97: How to Build Business Infrastructure

excelled in chemistry. And by the time I became a senior in high school, and it was time to start applying for colleges and universities, I was taking an advanced chemistry course by that point, and my teacher took a particular interest in what would become my future career.

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Alicia Butler Pierre is the founder and CEO of Equilibria, a 15 year old operations management firm. She specializes in increasing bandwidth for fast growing organizations via business infrastructure. Alicia has a Bachelors of Science in chemical engineering from LSU, an MBA from Tulane and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification, and you know, we gonna dig into that! Her content has over three quarters of a million views across various

online platforms. She's also the host of a weekly podcast called Business Infrastructure - Curing Back Office Blues, and she is also a two time Amazon Best Seller with her book, Behind the Facade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success. She's committed to doing the right things the right way. And in her words, her

areas of a business. Everyone likes to talk about marketing and sales, but you're the glue that holds it all together, right?

take place. So one of the things that I always tell people is - think of marketing as the activities that are actually seen by your customer. And operations is really more so about what your customer experiences, not what they see, because operations is all of the stuff that's going on in that proverbial back office, under the hood, behind the curtain. Whereas marketing is always the forward facing or front facing customer facing related

activities. You know, your sales, promotional things, branding, publicity, PR, Press, all of the things that people can actually see. But operations is, you know, that's when we start getting into processes and systems and procedures and workflows and making sure everyone knows how to do the work so that they can consistently deliver those products and services on time.

your technologies. So that the reason it's important, Darrell, to use that word linkage, is because whenever there's a change in one area, you're forced to think about the impact that it will have on another. If you upgrade a particular technology, for example, what impact is that going to have on the people using that technology? Will that technology replace some of the things that a person is doing? And what are

the processes? What's the impact on the actual way someone is performing his or her job, as a result of that change in technology that you've made? And similarly, if there's a change in personnel, if there's a change to a particular process, or workflow, how does it impact the other elements of that system? So I mean, another way to think about it is, your ecosystem, all of the different

things. So when we're talking about your business as a whole, that ecosystem consists of your vendors, your suppliers, your customers, your employees, all of those things come together in this beautiful way to help you to help support that system that's driving the goods and services to your end customers.

excelled in chemistry. And by the time I became a senior in high school, and it was time to start applying for colleges and universities. I was taking an advanced chemistry course by that point. And my teacher took a particular interest in what would become my future career, and I wanted to become a chemist. I was applying to go to school and get a degree in chemistry. And she said, you know, you might want to rethink that, Alicia because here's the

thing. If you get a degree in chemistry, you're going to have to end up going all the way up to the PhD level before you make any real money. But, if you choose chemical engineering, you can make money right out of school as an undergrad, you'll make really good money. So that was the initial motivation, Darrell. I had this love of chemistry, but I still liked writing and reading. So I went to college, got this degree in Chemical Engineering, worked in industry for about seven or

eight years. And chemical engineers for those who are listening right now. We work either usually, as process engineers or design engineers. I worked mostly as a process engineer. And so what that meant is, for example, my very first job out of college was at Monsanto. Don't judge me, those listening, don't judge me, Dr. Evil right? I was making Roundup. And so what happened is whenever you are producing a physical, tangible product Darrell, it has to meet a

certain specification. These manufacturing facilities are usually running 24/7. There is no downtime. People are working in shifts. And so as each batch of a product is produced, someone is testing that batch to make sure that it meets the specifications. And if it doesn't, I, as the process engineer had to go back and figure out what went wrong in the process of producing that particular batch that caused it to not meet the specification. Okay? That's where the operational experience first

came into play. But something else really interesting happened Darrell, when I was working at Monsanto. Every month, there were accountants that were assigned to different parts of the overall manufacturing facility. The accountant that would come and speak to us once a month, I swore this lady spoke Greek, I mean, I didn't understand a thing that was coming out of her mouth. She's talking about assets and liabilities and expenses and profit and loss. It's like, what?!

right? I didn't understand what business decisions. What was going on out there in the marketplace, that was causing or forcing these manufacturing, these production schedule changes? I didn't understand it. So that's when I decided to go back to school. I went to pursue my MBA, so I was working full time during the day, going to business school at night. And I have to tell you, it opened up. You'll appreciate this, one of my concentrations was in

marketing. So it was like the missing link that business school education, because now I have the process operational knowledge. But I also now have the business knowledge to understand how to really pay attention to market trends and industry analysis and understand how to kind of mesh all these things together. So that's how this kind of love affair if you will, with operations and understanding how things work and how to make things work even better, that's really how it originated.

