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Where did the vision come from to transition from the historic background of your leadership skills

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to modernizing it the way you're doing? Well, it came, I got on LinkedIn about one

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year after it was created. LinkedIn was created in 2003 and I was on it in 2004,

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you know, and when I first got on it, I thought it was going to steal my identity, you know,

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right, that far back there, you know, you thought, oh, well, it's just going to steal my identity,

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you know. But, you know, I could call somebody, I could call the head of marketing and

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talk to on LinkedIn and get various ideas. In fact, trying to get military people to join LinkedIn

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at that time frame, I got LinkedIn to make me a PowerPoint slide deck that showed them that we

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really weren't stealing their identity. Wow. The purpose by putting this data out there,

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I still have it, it's 2006 slide deck. But when I was working on... Did you get to meet

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Reid Hoffman in the process? Just curious. No, but some of the early people that were,

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the early people that started LinkedIn came from eBay. Yeah. You know, and then, you know, that

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crowd kind of transitioned out to other opportunities, you know. Absolutely. You

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know, because there was new things happening all the time. And so, that was the wild west time of

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bringing things up. But I found that when I was working on a project in China to do wastewater

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treatment infrastructure over there for a Houston company, and we were trying to find, how do you

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find somebody that's got Chinese experience? Well, way back when you had to go back to a search firm

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and they had like, you know, 300,000 resumes and, you know, you pay money for that kind of access,

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right? And we did. And we didn't get anything. In other words, we paid money, they said they

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gave it their best shot and anything. Then LinkedIn came around. And then I saw very quickly,

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you know, you could search for people that had Chinese experience. Well, they didn't have the

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experience I needed, but I was able to contact them. And once I finally got in touch with them,

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I said, well, who do you know? And they said, well, you know, Billy Bob and Susie Q, you know,

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they've done that, you know, why don't you talk to them? And so, it was, nowadays that's almost

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digital, right? But back then, there were so few people, but once you found somebody in your niche,

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you could find, they knew eight other people that work with them back in China. And so, what it

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became is a huge resource, because we didn't have to pay these big search firms to try to find these

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people, you know, because this was the first element of being able to, you know, look at stuff

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kind of across the globe almost. And so, I saw, based on my transition into the private sector,

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which was a disaster, you think you know what you know, right? And then secondly, you come out, you

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know, fairly senior, and everybody says, well, you know, you're in your 50s. Yeah, you got three

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master's degrees in engineering degree, but, you know, you're overqualified to be a project manager.

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And so, what I found out, you couldn't pierce the corporate veil, but I did get some good advice at

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that time. And somebody told me, he says, look, go find some guys putting a deal together, you know,

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on the front end, where you can use your multifunctional, you know, experience to help

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them out. And then, you know, you're there kind of at the beginning. And that was really sound advice.

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And then secondly, I learned that LinkedIn, as I was working with, I said, man, I wish I had LinkedIn

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when I came out, you know, because LinkedIn gave you the ability to take what you did in the military,

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and lay it out there. And what I was able to do with people, I said, lay it out on LinkedIn,

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and then let's talk about it. And then I would help them after I figured out how to do it,

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that you needed to take your military experience and what you brought to the table,

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and put it in the vernacular of hiring manager. Exactly. Because if you use all these military

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words, I mean, you know, the hiring manager doesn't know, I mean, they want to, they,

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they want to help you, but hey, this doesn't look like what I'm needing here.

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You know, exactly.

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One of the same, that same principle, it applies to so many of us, and, and your, your niche,

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often gets out, that applies to a stay-at-home mom, who's trying to get back into the workforce.

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That applies to, I mean, I was a.33 GPA, who transitioned to LDS missionary, who transitioned

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home to business. And, you know, I was fortunate to have some mentors who said, you know, for that

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missionary work, put on your resume, you know, a regional sales leader of an international

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nonprofit organization, right, there's certain changes and adjustments that you can make,

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certain changes and adjustments that apply. Well, you tell me about sales. I mean, is it harder to

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sell, you know, a gym membership or sell God in a foreign language you don't speak to an 80 year

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old atheist? Yeah. Yeah. That's some high-powered selling.

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There, there, there, there it is.