeah, they can be they can really pull people in to the illusion and It can be very difficult to discern what is actually right or wrong True or false in that environment When you're dealing with the covert narcissist Yeah, they can try to manipulate you but deep down you still know that they are not right you still know the truth and In that environment, you may be the scapegoat and Instead of trying to manipulate you so much it's more about just shutting you down Because they haven't really got anything to lower you when there's nothing really to entice you so That's more of what they're trying to do is just trying to conceal it Trying to keep everything hidden because they haven't got Power that influence So yeah, you will get almost completely different responses Depending on the type of narcissists that you were dealing with if you're dealing with a lower level narcissists And you start to catch on it will cause a narcissistic injury Narcissist the Grage They will get very angry.  They won't try to tear you down Unless there's something to do with if you really are a threat to their power their money Then in those cases It can get pretty dangerous. I'm not just gonna play games with you They will become violent aggressive They will try to take you out and They're not gonna show any mercy in those situations They're really not But with the culverts it's more just Basic manipulation childish game playing That's what you're gonna get from them Smear campaigns gossiping that kind of stuff Just bitching about Which you know, it can be irritating as well But you just have to be grateful in those situations that you're not dealing with a higher level narcissist like a psychopath Because no situations you never know what they're going to do You really never know what they're going to do so be thankful for that and For those of you who are and most of you will be dealing with The lower level maybe covert narcissist and They know that you know They've had a lot of practice of playing the victim They are very good at doing that. That's where they get their power so and This is something they've been doing probably since they were in school They just point the finger at the other kids say He hurt me Even though no one did anything And then they know how to get everyone their side and then turn everyone against person who may be the true victim Usually they are and Yeah, the manipulation hasn't really evolved much from that Even though they're meant to be adults.   They can be alone They don't really need anyone They already know that they can just go to a different place if they had to and They can get new people So they're not really dependent on anyone And they can be alone for long periods of time So Yeah, they won't be concerned too much in most situations. It's more the lower lower level narcissist They're the ones who it's going to cause a narcissistic injury And they're gonna get really angry and they're gonna try to tear you down That's more the lower level narcissists that do that The higher ones Very rare that you will see the rage or them trying to attack you Only if you've really pissed them off Like you must have done something really bad to get to them.  Those are the ones who care the most The higher level ones They're not really concerned about anything. They're the kind of ones at least some of them You could punch them in the face and they just laugh it off As long as they don't see you as a serious threat And that's how you need to see it really it's the lower level narcissists They're the ones who because they're at the lower level they're very afraid So any little thing will get them any little thing will set them off it will drive them nuts It doesn't take much to irritate a lower level narcissist they're like loose cannons And then the higher up you go The more tolerance they have the less of a threat that you are going to be It's normally those types of people they've got bigger fish to fry They've probably got far more serious threats in their life than you you're just Insignificant in those situations Because they tend to have more things going on their lives Especially psychopaths they tend to be a lot more successful They have a lot more going on so yeah, this video kind of Turning to the differences between different types of narcissists Which I'm sure it will be helpful for you as Different viewers maybe dealing with different types So it can be good to know it can be good good to be aware of And this video as well should help you to identify which type of narcissist you are dealing with Because as I said they will react very differently They will react very differently and knowing that you can get away with certain things with them Yeah, that's it for this video we're gonna get back in the car got some things to do But I just like to thank you all for joining me On another live video You know, I do appreciate your wall and we do comment every morning So please share your thoughts down below in the comment section subscribe share the video I want coaching sessions. I am available You can book it through my website, which is not survivor Okay, and check out my Instagram as well. It's not survivor YouTube on Instagram. I Have new pictures and videos of my travels Every day on there and you can send me a message as well. I will respond All right, that's it for this one But I will have more videos


I run because I absolutely love it. I run because it's good for my health. I run because it's a chance to challenge how far I can go. I run to step it and get my mind out of everyday's life. To feel alive. I run because I like cake. I run for mental health. I run because I'm mental. I run because I love it. Because when I was at school my teacher basically told me I couldn't do anything at sports. So now let's see what I can do. I run to meet friends. I run because I love the pain. I run because Chris makes me cry. I run because it makes me feel happy and healthy. I run because I like it. I'm the very end of it.  I run to meet people. I run because I love eating chips. I run because when I don't run I'm sad. Why do I run? I hate myself. Because I love myself? That is brilliant. Perfect.