And I want to understand and so I just wanted to say that really quick, because I talk to people all the time. Because here's the interesting part, I started as an electrical engineering major.

just deal with it. And you said let me just at least understand, right?

old, it's been out there. But here's what's interesting, Darrell, it's just starting to really take shape here in America, even though it's been out all these years. And when you think about it, American culture, you know, we tend to consume more than we want to

produce. Whereas a country like Japan, especially following World War 2, it's an island nation, they have very limited resources, but yet, when you look at how far they've come economically, financially, in so many different aspects, where they are today, compared to where they were just after World War 2 ended, it's nothing short of amazing. And that Lean methodology has a lot to do with that. Now, Six Sigma is another

methodology or framework. And it's all about eliminating or minimizing, to the best extent possible, what we refer to as defects or errors. So if you are manufacturing a physical good, producing a tangible good, then it might be about minimizing defective product. But if we're talking about services, and so many people think Six Sigma doesn't apply to service based companies, but it absolutely does. We wouldn't talk about defects, we would probably talk about these processes in terms

of errors. How many errors were generated in delivering or providing that particular service? Now, what has happened over the past several years, Darrell, is the powers that be, whoever those powers are, I don't really know. But they have actually taken these two frameworks, and they've combined them. So that's why now you'll hear Lean Six Sigma. But just know, it's two different methodologies that have been

brought together. And the whole idea is to literally strip your company's operations of waste, defective product, and errors. That's the whole point of it.

service businesses. But at what stage is a company when they really need this type of expertise to come in, because I'm sure it's maybe not the very beginning startup company when it's probably, but talk to us a bit about the company that really could benefit from a Lean Six Sigma approach.

of things. But then what can happen is as a result of working with a company like yours, a company can go from not having any attention, any publicity, any brand awareness to now all of a sudden, you put out this particular media campaign and you have a different type of problem. Now you might have more business than you can

necessarily handle. So that's usually a good place where people start to realize, ah, not only do we need to expand our teams, but we need to start documenting how we do things. How do we actually produce this particular product? Or how do we actually provide this particular service? And that's when you start the documentation of your

processes. This is another really key thing that I'm about to say, because so many people, they hear a buzzword like Lean Six Sigma, don't really know what it is, or what's involved in it. Because it is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you, and it's not because it's difficult. It's because of the time consumption that is involved with it. And you know, we, especially as entrepreneurs, we want to move quick, fast, and in a hurry, right? We want

everything done yesterday. Lean Six Sigma doesn't work that way. It can take several months, maybe even a year before you start to see serious changes and improvements for the better. So you definitely have to be in it for the long game. And when you're talking about startups, they're just trying to get the word out about what they're doing. They're trying to gain

that traction. But then once again, you have some skin in the game, you've broken a few eggs, as you mentioned to me offline, that's when you're probably in a better position to apply something like Lean Six Sigma. So you document the process Darrell, then you apply something like Lean, or Lean Six Sigma to figure out - I have this documented process, how can I actually improve this process?

And the thing you always want to look at when you talk about improving a process, one of the things that we will almost always look at is what we call cycle time. How long does it take you to manufacture that product? How long does it take you to deliver that actual service? And is it possible for you to shave that down by 10%,

20%, maybe even in half. So that's when you start having conversations about automation, the incorporation of certain technologies, maybe you need to upgrade certain equipment that you're using as you're producing that product or providing that service. That's what Lean Six Sigma can do for any sized business. So I always argue it's not just for the big guys, it's for all sized businesses. Unfortunately, not many of us smaller business owners actually know what it can truly do for our companies.

customers, right? And as you mentioned, when companies work with firms like mine, which we do work with some startups, but, and of course, a lot of venture backed startups put 30 to 40% of that investment into marketing. But you've got to make sure you've got the systems in place. I heard you say something else I wanted to touch on. And that is a phrase that I use, in my own simple way, without it being a Lean Six Sigma is, you have to

define how we do it here. Like, we've got to figure out how we do it here. And I remember when the question was asked of me in 2002, my coach, she says, How do you do it? And I said, How do you do what? She goes, everything? Let's talk about that for a little while, right? I got it because I spent a lot of years in the Taco Bell System in the fast food system, for ten

years. And then we all like to talk about McDonald's when we talk about processes, and now today, Amazon is a huge conversation point around, How in the world can I order something today? And they get it to me anywhere in the world in two days.

