David Gross is a real estate developer who partnered with Nipsey Hussle to create Vector 90, a co-working space in South Los Angeles, where entrepreneurs can network, create and more. He joins Sophia to talk about his responsibility to carry on Nipsey's legacy and how that shapes the decisions he makes, the importance of having safe spaces like Vector 90 in inner city communities, how he hopes to spread this mission across the country, and much more.
Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Sim Sarna
Supervising Producer: Allison Bresnick
Associate Producer: Caitlin Lee
Editors: Josh Windisch and Matt Sasaki
Music written by Jack Garratt and produced by Mark Foster
Artwork by Kimi Selfridge
This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy.
Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to Work in Progress, where I talk to people who inspire me about how they got to where they are and where they think they're still going. I am so happy you all are here for today's conversation. Our guest is David Gross. He's a real estate developer who partnered with Nipsey Hustle to create Vector ninety, a coworking safe space in South Los Angeles where entrepreneurs can network, create, and more. He talks about how he's planning to continue Nipsey's legacy, the importance of having spaces like this in inner city communities, how he hopes to spread this mission across the country, and what it means to show up for your community. As David says, the marathon continues, Enjoy well, Dave. I'm excited that you're here today. It's kind of crazy. We were just talking about how when we're recording this, it's early February. We're almost a year out from the anniversary of Nipsey Hustle's death, and it's been a gnarly year and it was actually through following Nipsey's work in South Central and Crenshaw and his really kind of radical activist investment strategy. Um, my best friend Nie and I are trying to do some radical activists investing in Detroit, and we were following along what you guys were doing, and and then he sadly passed. And that was weirdly how we got connected, because there was this big, obviously cultural conversation and a huge outpouring of love from l A and all of us talking about what this shocking event meant. Wound up leading to you and I having a conversation and now here we are. So thanks for coming, Thank you for having me. How I don't feel like I can start in my normal way of asking you questions about how you grew up. I really do want to talk about Nipsey's legacy and and what the last year has been, and you know where you guys were when this happened. I mean I feel like we should start there. Yeah, so you're gonna make this easy, Han to ask me a small question to again, Yeah, just just as small, just a small, small one. No, you know, one of the clearly it was a huge shared trauma and shock event for I think the entire city of l A, which was one of the you know, one of the few positive things about it was to see how beloved he was by the entire city and to see how people um came together and everyone really understood what he lived and what he represented. So if I speak about his legacy, you know, I think the greatest testament to his legacy is that he intentionally started crafting it while he was here. I think the Marathon brand speaks to everything that he was. Um, I think it's the perfect brand. Actually, like most people when they start off in a career, that can lead to fame for individual fame, you know, they embraced that and they pushed that, not in a bad way. But he didn't start Nipsey Hustle merch. He didn't start Hustle records. He started uh you know, all Money In was his record label. And that speaks to that concept of ownership, like radical ownership, right, I want to own. You know, we'd have conversations where we talk about you know, vertical integration and horizontal integration. Like he wanted to own and be a part of every part of the process. Right. So that's one part of his legacy that he imparted to all the artists that worked with him is try to own as much as you can and and and treat yourself like a brand, right, not as a person or personality or a brand. Coke is a brand. He's like, you don't want to be I don't want to be Nip Puzzle the rapper. I want to be Nips the brand. There's a difference. So so that's part of his legacy. But the marathon, I think is it it's a perfect manifestation of what he was because he created something that everyone can take and internalize in their own way and run with. Yeah. I think that's that's kind of the art of inspiration, Like when you when you do something like at a really really high level, but you can make people who don't do that specific thing or maybe don't I haven't found the thing they do at a high level yet, but they can take inspiration from you. It's still incorporated into their life. And I think that's what he did with the marathon. Yeah. Yeah, I mean to me, this sort of seismic level of his ethos, Like it feels on par for me with Nike growing up as a kid in like to just do it era Like I'm not a professional athlete, I'm short, I have asthma. Is never gonna happen for me. But there's something about when when there's something so simple and so inspiring, like when something's really been distilled down to to like a match that you can strike. Anybody can go out there and you know, train better themselves, push themselves. That that's kind of what like those big athletic brands concept said. Yeah, and and there was something so amazing as an observer, you know, I wasn't part of his company obviously in the way that you are, but like as an observer, I was like, oh, I should be thinking even more deeply about what I invest in and why I should. I should be considering, you know, what stamp am I putting on something? And when somebody you know, as a woman in entertainment like offers me something, to say, no, I'm worth more than that, Like I want to own a piece of that. I don't just want to show up as a face for something. You know, it's pretty incredible And and to see in the weeks after that happened, like you know, the murals go up, and the parades happen and and just l A like l A shows up for people in a pretty amazing way. Yeah, I don't think anyone ever forget that it was having the ceremony a Staples like anyone who's from l A or if you've spent a meaningful amount of time, and I'll let you get what Staples means to the city. Um, it's culturally, it's resonant. So to have the ceremony there and then the procession afterwards, like I think everyone who participated that day, it'll be something that unifies us across time. Well, I think back and remember that that was that was incredible. Takes to feel that that's beautiful. How did how did you guys meet initially? So it's a um, it's a story. He told a lot and I you know, it's out there. We met at a lake game, but there were I had been working to try to connect with him about the Veteran ninety concept for probably three or four months before we finally met. Um. So I had actually met with his his his team, his partners, and I was like, look, I have this thing I want to do in the Crenshaw District and I have to do it with NIP. And they're like, okay, we'll