I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books, Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about inspiration, leadership, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the general manager of the very popular Giovanni Pastrami restaurant in Waikiki. She is Marisa Komomua, and today we are going Beyond Restaurants. Hey Marisa, welcome to Beyond the Lines. I love you, Coach Rusty. Thank you for having me. Marisa, you have been such a great leader for Giovanni Pastrami. I mean, the culture of excellence that has been building is absolutely incredible. But first, Marisa, can I ask you, in the restaurant industry, what are the various jobs that you've had? Okay, so I first started there in 2008. I was a host for a few weeks, and then I was a server for two years. And I worked only in the morning, or many was so extensive, and I had to... It was so busy in the morning, too, you know, so I had to learn really quickly. And then I was bartending for maybe about 13 years, and then I became the director of marketing. Ryan asked me if that's something I was interested in, and I was so excited, and I said yes. And then a year later, he asked me to be the general manager, and I couldn't pass it up to offer. And then when I became in that position, I had to learn how to do everything. So from the back of the house to working in the dish pit with everyone and being on the line and making pizza, and I enjoy doing it. So Marisa, right there, what is it about the restaurant industry that you love so much? I would say it's all the people that come in and just seeing everyone having a good time there. And I would be there if I didn't work there, you know, and it's just so nice to see familiar faces. And after COVID, just seeing everyone come back again, it just felt really good. It feels good to just take care of people and watch them enjoy, eat good food, and just talk story.  You have such great positive energy.  I mean, everybody loves to go there. The food's great. Great games on the TVs. When you're hiring new employees, new team members, what do you look for in hiring somebody new to join your team? What qualities? I just want them to be outgoing and smile a lot. And I always talk about our culture of excellence, superior culture of excellence, and talking. I talk to them about how long I've been there and how much they can grow as a person and just being successful there. And it can happen. I just bought my home maybe like two years before COVID. And it was a huge accomplishment for me. And I'm still there and I'm growing and just Giovanni Pestrami is so awesome. I'm so glad Ryan to get over. So Marisa, so you look more for the character of the person versus the skill. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. The attitude. So just they can grow from that, you know, and Ryan also was teaching us about skill, you know, attitude and skill and then knowledge. So I totally agree. It's all about that character that having the right attitude, the right effort, the right work ethic. And then you can teach people how to do the job. And Marisa, what, what do you feel as GM? What do you feel are some of your strengths? I'm a people person. So when I go around and talk to people, I'm very comfortable with it. I like to ask them where they're from and just see what's going on. If it was their first time there and a lot of people been going there for almost their whole trip, they'll come eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, you know. So talking to people, the second thing is just being, I can help everyone out. So if they need help on pizza, if they need help washing dishes or the host needs help, I'll be all over the restaurant helping out with everything. So I like to multitask and just everything. I enjoy it. You do it all. I see you. I see you doing it all. And, you know, that's a great quality of a leader because you're leading by example. I can see, you know, if there's a table that needs to be cleaned up and you're walking by it, you'll clean it up. I mean, if there's a dish out of place, you'll take care of that. I mean, if there's somebody that's, if the hostess stand is busy and you're right there in the front, you're taking care of the guests. That's really what a great leader does, Marissa. And I want to ask you, I know that you've had a ton of adversities in your life, whether it be professionally or personally, but what's one big adversity that you have faced? Um, just, I feel like learning, being in this position and learning to communicate with people and understanding personalities is really, you know, it was hard for me, but now I'm understanding how to talk to people. And in your book, you talked about the four misses, which I really hold dear.  I really think about it before I, you know, make my moves. Marissa, I'm impressed right there. The four misses. That's awesome. And Marissa, you've been mentioning Ryan. So just to clarify, Ryan Tanaka is the owner of Giovanni Pestrami restaurant. Marissa, what, what are some things that you admire about Ryan and what are some things that you have learned from him? Wow, that's, I'm learning every single day.  