investment for? What's the payoff?

game. You may not see the payoff in a couple of weeks, maybe even in a few months but it might take, again a year, 18 months before you actually achieve that payoff. And the payoff could manifest itself in different ways. Honestly, you might make an initial investment in let's say, upgrading a technology. Oh,

this is a really good one. So with so many of us with the outbreak of COVID, we found ourselves - it wasn't that many of us weren't using digital technologies, but we probably found ourselves in a position where we had to upgrade. So whereas you may have had a free dropbox account, now you need to upgrade to Dropbox for Business, or you may have had that free Zoom account, now you need to

upgrade your Zoom account. So what happens when you, again, you're making this initial investment, and the whole point is so that you can handle more demand, right? But in order to handle that demand, you not only make the investments in upgrading the technologies you're using, potentially even investing in new or upgrading equipment that you may be using. You may even have to hire more people. So your process improvements can take shape, can touch all of those different

areas. And what you will find is, yes, there's that initial investment of capital. But in the long term, when you look back over the past 12 months, you're going to see how much more revenue your company actually made as a result of really picking apart how you do things. What's The Darrell Evans Way? I love the book The Toyota Way by, for example, that's all about the lean methodology. So for your listeners, it's called The Toyota Way by Dr. Jeffrey Liker. And it's all about the

Lean methodology. So I think his research is based on 20 to 30 years of him studying Toyota. So instead of The Toyota Way, what's The Darrell Evans Way? What's the XYZ company way of doing certain things? Figure out how you can really start to shave off the amount of time that it takes to, again, produce or provide that product or service? What investments will it take? And how do you measure

success? That is another key and important aspect of doing Lean Six Sigma work or any type of process improvement initiative. You want to define what success is going to look like.

improvement. They continuously tweaked and improved these processes over an extended period of time. And look at where they are now. It is the largest, if not one of the largest companies, in the world. In the history of business. That didn't happen by accident. I'm telling you, because I know, I know, an executive, a former Amazon executive, and he said we have a relentless pursuit of process improvement.

process improvement. And I think for entrepreneurs listening, there's a word that I'm gonna throw out, I want you to tell me what you think about this word, because it's the word I use. And that is, what we're looking for in these areas of improvement are points of friction. That's points of friction between us and our customer. The points of friction between, from the point of sale to the point of delivery, from what kind of friction are my team members going through in fulfilling

their job. For example, you used Zoom. I think Zoom is funny because everyone got familiar with, I've been using Zoom since 2015. But the world got awoke to Zoom in 2020. And that free account's good for 40 whole minutes. It's good for 40. You get to a warning.

to learn. And we had to figure out how to integrate these different technologies with each other, again, from an efficiency standpoint, to make sure that data connects and flows seamlessly between these

applications. It was a lot! That is a great example of how you can look at a process and the tools and technologies that you are using within that process, and try to figure out, okay, by me doing something as simple as upgrading from a free Zoom account to a, let's say, pro account, or whatever the different levels are in Zoom, what implications does that have on all of these other aspects of this overall process or workflow? I love the points of

friction. In the Lean Six Sigma world, we refer to them as bottlenecks. Where are the bottlenecks? Something else you said, that's really key Darrell, is in talking about customers. Your customers aren't just the people who pay you. Your customers are also your, your employees, your independent contractors that you're working with, so when we talk about having this relentless pursuit for customer satisfaction, that's internal and external customers.

things. The purpose of, I think, hiring and building a team and expanding your company with human capital, is to allow them a pathway to exhibit their gifts and talents in alignment with your bigger broader vision for your company's purpose and mission. And I think if you really understand it that way, you're really working for them, to make sure that they have what they need. So I'm so glad you brought that up. I tell people all the time I do one-on-ones with my team, my key points on

my team. And those one-on-one meetings are for me to find out what I need to do for them to make sure they have job fulfillment. They can complain to me, they can tell me what they've noticed. I'm never going to be hurt or bitter. But you know how leaders talk about having an open door policy. And now it's virtual. So now it's an open click on my Zoom link and book a meeting policy. Nobody does it in the real world, because they're afraid to go say something to the boss, right?

