three tips to improve your sense of timing for your animation. Now, if that's not a clickbaity title that I don't know what it is, but it is YouTube, you got it like this, but it's also not quite true. Yes, three tips in terms of three categories, and I can spoil them right now. Tip number one, it's all about observing real life and reference. Tip number two, look at the animation that you want to do and that you want to emulate. And then tip number three, it's all about practice and repetition. Again, that's very simplified, and you can break these down more. So I'm going to go beyond the clickbaity stuff. Let's go one by one. Observing real life and reference. So what you got to do is film yourself or film a friend or find some footage that you can analyze. You have to look at what is going on in terms of the movement, the body mechanics, anything that you want to animate, and then go frame by frame. Look at what is the pose on frame one, frame five, 10 or 13 or whatever. Take notes and look at how long does it take for that arm move, for the head move, just kind of familiarize yourself with those movements. But I still would recommend that you act things out so you know how it feels when you do it yourself. If you just look at footage, it's not quite the same. So act things out, film yourself, you don't want to shoot to anybody, that's okay, it's just for you. It's a learning experience to get your muscle memory in, but you have to look at real life. Why? Because it's life, it's true to life, it's more original, it's more personal, it's something that will feel new and it will go through your lens and your filter and your interpretation and stylization to create some new performance versus finding something that someone else has done and taking that which has already been interpreted and then reusing that's kind of a copy of a copy. And it's also a lot easier because it's all around you. Anywhere you go, take a sketchbook, film something, obviously have permission to film, but it's everywhere where you go. Just always kind of look at how long does it take to move something, get out of the car, get into the car, to turn something on, to get your clothes on, anything, you just kind of start looking at patterns and just the rhythm of movement. But of course you can't always do that everywhere. So look at movies and TV shows, there's a lot of stuff out there where you can look at real actors in terms of how they perform and how they move. I would highly recommend stand-up comedy. There's a certain rhythm and delivery for each specific comedian that will help you with a sense of timing. If you're at home and you can't go out to look, I think there are a bunch of YouTube channels. There are channels specifically for reference, this can be for animals or just for humans. There's so much out there where you can take those clips, download them and go frame by frame and analyze. And in terms of like a sub category, I would also recommend music because you do want to think in terms of rhythm. The sense of timing for me is always a sense of ebbs and flows and like certain amount of punctuations and just contrast. And for me, music is great too. So listen to music, not saying you have to go and study music and do a whole lot of the degree. And maybe that's just me, but it always helped me to kind of have music in the background, animate with music, just think in terms of a melody and rhythm so that you do have contrast in your movement and the performances. Now once that is done, and it's not saying one, two, three, this is all kind of mixed together, but you can't just look at real life. Because the thing is, once you start animating, you still have to stylize it and caricature your shots and your animation. Even if you work in VFX animation, and you can't just do a one to one copy, it'll feel a lot of times it feels kind of soft and kind of weightless. You still have to go in there and punch it in and just kind of add something to it. Now if you do cartoon animation, feature animation, you'll go through an extra step of cartoonifying, stylizing and caricaturing certain elements where it's you heighten a certain moment. And if you're new to this, then look at the material that you want to emulate. So if you don't work at specific companies, screen cap the work can be a shot can be a sequence and then go frame by frame. How long does it take for a blank, for a head to room for a gesture, all that stuff. So you can see, okay, this is real life, this is animation. How does it change from there to there? And if you don't have the time when you have the material to look at that, you can always go online.  They break down shots and look at the timing or just collect a lot of progression rules where you can see how things change from layout to blocking to final polish animation. But none of that matters because you can observe, observe, observe, read about it, watch things. But if you don't actually animate, it's not really going to help. And the last type or category is probably the most frustrating one. It just takes time and practice. So even if you take a whole day and look at all those clips and everything and you watch tutorials and all that stuff, you won't be able to do exactly that that evening. You will have to open up your whatever software use and then practice and go step by step. If you're new to animation bouncing balls and then build on top of that. But what I would highly recommend is to keep the shots short. And my students, if they, I don't know, my students watch my clips, they'll probably be sick of me saying this, but keep things short. You don't want to attack a 20 second shot because you're going to be involved with just getting the whole thing done, wrangling all the mechanics and maybe camera work. I don't know what you're doing, but it's going to be so much work. It's going to be frustrating. You're going to run out of time and you won't have the motivation to continue. And so for me, when you take a short shot, you will have time to finish it. You will go from the full process of layout to polish and then you can start something new. And if you break things up in terms of just gestures or head turns, odd parts, small body mechanics, it's like I said, I think in the previous clip, it's like Lego pieces. You practice by building little pieces, right? Or you have one little piece and once you tack a longer shot, it's not going to be as daunting and maybe, you know, frustrating or intimidating because you have done all the little pieces. Now you put them all together and now you have a longer shot. And just because the shot is short doesn't mean that you can't show off what you can do. My favorite example is the one from Maximus Entangle. It's a short shot, but the timing is so good. It's so funny. It's entertaining, snappy timing, good mechanics, little extra details in the stirrup of the saddle and the tail. It's just a great shot. It's short. And even though I constantly talk on my channel about props and sets and cameras and things, this is just a character in an empty scene. But that's all you need, especially when you practice. And after you've done all of this, it's a rinse and a repeat factor where you just again observe, always look at other things, look at and not just, you know, people that look like you in terms of the size or how they move, look at people that are bigger and skinnier and smaller and children and then animals. Like there's so much you can observe. Every time you do something different, you're going to learn something new that you might plug into another shot. And then again, vary the sources of reference. So real life, yourself, film yourself, then look at movies, TV shows, look at animated movies, animated TV shows, different styles, just look at all that absorb, but especially write things down, analyze, how long does it take? How many frames emulate this? You can take anything that you just found from footage or from real life, put that into my end and rotoscope it. You're never going to show it to anyone. It's like when you're real, but it's good to just copy it so you can see what is the spacing? What is the timing? How do your poses move from one frame to the next practice? It gets kind of like a muscle memory, mental memory.  And I can guarantee you over time, your sense of timing is going to get better over time, sense of timing. Yes, but you got to be patient and some people will get it faster. Some people have an innate sense of timing. Maybe it's because of, I mean, my dad used to play saxophone at home and he does always jazz and classical music. And I always listened to music when I was small and to this day. And I think having that constantly in the background and watching movies and analyzing that the academic analysis clips, I do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, it just helps. It's just that constant exposure and kind of soaking up just even if you don't always specifically analyze things, you will still get used to a certain pattern and rhythm. It just helps to consistency and practice is key. And unfortunately, all that takes time to be patient, be patient with yourself, but be consistent and practice. You can't just do it once three months later. Do it again. It's just that it's going to be a long road if you like this. And personally, I put timing over poses. Poses are great, obviously, but you can have beautiful poses and your sense of timing is completely off and it's just not going to work. And you can ask fairly crappy poses, but if the timing is just fantastic, it's still going to work. Obviously, you want both to be great, but I put more weight onto timing. So timing and spacing really important timing for how long it takes and spacing, how things move, how your poses move one frame to the next. I think that to me is always the biggest thing to look at. And of course, follow up by poses and by the mechanics and all that good stuff. So there you have it. These are my obviously subjective tips. But if you have something else, like maybe I'll comment. I don't know, comments are always open. What were your ways to get better at timing? How did you fine tune your sense of timing? I'm very curious. Again, this is all very subjective. This is how I do it. This is how I do it. So let me know how you go about this. I'm very curious. But that's it. Thank you for watching. That's a hopefully shortage. It's not that short. It's not that if you're still watching as always, thank you for watching. And hopefully it was something that was helpful. And then if you want to miss any of my future uploads, you know, the pitch at the end, click betting tiles at the beginning, YouTube pitch at the end, YouTube subscribe so you don't miss any uploads, you know, like that stuff that people say, and I say that as well. But thank you for still watching. I appreciate your patience. And hopefully I'll see you in my next clips.