come talk to you about it. And so they came and I pitched them on this, you know, coworking space and business incubator, and he was gonna lead to all these other things, and I'm sure where they were like, you're gonna do all this in the Crenshaw District. But he was actually working on He was working on Victory that he'd been working on it forever. Basically to anyone who's who's followed his career know it has he been working on that album, you know, probably for six or seven years to get it right. So he was he was in the final stages that so like when he comes out the album, mode like it's something we think you'll definitely be into and we'll get back to you. And a couple of months later, we were side by side of the Lakers game and so like, you know what, I'm not gonna bother him. I'm not gonna bother him about work. Um, so we just started chatting about the game for the first couple of quarters and he was there with y G and they were talking. So I was like, I'm definitely not gonna do it. It's at the right time. But we had such a great conversation and rapport. But the requarter, I was like, hey, look I have this radical idea. I think it's right up your alley that I've been wanting to sit down and talk to you about. I was like, I talked to to Stebo and JP and I know you're focusing your album and he was like, no, tell me. And so I walked into the concept and he was like, let's have a follow up meeting. And I was like, of course, and he was like, when you want to do it. I was like, it's up to you. He's like, I'll come to you tomorrow. And so literally he came to see me the next day in my office at the time was in Calabasas, and he really came to Calabasas the following morning and um, we met for a couple of hours and then we shook hands and we're like, okay, let's get started doing it. And that that's how we officially co founded Vectorality together. So cool. It's interesting when do you get that sense, like you guys wound up sitting together at a Laker game that night, you'd already met with the team, like something in the universe knew there was there was some there was some kind of energy or some kind of did it did it feel like fate or like things were just lining up because to me, and maybe this is the entertainer in me, I'm like, that's a movie moment, you know, like you guys wound up sitting there. That's like the moment in the script where everyone goes, it's going to happen. So the way it worked out the fact that he um, the fact that he was so receptive and came the next day, because it could have been one of those things where like I always knew it was an idea that was right in his that he would have a heart for right, And as I was coming up with the initial concept, I wasn't kind of scouring the landscape and trying to figure out who it should be. I was like, now this is this is it's Crunchhaw District, and it's he's bigger than life in l A. And this is what he's about, like standing kind of shoulder to shoulder with his neighborhood. And I was like, no, you know, he's the one. So I wrote it with him in mind, so I knew we would always connect. But it could have been one of those things if I hadn't seen him that day, it could have been a year later. And then he dropped. Let's say it had been months later and he dropped Victory Lap and it was really successful and it went on. He went on tour and it went on to be Grammy nominated. You know, it could have turned into a we could have met two years later and connected on it right because I saw after we started working closely, I saw the whirlwind of activity that his life was because he had a lot of things going on. So that part was definitely kids met or you know whatever, whenever, whenever the universe kind of conspires to make something happen um at a given moment. It was a bit of that. Yeah, that always is a thing that feels like a little touched by the wand to me, that's really special. So you obviously wound up back in l A. And you're from l A. You grew up in South Central, but there were many years where you left l A. And I kind of want to go through this story. I always like to start with people because so many people who sit on that couch come in here and the way that you are with this incredibly impressive worlds that they've built and achievements, and I know listeners are like, how did that happen? And I'm I'm always curious, you know, we were talking about your kids and like the personalities, and I think about what I was like as a kid. I'm always curious to know, like who were you at eight or ten? Like who is that David? Were you interested in all these systems? Were you always like a tiny entrepreneur or or were you like a completely different kind of kid? Yeah, so you know what my childhood at two distinct childhoods. So I was born and raised in South Central A and I lived I lived in South Central until I was nine and a half ten, so between until the end of the third rate, and end up moving to Um, a small town in Texas. But in l A. You know, it's eighties. I'd say South Central was probably the episo center of the gang issue, Um the epicenter of the war on drugs. They're still aftermath of the riots and racial tension at least between the community and the police. So it's just the chaotic, a very chaotic time and place. And you know, my parents were young Um and I had an older brother who had a different father. We all kind of lived in the same neighborhood, and so I think that that definitely added to how chaotic our family structure was. And so by the time I was nine, you know, my my mother decided to send us to Texas to live with our grandmother's sisters, so our great aunt. There was literally life in l A, you know, until I was nine and a half ten, and then life in Texas after that, and just too there were some similarities, but then just very start contrast. And I imagine going from this epicenter of Los Angeles, who, as you said, a small town in the middle of Texas is I grew up in a town in Texas. I grew up in a town smaller. I doubt you've ever been to a town as small as this. So the population sign outside the town when I went said five, and I checked it. I had checked it like a year ago, and it's actually decreased, so it's like four seventy five now. But a really really small town in East Texas. It's like halfway between Dallas and Houston. Um, so everything about it was kind of a one eight. So my parents are really young and I go to live with my great aunts. So she's older than my grandmother. She was a retired teacher at the time, so she was in her early sixties, mid sixties, and I mean she was like she was the oldest person I've ever been around. So that was and this tound's simplistic at this point, but I was like scared of her for the first, you know, four to six months that I was there. Retired teachers, so she definitely had a She was very all stare, and she was very much a disciplinarian um and just radically different than my life in l A h. And teachers are structures, so she was an English teacher. So she called the TV the idiot box. So she didn't let me watched TV. I think there are a couple of programs that we watched sixty minutes like something else. Um. She made me read every day, which I mean