They'd rather be a water cooler assassinator and assassinate you at the watercooler. Now, that's virtual. So that's in the chat role, or slack channel, or, or the Discord. I'm telling the truth, telling the truth. But we don't allow for that character assassination. So I open the door and say, Listen, once a month, once a quarter, we're gonna sit down and talk and you get to come and tell me how you think we're doing as a company. And if you've seen things, I

want you to share. All that being said, I want to stay on this idea of tech, and I'm so, again, just glad you brought that up. You talk about tech. It's a big point of friction. We are 21 months or so into a pandemic. There's still a lot of adjustment going on and I love something I read about you. Talking about this idea of stick figures and index cards, and how you like to use strategy used for integrating low tech with your high tech. And I just thought the title of that little

piece was interesting. Let's talk a little bit about that. What's your methodology around that?

sheets. So . . .

your company. So one of the first things that I recommend for your listeners, Darrell, is that they take index cards, and so I'm holding up some examples here. You want to take index cards and write down an individual task or activity that needs to be performed in your company. No matter how mundane or how complex, you want to think about things that you're doing, whether it's on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly,

annual basis. Get all of that information out of your head and onto these individual index cards. What's going to happen? Don't be surprised if you have 300 or more index cards. I'm not kidding. When you really start to really wrack your brain and think about all of the things that you and everyone else on your team is doing, definitely get your team members involved in this exercise, you are going to be absolutely amazed at just

how much work you're doing. And it's going to probably help you understand why you may feel as though you're constantly running around like a chicken with its But then the next thing that I want you to consider doing is head cut off. look at all of those different activities that you have written on these individual index cards, spread it out over a large flat surface, usually a table. The reason I don't recommend post it notes is because over time post notes, the adhesiveness, you

know, it starts to wear off. But index cards are a lot more durable than sticky notes. But I want you to start to group activities that are similar in nature, you're going to group those together into columns across this large table that you have. So in the example that I'm showing right now, in the video, I have activities, A1, A2 and

A3. So naturally, I'm going to say all of these belong in one column, because they all start with the letter A. Well, then I want you to place a blank index card above that grouping of similar tasks or activities, and I want you to assign it the name of a department. If you're doing this at a project level, you would just say, Okay, well, this particular grouping of activities has to do with the communication section of the

project. Or if we're doing this at the company level, you might say, you know, collectively, these particular activities would represent our accounting department or our technology department, our marketing department, sales, so forth and so on. Then I want you to look at each column of information.

So imagine you have these index cards that have been organized or grouped into columns along the table, you've assigned a department name to each of those groupings, and now I want you to look at each column individually. And you're going to take a stick figure, like what I have here. And you're going to say, Well, ideally, here's the key, Darrell. Ideally, in a perfect world, if you had access to all of the resources that you needed, money

is not an issue. If you had access to all of those financial resources, who ideally should perform, in this example, task C1. Is it the CEO? You may be doing this today, Darrell, but should Darrell really be doing this? Or should it be the bookkeeper? Should it be a future office manager? Should it be a general manager? Should it be a COO? Should it be the Chief Financial Officer? You want to start to get into the habit of figuring out who ideally should

perform this work. And the reason my stick figures have a laminate surface is so that you can, this is when you start having discussions with your team and your, there's usually some, it's always healthy discussion around well, you know what, I really shouldn't be doing this, this really should be the person who would be in charge of business development. So this would be a director of business development position.

And so if, for those positions that are already filled, for those resources that you already have as a part of your team, you would simply write the name of that person's position, not the person's name, but the name of that person's position, in black. And so whenever you see a person's position written in black, that's to visually demonstrate, okay, this is a position we've identified. It's filled, someone's already performing that work and performing and functioning in

that role. If you see something written in blue, that's an indicator that that is work that you've outsourced to someone else. So we have this big, huge gig economy, right. So a lot of us may outsource, for example, graphic design work, or we may outsource editing work, whether it's editing a podcast or editing a video. And then if you write something in red, if you write the name of that position in red, that's to visually indicate this is a position we've identified, but it's vacant.

And that's when you're going to take all of that information, Darrell, and believe it or not, that's the foundation for how you're going to come up with your company's job descriptions, your company's organizational chart. It's going to help you figure out which processes need to be documented, and how you're going to document those

processes. It's also going to help you figure out how to best organize and structure all of your company's records, whether you keep most of your records digitally electronically, or if you have some things that you have to keep a physical copy of. And then also, it helps you figure out, what's the best way to organize my physical

workspace. So if you've identified, let's say, six major departments in your company, even for a solopreneur, that might be listening to this and thinking, Well, I just have my home office that I'm working out of. It's just me, I don't need to do all of this, this is way too much. I'm going to push back and encourage you to rethink that. Because even here, in my home office, I have different zones, each corner is a

different zone, Darrell. So in one corner, in one corner, there's all the sales and marketing stuff. In another corner, there's my technology related information. In another corner, I might have all of my human resources and some of the operational things. And then another corner, there's the business development, the ongoing things that I'm constantly working on. So get into the habit and the idea of organizing everything that you're doing in your company's back office, around those

departments. And even when you start to use a tool like, like Dropbox, or like Asana, Trello, monday.com, you don't have to think twice about, Oh, my gosh, how am I going to even begin to organize information using some of these different technologies? Your very first level of organization is always going to be those departments that you've taken the time to identify as a result of using stick figures.