Coyotes are a hot topic for deer hunters and land managers. Coyotes do predate on deer fawns some and occasionally on adult deer, but their diets typically consist of small mammals. To determine if you have a coyote issue keep records from hunter observation and trail cameras regarding the number of fawns per doe and the number of coyotes. If coyotes are causing fawn recruitment issues there are a few ways to mitigate the damage. First increase the amount of fawning covered on your property and distribute it as evenly as possible. Larger regular-shaped areas are better than small openings or thin strips. Next, consult an expert trapper. Coyotes can be elusive and tough to catch. Lastly, reduce your doe harvest. If predation is a continued issue leaving more does will hopefully increase free production and fawn survival, especially when coupled with increased fawning cover and trapping efforts.


It's weird.  No. Um, the Emmy nominations were in July. But the Emmy ceremony is happening January 15th. Wait, what? The announcements were in July. For nominations, but the award ceremony doesn't happen until January 15th. Whoa! Josh!  You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Word, gist of content. Today we got a trailer, and this actually dropped a few months ago. Missed it, but it apparently just came out on OTT. And it's a Tamil film. It's called... Chitta? I mean, it came out this year. A thriller film about a starring Siddharth... Siddharth Namisha Sajian, written and directed by S.U. Arun Kumar. Um... A lot of people say it's their favorite of the year. That's saying a lot. Yeah, yeah, so, um... You guys, obviously if you've seen it, you can let us know if this is one we should watch before the end of the year. I always try in December to be like, get to anything that we missed that everybody's like, Oh, this is amazing. Obviously last year I missed every film, I guess that was good last year. Especially in the Malayalam industry. It's probably our biggest miss. Oh, as we've seen the films from last year and realized, damn, there were a ton we missed. There were at least three or four that would have been in my top five. It happens. And I don't know what I would have done. India makes a lot of movies. But those three specifically. Yeah, there was something right up our alley. But anyway, this one's Tamil. So you guys let us know what you think about this one. And we will talk to you after we watch the trailer. We will. Maybe. We've never done that. We should just watch the trailer and say bye.  I've seen reaction channels that do that. They just watch it. They'll watch something and they're like, oh, that was cool. Let us know what else you guys want. Okay. So they're literally just reacting and then have nothing to say after the film. Amen. That's what apparently people want. We get told all the time. Someone asked me, I don't know, do you talk to Jaby much? Well, not much, but I want to talk to Jaby. Do a collaboration with him. I don't know, man. Why doesn't he want to do it? Jaby. You pick the movie. You pick the thing that we can do a collab on. We'll do it on your channel. We don't care. Come on, Jaby. I just talked to the man. Here we go. I have no ill will towards Jaby. Do not start that. I'm liking the vibe already though. Me too. I was just going to say something. Hey, man. He's in a good mood. Oh, no. What a great trailer. Well, damn. Great trailer. Sorry, miss. I don't know if it came here at all. I don't know. If odds are if it did at the time, at least I did not get messages. Right. In plethora that I registered. Yeah. Which happens, but man, does that look good? That looks really good. One of the standout things, obviously always looking out for elevated artistry. And one of the most elevated things you can do in cinematic storytelling. Steals your child. That's it. No. And cinematic storytelling is obviously the basic foundation with that is show don't tell. But when you see a trailer that pays very close attention to small things, the movement of a finger. Yeah, that was cool. The look of an eye. No. The tilt of the head. When those are accentuated in the trailer, that is a big giant. Hi, everybody from the director telling you this is going to be that kind of film. It's going to be a film that focuses on the smallness of things on the symbolism of things. And you want to watch every single moment of film and that the acting is going to be rooted and grounded in reality and believability. So that is all of the hallmarks of the kind of movie that floats our boat big time. And it's head starring her. Yeah. So we have great Indian kitchen. Great actress. And great actress. And a couple other, I believe a couple other things. Yeah. Anything we've seen her in, she's been stellar. Have we seen her in anything? Tamil because... Ah, good question. I think all those other ones I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, are Malayalam. Obviously it's not unheard of to go in between industries. No, obviously. Yes. Fafa does it, obviously. Pretty much everybody does it. Yeah. Work is work, right? Yeah. Exactly. Work is work and movies are movies. But it looked really good. So I'd be quite intrigued to see it. So it had a theatrical, it should be streaming now, yes? Yeah. I believe because I got sent it a lot now because I think it just got to streaming. It just dropped. Okay. So maybe even more people saw it and then are now recommending us to... Cool. So you guys can let us know if this is one we should watch before the end of the year so we can... Give it some legs. And put in the... Yeah. Maybe the dummies. It's going to be an interesting year. It's going to be a very interesting year. But... Ah, man. And if you're wondering about things internationally, the short list, as we're filming this right now, the short list for the international film for the Oscars is in about 10 days. It's December 21st. Don't hold your breath. India won't be on the short list. Don't hold your breath. Not that I know. I haven't talked to any Academy members who... I just... I put money down on it though. I would too. A lot. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you would have put maybe LGP film. Well, we've got a few that we could have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a horse of a different kind. It's only... That's only two hours, right? Oh, 220. 220. I wonder where it's streaming. The other thing that's always wonderful to see, not that there's anything wrong with a different writer, especially adaptation, that happens a lot where you have a different writer and a director, but when you see a writer and director, that's oftentimes very telling in terms of the passion of the director to be putting something up, oftentimes a very big passion project for them compared to some other things. Not always the case, but it's always exciting to see written and directed by. Looks like it might be on... Doesn't mean it's any better necessarily. Who I can never trust. Something to go on there and I was like, no, it's not actually here. It's on Prime though. Oh yeah, no. Too many times, it says it's on Prime. It doesn't mean Jack. Yeah. Google lies about what's streaming on what platform when all the time. They didn't update it. I'm all about movies that... I don't know people that do stuff to children. Yeah. This will be hard watch. Because the animal instinct that just comes out of me, if I put myself in that situation... Yeah, as I refer to it as flipping the switch, it's instantaneous just watching it. Yeah. Because if I'm walking with my kid and I've seen videos of like in, I think it's other countries, somebody comes up to this dad and tries to take a kid out of his hands and abduct him.  And that doesn't change when they become adults. That doesn't change.  It's about... I believe the title of it is Escaping Twin Flames, and it's about a cult that presently exists here in the United States. By the way, there's 10,000 cults, at least in the United States. That's a staggering statistic. And not all of them are the church. But in it, there's a couple of stories of moms who saw their adult children be taken into this cult by the guy who is the leader of this cult. And as is often the case, and Johnny turned to me and said, what would you do if that was actually Alexis or Micah? I said, well, that'd be a flip the switch kind of moment for me. Because what was done to these people... Yeah. Obviously, if a person is stronger than I am, that's one thing, but every ounce of anger and power would come out of me instantaneously. The only things that stop me from doing those kinds of things, obviously, are...  