 Hello, it's your host Eric Coffey of GovCon Giants, the GovCon Giants podcast, the GovCon Giants on YouTube, and also coming up soon, the all new GovCon Giants redesign website. If you have not already been to our website, make sure to take a look. Check it out. We've got a lot of good things on there. We're now putting out RFIs, contract awards, and we're putting out content each and every day. We're trying to make sure that everyone has all the information that you need in order to be successful because, again, not having the information doesn't help any of us. So we're actually aggregating, we're taking accumulation of all of the information from all across different websites and platforms, and we're putting it onto our site, GovConGiants.com. So make sure to take a look at that. Today's guest, Carol Craig of Craig Technologies, started her company some 20-plus years ago, and she's grown it up to this massive company that is now embarking on helping the International Space Station and helping companies who want to test their products in space. That's right. If you want to test your product in space, Craig Technologies is one of three companies that's able to do that alongside of the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin. Today's guest, we're going to talk about her journey, how she got started, what she did, how at one point during her time and wanting to do a manufacturing business, how NASA actually approached her and offered her some equipment and how that story transitions and how it led to where she's at today and what's coming up for Craig Technology in the future. 400-plus employees developing technologies, all supporting NASA, small Earth orbit satellites. I mean, this is one for the nerds, for the science fiction folks out there, for the technologists out there, for the space cadets, the future astronauts of the world. This is the podcast for you. Definitely take a listen. I'm very excited about all the things she's done, that she's doing and that she's playing in the future. Make sure to listen to today's episode with our upcoming giant, Carol Craig. My name's Carol Craig. I'm the founder of Craig Technologies, Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions and Cytus Space Technologies. Now I know about Craig Technologies. I know about Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions. What's the last one? Everyone is Cytus S-I-D-U-S Space Technologies and we may kind of roll into that and it's basically a kind of almost a natural progression of everything we've done with Craig Technologies and Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions into another company, a little bit more focused on true space solutions like satellite constellation and some mission operations and things like that. How did I miss that? Well, because we're just kind of starting it, I guess. Okay. Sorry, but we're right in the process of really, truly building it up and it's not been promoted out there quite yet, but it's there. Okay. Okay. All right. No, no, that's all right. That's good. Well, at least I'm like, wait, did I not do my homework? No, you didn't. It's just my ADD, ADHD squirrel thing that we're doing, but actually it's a really cool project and I think, like I said, it's that culmination of everything that we've done over the last 20 years and into something that will be even bigger and better. Okay. No, that's, that's, I don't know how you get bigger and better what you're already doing, but okay, we'll wait and see. I believe you. I believe you. What do you think about what happened yesterday with the astronauts landing? That was pretty cool, actually. You know, you always hold your breath and you're like, please don't let anything happen. Please don't let anything happen. You know, and you just watch it and it was just incredible and they, it looks flawless. It was amazing. I hope that everybody was watching. I don't know. My son was watching, actually. And I didn't even know he had an interest in space and all of a sudden he's focused on it and he's coming down, giving me updates, even though I'm watching it on the computer and he just thought it was the most amazing thing. So, and it couldn't have been a more perfect scenario. I mean, the, the gulf was glass. You know, you saw the walk, there you were like, okay, God was watching for this. He was taking care of these guys. He was setting up. So it was perfect. And it was, it's just, just the beginning of, of even more great things to come. Now, let me tell you, they said that that one was historic. Right. How so? Do you know? I think it's because it had the first time in 40 years that a capsule had actually come down, right? So we've been doing the bottle for however many years. And then also the fact that it's a commercial company. I mean, yes, they're funded by NASA. I mean, they couldn't do what they're doing partially funded, but it's still a commercial company that kind of control, you know, how the technologies and this kind of things, but definitely it had been 40 years since a capsule had splashed down. And again, it was just, it was flawless. Right. No, I saw the video. I just, for some reason on my Twitter feed, only show like 13 seconds of it, right? Like the, right, like when the parachute's open, it's like coming down the ocean. So I haven't even had a chance to take it all in yet. But maybe that's why our podcast got pushed back so we could talk about it. There you go. See? You know, but let me tell you, you are, I mean, you're doing some incredible things with correct technologies, correct aerospace. You know, you're all over the place. How did you, how did you start this? And was this the path that you set out? So no, I mean, I never intended to be an entrepreneur. And now looking back on like, what was I thinking? Kind of a thing, just because as most entrepreneurs will agree to, it is, it is very stressful. I mean, it's cool. It's cool because you kind of control your destiny and you get to, I think, I think sometimes you live life even to the fullest because you control even your personal life, special and all that. But the stresses that go along with it are crazy. You know, and so I always say it's a good thing. I didn't know what I know now. That's a Toby Keats song, but whatever. But, but, you know, so anyway, but I just started it because I was actually following my husband. We were both military. I hurt my knees. I couldn't fly anymore. We had Matt get married and I was following him around. I have engineering degrees and it was hard to find a job in engineering and just hard to find a job in general when you're kind of moving a lot. And it was only a few years that that he was being moved around, but still kind of had an impact. And so I had somebody suggest to me, I should incorporate and, you know, maybe start a company and just see what happens. I'm like, OK, whatever. Let's do it. I'm like, OK, where's the cabin? It doesn't work. Right. I got engineering years. I'll figure something out later. But, but I ended up it started to really get some legs. And I did consulting to begin with. And then I got more and more work. And I'm like, well, how do I am one person? I can only work. I was working like I was working like 16 hours a day or so crazy because I didn't have a kid yet. And that was back in the day when the consulting you really make some good money. So I was just working constantly and there's more and more work. I'm like, what do I do now? So I started hiring a couple of my friends and saying, hey, can you help me with this? It was software related. And they're like, sure, yeah, we'll do it. And then that kind of just snowballed or rolled into maybe I should make this a real company kind of a thing. And still, I still never really crossed what I call kind of an imaginary line. I was like, OK, well, if it doesn't work, I'll just go back to a real job. And if I had, oh, some money, fine, I'll just be paying that debt off. And then when we moved here to the Space Coast, I kind of had crossed that threshold because moved here to Brevard County. That's kind of when I had crossed the threshold because my husband got out of the Navy, flying for the airlines, making no money. And I hadn't really gotten the company going. And we had moved out of house. And so it was that point