put this on the table for later, probably one of the biggest difference makers in my life. Literally she made me read every day NonStop. Could you choose what you were reading? Like, could you pick my interest or were there things she was kind of assigning you to read. Well, I started off reading age appropriate stuff when I was fourth grade, but literally the town was so smart I read. I think I read every book in the library, every children's book in the library, and then I started reading books as I got older from her library, her personal library, UM, James Baldwin, Tony Morrison. So she had an expansive library as I read all of that as I got older, and she had a hidden library of like Jackie Collins and Mario Poos and I read all that as uh So no reading became you know, reading became a central part of my being. And I highlight that because you know, you asked me what I was like as a kid, and was I always an entrepreneur or smarter? I don't really remember school when I was in South Central. We moved a lot, and um, I spent a lot of time out of school, and I was probably viewed as a to the extent you can be a troublemaker, you know, in the second or third grade, probably a little bit of a troublemaker. But in the stillness of being in a really small town and then like kind of bereft of chaos, yeah, I really got into school and then athletics, and yeah, kind of life changed. It's so interesting the contrast when you talk about you know, your your family being so young and things feeling hectic when you were here in California as an adult with the kind of perspective you have now, are there things you look back on that you see ways that as a child you were trying to process that stuff and finding outlets for you know, whether it's stress or nervous energy, Like, is there anything that sticks out to you now? Well, so, yes, I have a lot of thoughts on that, but it's I process my own childhood in contrast to have a number of siblings, So I had an older I had an older brother who actually moved to Texas with me when I first moved and we were separated, so he went to live with another aunt in Houston. The difference being I was ten, he was thirteen, and so that three year gap, he was already he was already living a life that teenagers in South central will live. And so it was a lot to handle for my family in Houston because he just took that life to Houston. And so about six months in he got sent back to l A, which was tough for both of us because we were best friends um and so seeing his life the direction it went when he went back and then my life makes me appreciate so much. We were talking before we started recording about exposure and environment because we were the same person essentially, and I looked up to him. He was I had a trink when I was little, so I just learned how to talk again when I was two, and there was that thing where you you know, it's like snots always running out. So when we were kids, he fought everyone in our neighborhood making fun of me. So I had it for like two years, and so literally he was the person who always protected me, who I admired, respected the most, and I thought he was the smartest person in the world, as most little brothers thinking of big brother, but completely divergent paths. After he went back to l A and I stayed in Texas, and so much of it was kind of the flip of a coin. So he gets into Houston, big city, and there was a lot to get into. I went to this really small town where there was Had I wanted to get in as much trouble as possible, there would have been nothing. Um so yeah, a lot of so anyway, looking for outlets and and you know, ways to express the angst or whatever you're feeling. I think about that a lot because I got to put it into like I became a star across country runner, and it was just because I was in the country and I would run from our house to town. Right. So that's the most crude example I can give of. I had time to feel like I had energy and and you know, I wanted to pour it into something, and so I became good at the things that were immediately accessible to me. That's super interesting. Did did your great aunt being an English teacher when you got into more and more advanced literature? Was she guiding you? I I think back to I had an English professor who changed my life in high school so much so that by the time I was a senior in high school and knew I wanted to be an actor, I petitioned my school. I was like, I don't need to take a pig calculus. I'm never gonna need to know what. I just don't need to know this. Let me take two A V. English classes at the same time because I wanted to just study with Mr Goss all the time. And I and I think about how he would ask me these questions as a teenager about what I was reading and my brain was in whatever developmental stage you know it was in at fourteen and fifteen and seventeen, and he really taught me so much about critical thinking. And so I think the the like education nerd in me is like, oh my god, you had a teacher in the house. What was it like? You know, I wonder about that. So my my taste and preferences immediately were just shaped by like her personal library, it was a lot of the prominent black thinkers and authors. And she was born in so you know, she experienced a lot of racial trauma in her life, and so she had very strong views. You know, I think she was she was definitely viewed as a being radical in the town we lived in, because she lived in Um. She lived in Detroit for a while. Her and my uncle, her brother, he was a black panther she she was for a while. So to be in a small town in East Texas, and you know, I read this is this is a funny this is a funny um linkage to Nipsey. So I think I probably read this book The Spook Who's Hat by the Door probably two or three times when I was a kid, because it was one of her favorite books. And that was Nipsey's favorite book. And so in one of our first conversations, we were talking about that, and he was like, you really, Yeah, I read that probably two or three times, but yeah, it was shaped by a lot of what I consumed was shaped by her worldview. Um. And she was a very strong, really really intelligent woman, and so much of it I didn't appreciate at the time because I was a kid, and and you know, you confuse someone being stern or strict with being mean, and you kind of want to escape. And I couldn't appreciate then that she saw, you know, what I came from, and she probably had concerns about, you know, if I went back, what could happen? Or if I didn't have kind of these strict guard rails around me, what could happen? Um. So it was probably an added layer on top of her just normal countenance. And it took me until I was in my late twenties to really get that, you know, she wasn't because as a kid, you processed things and and for my entire childhood. I left home when I was sixteen to go to um kind of a boarding school. You left her home in Texas then, yeah, Um. And one of the reasons I left is because I thought she was so strict, And then you know, when I was in my late twenties and thirties, I was like, man, I did her disservice, Like, internally, I never appreciated how much she probably saved me from, you know, everything