And she came into the courtroom with a gun and just shot him to death with six shots. And there's footage of it. She just walks in and she goes... And she's like, I regret nothing. But then you're in prison for the rest of your life. Well, I think... I don't know what story it was. It was a similar story.  And then she... I don't know if it was her husband, a relative, a random person. She killed him. And then so she got sentenced to something for murder. Right. And she, on her way out to jail, the reporters were like, so do you regret anything? No, happiest day of my life. I was like, more power to you. I hope you serve a light sentence because that is justice in my eyes. It should be allowed for, if you do something to children, the parents have ten minutes... Yeah, let the parents be the ones to enforce the punishment. In the room for ten minutes with no security. That's what should happen. Let the parents enforce the punishment, I agree. Anyways, let us know about this film if you liked it, if you didn't like it, if something we should watch, let us know without spoilers. Of course, down below.


The family of Rosalind Carter has begun three days of memorials for the former First Lady and Global Humanitarian who died November 19 at the age of 96.The Carter family invites members of the public to pay their respects as Mrs. Carter lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Hundreds, turned out to salute Rosalind Carter on Monday as the former U.S. First Lady and Global Humanitarian made her final journey from rural hometown to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center in. At Lanta.at the public viewing, visitors passed poster boards with quotes by Rosalind Carter and walked through the museum before being allowed to pay their respects in small groups in front of her casket, which was in the lobby, flanked by members of the Georgia State Patrol Honor Guard.


Entrepreneurship programs for teenagers, guys and girls, y'all all know that I'm very big on programs that have tangible results. So about that, running from my childhood, we had plenty of social programs that were provided by great nonprofits and great organizations. But guess what? The programs, once they delivered their service, there was nothing tangible, it was nothing for us to hold on to. So I'm very big on, as y'all guys and girls can see, when we do the Wesley Learns program that ties into schools, we award kids stocks for learning about financial literacy, which leaves a lasting imprint on students well after they have finished the program. But today I'm very excited about this episode. We have the Universal Startups. The thing I love, before I get into Universal Startups, that's the name of the company. And what I love about Universal Startups is that they award kids almost like Shark Tank. I'm making a simple plank. I love their entrepreneurship program. So what they have is teenagers get to go through their two-week program. They even, they have it virtually. And what happens is they have to pitch. They have to do a pitch almost like Shark Tank and the kid and the teenagers actually win prizes as well. So not only do they win prizes at the end, they also learn, they learn how to pitch to real companies and real organizations. And also they're getting taught by professors from the top universities like Cornell, John Hopkins, Georgetown, you name it, right? But I had to bring in the founder today, the founder and one of our partners at the Global Children Financial Literacy Foundation. We had to bring in Mr. Mark Stern. Hopefully I didn't butcher his name there. Stern, I think he told me. He's out there in Maryland. How you doing, Mark? Awesome, thanks, Prince, for having me. Definitely glad to have you.  You know, I know you was talking briefly before the show of you coming from, was it Argentina? Yeah, my family's from Argentina. My parents came over in the late 70s and I was born here and love their spirit, love their entrepreneur spirit and it's kind of passed down to me and so I'm trying to give back as best as I can. Okay, so the entrepreneurship spirit, can you please explain to people how does your entrepreneurship program work for teenagers? Yeah, awesome, thanks, Prince. Well, essentially like you indicated before, our program's taught by top tier university professors, professors from Hopkins, Cornell, Georgetown University of Maryland and we bring these kids into the program. They form teams, they're giving mentors by amazing entrepreneurs, they have student coaches, they come up with their own concept using theories like design thinking and lean methodology and they go through the whole process just as if they're in college, right? Same deal, they come up with their own solutions for problems that they really have in their own community. So they're really thinking about how can I fix things in my community to make things better? So it's so cool with some of the companies they come up with and at the end, as you indicated, they will have a pitch in front of amazing entrepreneurs in the DMV area and they can win prizes, cash prizes, gift cards, but more importantly, they're taking away skills, right? Like I love what you're doing with the financial literacy, our goal is to give them awesome skills to be collaborative, creative, working a team, be inclusive, problem solvers and we actually measure 30 different skills throughout the program and the results are amazing. We're just, we can't be thrilled, any more thrilled than we are dealing with these kids. They're just the opportunity and optimism that they have after the program is just through the roof. So, Mark, someone who's listened to this and they're watching this and they're saying, hey, how can I get this into my school? Of course I want entrepreneurship. Of course it makes sense for my kids to get internships and scholarships. How can I make that happen? Awesome, so we really do partner with school districts and nonprofits and we work with these kids for eight months. Typically it costs like this kind of program where you work with a student for eight months, can be anywhere from like $27,000 to $54,000. The cost is really outrageous and unfair to these low income and disadvantaged kids. Our entire program for eight months is $2,000 of students and what normally happens is the nonprofits will then go out for additional funding sources. They'll partner with the foundation or get a corporate sponsor and school will do the same thing with grants, corporate sponsors and donors but this is the way to help these kids. We talked about giving them the skills to succeed in the workplace and these skills are completely transferable. You don't have to start your own venture. If you work a general electric or IBM you have to be able to work in teams. You have to be able to problem solve. So man, we need to teach these skills to these kids and nothing beats entrepreneurship. Okay, now your program, how does exactly your entrepreneurship program? Is it eight hours a day? Is it two hours a day? Exactly, how does Universal Startup Program entrepreneurship for teenagers? Can I do this on the weekend? Do I need to do this? Is it an all day event? Exactly, what are the details? Is it exactly how the program runs? Yeah, very cool. So during the summer it is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and that's a live class. In October we run another cohort and we have two options there. We have the live class which is two hours once a week on Thursdays but we also have an on-demand class during October through January where a student can take it anytime they want. They can do it on the weekends, they can do it in the morning. They have to hit certain deadlines but a lot of students enjoy that freedom to say, you know what, I wanna do it after dinner or on Saturday morning and we enable them to do this through the on-demand course. The on-demand course is taught by Stanford D School Coach. I mean it's top notch. It's incredible professors helping these students learn these skills. Okay, so it can be self-paced or self-taught as well. You can go with self-paced companies, not self-paced companies but self-paced process to get it done. It can make it make sense. So sometimes, you know, I hear some people say, oh wow, you know, eight hours a day that's a lot or if it's self-taught would the kids really stay engaged, right? Now, how do you work to keep the kids engaged to say, hey, every weekend, not every weekend but every week on Thursday, I have to take a two-hour course in order to complete this course? Yeah, it's so good. So we actually just ran a cohort in June and parents came in and said, the only complaint they have is that we wish we had more time with the kids and the professors. Like they love the program. It's you, you know, you sit in class in high school or college or wherever it may be and you're forced to take a subject that may or may not be interesting.  