this work. I remember the very first time I went through an exercise similar to this, although it wasn't with stick figures and index cards, although I love the, the way that's done. But then it takes some time to do this work. Number two, that's why she said earlier, you have to have gone and broke a few things, made some money, because you can't just make up this dream land of what you think the company is going to look like. Right? There's a time for a business plan. There's a time for a

strategic plan. But we're talking about now, Oh, here's how we do things. Let's backtrack on how we actually produce the result. How do we produce the product? How do we sell the thing? How do we handle customer support? How did we do our ordering? How did we do payroll? Now you can say here's how we did it and then start to look for those - I love what you said about, Who should be doing this? Yes, yes!

you're going. I have to coach people beyond the present moment awareness, the present moment now, present moment revenue, present m,oment leads, present moment current size of the team, present moment awareness of not sleeping well, all of these sorts of things. Wayne Gretzky is where I first heard this quote and I just love the way he put it. Wayne Gretzky, Hall of

Fame hockey player. I wasn't a hockey fan until Vegas, the Golden Knights came to Las Vegas but all that being said, I love what great athletes do and how they think. And he goes, I don't play where the puck is, I play to where it's going. Right? And so what you're describing is a very similar idea. And the fact that, let's plan how we do it here. And then plan, where are we going and who is the most ideal person for that role. So I just love the distinction. I just wanted to spend a second on

that. I love the simplicity. I love the thoughtfulness of it. And again, you're not saying hey, this is all before you go open up monday.com, Asana, Trello, all fantastic tools, right? We're migrating to ClickUp, we use Wrike on my other company. They're all great, except when you open them up. They require your thoughtfulness. They require your thoughtfulness. She's saying, get your thoughtfulness together before you buy the tech.

again, that's 100% on me. So I know that every pressure point, and I use the word friction, every time I hit a point of friction in my businesses, it's always, and I love what you said earlier, too about, don't blame the person, blame the process. See, if we look at the process, the customer is upset about XY or Z. They go back to, not the person who executed the thing. But was there a system? Because I always say that companies build systems to be executed by

people. And unless the person, you know, obviously cussed out the customer, did something completely egregious, then what was the system that led to that outcome?

And I was like, What you talkin' 'bout Willis? You know, and she wasn't a Willis. But you know, I was like, what you talking about, don't sell much for the next 90 days, that's what I do,! Like, I sell stuff, I make it rain around here. If I don't make it rain, bills don't get paid. But she was like, Yeah, but that ain't gonna last you long, under the current situation you just described. And that was the conversation. I was, let me say another thing. I had only done 88,000 in gross

revenue that year. So your point earlier, is what I'm trying to emphasize. I only had done 88 gross revenue in sales. That was the first year of that business. But I was already feeling the friction. So this isn't Fortune 500. This isn't Fortune 1000. This isn't S&P, this is, you, entrepreneur, wherever you are. I was doing 88 grand in sales. I'd never made that much by the way, in my previous job. So this

was 35 or 40,000 more. So while it looked good on paper, I was working bell to bell 6am to 6pm. Taking a couple hour break, back again from eight till 12. Because I didn't have team. I didn't have staff. I didn't have systems. I didn't even know exactly what I wanted, and she made me stop and figure it out. And within that window, she said, You're going to hire someone. I further said, You must be out of your mind. Yeah.

about another thing. You can't have the life you want as an entrepreneur if you keep pretending that this process, these systems, call it Lean Six Sigma all the way to down to the most finite stick figures and index cards, right? Alicia is talking to us, as she's an expert across all scales. Alicia talk to us about the types of companies you are currently engaging with and what's going

on right now. If your ideal customer is sitting here listening to this show right now, and they can't sleep at night, and they'd like to be asleep. They're being kept up at night, what kinds of things are happening in their business that says, you know, I need to really talk to someone like Alicia, because I am there right now. Who is that right now? What are they going through?