where I'm like, OK, I can't fail. I have to succeed at this point. So I've just kind of moved on from there. Wow, wow, wow. But you were doing consulting and software. So how do you go from software into space? I mean, I mean, it's going to go straight into space. Like, how do you go from software to space? And I mean, for those who don't know Brevard County, can you tell us a little about Brevard County? Yeah, Brevard County is called the Space Coast for a reason because Kennedy Space Center is over here. And there's a lot of technology companies, not just related to space. But you've got companies like Harris, DRS, now Northrop Grumman, Collins Aerospace, and again, a lot of those Blue Origin related to space. Blue Origin and SpaceX are all here. And so it's a focus on space, but it's also a focus on defense and technology and 72 miles long. So for what I would call a small county, two degrees of separation, it's actually a pretty large area with a lot of great companies that are in the area. So when you ask how I got into space, we moved here just because we were trying to find some place to relocate. And I thought at the time, well, I mean, there's Harris and there's NASA and there's these other companies and maybe I only had 10 employees at the time. I think five are related to me and the other five are part-time or something like that. And so it was really, really super small. But I thought, hey, here's some good targets that maybe I can see if I can do business with these guys. And that's kind of how I rolled into space is because of moving here, I believe. I had a spaceship locally with some of the companies and some of the nonprofits and got introduced to a gentleman who worked for SAIC here local on a contract at Candy Space Center and he ended up rolling us into a proposal and they won. And so that kind of really was the very first start of the space focus that we had. So it was really more the services side of things, people supporting us. Okay, okay, all right. And then at some point you just, you got into manufacturing. Yeah, I still like, oh man. Just to get the other day, I wonder what it would be like in that sliding doors movie, I wonder what it would be like if I hadn't done the manufacturing, where would I be, what would be a better situation. Yeah, I got into manufacturing and that was through University of Central Florida actually had a incubator, has an incubator center there. And I got introduced to a gentleman who wanted to create, manufacture something. And it turned out to be a disaster for them. And it reminded me of why I never go into business with anybody. And so that didn't last very long, but while I was working with him, I ended up purchasing a small manufacturing company that was going out of business. They were really old, just a bunch of old machines and some old machinists and brought them on board. And it was supposed to be just something small, prototype, supporter, engineering, that kind of thing. And it ended up kind of blossoming into something larger. There was the opportunity to respond to a request for information through NASA to potentially take over a bunch of their equipment that they had used for the shuttle. And honestly, I don't think we thought we would get it. We just kind of like, oh no, let's see what happens. Which has been probably the story of my life. You know, what could possibly go wrong? But we ended up applying for it and we got it. And what we got was a whole bunch of old equipment. And that's it, no contracts, no money, no funding. Just equipment. Yeah, just equipment. Here you go, you can do what you want for the next five years and then we want it back. Just take care of it. And so we did that. And it did not go as planned. I wouldn't say it didn't go well because the things that we're doing right now on the International Space Station, the potential for our satellites, all these things that we're involved with, we would never have done if we hadn't taken that leap and gotten that space act agreement is what it was with NASA. So again, it cost me a lot of money. We put a lot of money into it. I had the two sides. I had the services side, create technologies and then the manufacturing and I created create technologies aerospace solutions. And every bit of profit that I was making out of CT was going into CTAS because obviously manufacturing when you start something you're likely gonna lose money. So we put a lot of money into it. And at one point I finally realized, at the end of that five years, I got a downsize. This isn't working at the scale that I wanted to work. And so we downsized and now we kind of fit. I think we're in a good place where we fit a little bit better. And so still moving forward though, still trying to do the bigger things, I guess. Wow. Now let's go back in time. What was little Carol like? Oh, man. So I'm a middle child and I'm adopted. I'm adopted. My brother is adopted as well and then I'd be in her sister and my parents' pilot daughter. They're all very quiet. So I'm the middle child and I'm like loud, you know, Cuban background, you know, and I realized now, okay. Yeah, maybe not a big brush. And so I was the cruise director. I was the core and I still am today. I'm still like, come on people, what are we doing? You know, let's go. Both of my parents are still alive, doing really, really well. But that's who I was. I was loud. I was, I don't know what, you know, I was very tomboyish. Okay, okay. There's a couple of pictures of me and I look like a dude, which is fine. I mean, I was like back in the 80s and I'm wearing the cutoff sweatshirts and then my best friend is this pretty, you know, popular girl. And we made a good couple in high school hanging out. But yeah, that was kind of me. I was a geek. I always liked computers. You know, the engineering thing happened in college, but I was always into, believe it or not, I was into Ray Bradbury, was one of my favorite authors. So Martian Chronicles, Isaac and Mom. I read all of that. No intention to go into space, but. But you, but also I read you an athlete. Come on, you're a geek, an athlete, a top, like, come on. Mom said, she always said that, like, first of all, they always said you could do anything and you couldn't be anything. You know, you just do one thing. You know, I'm a musician as well. So I played piano and violin and a bunch of genocide things. And so I've been playing piano since I was six. And like I said, it's my parents' fault that I'm 80. Like this, cause they're like, sure. If I want to, one month, one month, I wanted to learn to play the cello. And I was like, all right, she rented me a cello for a month to learn to play the cello. And then, you know, and then I move on, you know, kind of thing. But yeah, so I actually started hurdling and high jumping like in seventh grade. And then I ended up doing that in college as well, which I just sent an email to my daughter cause she's lacrosse and she just got an offer for a division one NCAA scholarship or whatever. But I just sent her an email of my records that still stand at Knox College in the top 10 or the top five or something. I pulled them up. How did you see those? I saw them. I would pull them up. Cool. I am cool, Jillian. Let me tell you, I pulled them up. Okay. The only thing is one of the records, they stopped at the 60 meters one. Yeah, I saw that. I'll record forever. I'm like, speak. That means they're public. I have them. I actually have the link to the Google Doc file. I pulled them up. They were the 55 meters or the 60 meter hurdles or something and they don't have them anymore. They don't have them anymore. So I'll have those records forever. I see. I checked you out. I saw that on there. No, it's your job. It's your job. That's my job. Hey, look, I was like, wow. But see, I didn't know about the piano, the violin, the cello. Yeah, but Knox College actually got a music scholarship and then I did the sports as well. But I think my mom, another thing she always said is that she kept me involved in everything because she knew if I wasn't, I'd get into trouble. And it is absolutely true. I mean, if I didn't have all this stuff to focus on, who knows what I'd be doing. Well, I think, I mean, that's the same thing with the swimmer, Michael Phelps, right? It's like he had ADHD. Go