You can make money, you can donate to your community, you can solve problems. It's everything, you know, that I wanted as a student but now I'm able to give as a professor. It's so engaging. It's so much fun.  It's, man, you're out there doing stuff. And it's so, it's so much fun for the kids. That's our least our concern is, you know, the engagement of their, they're so engaged. It's pretty fun. Okay. I know you spoke about being first generation American, right? My question to you, we look at these things, you know, in school, we learning in calculus, geometry, trigonometry, this or that or whatever. Why aren't, why is this not taught in schools? Yeah. You know, I think a lot of that is legacy and tradition. You know, this is the way it's always been taught.  You know, this is kind of the new wave.  I wish I had a better answer why it's not taught. I'm gonna tell you what we're committed to engaging schools, you know, bringing our methodology to these kids so the kids love school. There's no reason why you can't enjoy school. In fact, studies haven't done that you're actually more creative during play, right? So why make things boring when we know that limits your creativity? Let's make it fun. So that's what we do. Okay. So one of the things, one of the things I was, I struggled with when I was in high school in junior high as well is I had a hard time learning things that I couldn't relate to reality. So for prime example, when you're taking geometry and algebra two and you learn all these angles and this angle does this. I'm trying to visualize this. I can't place it in my head. So it doesn't seem to be real world to me. But if you tell me, hey, Johnny ate two slices of pizza and you had eight, you know, eight slices. Oh, that made sense. Somebody ate his pizza. But that's what it felt like when I was in school. One of the things I struggled with was trying to learn about something that I couldn't visualize like, what's the weapon? What's in it for me? What's in it for me? What does this mean? How do I make this realistic in my world? Why am I learning this? And that's one of the biggest things I learned with, you know, one of the things I like about your company as well is that you are giving real world things, tangible results that can go out somebody can use when they get out of it, right? So how do you feel about society? Or what is your plan? Do you have a plan to implement yourself into society of like maybe changing the culture, changing the conversation? First of all, I love what you said. And it's so true. Not just for you, for me, all students. I, a teacher was struggling with a student in the statistics class. And, you know, he just, he said, he just doesn't get it. I said, well, I know the child. He loves baseball. Why don't you spend a couple of weeks of just teaching statistics through baseball? And he loves to watch the nationals, which is our local team here in DC. His grade skyrocketed, right? He was able to apply real life statistics and sees the value of statistics. So it was very cool.  That means they're four times more likely to be unemployed. And if they are employed, their salaries are 40% less than their colleagues who are in college, right?  If we can get these kids to college or get them great jobs, you're gonna improve the tax base in your city.  It just helps everybody. So we wanna study. It's funny you say that we're in the process now with partnering with the school district, but we're gonna study the entrepreneurship impact that we can have at these kids from high school all the way into the business community. Because we believe that. We believe entrepreneurship can change the world. And let me tell you one more thing.  The average GPA of millionaires is 2.9 in college. We're not the best guys in the world, but we got hustle, right? We got the ability to create, be collaborative, think differently, don't be afraid of failure. And all the kids who go through my program increase their capabilities in all those levels. All those levels, it's incredible. They're less risk-averse. They're not afraid of the future. 83% of them are more optimistic about their future now. I mean, that's what we want. We want to give these kids, you know, the empowerment to be awesome because they are. Okay. Now, what we're gonna do right now, well, we're gonna jump into speaking about those disadvantaged areas and programs, not programs, but areas and to see what we can do to make them better, definitely like that. But to everybody that's out there, we're gonna take a quick break. And I mean a very quick break. Don't you touch it down. Don't you move. We're gonna be back with Mark here from Universal Startups. Y'all stay tuned. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11 a.m. Aloha. Entrepreneurship for teenagers. Entrepreneurship for teenagers around the globe. Something I'm very big on because like if you haven't been following the show, Mark here said, hey, 69% of impoverished students don't go off to college. If they don't go to college, meaning they're left with low-paying jobs, and if you're left with low-paying jobs, who wants to have a low-paying job? This is when you start to look into crime and other things like that. So how can we fix low-income areas? One thing I like about our guest here for university startups is that he spoke about, hey, I want to help three million kids go through entrepreneurship programs by putting them through a pipeline, also giving them professors from the top universities and from Cornell to, from Cornell to Georgetown and John Hopkins, right? So what I further do, let me bring my guest back on here. We have the founder, CEO, university startups coming out of Maryland. Mark, how's it going? Awesome, nice seeing you again, Prince. Oh yeah, definitely. So I want you to get into this. If you go into an impoverished area, people are saying, hey, well, I come from a single parent household, maybe drug infested, whatever the case may be. Like I recently just came back from a city of Detroit and I was like, what do you do? You can't just go there and put a fast food restaurant there because those are really not how paying jobs for the most part and who can really afford what you bring. How do you re-energize that community? What do you guys have to say, Mark? Awesome. So I mean, it's a challenging question for all of us and I really believe in the power of entrepreneurship because it empowers you, right? So I don't have a specific solution that I can go into Detroit or other difficult areas and say, this is how Mark would do it. Instead, I want to teach these kids empowerment and the skills necessary that they can go out and come up with their own solutions because they know their community is better than I do, right? But we can mentor them. We can show them the methodology. We can show them the process so they can become amazing entrepreneurs come up with amazing solutions to really build this ecosystem within their community that it rocks, that it's so amazing. And let me give you an example. I had high school teams that just graduated in June. One team is her and her students live in a very high crime area and there's a lot of anxiety. They hear gunfire at night. It's just, it's a difficult environment. So they came up with, it was kind of like off of Build-A-Bear where they would have their bears but they can do a QR code and they would swipe their phone. If they're struggling, they could automatically be connected to a psychologist or psychiatrist to help them walk through their anxiety. It was just so creative. I mean, they were just amazing. Another team had, you know, they're like, well, I grew out of my clothes. What am I gonna do with their clothes? So they came up with a recycling business where they could start selling all these great clothes that, you know, were almost new but, you know, they wouldn't warn that much but they could pass them down to other people in the neighborhood at discounted prices and they could start making money. So that's the keys. Really empowering them, giving them skills, giving them know-how to build their own amazing companies, right? Developing the Mark Staring Company for them, you know, won't work. They need that power and we restrict them too often. We say you have to do it this way. That's not the way I believe. I believe give them the methodology, give them the tools, support them financially, support them through mentorship and support them through real instruction to, again, to empower themselves to come up with amazing solutions in their own communities. Mark, and I agree with you cold-heartedly because I think that if you wanna change the future, you change the children and if you wanna change the outcome, you change the mind.  