I've been exposed to before and in myself by the way she brought me up. Mhm. I think about those generations that came before us, and I think for us. You know, you have little kids. I don't. I don't have kids yet, but I think about the way that our kids will grow up and the wealth of knowledge and and the lexicon we have now about you know, trauma and generational trauma and expression and love languages and communication styles and all these things, and they're going to be so lucky because there's so much more we're able to communicate. But I think back to your grandma having been born in nine and her there wasn't the communication then for someone to say I'm being strict with you because of X y Z. You know, you you showed your love through action even if you didn't even if society wasn't talking about it. And it's kind of cool that almost in reverse, you see it and now and you know how to communicate about it. Yeah, because The thing is that I didn't get the experience he as a person, right, So I didn't get to Um, you know, I was in my like I said, in my mid twenties, late twenties, and I started thinking about what was her life like in the sixties, Like she was a you know, she she went to college. She went to it, and it's it's it's tragic. I forget where she went to school, but she she went to a college where she had to be a minority. No, I think she might have gone to school in Texas, but at a time when a lot of black people didn't go to college, especially black women, she went to college and she got a degree. And she was always this She never coward, she never feared you know, people's perception, She never minded sticking out. She was so brave, right, and none of that that I connected with me, like at a at a deeper level, And I thought about she had this whole interesting, like incredible life story that I never got to like sit and talk to her about and never got to appreciate with her. And now I'm just an Oliver looking back. Um, she definitely you know changed my life and in effect changed my kid's life, and you know, everyone in my immediate sphere. You know, me being here is directly a tribut her. What was her name? Lela M. Do you have a favorite photo of her that you keep in your house or your office you have? I have this little this little um box that I've carried with me since I've had it, I think since college, since high school. I have some pictures of us, that's cool. Yeah, I have a little bit of that. With my grandfather. I've got like some really amazing old photos of him, and I've got I actually have his tags from when he was in the navy, and my grandfather was so old that they weren't they weren't. I don't even know what they're from. They're not shaped like dog tags. They're round. It's like bigger than a quarter and smaller than a fifty cent piece with his name stamped in it and his navy number. And I'm like, what even is this? How old? What era did you live in? But I've got some of those things of his that just like that are pretty rad and similarly to what you were saying. Now I think about it. I lost my grandfather when I was twenty four, and God, I think about some of the stories he we worry. Yeah, he was my mom's dad, and he was he was a special dude, like a really special dude. And I think about some of the stories that he used to tell me, and you know, I would roll my eyes and be like, because as a kid, you hear well when I was you your rage, you know. And now I'm like, God, if I had if I had just been a little more aware then in that decade the way I am in this one, I would have loved to sit down and interview him about his life, you know, Like I think that all the time. I was like, I would kill to go back and have an adult conversation. I would just love it awareness that I have now. Yeah, So anybody listening, if your grandparents are still alive, interview them. You have an iPhone, you can make a movie. I've been. I've been, and you know, it's interesting reflecting on that I've I've now started asking my parents a lot of questions about their lives, you know, and I'm I'm lucky my parents are both still relatively healthy, and they're adorable and you know, getting old, but likeable. They kind of do you know my dad? It's really funny he's like, we're pretty cute, and I'm like, who are you. There's some sort of sweet vibe happening there in retirement that's really lovely. And and again similarly, I think about being a teenager. I used to have to work for my dad every summer, and I was pissed. My dad was this incredible photographer. He started getting his work published in Vogue when he was twenty two because he hustled and started self submitting while he was a student at Art Center. He had moved to the US from Canada and he got a green card and was a student here and literally was just like out there grinding, you know, to make art. And I had to work for him every summer, and I thought, this is so annoying. All my friends are at the mall, there's like new CDs coming out. I'm missing everything. And recently I sort of went him with my tail between my legs and I was like, so I never paid attention on set when I had to work for you, And I'm really embarrassed that I didn't learn more about photography from arguably one of the best photographers around. Can you teach me genetically? I'm very very visual, so I frame everything like a photo, and I notice little things because my dad taught me how to edit. So he would shoot on these these cameras, mammy as that had three by five films, so the negatives were like this and color, so instead of looking at like a weird negative that we need, would shoot in like a thirty five. They were essentially like a tiny photo, and you'd edit them on a lightbox. So my dad would give me a yellow grease pencil and send me through the roles of film at to do an edit, and then he would take the red pencil and sit with me and show me what I picked right and what I didn't notice that was wrong, or you know, if I didn't pick up on a detail that made something unusable. Because this was before like anybody had an app on their phone where they could retouch, you to pay a retouch or a lot of money to fix a photo. So essentially you wanted to pick the perfect photos. And so I'm really really particular about the way things look and fonts and everything, which is cool, but people will ask me, you know, there's technicality to photography, like your f stop and your aperture and all that, and I'm like, I don't actually know the answer to that. I know if it looks good and people are like, you're how do you not know this? So I'm I'm taking the lesson I learned from not having asked my grandfather as many things as I wish I had, And I'm doing things a little differently with my parents now, so you know, we learned. It's a crazy thing to to think about what it would be like to be a student. It with the perspective we have now, sometimes I think that like education is wasted on the young because they think it's annoying. So much is wasted on you. It's crazy. And now I'm like, what I would give to have my only job be to sit in a room and learn every day. That would be so amazing, right, Yeah, you don't have time to I feel like I don't have time to to do