And he's so incredible. He has so many different businesses and he takes the time to meet with us every week. And I meet with him every week and he's just so inspirational. And I don't know how he does it, but just all this multitasking, I'm enjoying that. Like I said, I like doing the same thing and he's taught me so much. I can't even, I don't know where to begin. I know what you mean. Well, so Ryan bought Giovanni Pestrami 45 days before the pandemic. And, I mean, we know how many restaurants have closed because of the pandemic and Giovanni Pestrami not only survive, but is starting to thrive. What are some of the reasons why you feel Giovanni Pestrami survived through the pandemic? Ryan just took the wheel and we went, you know, we have so many new things that came up and so we had to have a new POS system, toast, and then he, we got a new pizza oven and he just started inspiring all of us. And it was so, it was rough in the beginning and it was scary, but once we got back and we came back as a family, it became an oil machine.   So Ryan's created a partnership with all these hotels and so they or we have an online ordering that they can cure code and we do so much takeout ever since COVID and we finally got it down because it was, it's like a new position in the restaurant. Just quality, everything needs to be quality and you know, we even put an insert in there saying thank you, just personalizing it from Giovanni Pestrami and it's just all these little details that really matter and that's another thing that he's been teaching all of us. And in addition, he's the master of finance. He's so brilliant and and Marissa, the community now knows that he's the founder of Brada Hood Grines and Sisterhood Grines and I was there in the beginning in that first meeting with Ryan, Timmy Chang and myself because, you know, Ryan was donating my books and and that's when Brada Hood Grines and Sisterhood Grines started. Now, you can see the governor, Josh Green comes, Mayor Rick Blangiarity, a lot of our community leaders are invited by Ryan to participate in Brada Hood and Sisterhood Grines. How important is that for you and your entire team to be helping UH athletics and the community? Oh, the team is so excited.  I mean, I have different servers that work every time and they just enjoy it, you know, and just being there and just helping the community and having the career development program. And it's just so amazing. Is this for the future? You know, and we love being a part of it. Yeah, and just to clarify, Brada Hood Grines, it's not just the restaurants providing a complimentary meal for the players and the coaches. Ryan has set up a networking situation so that the players can meet community leaders to actually position themselves for life after sports. And we just started the third year, this past year, as you know, and this past week. And I want to ask you, Marissa, in terms of Ryan, I mean, he has such a great character. He has donated my books to countless sports teams, schools and organizations. He's donated both of my books to the entire UH football team, the UH men's volleyball team. I mean, he is so, has the heart in the right place to really want to make Hawaii as great as possible. And how does that, his energy transfer to you and the rest of the Giovanni team? He's an inspiration to all of us and just him donating your books to us was huge. I mean, I have the staff read it, you know, they all have a book and you personally signed it, which was even more nice, you know, and it was such a nice gift that this and your books don't just, it's not just for our job. It's even our personal lives that we can even, you know, grow on and there's so much great chapters in there. I can go on and on.  So we just had a Christmas party and you're there and it was such a great, you know, that was something that was different and it was a beautiful, beautiful Christmas party where we talked about both standards and just that's what we're moving towards now. And it's just so exciting and just our new goals for 2024. And Marissa, I know why you get emotional when we talk about with Ryan because of, you know, how he's helped you and and so many of your team members. Earlier, you mentioned about my books about the four misses. What are some other concepts that stood out to you in the books. Um, so one of our first meetings we've had Ryan asked if a flower doesn't grow and why.  So when I opened your book and it was in Chapter 8, Beyond the Lines, I was like, oh, okay. I started reading and I was like, oh, this is where it came from, you know, and I was just inspired by it because it's our garden, you know, and we want all our staff to grow in there. It's just so wonderful seeing the camaraderie and like bringing that back.  