And I think that that's not empowering, you know. I think that, hey, you have to have something that, hey, you have to create your own. And plus when you create your own, you have a sense of ownership. The community feels like yours. So when you're there, you're renting that apartment and you go down the street to the grocery store and buy your groceries and you may stop at a fast food restaurant and grab some fast food. You don't have that sense of ownership. You know, you feel like a person who's just, I'm just existing here, right? I'm just existing here. I don't feel like I have a piece of what's going on.  We all have an invested interest because I live here, you live here, our kids play here. So we all are doing neighborhood watches. We all watch it now for each other. We're all changing rules and things like that. But in lower income areas, you don't see that sense of ownership and you gotta ask yourself, why don't you have the sense of ownership? The sense of ownership is because the community don't own anything in the community. So wanting to do something puts it there. So I'm definitely with you with Empowering. That's why I love the program of showing kids how to do it. And the mentorship is very, very important because they always say, if you wanna see a future, look at the people you speak to the most or look at the people that are around you. So if you don't know anybody, if I come from a low income area, how can I get to know somebody? So I definitely like that as well. So I definitely like what you're saying with Empowering, funding, mentorship and guiding with them for the long term, not just the short term. So now, looking at this now, have you noticed any other country that may have done something better than what we're doing with youth entrepreneurship or do you think America is number one? I love the American spirit. I love the American entrepreneurship. That's why so many people wanna come here and that's why there's such a diverse, great population with so many different ideas, so many different cultures.  There are a few countries in South America that have some really interesting. Asia obviously has got some hotbed of manufacturing but I just think, before I look to other countries, I needed more here in the United States to help these kids be the next generation of awesome entrepreneurs. And I feel that, you said it so right, success leaves clues. When you mentioned mentorship and seeing that, I think it's a pinge upon me and my colleagues to show the way for these next generation of entrepreneurs that never really had an opportunity to take these kind of classes. They don't teach entrepreneurship in most high schools, right? We need to be the leaders teaching them and you and your part with the financial leadership part to teach these kids. Imagine if we set up a restaurant in one of those areas where they learn back of the house skills, front of the house skills, the financial literacy of inventory costs and running a restaurant. I mean, there's so much we can do to empower kids to really lead the next generation. So I love what we do here in the United States. I think we can do better. When I think of innovation and creativity, I think in the U.S. Okay. And I can't have seen that as well. Now, what have you experienced has been the biggest problem with university? Not a problem, but maybe not a fork in a row, but hurdle that you've seen with university starts like, hey, this is where we need some more help here or this is what's going wrong or there's something I want to see get better. What is that if you can see it? I mean, from a company side, we need to be out there more. I want to help more kids. You know, our cohorts are filled. On October cohort, we got 75% filled. We only need 25% more kids, but I want to do more. I want the word out there. I want to get more and more professors that have written me notes and, hey, we want to be part of this work. Recruiting more professors, people with the mission that want to help these kids to help these high school kids. But I need to be more engaged with more and more nonprofits, more and more school districts. I just feel like we can do so much more. We're just tipping the iceberg. We've six times our growth in the last six months. I want to go much further. So I'm looking for partners and nonprofits and school districts to join us on this mission to really help these kids. Okay. And you can do this second. It can be part of the after school program too, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, during the school year it is after school. Okay. So you have a nice after school program or I can see that, you know, I can see some boys and girls clubs have teen centers. If they have, you know, they have to have the computers. Now, what would they need? What would the students actually need to facilitate this? Yeah, so they do need a computer and they do need Wi-Fi. We're actually looking to figure out ways to help kids get computers and get Wi-Fi because that was a concern for some of these kids, you know, they had the difficulty getting Wi-Fi. Some, you know, had to take the course on their phone because they didn't have a computer. So we're looking for ways and we're looking for donations to help these kids get computers because that's our next step. I really want to make sure, you know, they have a computer. It's just something that you and I take for granted. You know, we have a computer, we have Wi-Fi. Man, some of these kids don't. So they need it. They need it for their work. When they go into the work world, they're going to need it for college. So I'd love to get these kids' computers. Awesome, okay. Now, what do you want to leave to the live audience and the audience that would catch the playback? Is there anything you want to leave them with? Yeah, we have an October cohort with the Georgetown University professor. We're looking for about 15 more kids. You know, so we're looking for a nonprofit partner or a school, you know, school district that's looking to send 15 kids to our program. You know, we'd love to partner with you. They can reach out to me. That'd be awesome. Awesome, okay. Well, how can people find you? You're social media or how can people find you? How people can keep in touch with university startups? Yeah, so www.university-startups.com or they can email me M-S-T-E-R-E-N at university-startups.com. I'd love to speak to anyone, you know, if they can help if they want to be a mentor or a partner with us. You know, anyone that wants to join us on this mission to help these kids, you know, we're all for it. All right. Well, Maura, did you have fun? I did. It's awesome. You're great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for being on. I know it's pretty late over there on the East Coast, but I know it's in the evening in Hawaii and it's kind of the middle in Denver. We're all over the place, but that's a great thing. Awesome. But definitely. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children, ladies and gentlemen, you are now tuned in to The Prince of Investment, live here in Denver, Colorado, by the way, of Haluahua, Hawaii. Until the next video, podcast, cartoon, episode or whatever else craze you see me do around this wonderful globe, peace, be safe. I'm out and thank you.