Sometimes I forget to eat, right, or I don't eat sometimes just not because I'm dieting, but just because you're busy and running. So to think back to all the idle time I had when I when we were younger, I might had snacks at recess, and you're just wishing for time to pass. You're wishing to be older. It's crazy kind of how things work. Where did you go to a boarding school at six? So it was a So I use the term boarding school. It's just the best way to describe it. But what happened is and this is a really cool story, and I definitely want to highlight the person who said this emotion. Um, another person changed my life from that small to out. So our school was so small that, um, my basketball coach was also my math teacher, right, and so he taught all high school math. And again, maybe maybe I wasn't the best basketball player, maybe just the school was so small, but I ended up being the star, the star basketball player. So I'm the star basketball player, and I end up being pretty decent math um and and a running star. Yeah. And I think he might have been my cross country coach in junior high. But east town, small town, East Texas football is everything, right, Um, if you're a guy and if you're a girl, cheerleading is everything. So my coach coaches his daughter. Christie's incredible, dynamic, right, friendly, everyone's best friend. But she was born with the club foot, which meant that she just got excluded from She couldn't play basketball, she couldn't cheer lead and it was his and I saw it at the time like it was the one thing because he was he was a tracking, basketball and football coach. It really bothered him that she couldn't participate, and it bothered her, right, so he was always I think he was looking for an outlet for her. So he found this program that the state legislature created in Texas. Because there was a dearth of doctors, advanced scientists, mathematicians graduating from Texas schools and staying in state. They created this trial program to encourage students to pursue hard sciences and math and stay in state. So the structure of it was, you'd spend your last two years at the University Unior of Texas, so you would take all college classes, so when you graduated from high school, you'd have your first two years of college credits. The idea being within stay in state and pursue an upper level degree. Right, So they wanted to facilitate more doctoral students in you know, chemistry, physics, damn essentially. So he finds this program for her and then he tells me, you know, David, I think you should consider this. And at the time, life is good, you know, like I'm the president of the class, I'm the you know, I'm doing well in school, and so I'm I've stabilized in this really small town. And there were definitely aspects of it I didn't I didn't like, but I had, you know, I had a world that was solid. But he spends a year working on me, saying, hey, well, Christi's gonna apply to the school and you should apply to and so I don't think anything of it. And so I take the test that you have to take um to see if you qualify, and it's a pretty straightforward process. I think we took we forget the name of the test, but I think one of them. We took the p S A t like a year earlier than we typically would have, and it was pretty straightforward. Like the top two fifty scores or top three hundred scores got invites to attend for like two spots. And I'm really cavalier just kind of going throughout this process and I go interview and I'm not thinking much of it, and then I get in right, so, like, yeah, you scored fairly high. You know, you're one of the top. However, many scores in the state of Texas so we're gonna extend to a mission. A big thing is it's free, right, Um, so I get to go if I if I decided to go, I get to go for free, get two years of college credits, and theoretically graduate high school as a junior. Had I stayed in Texas to go to school, because that's a big part of the Texas narrative that you know, my my grandmother was a retired teacher from a really small school system. So the level of poverty that I faced in South Central was the same in Texas, just no chaos on top of the poverty. But that was always something I was trying to escape, right, And so I didn't know what to expect by going to this school, but I was like, look, if it gives me a way out, um of you know, not having money, and I didn't really want to go back to I didn't really want to go back to California at that point. Um, I didn't really want to stay in Texas long term. I didn't know what I wanted to do. But this just seemed like a conduit to something else. And so I ended up going to the school. And that was probably you know, they're probably three or four things. If I look back at my life and say, those were changemakers. Going to the school was, yeah, it was. It was an epiphany. So I was literally surrounded by four brilliant people. Um so maybe them now I look back and there they have double doctorate degrees and organic chemistry and physics. Like my my roommate he got to two doctorate degrees and he's a professor somewhere. But everyone's really smart and and socially and culturally very very different. Actually, the school was in this town called Didn't in uh, Texas, and it's a very um kind of earthy. At the time, grunge was big, and so I could change my musical taste completely. But yeah, that was. That was a life changer. And then everyone there, like the students who weren't going to stay in Texas so they could you know, graduate and be a junior at the University of Texas. They wanted to go to cal Tech or m I T. Which just shifted my thoughts about college, like what was possible and what I should be shooting for, right Because I was always competitive at the very least, and so everyone was thinking about these incredible schools. I was like, wait, I'm gonna go to a I'm gonna go Ivy League, Right, that's the best. So that kind of altered my reality a little bit. That's so cool. It is unbelievable the way that education can like just blow the doors off for you. But I really am curious about this shift in your musical taste. What were you listening to and then what happened when you got into this crung e kind of scene. It was it was all hip hop prior to that, because I retained a lot from l A and then I picked up Texas rap at the time, but um, when I went to the school is called TAM. When I went to TAM's, I mean it was literally obviously Narvon, it was massive, nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, but like it was, grunge was at its at its maybe it was at its peak, but all the grunge music. I picked up a lot of the classical kind of rock groups like m the Grateful Dead. It was just, Yeah, from a from a musical and cultural perspective, it was very expansive. Yeah, who was what was Texas rap at the time? Who was standing out there? Oh, Texas rap? It was the Ghetto Boys. It was um it was the ghetto boy actually, and not just Texas wrap, but there was like Memphis rap actually you g K which is Texas eight ball and m j G which is Memphis. So a lot of stuff and stuff, and there's some like underground artists, and they were underground Artiston Houston and at the time, we're big. That's