And what about Beyond the Game? Did something stood out to you there? Beyond the Game Chapter 2, a coach, coaching versus teaching. A coach is a teacher who inspires a person. And that's exactly what Ryan has been doing for us, the management team and the whole staff, you know. And that's where I'm learning, you know, and I just watch and listen and just so excited every day. Marissa, I'm impressed that you really know the chapters as well, like where it's located. That's awesome. And Marissa, you also do a lot of catering. What is it that you love about doing catering for various events? So there's a few catering events that we do for like schools, even visiting team specials. And it's just so nice to have them come to Giovanni Pusciami and, you know, and we also do golfing tournaments, not just in the restaurant, but we do golfing tournaments. We'll go to the UH and then we pass up pizza and, you know, it's just nice to meet new faces, new people and just, you know, be out there. Yeah. And Marissa, what's great to, I mean, the popularity of Giovanni Pusciami, I mean, it's growing in amazing ways.  And the other guests were excited and Super Bowl champions, actors, I mean, other famous athletes, they all come into the restaurant. So why is it popular? I mean, why is it more popular than other restaurants in Waikiki? It's, I would say the staff, you know, and they just have people coming in and they're just enjoying their time and people are hearing about Giovanni Pusciami and just the brotherhood and sisterhood grinds. That's a huge thing that, you know, that Ryan's created these NIL agreements and we just love being a part of it. And it's, it has grown since I first, you know, started and this is never, this is something that we've never experienced before. Oh yeah, it's totally new.  And now in this third year it's grown to 24 restaurants and over 50 sponsors and during the event hotels are giving complimentary nights, which the players, if they win it, their parents can come from the mainland, watch the games or Alaska Airlines is giving a free round trip ticket for two anywhere that Alaska flies. You, you're there, you see all that excitement and then the players and the coaches are like, wow, this is amazing. And yet they're sitting at tables with, you know, these community leaders of, you know, successful CEOs of businesses or incredible nonprofit organizations. I'm excited every time I'm there and then Ryan always asks me to speak and and it's really because I was there at the beginning and he and we work closely together and, and I think he's just, I mean, everyone in Hawaii should be so proud to have somebody like Ryan to really inspire the community and Marissa, I want to ask you in terms of team bonding, I mean, it's so important when you're the leader of a team to enhance team bonding and to do activities together outside of work and to keep things fun. How important is that for you? I feel like that's number one, you know, our team bonding really matters and just everyone smiling and, you know, and having a good time.  And Marissa, I want to ask you about teamwork because whether it's in sports or business, you have to have incredible teamwork to be successful. And for me, when I came in to do the keynote speaking for your holiday party, you know, I stress the importance of when a guest comes in, the most important person they see is the host or hostess. And they are the reflection of the rest of the company or the restaurant. And then the next person is the server. And then it could be the bartender. It could be the manager. It could be the cook who doesn't even see the guests. How do you get everyone working together and having peak performance every day? We started having these gold standards, you know, and then everyone has a role and the team Bonnie, we make it fun. So everyone's helping each other, especially in the front for the host, you know, and that's what I love about like the staff and everything they've been doing such a great job, even the back of the house. You know, we're all laughing while we're doing it and but we still have these standards, you know, that everyone needs to take care of. And every time someone comes into work, we always say welcome home. That's like our thing. It's just a cute, you know, thing to do and everyone just loves being there. Yeah, and it has to be, you know, like your second family, you know, outside of your primary family and that's just how it is if you're going to have a great team or a great organization. And Marissa, Ryan bought, he bought CJ's and Roundtable Pizza over a year ago at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and you work really closely with their leadership management team. Why are they having success, you know, greater success in just such a short amount of time? It's all Ryan, you know, like, they're, and I love working with the other management there too, you know, all of us are really close, all from CJ's Roundtable to Giovanni Pasciami. So the whole management team, we all work together and it's so nice to go back and forth and talk about what we need to do and work as a team, you know, we're a Giovanni Pasciami restaurant group. So it's, yeah, it's incredible. And everybody loves Roundtable Pizza, right? Yes, oh my gosh, it's so good. Well, I need the King Arthur Supreme. I mean, that's, that's one of my go-tos and Marissa, you know, a lot of businesses, a lot of companies, they're struggling to really get employees. And that's affecting their business.  