 at what point did you apply for a day or what made you even like go that route to to considering the program there was a woman in my industry as you know i'm a white woman so it doesn't really preclude minority although a woman in my industry had gotten it and she was a white woman right and she she had based her narrative on gender discrimination sure of course and so i was like well you know i'm in utah i'm a software engineer i make 10 grand less than every one of my male counterparts right and i'm a good writer so what the heck i'll just try it you know so i did and um there was you know a few glitches and and but then i ended up getting the 8a status wow now how how far out was that from when you like made the transition it was about two years okay okay okay three years okay so um now i didn't know what to do with it okay right there you go that's my now that's my that's the most common uh thing is i try and tell people but you go ahead keep continuing please yeah so i didn't know what to do with it it sat in a corner for an entire year i wasted an entire year of my 8a can you imagine it is it is a once in the lifetime opportunity and the very first year i did nothing with it let me ask you this sorry to interrupt how did you maintain between that first contract in this and the 8a stuff um i was uh you know one person consultant okay so you kept getting subcontracts from the from different people yes i did okay okay okay so i mean i kept working i kept writing software okay and so after a year another i call them blast for my past but they're wonderful people in my life that i came to me uh you know a little larger company i had been one of their original employees and asked me if i would be interested in a minor prodigy with them minor prodigy agreement right and i lucked out i hear some of these other people talk about their minor prodigy and how they're just a check mark that's you know right the baby in the corner and like let's forget that she's over there you know mm-hmm but i lucked out i had a mentor that showed me how to write a proposal how to set up my accounting system uh introduce me to their customers we did work for many many many years together wow wow that's fantastic that's incredible you know i don't know if you lucked out or not i think that a lot of times what i've heard is that the people don't know their mentor and the mentor doesn't know the prodigy so you know they don't have any history to build upon and so you know it's more of um it's not really a mentor proje it's more of like a financial arrangement per se than one of learning and building the business and you know produce like teaching you how to fish as opposed to just you know catching the fish for you and splitting them up so from my experience that's what i've seen right yeah you know they tell you to not really have it another mentor that's a small business so that you really should get a large business right but i had another small business and we did great oh so your mentor was a small business yeah but mid-sized maybe okay okay you know but not large right okay wow so you had a mentor so you sat for a year you found a mentor and the mentor taught you proposed writing setting for books and how to navigate the program yes okay and then we started to compete and we you know we did very well for you know several years oh wow so once you established the like the mentor protege was that the second year of your a day or the third year do you remember between the between the second third okay okay and would you say that's the time when your business started to take off yeah oh absolutely i would have just still been sitting in the corner okay so let me ask you this we have a lot of people with a day and i'm sure you know the same thing they probably asked a whole time is they've got a day they don't know how to navigate it they don't know what to do with it what would you tell them i would tell them to go get a mentor okay you know and be specific about the mentor you're looking for and interview them just like you would interview an employee make sure it's a good fit interesting now you do i know you do software what other types of services does dina grace offer or that you offer like through the eight a program well one of the things that i would tell a new eight a is to find a niche and focus on that niche because what i did was oh you need an eight a oh i'm your eight a i can do i can do it you know so i did all sorts of things i've done construction i've done demolition i've done water quality studies i've done you know we've done engineering services environmental services we've done cybersecurity i mean you name it and we've probably had one small piece of it right right right but what that does is you've got too many avenues to go down whereas if you find a niche you can focus on those government customers that do that niche and then get to know them reach out to them and you have a much better opportunity to get that eight a award