cool because the scene in l A was so good, like just being a kid and growing up with tupac here. As soon as I left. As soon as I left home, I shaved my head ball and then I got two tattoos and two earrings. And so when I went back to see my grandmother in my first break, she almost had a heart attack because I was fully two pocked out. Wow, you were like, he's my idol. Here we go everyone, Yeah, oh my god. Everyone. I mean as much as in the South and in Texas like he was as Yeah, they love him deeply as much as anybody l A. Yeah, that's so cool. Okay, so you're at this, you're in this program high school, but in college and then what after the two years did you stay in Texas or did you I went to New York, so I got um. I only applied to two schools. I applied to n y U and I applied to Cornell. I wanted to go to New York. I didn't want to go back to l A. I didn't want to stay in Texas. What was the draw of New York? You think? You know what? It's so funny. The only the only conception I had in New York was when I've seen in the media and so the hustle and bustle, and I knew I wanted to be a businessman. I didn't even know what exactly what a businessman did. I just the briefcase and the phone. And you know, they made a lot of money new York York at that drawn there, So um yeah, I literally applied to two schools, which looking back like that was pretty foolish. But I did well in the S A T. S. And I was a National Merit scholar, So I just made things easy and it was a coin flip when I got in. So literally, when I got into Cornell one, I thought all in New York was like Manhattan. I had but how would you, well, maybe other people know, I didn't know. I thought all of New York was the city. So I accepted Cornell because it was Ivy League, and I was like, Hey, I'm gonna be in the city or something like the city, right, and so not until I go and you get to Cornell by flying into Syracuse and so touchdown in Syracuse and on the drive from Syracuse to Cornell their pastures and it's it's rural, right. This looks just like Texas? What what is this? And I felt set up but actually end up loving if the good loving Cornell. If it is a college town like Cornell, basically is life there because it's isolated. There's a very rich kind of cultural on campus. There were tons of bars and lounges and not just bars, and its huge like Greek scene. It was very dynamic and it was very protective because it was only you know, the campus. Yeah, it gives you bumpers in a way. What did you get into in college? You know what? I was? Um, I'll say the the the drive to not be poor is it's so strong. And like I did all the things that a normal college kid does, right, skipped classes, I had fun, I went went to all the parties, but I was always pretty narrowly focused on making sure I got um. I had a good job lined up when I got out, So you know, the first year, the first year, I think I end up working at like the campus store and like Wendy's. So I had two jobs, but I pretty quickly by the second year, I was a research assistant to an I was an Econic government major, so I was an assistant to an econ professor research assistant. And then I I worked at it doesn't exist anymore, but this broker's firm pain Weber, like after my sophomore year, and I literally it was my process of self discovery was I will literally talk to my professors and like, what's the best job I had someone who wants to make money I can get when they graduate. Because I didn't have anyone in my family or my my network right who had gone to college or had a real profession until my process was well. Investment banking was kind of the thing at the time, and I was, okay, if investment banking is it, what's the best investment bank? And it was Goldman's Acts. So I was like, coming to get a job at Goldman's Acts when I graduate, And it probably seemed improbable, you know, everyone, I'm asking these very crude questions, but that's what I did. So I went from pain Weather and you know, working whatever odd jobs on campus, and then my junior year I got a internship at Goldman ended up getting a full time GOB at Goldman when I graduated. And what are you learning when you start at a place like Goldman? What's what's the beginning look like? It's like a boot camp because basically you have a lot of people coming out different majors and so they like English majors, Russian lit majors, So it's like a level setting process where they kind of teach you the nuts and boats of finance. And you know, you don't really do much important investment banking work when you're an analyst or even an associate. You're basically making pitch books or at least that's what we did when I was analyst, and so a lot of writing, some number crunching, but really adding and doing support work. But it's a pretty rigorous training process, um but less the specifics and the technical aspects they taught me about finance and investment banking and that program were less important than kind of being in it and feeling like, yeah, I can do this. You know, like I'm not gonna be because I was always afraid or worried about Like when I first got to Cornell, I was certainly worried the first year about like being out classed, right, like I'm in an Ivy League school and you know, knowing us my family had gone to college, so I'm not gonna make it, And so I just that first year I just worked really hard. In the first year, I think I was Dean's List, and maybe the second year before I did get comfortable, um and took my foot off the gas when I was a junior, and so I got acclimated at Cornell and like, yeah, this is probably as good as as some of the better people here and better than most. But then when I went to Goldmen, it was a similar thing. I was like the first you know, I don't know how many months it was like, you know, am I going to get found out? I really can I really make it here? And it was a little bit of imposter syndrome. And so I think I had that like the first two or three times that I went into other spaces that just no one in my family and my social network had been into. You have that and then you kind of figure it out, and then finally you start kind of connecting like all these things. It's getting there and really getting in that's the hardest part. Um. But once you do that, like I think most people can kind of figure out most things. And so that's what I learned. That's that was probably the most the biggest impact working at a Goldman had on me. It gave me the confidence that you know, wherever, wherever I go after this, I'll probably be okay. And then when did you go to n YU Because the list gets it's already impressive, and then it gets like freakishly impressive because you've got an m being quantitative Finance at n y U, a Master of real estate development in Colombia. You were on Wall Street for a decade, Like how are you doing all of this? One? Well, so after getting into Cornell, like and actually don't even know if this is a good thing, right, because I think now people think a lot more about what they want in life and how to align their work and their passions, etcetera. So for me at the time, it was a function of I just never want to be poor again. What do I have to do? And so