I mean, why is that and how good is that knowing that there's so many other restaurants that are struggling in that capacity? Right, I just, it's so great. Interviewing people have been coming in and just walking by and ask them if they've ever, you know, how they found out about Giovanni Pasciami. It would be on TV or, you know, just walking past hearing about us and it's, when I interview people, it's their character in there and I'm choosing the right, you know, trying to choose the right candidate for the position and, you know, it's, and our team is great. And Marissa, okay, let's go one step further now is employee retention is a huge thing for businesses because oftentimes there's a lot of turnover. It seems like at Giovanni's, you guys have very low turnover and great employee retention. Is that because of the culture that's implemented? Is that, I mean, I know that you're trying to show that you care and that you have empathy for everyone. And I mean, is that one of the main reasons why? We're sure that, you know, it has to be the number one thing is that empathy, how we care about each other and the culture of excellence, like you said, like the books you gave us and we're reading and this pertains to Giovanni Pasciami, that's our, our book, you know, that's where we go off of and everyone's enjoying their time there, you know. And you know what's what's amazing, Marissa, and this is just to add on to what you just said there. You know, there's some other companies that are using my books. You know, for, I mean, all of the employees have the books and they're using it as a playbook for their company. And the reason is the CEO wants everyone to get the same message and they want everyone to be striving for that same superior culture of excellence. And that the employees can hold management accountable and management can hold employees accountable for everything that's in the book. And, and the books, as you know, it's all about character, it's all about teamwork. It's all about mindset.  I mean, it's hard because sometimes you're not in the mood. And I always say, if you're not in the mood, get in the mood, because that's what it takes to be successful. What are your thoughts about mood and attitude? I mean, you mentioned attitude earlier, but how do you get everyone into the right mindset if they're not in the right mood? And I can tell right when they walk in the door who's having a bad day, who's having a great day. So I'll just pull them aside and ask what's going on, you know, and, you know, we're here to, you know, do our job, take care of our guests.  And I try to see what's going on and try to just navigate the conversation. And if they ever need help, I'll help them, you know, and we can talk about it later. Right now we need to, you know, work, you know, so. And Marissa, I mean, we know the importance of really the essence of building relationships is when you build trust and respect. And trust and respect has to go both ways. How important is it for you to take time when you see one of your team members kind of struggling that day? And then I know that you have a ton of responsibilities to do. But then you'll still take time to really address and make that person feel cared for or to try to find out what their situation is. So how important is it to really build that trust and respect? It's very, very important. I mean, that relationship you have with every staff member really, you know, you want to see them grow and you want to see, you know, in life things happen here and there. And we're here as a family and I just want them to know that I'm there for them and whatever they need. And even all of us, the whole management team, you know, and we work so well together and everyone has their personalities, right? So they'll go, you know, they have to go to multiple managers and we kind of have our own opinions. But we all get it through together and that's where the trust comes in, you know. And that's why it's so important to be on a team. And if people feel like they're truly a part of a team, then they can open up and really be honest about what they're thinking and feeling. And for you as a leader, you want to know the vibe and the pulse of what's happening. And you're not a mind reader and that's why you welcome, you know, to try to have your people share about what they're thinking and feeling so that you can make sure that everything keeps moving in the right direction. And that's what I did as a coach with my teams as well. And that's what I'm trying to inspire, you know, the world to do. And then in my mind, the world's going to be a better place. And Marissa, I really want to thank you for taking time to be on the show today to really share insights and really keep up the great work. Thank you, push rusty. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit rustycomory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Marissa and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.