My name is Molly Owens. What I want to start with is my grandparents. They, my grandfather fought in World War I and was given a land grant down by Tule Lake. They were from Band and Oregon. And during the Second World War, as you might know, there was a Japanese internment camp in Tule Lake and my grandmother was outraged and she went down to that camp regularly to take things to people and to work with, you know, do things for people. And so when I was a little kid, I would hear stories of her work there and her outrage. And then when I was a young teenager, we got involved in Vietnam and my grandparents again were outraged. So my grandparents raised us with a real awareness of politics and of questioning and of knowing the story behind the story. I went to high school at a Catholic high school and there were two nuns there that supported and encouraged my questioning of noxious, outrageous behavior against all the other nuns. They didn't let me in Honor Society until I was a senior because the nuns who were in charge were so concerned and outraged by my questioning behavior. But we got a new principal when I was a senior and she was wonderful and so she got me into Honor Society. I was so happy. So I had the opportunity to go to a couple of different colleges and I chose to go to SU which was Southern Oregon College at the time because it was close to home. And I grew up in Meryl, Oregon and I had been to San Francisco once.  It was very narrow. So I really wanted to just not be that far from home and I was so homesick my freshman year. But I got into the Honors Program and I met some women and some men who changed my life in terms of my thinking. I came to school over here in 1967. So I think the first one was Bob Casper and William Gabori. And then I met Joe Widmer and Helen Volcominer and Dr. Betty Harbert and just a lot of people who, you know, were all these young, exciting PhDs who just come out of a whole bunch of different experiences and they came to this campus and they were bright and they were inquisitive and they pushed us. And this Honors Program was just an amazing experience. They were all, again, they were organizing just above our heads so that the women students at the college had the same opportunities as the men. They were making sports for women start to become a reality. They were making, we got into student government. So they were making the role of women in that student government more accessible. And they mentored us while we became student senators. They, Joe yelled at us a lot so that we became physically stronger and more active. That's mostly how I remember her, but I kept signing up for her classes because she pushed us.  And I became very good at archery. And it was mostly, I think my experience with them was mostly through student government. They just as role models and as supporting us while we got involved in that. And in doing talks about it at the Honors College and modeling the role of women in that level of administration. So first, you know, really other than the nuns, but the nuns always seemed secondary to the priests. But those women were not second. They were strong, bright, articulate women with a vision. And Dr. Harbert and Dr. Volcominer, I think, had more direct impact on my thinking. Because I had class after class after class from them and they really pushed me to develop my intellectual thinking. But those other women really modeled women making change in a larger organization experience. So I continued to be supported in my questioning and my interest in politics. And met a couple of other women, Meredith Reynolds and Linda Johnston at the time. Who became my two best friends. And all the way through college the three of us were really involved in activism. And were really supportive of each other. And it was the first time I'd been with other women who were really smart and really questioning and just kind of out there. And I think we really supported each other in the things that we did from there on. A couple of years after I graduated from college I had the opportunity to go work in Micronesia, which I did. And I was there for, and I went because at that time the politics in the United States were just awful. And it felt really hopeless. And I felt like I had just given everything I could give to politics. And I wanted to do something else. So I went to Micronesia to teach. And that also changed my life. Little girl from Merrill, Oregon. And my dad had been in the South Pacific. He was with the Marine First Division, I think. And he had been on the front lines all the way up the Pacific as they fought the Japanese. And he had been in Micronesia. So he was really excited that I got to go there. And was real supportive of this move. So I was there for a while. While I was there I met an old man who had been teaching there, I think probably since the end of World War II, who educated us about what the United States real intentions were in Micronesia and how important Micronesia was strategically for the armed forces. And again opened my eyes about, you have to look for the meaning behind the meaning. Got married, came home, had a baby, kept teaching. And in 1980 I got divorced. And I had broken my leg and lost my job just before we separated. So I was looking for a job. And I cannot remember how I met these two women. But I met Mary and Taya who were the two counselors at the Displaced Homemaker Program at SOU in the Women's Center. And they introduced me to Rosemary.  And they said, we need a director. Would you like to apply for the job? So I applied for the job as a director of the Displaced Homemakers Program as a part of the Women's Center. And got the job and got introduced to all of these women and all of this politics. And I had been a feminist through the anti-war movement.  So much sexism. But I don't think I had the academic feminism. I didn't have a lot of the thought behind it. Yeah, I had the heart behind it. Absolutely. I think my grandma was a feminist. But the politics and the reasoning and the thought behind it really just kind of blew up for me. And it was an incredible experience. And so I got involved with a lot of other women who were doing other political things. And got involved with the Dunn House, which I'm not sure was even a house at the time. It might have still been just hiding women. Worked for the Displaced Homemakers Program for a couple of years. And then Neyraal was looking for an organizer. So I went to work for them as an organizer in Southern Oregon and Eastern Oregon. Really quite an experience. And it was just me. The organizers in Portland, there were four or five of them. And down here there was me with a really strong right to life movement. And I learned a ton because the woman who was my supervisor was an amazing organizer. Her name is Kathy Howell. And she's been an organizer for the labor movement and all kinds of stuff. She's really, really talented. So she taught me a lot about organizing. And we did a lot of work for Neyraal. And that was where I met Mary, who was an organizer with another grassroots organization in Portland. I'm going to tell you one incident that kind of crystallized a lot for me. I had gone up to Roseburg. My daughter was four at the time. So we had gone up to Roseburg to do a meeting. And we were meeting in a church. And so we were meeting in one part of the church. And my daughter and two other little kids were playing on the playground right out from where we were. And we saw these people come up to them. I went outside. And this right to life or had a jar with an aborted fetus in it. And he was telling my four-year-old daughter that your mommy kills babies. And I wanted to kill him. But I didn't. And we, you know, told him to go away and reported him to the police. Yeah, I mean, I did house meetings in Roseburg and Klamath Falls and Lakeview and Medford and Grants Pass. And that was the era the clinics were being long. And I, you know, after I stopped working for them, I still volunteered for them. And volunteered for Planned Parenthood and worked on abortion referrals. And took people through the picket lines to get abortions. And I quit when I had this amazing young woman that I had met in my work experience. She was a single parent with two little kids, just left an abusive relationship. And she discovered she was pregnant. And she decided to get an abortion. She was out of the evangelical Christian movement and had made this decision. And I helped her arrange an abortion. Took her to the abortion