there were two or three careers that if you went to an IVY lea school, you're rather gonna be a management consultant an investment banker, or if you had the appetite for more school, you go back to law school or med school, right. And I didn't have the appetite for more school at the time, So it was literally management consulting or investment banking. And they seem like the same amount of work, and investment bankers have more upside, so it was investment banking. So going from Cornell to Goldman. Once at Cornell pretty high probability, you land, you know in finance, right, It's that was easy, and then once you're out of Goldman, it was just a process, like you stay in the analyst program and get promoted to associate, or you go back to to be school. I actually left a little more than a year into Goldman to go to a startup at the absolute worst time. So it's a two thousand middle or two thousand right before every stock market corrects and right before the first big wipeout startups. The people listening at home can't see you and I are both cringing, just like, oh, it's a time. It's crazy because um, I experienced the firsthand and like all the potential and optimism of internet and startups and and everything it was gonna be. And then by two thousand and one, because it's like the Internet was a fraud and it's away, but now twenty years later it was that and more right. But um, definitely I caught up in that cycle. And so that was kind of my first after having success, you know, after getting into corn now and then getting the job that I wanted, that was my first real kind of loss um and it it definitely shook me a little bit, and I was like, well, am I ever gonna you know, I messed up an incredible job. And I was watching friends who were still like goldmen or their banks, and I mean, you're so young, you don't appreciate that whatever you're facing at the time, like it's gonna be minor looking back. So think for like half a year or a year, I was kind of lost in trying to figure it out. But you know, I was always good at school, So you side, all the schools I went to, but for me that they're always they're just like a refuge. That's the one thing that I was good at doing was learning, and so you know, I was I wanted to go I wanted to get my j d NBA at that point, so I always It's funny, I always wanted to always want to go to Stanford. Applied to law school first because for the j D n B, a go to law school for a year, then you apply to be school. So I was supposed to go to law school. I did get in the Stanford and I just didn't know I was gonna afford it, because you know, I had left Goldman early, and you know, I maxed out every credit card I had and put the money that I had at the time, which wasn't a lot into the startup. Yeah, so it just seemed like it's gonna be a struggle. So wow, kind of figuring out, you know what law school is gonna gave me the best package. I saw that n y U had this fellowship program where if you qualified for it, you can go for free. Um, so it's like, look, I'm I'm gonna do that kind of as a safety measure because I don't think I knew at the time I was gonna get into Stanford. So I did that. I got that. I dig into Stanford, and it was like one of the toughest decisions at that time that I had to make because you know, someone from California like Stanford, usc U, c l A, like they stick out in your mind. But the money just led me to go to to BE School at n y U because I got a free ride. So back to BE School and then back to Wall Street where I had a decent run. And then you brought it home? And what what made you come back to California after this big decade in New York? M You know what I experienced. Um, if you spend ten years doing something, you definitely, um, you go through some cycles. So immediately out of n y U, I was working at City. I was credit to falsewib trader, so I hate to use terminology, but I was trading derivatives, credit derivatives, and um, that market just blew up. So my first two or three years in the job, we were the epicenter of are we the great recession? Right? So we we felt it first. So I had a within that bank, I had a career shift, so from trading credit derivatives to trading foreign exchange, and then I did that for a number of years. But then that market changed too, and so like I started to pick up on like look the world is constantly gonna change, and so FX became a place where computers and algorithms were more valuable than human traders. And so I had always been interested in real estate, and I remembered, like even as a kid, the people who even in a poor neighborhood, the people who seemed like they had wealth, where people on land and then certainly working on Wall Street. Like a lot of the really wealthy people I met, even if they didn't generate their wealth from real estate, they invested a lot of it in real estate. And then after seeing you know how everyone who had a lot of their money in financial markets, how they're impacted by the Great Recession, I was like, you know what, I have to do something where one it's tangible, which for someone who got an m B A and his trading derivatives. That my sound simplistic, but I was like, I need something tangible um and I need to do something that is entrepreneurial because my heart of hearts, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and to build something. But I was like, it has to be something that if I do it right, I can build something really big and it uses everything I've learned to date. So I did. I went back to school, maybe probably for the last time, and I got that Masters in real Estate Development and Finance at Columbia. I didn't have a specific plan going in. I mean, I figured I'd go work at a private equity fund and then try to do my own thing. And again, you have these little moments, and in life I told you I probably have three or four, probably a couple more. But while in school, I got connected with someone who's now a partner and a great friend, a basketball player at the time named lou All. Dang incredible guy, and he was, you know, a passionate real estate investor, and we connected and we did something really specific. So I pitched Columbia on a thesis project of creating um a certificate program and real estate investment for NBA players and entertainers. And they have similar certificates at Harvard and Wharton. So it's like, we should do this, and we should base it out of the real estate program. And so I'll work on it for a semester and then finally when it's I think we're gonna pull the trigger because it's what I've been focusing on for six months. They didn't want the reputational risk of doing something with entertainers and athletes at the time. So I'm like, well, I spent a lot of time on this curriculum and it works, it makes sense, So what do I do? And Luall and I had, you know, been talking and looking at real estate. So he was like, so, what's gonna happen with that? And I was like, I don't know. I was like, I have a curriculum, I can teach it, I have professors who help me teach it, but now I don't have a sponsor. And so he was like, we'll help, you'll do it. And so he was gonna underwrite it, and he was gonna get players to come. But