to swim and just go out there and swim. They became an Olympic athlete. So I think that formula works. Yeah, yeah, I think those two. And now I'm self-reclined ADD, ADHD. I don't know if I read them, but it is those tendencies of like, okay, what can I do now? But I can focus. One thing I do know is that when, and same thing with Michael Phelps, I think when there's something that you really, really love, that's when you can bring it all in, you can focus on it. And I did that with computers. And then I think I've done it with the company sort of a little bit. Nice, nice, nice. That's really neat. I like that. So you said it to your daughter. So how many kids do you have? Two. So my daughter is 17, she'll be 18 November. And my son likes to turn 19 in June. So just the two of them. Now tell us about your son. I see that you're a part of a couple of organizations. And we talked a little bit about it before the episode. Tell us about your son. Yeah, so he has a rare genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome. And it's his version is like one in 25,000. And the hypothalamus malfunctions. And hypothalamus controls everything, your height, your weight, your hunger, you never feel fault is one of the biggest things. And temperature regulation, anxiety, that's one of my sons probably his biggest challenge is some of the anxiety. But he is really none of those classic things when you think of Prader-Willi syndrome. I shouldn't say he's none of, what I should say is that he's a role model for individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome to see that he really can overcome. And it's a spectrum disorder. It's just like autism. I mean, you know, how many genes do we have? You know, it's like it's a small piece of you. And that's what Danny will say. He says, you know, Prader-Willi syndrome does not define me, you know? And so, which is awesome. But yeah, so that's why I got involved early on. And actually Danny was misdiagnosed. He was Navy medicine, which I had Navy medicine work on my knee. And that's why I'm no longer in the Navy because they screwed that up. But same thing with Danny a little bit is that they misdiagnosed him. They screwed up a CAT scan. And then told us that part of his brain was missing and he was not gonna live. And through a series of, you know, we kind of went back and forth with doctors, went to new doctors and found out that was a true. And it was just, it was a mistake on the CAT scan. So that kind of changed my attitude toward my son and what I could do, because I couldn't figure out how to fix brain damage. But when I found out it was Prader-Willi syndrome, I'm like, okay, I can fix Prader-Willi syndrome. And so I just started focusing on things that could make his life better going forward. And whether it was nutritional supplements, it was other interventions, cognitive interventions. I did all my research. I think that's why he's doing well. I looked out of the box. So same thing applies for business. At what age did you realize that he was the diagnosis? Diagnosis, well, I knew something was wrong, right? When he was born, he had a small punctured lung and he was losing all his reflexes. So they started trying to figure it out and they misdiagnosed him at four days. So we actually put him in a home for disabled infants because he was supposedly so severely disabled. And it was when he was seven weeks old that we finally got the diagnosis. And we had brought him home. So he was in a home for infants, disabled infants for six weeks while they tried to figure out what was going on. And they brought him home at seven weeks. And so at that point, like I said, I was over being told what to do or what was wrong. And I said, I'm gonna figure this out myself with help of doctors, but we ended up being great doctors who trusted what we had, what we thought, I think is, and that's the thing I always say. Like, second, third, fourth opinions are so important and your intuition and your gut feeling, that's the number one most important thing to listen to, whether it's your personal life or it's your professional life. And if you listen to your gut, you really, I think, can't really have too many regrets. You know? That's interesting. Speaking of that, how would you define your work-like balance now? Oh, and I said this before, work-like balance is a myth. I mean, there's no such thing. You're like, one gets a little more attention and the other gets less. Actually, I think I'm doing pretty well right now. It helps though that my kids are older. And when your kids are younger, there's a lot more activities. Obviously, they're not driving, doing their own thing. So it gets a little more crazy. But I think I've learned a lot over the last several years that I'm doing a better job of that balance. But again, there's never a balance. It's always, you know, one gets a little more attention than the other. I think I've quoted this before, but there was a professor at University, or at the Florida Institute of Technology, who said, it's okay to drop balls as long as you drop the ones that bounce. I said, yeah, it's okay to drop balls every once in a while as long as they're the ones that bounce. Right, so it's the ones that don't matter. It's okay if you blow it off. And so that's, so I have known, I have been known to blow off meetings for a, I did not do that to you, I promise. That one, I was. No, I'm not even thinking about that meeting. I'm totally okay with it. No, but I have done it where I had to go, I can't do this. If it's stressing me out this much with something personal, like a workout, or it's a meeting with somebody, I just go, I can't do it. And as long as it's nothing critical, you know, doctor's appointments, don't blow off the meeting with the customer, who's your largest customer, maybe that, but everything else is kind of like, and, you know, work through it. I like that. Thank you. I want words of wisdom. I know so we need words of wisdom out here in this show. We need that. All right, so very cool, very cool. Now let's bring it back forward. You've been a part of a lot of boards. Enterprise, Florida, National Space Club Committee, you know, not forget the foundation that you started, but I mean, Florida High Tech Corridor Council. First of all, I didn't even know some of this stuff existed. I mean, I'm well aware of Enterprise, Florida. I attended the University of Florida. I actually co-founded the Entrepreneurs Club at the University of Florida. So I'm aware of that. I was actually in one of the, a technology incubator that they actually started there called GTEC back in the day. So that, I'm aware of Enterprise, Florida. But for some of these other organizations, these associations, how did you get tied in? And what was some of the value that you learned by being a part of it? Or maybe it wasn't a waste of time. Yeah, it's a good question. So most of them they found me, but they found me after I got involved in some of the non-profits that really meant a lot to me. I mean, all of them. And I tried to make sure that I didn't want it to be like a resume builder, you know, when you- Right, that's kind of what I see, yeah. Yeah, and you don't want that. I mean, because otherwise you just wasted space and that's not the right way to do it. And if they just want your money, fine, you've got to check, you know, and don't worry about having to be on it. But number one, I'm a people pleaser. Maybe that's the middle child thing, right? So I asked for something like, okay, and I didn't understand what I was getting into. So I started with Junior Achievement. I was on the board for Junior Achievement, very much involved and really enjoyed it. And it was a trying time too when we came in here for Bar County for Junior Achievement. So we made some really good progress and some significant impacts and people started to see that. And then I got more and more involved because I really feel like in your own community it's super important to make impact. If you're especially if you're doing well, and you have employees in that area like we do. So I just started getting more and more involved. And it's, you know, I don't think I ever was on a board that didn't mean something to me, you know? I mean, it's like, which is bad. It's like, okay, yeah, I can't help