clinic, which was a doctor here in town who provided abortions. And he had this huge picket line around his building when we came out. And she said, I don't know what to do. I know those people. I go to church with those people. And she laid down on the floor of my car. And I started to drive through the driveway. And they started to mob the car. And I was overwhelmed with a desire to run over them. And I thought to myself, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. You go to jail. And then I thought I can't do this anymore. I am too angry. And so I didn't do it for a long time because I really had to get over it. That was such an awful experience. She was between a rock and a hard place. She had nowhere to go. And that was not an easy decision for her. It ripped her heart out. It's a response, I think, that a lot of people have when they confront something that is really wrong. And our moral moral-ness comes up in what we do with it. You know, I can feel that way, but I can't act that way. And my anger was righteous. Not right, necessarily, but righteous. My anger was that they would not put themselves in the place of this young woman. And I understand that they're moral convictions. I do. But I struggle with the fact that people on that side of the issue so often are so busy being judgmental and righteous and obstructive instead of being embracing and assisting and making change and making it different. I mean, if she had thought she could bring her daughter into a world or her child into a world where she'd have support and help, that would have been all the difference that she would have needed. But we don't have a world like that. And people who are right to life are not doing anything to create a world like that. So I am righteously angry at them. And, you know, I worked with a couple of people who were strongly right to life, but they spent hours every day. One of them, we worked at the Community College in the Student Services Building and she would spend hours every day helping those women find ways to afford to go to school. I mean, she dedicated her life to it. She was a financial aid counselor and she was heavenly. She went out of her way to make it easier for those women. So she's an example of what putting her life where she said her morals stood. So I really had to figure out more about how to be a single mom, how to protect my kid, how to continue to do this political work. And so shortly after that, I was talking to the people at Dunhouse and they were looking for, they were about to close. They didn't have any money and their last director had played not nice with the books. So Mary and I agreed that we would come in and raise money for them. So we did that together for a while and then she took another job. But we raised $40,000 in like three months. It was really a lot of work. But it was really nice to get away from the uncertainty of the organizing with NARAL. We worked really hard at Dunhouse, but it wasn't quite so uncertain and there was a space and I knew Erica was safe there. And so then I learned about being a part of a statewide network and part of a network that began to work with the police and work with judges and work with that whole part of the community while having a really incredibly serious sense of distrust because some of the women that came into the shelter were wives of police officers. They were women who were often well connected with the upper level of society. And so trying to balance keeping our location really secret and really safe and being out in the community and trying to raise money meant ultimately we had to find another space to have an office. And so we became a part of another organization that eventually kind of swallowed Dunhouse. And it meant working with people who were not feminists and it meant working with men who in my experience and opinion were abusive, at least emotionally abusive and coming out of being a part of kind of that safe cocoon of just a feminist community. So there was this period of time from like 1975 to 1980 to 1985 where I really worked in this really safe kind of, you know, it's funny to say that it's safe. You're working with pro-life people and batterers and all this other stuff but it was a really focused group and there was a group called Men's Alternatives to Violence. So then we were working with men who were also focused on the same issue. It was working with people who all agreed with kind of the same feminist philosophy. It was working with men who were committed to changing the way men acted and encouraged us to change the way we acted too. I mean it's kind of unreasonable to expect people to not be violent if your reaction to them is also anger. That was a big lesson for me, kind of a long lesson, but a really good lesson. So during that time I came out as well, which was really hard on my good Catholic leather and I found not just the feminist political activism but the feminist lesbian group. So there was the political community and then there was the community community. It wasn't based on politics, although kind of it was. So there was a group called Women's Source that was all about creating activity and community for women and through Women's Source in particular there was a gathering in the fall called the Fall Gathering. But it was held up at Lake of the Woods at the Girl Scout camp and it was a long weekend of just fun stuff.  It was an issue for me that I had a child who was like four, five, six, seven during this period of time and almost everybody else was childless. And not only did I have a child, I was working for a feminist organization and I made about ten cents more than it cost me to live, so paying for childcare was really hard. The other part of that feminist group is that they wanted to do feminist decision making meaning everything had to be consensus. And I think if you don't have the experience of being a single mom it's really a lot harder to empathize with that experience and to understand why somebody can't just get childcare. And so there was a lot of contention about whether or not there would be, first of all, kids could come and secondly if there would be childcare. And there were some really vocal opponents. It was a seminal experience in my life and I really struggled with it and I carried a lot of resentment about it for a while. Interestingly as more of those women had children that changed. You know my response at that time was so out of my emotions rather than my intellect. I was one of the very few, I mean I was newly out. It was a hard place for me, hard experience for me. My job was in a, well you know different periods of time. Part of the time in my job I didn't feel like I could be out. Other times in my job it was fine.  There was another group that was much more into, much more experiential. Much more into the arts, recreation. And they didn't have kids. They were able to really focus on their experiences and what the experiences they wanted to create. I came out of a lot of politics. I mean I had a political awareness since I was a kid. And for me feminism was really political. And all of the things that held women back were a part of that. So child care I guess was emblematic of that. Child care and poverty, both of those were really emblematic of those are things that hold women back that make it impossible for women to have the same experiences as men. And that single women while they still have to deal with less money don't have to deal with being responsible for another small human being. And it just makes for a really different life. But I hung out with those women on the political side. Not on the women's foresight. Those women tended to be lesbians and had been lesbians and didn't have kids and hadn't had male relationships. I don't think that one came out of the other. I think that they kind of did this. And I think, I mean I think any of the women that I still know they were all a little younger than people like me and Rosemary and Max all of whom were involved with the domestic violence work in the beginning and who had kids. All the other women that I can think of in that group well we're mostly younger. Some of them just moved here after from other places later. After a while the struggle of consensus building. No, it wasn't consensus building. It was because none of us had really developed the skill of building consensus. We didn't understand that to come to consensus usually y'all have to move towards the middle. Rather it became real opposing forces and we just banged heads. And