right. They want what they've paid for, and they want it delivered on time.

fix these things. That's why it's so important to subscribe to Darrell's podcast, The MindShift Podcast, because this is your free education. Listen to these podcast episodes, soak in all of this knowledge. You don't have to spend all this money. You can add to your staff without having to get full time employees for example. We referenced the gig economy earlier. Leverage resources like fiverr.com, or upwork.com, until you can build your way up to offering someone a full time

employment contract. But I don't want anyone to be discouraged thinking oh my god, now we're going to fail, not because we don't have enough customers, but because we have too many. So that's on the small business side. Now, I actually have a very large company that I'm working with right now and they are in the food distribution space. But the same issue, it's just on a larger scale, Darrell. They need processes. And now here's what's

hopefully. That means you can invest in other companies, you can kind of start to buy out your competition. This is how the Amazons of the world come to be, ultimately. And so it's this particular company that I'm working with right now, it's no exception. What happens when you start to purchase these other companies, the acquisition is taking place, but has the merge actually taken place.? You have different ways of doing things.

You have different company cultures, you have different policies, different procedures. All of that needs to be brought together so that everyone is on the same page, and that you don't get increase in failed audits, the increase in employee turnover, the increase in customer complaints and customer turnover. So again, these are issues that are common across every industry, every size business. It's just that some of the larger organizations know where to go or know what to look

for. But unfortunately, the smaller companies don't always know. They just know they have the pain, Darrell but they don't quite know how to articulate it, yet alone how to go and find resources to help alleviate that pain. Yeah, such good points. Just fantastic time, your insight, your background. Let's celebrate one thing really fast. Entrepreneurs listening to this, to have a business and be at 15 years. Let's acknowledge

that for what it is. One of the, my core missions in what I do with MindShift is to really help entrepreneurs not just become successful but get to that seven figure mark, but also longevity. We need to grow our businesses and keep our businesses and not get this shiny object syndrome about the latest, greatest thing. It's okay to dive into crypto and dive into these other interests. Let's keep the main thing the main thing, and let's build a successful business. So Alicia, congratulations on

building your company. I want to finish off really quick, because I know, whether you're big company listeners, or you're a smaller organization just getting started, everyone can read a book and get at least the basics there and start getting the frameworks there. You've written a book called Behind the Facade - How to Structure Company Operations for

Sustainable Success. Just really quickly, what would people get if they pick up that book as a doorway or an entry point, at least from this conversation, if not for them to reach out, and we'll let them know where they can do that in a moment.

throughout this book. How you can use it to, again, create those transparent, well defined job descriptions, create your organizational chart, create the processes that your company needs to truly scale to the next level. So that's what this book is. It's not light reading but I do tell stories. So I try to not make it too incredibly dense with just hardcore factual

information. But it actually tells the stories of six different entrepreneurs who are experiencing these growth, pain points in their companies, and how they actually use exercises like the stick figures and index cards to actually solve the different challenges that they're experiencing.

statistics are what they are. 30 million, just the United States, small businesses, whatever this statistic is, 80 to 90%, fail in the first two to five years. Of the 10 or 20% that make it, fail in the next five, and don't make it to 10. This is hard. And the reason why people like Alicia has taken her talents and her gift and her pivot in life. Remember, she started as a chemical engineer. And here she

is now in Process Management. I love pivot stories, because people always talk about, you know, Darrell, do you recommend . . . I was talking to a young man from a university in Indiana a couple, three weeks ago, and he's like, I've got all these projects going on, I need some direction on what I need to do. And I said, Well, hey, let me explain something. I'm a fan of entrepreneurship, but I'm never going to encourage a student to drop out of school. That's

number one. I'm not saying you have to finish school, I'm not going to encourage you to. You get to do what you want to do. But I am going to say is my degree is not in alignment with what I do today, or is it? I have a degree in finance, you have a degree in chemical engineering. You're now in process management, operations and infrastructure. One would argue that a chemistry, except, except, or is it? Except or is it? Because there's these

overlaps. And so, I just want to thank you for the work, the path, your intention, writing the book is not easy. Thank you for putting that work, getting it out of your head and into bookshelves, we'll be able to link that up. Where else can our listeners find you if they want to connect with you further, they're ready to bring someone like you in and connect with you further and the rest of your work, where would they find you?

answer. And that would be, if today happened to be your last day on this place we call Earth, our home, what would you want everyone to remember you for?