everybody, right? Right, right, oh, it's a lot of time. It's a time commitment. Yeah, and so I'm glad I did it. It gave me a lot of experience. It gave me leadership experience even. My company was very new and smaller and coming in as a board member and then moving up to being a board chair and understanding Robert's rules and all those kinds of things. I mean, just in general, it gave me a lot of experience with different types of people, not people I hired and selected, but people that were from different backgrounds. Different backgrounds, okay. Yeah, I didn't change who I was. So there were a few, you know, kind of things like that, but I think what I learned from it was, okay, 27 or 30 boards is a little too much, you know? And also I look back and I'm glad we did it. The amount of money that we donated to this community was pretty significant. And then I think, well, should I have donated to Prada-Willi Syndrome? You know, should I be more focused on the things that are really, truly personal? And so what I've done now is I've kind of scaled down on, you know, I'm just focusing on a few things and realizing, okay, there's not gonna be huge donations. It can be small ones. It helps, you know, schools and things like golf tournaments and, you know, other, also in the, we have employees throughout the U.S., so I always impress upon them that if there's a golf tournament, there's anything that you want your company to support. We'll do that. I don't care if you're in California, DC, wherever, but for me personally, I've kind of brought it down to, you know, raising funds and focusing on Prada-Willi Syndrome and then some of the school things around in the area. All right, so we were talking about the boards and you were telling us that you, there's some people out in California you support more golf events and then you decided to just start focusing on a few select things. I realize, so I think it almost parallel my business, you know, the attitude toward nonprofits and focusing a little more on things that really directly impacted me personally, kind of was in parallel with realizing that I need to do the same thing with my business because I had been putting so much money into building Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions. It was very stressful. It was becoming tight. I mean, you know, when you grow and I've done it all organically, so no investors, it's all, you know, my dime, double mortgage, all that kind of stuff. What I hadn't been doing and still not quite doing was putting something away from my family. You know, and at some point, just a few years ago, is when I realized like, oh, I need to start focusing on myself as well as the company and realizing, you know, my families. Then I said, family integrity, loyalty, passion, community, those are our core values, but I was kind of forgetting my own family and the priority of making sure that we're secure. And I don't mean rich and whatever, I just mean not having everything leveraged and everything on the line and, you know, maybe putting a little bit away, you know, stuff like that. So it was kind of this change of focus, you know, tied to the nonprofits as well as a professional going, all right, it's time to start thinking about me, you know, and not as much about pleasing everybody and also recognizing that it could all go away tomorrow. And I always said that before, but I don't think I ever realized it until just a few years ago. And we had some definite struggles there because of the amount of money I was putting into building, manufacturing and our space offering and all the stuff that we're doing now. It was, it was very, it was a little scary even, you know, kind of going, what am I doing? You mentioned a couple of things. I mean, you mentioned a lot of really good points that you touched on there that for new entrepreneurs out there getting started, maybe they don't understand what that means to put everything on the line. Like, can you give us an example? And you could go back to 10 years ago, that way it's not something that's immediate today, but I mean, can you just tell people, I mean, I heard you say double mortgage, I know what that meant, but like, what does that mean to be like, tell people exactly, what does that mean? When you say double mortgage, right? What do you mean by that? Yeah, well, yeah, you're putting everything on the line. So unfortunately, it takes money to make money, right? And so when you put a bank, they're like, well, you know, what are your assets? When you've gotten most of the time, when you started out, you don't have that much, but you have to have a personal guarantee for most things, right? And it's like, if you haven't done, if you're not doing investors, because a lot of times, if you have investors, or you're doing kind of outside funding, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a personal guarantee. You dilute the value. And so when you do, if you sell or you do something like that, maybe you're not gonna make as much money, but again, putting everything on the line means that personal guarantee. And in my case, I started with 150 bucks and I have had HELOC, I've had the home equity loans where I've taken money out, put it into the company, I've had primary mortgage and then you have a double mortgage that's, well, double mortgage kind of the HELOC, but then you also use it as collateral. So with the banks that we've worked with and house is gonna, has a second lien on it, all of our nest eggs. So my husband actually is very smart financially and he was cruegel when he was younger. I was not. So he had a nest egg coming in to our relationship and he actually invested in Microsoft in 1985. And that's when it started doing all the splitting and all that kind of stuff. So he had a little bit there. So I even used that as collateral in our talks. And that's even how we are right now. And I don't mind saying it because even some of my leadership a few years ago didn't understand what was involved or how much I had kind of on the line. They didn't realize that. I mean, I look back and I've over 20 years I probably put in, I can't even imagine how much money I do have my own money that we put into the company and have not gotten back out. And then all of the stocks are collateralized. The house is collateralized. I mean, that's where you say put it all online. Cause if it all goes to heck in a hand basket, I didn't swear cause my mom might listen to this later. But if it all goes bad, what happens? Well, bankrupt scene and you lose everything, you know, kind of thing. So that's what I say about putting it all online. Now you don't have to do that. You know, you can be more conservative. And I'm a fairly conservative entrepreneur but not super conservative. You know, I definitely don't jump without thinking. But then again, my favorite quote is a Ray Braverig quote that sometimes you just have to jump and build your wings on the way down. That's right. Which kind of makes it sound like I do jump, but you know, so you don't have to do it that way. But again, if you don't have investors and you're trying to do this organically on your own, thanks. Which I think that includes 99% of us don't have investors. And that's the stage I'm at right now. You know, we've grown and we did it on our own and I did it on my own kind of a thing financially. And I'm sort of over it. I'm ready to use somebody else's money. I'm like, man, if I didn't have to worry about my own finances, gosh, what I could do with somebody else's money? Cause I still, despite my age, I still have energy. And so that's what we're doing with side of space technology. We're actually talking to investors because we want to do it faster, better, smarter, and really, you know, build this third piece, you know, potentially an exit strategy. I mean, it's that kind of thing. I would love to talk to you about that afterwards. No, I, you know, I'll, I mean, I don't want to cover on this episode just because I don't want to take time from your story. The people that are listening to this know my story cause it's my show, but I don't want to take time for that. But we were in a similar situation where we had some opportunities and we needed money and we couldn't capitalize on them because we didn't have the investor's money. And so after the fact we did get money, but it was too late. But now we do have access to capital. That's good. Lots of capital. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. We're going to talk. I mean, I, you know, we just did a presentation in my private group last weekend and I brought on the person to talk about it. So we're working with some, it's exciting. It's really exciting. It's really exciting. And, you know, the reason why I say, one of the things that I'm hearing that I like is you talked about your progression from consultant, right? And to hiring some employees to, right? To take it on more employees and making this a real organization. I think a lot of times people believe they could just go straight into like being this big company with all like, you know, 30 employees, right? Not even big, but I mean, even having 10 employees is a big deal, right? That's a lot of payroll for someone to start now. Like you said, with a couple of hundred dollars. Yeah, exactly. And so people always ask, how do you start? And I like that. That we should just explain your process. Yeah. Well, and I kind of, so people will say, you can't, what do they say? You can't be the business and be in the business and then whatever that statement is. But I did a lot of it myself, you know, and then with some friends and family when I started and I look back now and I'm very glad I did that because it helped me understand the various areas or departments within my company, right? So I was HR, I've been a recruiter. I've called up people and hired, I've been involved in the hiring process. I did the payroll process. I did, you know, just about everything in my company I've done, FSO, the facility security officer. And I did that myself before I hired somebody. So there's an advantage, I think, to growing slow because you as a leader, as the CEO or the founder understand what all is involved. You've worn the shoes, you've walked in somebody else's shoes. Now that can make you empathetic or it can make you sit there and go, it's not rocket science, what's your problem? Come on, I did it. Which I know they're so tired of hearing me say that. And I'll be like, fine, I'll do it now. And they're like, okay, relax, Carol. You know, but I think it's a good thing for me. Now, we did the same, I had the same attitude toward prime contracts versus subcontracts. Tell me. I've focused a lot on the subcontracts because again, I'm learning this as I go. I make the stuff up as you go is another motto of ours and being a subcontractor helped us learn what we needed to know and not jump too quickly into being a prime contractor. Now, we're doing that now, obviously. As a business, you know, as a government contractor you decide don't want to stay small all the time or do I want to make that leap to be a large company? And some people want to stay small. That in itself has stresses as well because the timing is a little bit crazy or you just are a niche company and you do one thing, you sell a product and you could manage that. That wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. Just because I like doing a lot of things obviously and I wanted to be a part of everything. And so, but we've struggled with that because we did grow out of a small business. The different NAICS codes that distinct what size you are and whether you're small in engineering or small in IT. And we grew out of some of our primary ones and we struggled a little there because in some of our previous prime contractors it's like, well, you're not small in engineering anymore. And that's just the nature of our business. It's this cyclical up and down and figure out where you want to be and what you want to do. But again, for me, taking it slow has worked and then hopefully what I'm doing now because we got to about four to 75 employees and that was with our manufacturing and services might have been 400 and now we've dropped down below 300 but we're on our way back up and I feel like this time I'm smart about things and we made a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes, especially as a leader. I made a lot of mistakes over the last several years and I feel like it's a chance, second chance maybe to learn from those mistakes and do it right the next time. So, and that's on the CT side. So that's where the CT hat, CTAS hat, SIDIS hat, but yeah, I guess that's another takeaway is just learn from the mistakes, don't get sucked in again. How do you handle stressful situations? My answer might be different than if you ask anybody else. If you ask my husband, my kids. Oh, when I ask them about you, how you handle it, right? Like if you ask how I handle them, how do I handle stressful? You'd get four different answers. Well, I think I do well under really stressful and some of that might be naval aviation training, it might be in the military, it might be my family being that middle child cruise director and getting everyone to calm down, but I think in some ways I probably perform better when I'm under stress to a certain point. And then there's that mechanism, all of a sudden that COVID mechanism of kind of shutting down, where maybe I'm not being as productive as I could, but yeah, I get pretty hyper-focused. If there's a stressful or something I really need to deal with, I think I handle it pretty well. Now, how do I deal with stress? You got to keep, I work out, I play piano. That's one thing I do. So I have a couple of pianos and stuff. And so just to be able to get away and sit there and just play kind of helps calm things down. I would have loved to hear you play the piano. I actually played the piano growing up in church. And then at 12, 13, we had Hurricane Andrew hit Miami and that hurricane, everybody got displaced. And so I moved away, my piano teacher moved away, and I never touched a piano again. And it's one of my biggest regrets that I did not continue. I bet you could do it though. Honestly, I bet you could sit down to piano and just kind of relearn the three and all that. Do you do that? Have you sit down and play? I bought a keyboard to do that. And you're right, after about a couple of days when I start playing, but I haven't sat down to where I like made it like a practice because one of my, also I'll tell you this, one of my goals, it's so funny because you talk about cruise director. So you know how you see the people play the piano and do karaoke? Like that's one of my dreams on a cruise. By the way, just like, I don't know if you can see this but this is actually a Royal Caribbean Cup. Nice. I drink out of it to remember we were on a cruise right before COVID happened December, right? Last December, where my dad's eighth birthday and I, it just reminds me with all those craziness going on with coronavirus and stuff. It's kind of like, it's like, remember being on the cruise? That's awesome. That's exciting. So I do, it gives me that little memory. So it's fine. So what my goal always was to play in a piano bar. I want to be, There you go. That's very similar. The problem that I have though is I, you know, I've been playing since I was six and I did the whole classically trained. And so I was all the, you know, Bach and Mozart Beethoven and I can sight read just about anything. Okay. Well that's a problem because I couldn't train my brain to just improv. I mean, I can improv with the music in front of me but pull it away from me and I'm like, I just lose it. So I have just started to teach myself and relearn theory. And so I do, if you pull up, you know, the music of some song, whatever, something that I know when it's got the chords, I can play that. And then I can play piano man now on my own, you know, just sit down at a piano and kind of jam. And cause like my husband actually said one time he said, you know what? You should really try to learn stuff by memory. You're no fun at parties. Cause you have to have this. That's, see that's kind of how I wanted me. See, we're the same in that regard. I'm the same way. I want to go to like you say, show your house and like sit out and play. And I love karaoke. So I could do karaoke. Like that's easy. So I don't mind being a party starter, but add piano to it. And I think I'd be like jamming out. That's it. That's what I say. In my retirement, I'll be somewhere either