I don't like banging heads so eventually I left. And like I say I think my feelers were hurt for a while about the lack of understanding about what it's like to be a single parent. As I got some more maturity I just developed the understanding that you can't really understand that unless you've experienced it. And I get how much people just want to have fun. But one of the things I kind of decided in there was I needed to put more energy just into the political. Because all these issues you know that the saying the personal is political is absolutely true. And one of the things that became clear to me was what a barrier childcare was. And what a barrier not having enough education was. And what a barrier not having access to certain kinds of jobs was. So I went from the Displaced Homemaker Program at SOU. I really don't remember which job I did. But anyway after I think after the job with the Dunhouse ended there was an opening at Rogue Community College for their Displaced Homemaker Program. And so I resigned from the larger program that was managing Dunhouse. Because it's just the struggle with again the decision making there. They were not a feminist organization. I thought the Dunhouse should be feminist. They wanted to make it a more mainstream social service which was fine. But it wasn't something I really even knew how to do. And I certainly didn't want to. So this job came open at the community college to run their single parent Displaced Homemaker Program. And that looked like a real opportunity. So they hired me and I worked half time in Grads Pass, half time in Medford. And Mary at that time was working at Head Start. And after a couple of years at RCC I joined this statewide Displaced Homemaker Network and then a national network. And I was chosen to be part of a 10 person governing board on the national level. And I went as a part of that to this amazing workshop on women and economic development. And had my eyes just wide open and came home and just was raving about it to Mary. And we decided that we needed to create some opportunities in Southern Oregon. So we had a conference here that was focused on the economics of women. And out of that came a group that took on childcare, a group that took on women in small business and a group that took on women in non-traditional careers. And so the Jackson County Child Care Coalition eventually came out of the childcare group. Southern Oregon Women's Access to Credit was a small business development program that a small group of us started and then Mary ran for 10 years. And Women in Non-Traditional Careers was a program at Rogue Community College. They kind of got bounced around with a couple of the job council did it for a while and Rogue did it for a while and it was kind of an idea that got bounced around until I think there was enough absorption of the ideas and the opportunities that it didn't have to be a separate program. It became a consciousness razor for the programs that already existed. And then we also started a teen parent program that was done between the ESD, the community college, the job council. I think there was another partner in there but it might have been the Child Care Coalition by that point. So I spent most of the 80s and 90s. I was on this National Women in Work board which was just the amazing opportunity of the century. There were 10 of us from around the country and we met quarterly. And we had a lot of projects, all of them around raising consciousness, raising the consciousness of people who were supposed to be helping women enter the workforce. And helping women themselves and then the people who work with them understand that just developing a skill isn't enough. You have to, often you have to develop the personality. The personal is not personality but personal skills. You have to have a support network. You have to know what to do about your kids. You know, just kind of there's all this other stuff that goes with being a woman in the workforce. And we spent about 10 years developing curriculum and programs and trying things out and supporting each other. And some of those women are still my good friends. It was a great experience. We did some lobbying in D.C. You know, for this kid from Meryl, Oregon, what an experience. I got to see the Indianapolis 500. That was my other big experience.  Personally, getting divorced was soul-crushing. My husband was from Micronesia and we really liked each other but we could not ultimately make the two cultures work. He was a really smart, pretty important person in the Micronesian culture. I had a lot of opportunity in that American culture. We couldn't find a compromise. And so making the decision to separate was just really, really hard. And we had a three-year-old and ultimately it meant she just didn't know her dad very well. Impetuously marrying him and then unimpetuously having to untwine from that was a very hard experience. And it made me way more cautious than I had ever been before that. But it also made me really aware of, you know, living in a third-world country in third-world conditions made me, first of all, really appreciate other cultures. Micronesian culture is a really wonderful, caring, gentle.  And they talk pretty openly about that. And they are just gentle, caring, generous, open, loving people. So living with them was a real gift. And then coming home and being a single parent without the dad there and at the time my mom was living in Chico. Eventually she moved up here and she was a lot more support then. But I just did it and my two best friends, one of them had gone to live in Mexico. The other one was here. So I had one good friend who was really supportive. But I didn't have much of a community. And I had gone through this teaching experience that was pretty rough and had resigned from a teaching position because I had a really unsupportive supervisor. So I was really feeling lost and alone and adrift when I discovered the Women's Center and went to work for them in the Displaced Homemaker Program. So finding the feminist community was a gift at so many different levels. Intellectually it was a huge gift. It was a way to make sense, a new way to organize everything that was happening and a new way to look at what could be done. And then there was the community and the experience of women really loving and supporting each other, which had not been my experience as a teenager for sure. And then in college the majority of my friends were men. So like I said, Linda and Meredith were really close friends. But I didn't have a bigger community. So experiencing community like that and realizing that you could work at that, you could create it. You could make it happen for yourself and you could make it happen for other women. And that not everybody had to be alone and adrift and experienced going through a divorce or going through a domestic violence experience or going through a rape alone. And you could have support groups even when you were in school, you know. There were all these places where you could have support. That was a new and amazing realization for me. And to, you know, to see and understand the philosophy underneath it. But then also to learn the skills that it takes to practice it was, you know, my life would have been really, really different without that. I think that being able to make all those political changes and make what, to me, I consider political differences through the women in economic development. I mean we changed a whole community. You know, a whole community became aware of the need for childcare. A whole community became aware of the need for better paying jobs for women. A whole community became aware of the need for access to credit. And we did it by bringing other women in, talking about it, working on it, experiencing what it took to do that. And then experiencing when you did that, it had all these ripples. And I feel really proud about that. That was a really exciting thing. And then, you know, to do the teen parent program. I had a lot of energy and we did a lot of programs that made a difference. So, you know, when I got older, more of my energy went into helping individuals get into those things and helping individuals and teaching. I love teaching. It was my favorite thing to do. But, you know, my experience as my life here really has been a gift. And I, you know, I don't really know how to wind it up other than to say, Dang, I've been lucky. And I've just known some great people and had some great experiences.  All these other women. Wow.