in the keys or in the Caribbean, have my own bar and piano. And my son will be working, you know, being the director of the, you know, hostess, hostess, whatever you want to call the guy, you know that, but be a family affair. We'll all be hanging out doing that. We have a very similar dream. Yeah. We do. I almost bought a hotel in Dominican Republic like eight years ago. I mean, I was actually negotiating it right before the real estate market crashed. We were negotiating a hotel, a buddy of mine. And I was like, because you read books and it says, okay. And you probably heard this story where the guy lives on like a barren island and he just fishes all day. And people say, well, why don't you, you know, he said, well, why don't you get your boats and catch more fish and you can sell up to the market. And then he ends up going around his whole life and then back on the island. So I said, well, why do I have to do all this stuff to be right, like to be what you just said, right? Why do you have to build all the correct technologies, send stuff to the moon, all this, just to end up right back on a Dominican or in a Caribbean or in a keys. We can just go to the keys now. That's kind of was my thought. Maybe it makes us appreciate it more, right? Cause we don't appreciate it till we've done all this craziness and our life's been stressful and everything. We come back around and we go, okay. Okay. And then I guess the goal is just do it before it's too late, right? I mean, if you're still, you know. Able to enjoy it. That's what I think. I'm like, like, while I can still water ski and you know, I can snorkel and I can go out on the boat and fish and all that kind of stuff and do it. So, yeah. Tell us, listen, tell us, we have not talked at all about some of the cool things that you're working on. Tell us about some of the payloads you're setting up and what that's like. How did you even get into that? I mean, we know how you got your company, but I mean, what does that feel like? It's, well, it's funny. Sometimes I don't think I appreciate it enough or I don't realize how cool it is cause it just becomes a part of every day, you know, and you're around a lot of people that do some of the same things, but it was pretty cool. And I know when we sent our payload up, so we have a facility called Craig X and it actually goes outside of the International Space Station. So it's out on an extended arm, you know, size wise, I say it's like 20 U, U is, I don't even know what it is, four inches by four inches by four inches, something like that. And it's a wedge shaped kind of a container and it can have optics, it can have a camera, it can have materials, it can have material samples, it can have electronics and antenna, those kinds of things. All kinds of different technologies can be put on there and we started developing this thing back in, actually we were working on the contract and the grant for it back in probably 2015, maybe even before that, took forever to get it awarded, maybe it was 2014, 2016 was when it was awarded and we just got it deployed up last November. So you can see how long it takes. And so that might be part of the reason where I'm like, okay, cool, it's up there. Because you're almost so exhausted, like, hey, can you give this thing to like three and a half years so it's supposed to be a one year contract and all the stuff that you go through, but it is cool. I mean, so our payloads, we had multiple customers on there. We had some universities, some high schools, we had Lamborghini, we had Blue Origin. We used some of the, they had some material coupons that they wanted to test up there. And I think technically we were probably the first people to get them up. Can you explain to people who don't know that's not technically savvy with the payload? The payload is? Yes. Not that technically savvy. So. I may explain to people. Yeah, I mean a payload, so the International Space Station, the primary focus is research and development and things that will impact our future as it relates to space, but also impact what our lives here down on earth. So typically it's gonna be any type of an experiment or something that as a greater opportunity or a focus on research and development. And so a payload is gonna be that thing that gets sent up related to research and development that's gonna be up on the International Space Station. Or a payload can be a satellite. Can be an entire satellite would be a payload. Or a payload can be just material coupons that you're trying to test to find out. Lamborghini, what they wanted to do was see what happened to a particular, I think it was like a paint chip or material in really extreme conditions. And typically they were testing out in the desert. But if they can, and they do an entire car or something like that, but if they can just send up material samples in that external environment of space and then bring it back down and do testing, they've essentially accomplished what they would have done by putting a car out in the desert for a few days or whatever. So again, payload is anything that's gonna go up in space and as far as the ISS goes, it's usually related to research and development and the further of other technologies. And what role do you play in helping them to facilitate that? Yeah, and so we're basically, we are the people that make it happen, right? So if somebody's got a technology that they wanna test, camera, for example, the optics, maybe their goal is to develop a technology that will go on satellites, multiple satellites. And so they need to test it, get it flight proven. They would come to us and we're start to finish. Cradle to grave, we'll get it integrated. We help them go through all the safety reviews that they need to do that. And we do the launching, we manifest with the ISS for the deployment and monitor it while it's up there. MO and I is what it's called, Mission Operations Integration. Handle all that 15 weeks later, it brings back down. We support it all and then we hand it back to the customer and say, here you go. So we don't do the research, we don't do the technology, we're not, but we are definitely the integrators and the operations piece of making that happen. And you may not know this answer. What is that, what would that, what's that approximate cost or something like that? Yeah, so ours is a lot less. So the International Space Station provides an opportunity significantly reduced costs to be able to do that. If you, for example, because we're an implementation partner on the ISS, it doesn't cost us personally anything to launch a payload up to the ISS. They call it up mass, right? Cause it's part of what, you know, the subsidence role of the International Space Station. But if I wanted to do it through, you know, like SpaceX or space or Blue Origin, any of those others, it's like, you could be $3 million to play a small satellite or a small payload, 35 pounds or something to the actual, to, you know, up into space. And so, yeah, our cost is, like I said, significantly less, you know, and it would be if somebody was just going through regular providers. So if I had, if I wanted to test something that I invented and I came to you, what would that cost me? It depends on what it is, but anywhere from 10,000 to three or 400,000. Okay. So I mean, it's, it ranges because if it's, if it's more complex, like if you want to test an antenna, if you want to test the opticals or electronics, that's going to be a little bit more because it's, there's a lot more involved. But if it's a coupon material samples, have you probably sent it up? We could probably do it for about $5,000, three, $5,000. I mean, pretty, it can be pretty inexpensive like that. So you didn't charge Lamborghini extra because they're Lamborghini. We're driving for the second time around. We're like, come on. You'd be like, wait a second, you're Lamborghini. You wouldn't give me a discount on a car. I know, I got to meet the, I got to meet the CTO or something, you know, so that's cool. But, and that's our CraigX. The other thing is our satellite deployer. And that was a piece of NASA equipment that was already up there. And we are now, and we again took several years, two, three, two years, I think, to negotiate for a contract to be able to support that piece of hardware, which is already up on the International Space Station and allows- How do you say it? How do you say it? Cyclops, Cyclops. Okay, there you go. Cause I would try to like, how do I pronounce this? Well, I mean, they, I've seen it, I've seen it spelled like Cyclops, CY, CLOP. But I, I like the, you know, the more technical looking SSK. I can't, I don't remember what it stands for, Space Station, Kinetic. I'm looking at your website, I don't see it. I don't know. My engineers can't rattle it off, so it's just Cyclops. But it's the size of a coffee table and it's a mechanical fixture in the middle. And so the astronauts, in January, they just deployed a satellite off of using it. The astronauts just, you know, put the, they unpack the satellite that was already brought up there, you know, by the, by the rocket and they attach it to the Cyclops and it gets put out and get attached to a robotic arm that then goes out off the ISS and then just pretty much releases it and it goes on its way. There you go, you can even see it, yeah. So what are we watching here? Now, let me see if I can make this bigger. That's the robotic arm. That's the, it's a Canadian robot. Okay, let's start from the beginning. Okay. Yeah, and then that flat platform is the Cyclops. That round thing is called Spinsat and that's actually a satellite that was done back in 2014, I believe. And so it, the robotic arm grabs it, moves it out of the way because you got to worry about separation when it comes to the satellite and the ISS. And then it just deploys it. Now that was fast. But in reality, it takes several hours for that. To do this. Get all the way out there and yep. Okay. Yeah, we actually went to Kennedy Space Center to be able to watch it, you know, watch the operations and at one point I had two of the young guys were with me and obviously they don't need a lot of sleep. But I'm like, you know what? I've had enough. I brought my pillow and I'm like, I'm going out to my truck and I'm gonna sleep for a couple hours with my pillow and I'll be in, call me when we're getting a little bit closer to that thing being about to release it. So. Oh wow. Okay, okay. All right. So no, that's really cool. And then you're doing something with low earth orbit satellites. So that's where Citus comes in. Yeah. Okay. So over the years, all of our contracts. Oh, so I was still good at my research. You were close. Yes. I was close. Okay. We've done so much related to space, whether it's, you know, on ground operations, Kennedy Space Center, launch support operations at Patrick Air Force Base. We've just, we've really, as far as past performance goes, we've done a lot of things. We've got the International Space Station work. We've got that Kreg X, which lets you test the subcomponents of satellites if you want, you know, bring them up 15 weeks, bring it back down. We have the Deployer and this is where I kind of went, well, we sort of have the makings of our own constellation or, you know, space company at a bigger scale. And so why not see if it might be something people are interested in. And so when I started kind of socializing the idea with some external strategic advisors and people I trusted, they're like, that's great. That's a great idea. I mean, why not? So because we have the relationship with the ISS, we're an implementation partner, we can deploy some of these satellites, at least initially, a lot less expensively. And so we're building our own satellites as well. And the concept is giving smaller companies that don't have a lot of money the opportunity to truly test their satellite subcomponents or technologies in space, not just the on Kreg X, you know, up and down, not in a, you know, at Marshall and sort of a pseudo space environment that truly allow them to test flight, you know, flight prove their technologies on a satellite. And we have a, we do 3D manufacturing here. And so we're utilizing a 3D printer, additive manufactured metal printer called, it's by Mark Forge. And it, we're building kind of a modular design satellite that lets us sort of plug and play the different types of technologies that want to be tested. So if somebody's got a camera they want to test, they don't have to go and pay $2 million to build their own satellite, you know, then pay another million and a half or $2 million to deploy that satellite just to test this camera. And what's happening now, I think is, you know, there's a lot of competition. These companies that are building satellites or the, you know, the larger satellites and the government that kind of thing, they want to know that your technology is truly flight-driven. So if you can say, yep, here you go, I just deployed satellite with it shown and it ties into the International Space Station mission because it's all about technology and the advancement of different technologies to benefit us here on Earth and in space. And so that's why we decided, okay, let's see if we can't create a satellite that allows for this support. We needed our redundant systems as well. So we have our own systems, you know, our own propulsion, optics, you know, those kinds of things. And then the other challenge that I think a lot of these technologies run into is having a spectrum. So meaning the frequency being allowed. I think if you guys remember SWARM, how they, was it SWARM? Where the satellite company deployed their satellites and had not gotten registered by the FCC for their, I didn't see that. Got fine millions of dollars. I mean, you don't want to mess around with that kind of stuff. And what's happened with technology, with smaller companies that are testing their technology, they have to get an experimental license. It takes time. Well, we're doing that. We're applying the license for the spectrum to deploy these satellites. And now we handle all of that. And so if someone's got a technology, they just go, here's what I want to test. We go, okay, nope. We'll integrate it. We'll deploy it. We'll monitor it. Ground station, we've got all that set up. You know, we handle it for you. And then you've got a flight proven technology. And so it's nothing, it's not huge. You know, we're not setting up, we're not planning thousands of, you know, satellites and telecom and that kind of thing. It's, you know, I don't even know how large it'll end up being, but it's there to help those companies that are really trying to prove out their technologies and do it faster and cheaper. Wow. I don't see. And that's where the investors come in. This is why I'm like, all right, we're doing this anyway. I mean, we're, and if it's anything like the last 20, it'll take another 20 years. And we plug along, do it this way. But, you know, the need is now, the opportunity is now, there's a lot going on in space. And so that's the reason we're looking at investors. Because, and that's just one little piece of Cytus. It's a much larger, you know, offering or whatever, you know, companies that are pulling in everything that we've done over the years. Wow. No, I like it. I like it. All right. I've taken up a lot of your time. I'm going to ask some couple of close up questions, which I've asked some of them already. Something off cuss. Tell me something that you've bought recently off Amazon has brought you overwhelming joy. I bought a violin bow. So I play violin. I had bought a couple, I bought a violin a while back and I never played it. And I bought a new bow and while I was in the keys, a friend of mine who's a musician came down and I played a wagon wheel. I got to play my violin with it. It wasn't the best. I needed to practice a little bit. But you played it. I played it. So buying and having that bow show up and I'm rosining up my bow, yeah, maybe. That was good. No, like, are you an early riser or are you burning midnight oil? Early riser. Okay. For sure. I figured that by the 9 a.m. podcast. Which I love. I love it because it's like, let's do it. Get it out the way and let's go on with our day. Yep. That's it. No, I'm definitely early riser. No, that's good. Our job or our place that you've worked before that someone would not guess. Baskin Robbins or Kmart. I worked in the camera and job with that one. I worked in the camera and joy department at Kmart and I was the one that said, ladies and gentlemen, there's a blue light special happening over here in camera and joy for the next 20 minutes. It's gonna be 10% off of all of your 14 carat gold. Come on over and enjoy. And I pushed that blue light and I'd have like little ladies like following me and go, where's the next one? Where's the next one gonna be? So that's what I did. Say it again. Ladies and gentlemen, for the next five minutes only gonna be 15% off on all of our 14 carat gold chains or whatever. So come on down to the camera and joy department. Wow. And you know what's amazing is that you're, look, you're in business at Kmart's out of business. Oh, exactly. Although I gotta tell you this, I swear the only two Kmart's that are left in the world are down in the keys. We were just down there. They had a Kmart in the keys? I was telling my husband, I'm like, do you think nobody told them? Do you think like, they went out of business and they don't even know? They're like, yeah, they're so far away. They're like, whatever, tell someone. You know what's funny? I actually, I use the Blockbuster versus Netflix analogy all the time. I come to find out that there are actually still blockbusters around. I think there's a couple in Alaska. So they don't know either. They didn't know they were gonna miss this. I think that's a great. There's a couple, I think in Alaska. It's probably cheaper to keep it open than try and dismantle it in Alaska, right? I bet. It's like, just leave it there. You know, maybe there's no, you know, the good internet signals, so they're like, get your tape. And I have admit, I was at, I was at, I'd worked at a project in Kansas at Wichita and the hotel, you could rent out the tapes and DVDs and stuff like that. So there are places around the country, if you travel all the way around to see stuff like that. Yeah. Something that you had to do in building your business that you hated or disliked. Firing people. No question. Hands down. I cannot stand. I'm not good at it. I hate firing people. I'm non-confrontational, believe it or not. I mean, I'm that cruise director, but when it comes to the negative stuff, very non-confrontational. But luckily I have people that work for me that I make them let people go when they need to be let go. How do you wrestle with that? It's hard. And even with the manufacturing, I had to lay off 50 people and I never laid anybody out. But the good news was of those 50 people, I think almost all but five onto other contracts or kept them until they found jobs, but that was probably truly the worst thing I ever had to do to actually, firing somebody because they've screwed up or there are no load or whatever. I mean, you're like, okay, you made your bed, right? But when you've got to lay somebody off, which I take personal, like, okay, this is my fault because I didn't do what I planned on doing or whatever, that was probably the worst thing. Again, it turned out okay because we were able to slowly move people. Nobody, as far as I remember, it was on the street kind of a thing, but it was still tough. I hate doing that. Okay. And some parting words for everyone out there listening to this. Gosh, I don't know. Wait, hold on, before I do that, you did not make a book recommendation. A what? A book recommendation. Ooh, a book recommendation. Oh my gosh. I was in the Keys for this last month and I bought all kinds of books on Amazon and I read business books. I read fiction. I read... Anything's helped you out that you go back to, that you turn to often? What I go back to, oh, actually Disney. So I think it's called Making Magic. Walt Disney, it's one of the Walt Disney, it was Lee, Lee Cockrell, Making Magic. It's one of my favorite, it's older now, but it's one of my favorite business books. I like their culture and how they approach things. So it was probably one of my favorites. Okay, now you could close out. Okay. What are my words of wisdom? Like, oh, be careful what you wish for. That might be, no. But you are a happy entrepreneur. At least, I mean, you are the, you are the crew's director entrepreneur. And to be doing such, I mean, I don't know. It's, I mean, I see, I will say that I learned something recently about Mitch match personalities, right? So your, for example, your emotion, everything comes out, it exudes some matches of personality where somebody might be happy, but then you look at them and go, why does this guy look like that? He's like, I'm really happy. You don't look happy. So your personality matches, like your facial expressions, your features, everything comes out. And that just, if we go back to the 90s books where they talked about it to be an entrepreneur or to be a leader, you have to be really strong and you have to be a tyrant. And remember those books where they always talk, the art of war and we're fight, you know, it's like a battle, I can't see you being like that. Well, I don't have an MBA. And it's funny, my husband went and got his MBA at FIT. And, you know, we realized that I've basically done everything they tell you not to do. And it was funny when he was taking classes, he would get in arguments because the teachers or professors would say, you need to do blah, blah, blah. And he'd be like, well, no, you don't actually. And they're like, yeah, you do, it won't succeed. He's like, what should my wife did the complete opposite? And she's pretty successful right now. And they just kind of dismiss him and stuff. So... Do you remember any of those things they said not to do that you did? Well, for sure. You know, you're not supposed to hire friends and family. I definitely did that. What are all the, and you know, a lot of people would not, they don't recommend the whole leveraging credit card. When I started, I had E credit cards, all that kind of financial things. I'm open, you know, I am who I am kind of thing. So I let my heart sometimes, you know, make decisions. And I guess, this is why you're not supposed to do that, focus and I'm like, okay, you know, but at the end of the day, you have to live with yourself. And I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm not perfect. And you know, I lose it occasionally and I feel bad. Always apologize. You know, you never should have that ego where you can't admit you made mistakes. But at the end of the day, you've got to live with yourself. And so that's really truly what matters. I think if you put your head on the pillow, I'm okay. You know, I'm doing the best I can, the best. It is what it is, you know, no problem. So, there's my words of wisdom. No, no, no, hey. I am still enjoying it. That's the one thing I will say. Even though it is, I'm telling you, it was so tough the last four years. You know, there's a point where I was saying, I think I'm, what if I go bankrupt? And I'm calling my, you know, lawyer friends and saying, what if, what if, what if, you know, just like, oh my gosh. And at the same time, my son's getting scoliosis surgery and all this stuff is going on. I mean, it was just awful. But having gone through some of that stuff, I'm still like, this is so much fun. I enjoy what I'm doing. I'm super blessed. Oh, so shut up in color, right? Just keep, just keep going. So I have fun. Wow, wow, wow. No, that's good. That's good. That's good. Five years from now, where are you going to be? I hope I'm going to be on that island somewhere. In the keys or something. The company mate will still be going, you know, I would say, but me, now I need to, I need to be hanging out on a beach and working a little more on that tan. I've been working on the last month. I think it does pretty good. In all seriousness, with Citus, I really want to have that constellation launched. I want to, you know, there's, I want to see those satellites up there. I want to see us focused on some areas that I feel like maybe don't have to much focus, like marine, you know, when there's issues, you know, on the water and just, you know, and there's just a whole bunch of stuff that I want to see happen out of that. So that maybe that's where it is. I'll be on an island looking up at my satellites in five years. Carol, thank you so much for coming on today. Oh my gosh, it was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It was great. No, it was a lot of fun. You exceeded my expectations by a thousand percent. Thank you so much. Take care.