as we started talking about it, the nb the Players Association for the NBA, they heard about it and they were like, if you can do this, then we'll we'll provide you, the players will make it part of our educational curriculum, you know, this summer. And so we did that, and that opened up a whole new world to me. And you know, five years later, we're partners and we've you know, done a hundred and fifty million dollars and deals together. So that was that was a game changer that relationship, and it led to it, It's a long winded story, led to an opportunity with you know, a prominent entertainment family to come back to l A and help start a family office for them. So that's the opportunity that brought me back. Very cool. Does that all of what you learned in all of those programs and that experience, and especially with the real estate development, has that impacted your philosophy on the power of ownership when you when you think about, as you mentioned, like how important it is in communities like South Central for people to own property. What you guys are doing with Vector ninety And in one of the Forbes articles that I read about everything that that you and Nipsey started, this quote jumped out to me that ownership is a critical component of setting the structural stage for a community to thrive. And I was like, yeah, and again, it is one of those things that nobody really talks to us about, and especially nobody talks to people who are becoming whatever version of successful at a young age. And I'm going to compound that was saying nobody talks to women about it, about finance, about ownership. So I'm curious when you came back to l A and you started reconciling these worlds. Were you already thinking about ownership in terms of real estate at that point? Well, I was thinking about ownership in terms of real estate, just in the purely kind of the purely academic and financial side of it, like what it meant right to own something tangible. I'll be honest, I did not come back to l A with the plans of reconciling all of my different experiences in all these worlds. Um. It's hard to really explain to two people how sad my older brother, who you know, was alive when I left l A and I have a number of siblings were born after I left where I had never lived with, but they grew up. They were born in either South central Englewood. Um. They lived a very l A lifestyle. But it's hard to explain how, you know, when I was working on Wall Street, I was tunnel vision, just focused on trying to survive or thrive in that world. Um. And even though I had obviously deep connections because the family in l A, I didn't have this rule feel for what life was like in a South central l A or Inglewood at that point. And so coming back, I didn't come back thinking, you know, hey, I I never wanted to be an activist or a never thought of myself as a philanthropist or impact investor. And I came back pursuing a great opportunity. And obviously I was excited to live close to siblings I never lived with, you know, prior to my life, and so that was the anticipation and excitement. But it was coming back and getting the visceral shock of you know, when I went back to the house that I lived at, you know, in fifty first nevermont as kid. And maybe there's someone in l A who experienced every moment of it, maybe they felt change, but I didn't see any change. It's certainly not any relative change to Santa Monica or Beverly Hills. Like when I first came back, you know, I lived in Santa Monica and I was like, it's it's like it's frozen in time, and there's definitely like a two tier maybe more tears, but it's definitely a two tier kind of society. And that having that visceral shock is what Thatt mean. They started thinking about, Okay, this is something that I have to focus on because it's someone who came from there. I hadn't really thought about it or spend any time on it. And I was like, so there are people who just one who don't know, They don't even have an exposure a way to know. And so because I do know and I do have exposure, like if I don't focus on it, like, how is it realistic that someone else will? And that's what made me start thinking about what would eventually become better ninety Yeah, because it's personal to you and you have the touch points, and you realize how easy it is for all of us, by the way, like whatever the circumstance, whatever the career path, to be focused on what we're doing. And if we don't make a change where we see a need for change, who who will. There's something you said before we started recording UM and we were talking specifically about kids, and you're like, you don't know what you don't know. But even for adults, right, you don't know what you don't know. And so it would be difficult for someone who doesn't come from you know, come from an environment like a Compton Eagle Englewoods out central Watts to to really have a feel for it or appreciate you understand it, and that's how would they you know? Um, so it works both ways. You know, you don't know what you don't know in both both kind of environments. Yeah, I mean, I think about it again. We talked about this before we started. But how lucky In hindsight, I understand how lucky I was to grow up the daughter of an immigrant and my dad and the daughter of a first generation of Arikan and my mom, my mom's mom came here through Alice Island, you know, had to sign her, had to sign in the book, the whole thing. And I remember helping my dad study for his citizenship test when I was twelve, Like I was making flash cards and it was like is he gonna get it? You know? And and the kind of community I grew up in because of my dad's work, and how you know, queer and diverse in both race and gender it was. And I was lucky to grow up with a family who loved everybody. And I think now understanding what I do, having lived where I've lived, having built the kind of community that I'm surrounded by, I think about how little I knew, Like I grew up riding horses in Burbank, and I would always hear about the Compton Cowboys, and I was like, how cool, Like I'm learning to be a cowgirl and there's cowboys in Compton. And I went to USC and I lived on twenty nine Man Hoover, and I was really clueless. I was kind of like, isn't l a amazing look at all these amazing people who lived together and work together, and like nobody was together. The amount of segregation and separation and economic disparity and and the generational holding back, especially as we're as as this conversation pertains to finance the holding back financially of people of color around America. But you see it so starkly in this city when you move neighborhood to neighborhood. I was like, you know, they say ignorance is bliss. I was blissfully unaware. I just was like, I love living in a city that's a melting pot. Like I didn't know and and I've lived in the middle of it forever. And and so I think too, in my own way, about how as you age and you you choose to learn the way, you're able to see things that you you just didn't see before. It's definite a pro active It's a proactive decision to go and like learn and explore because literally, I, um, I was a question I've been asking myself. The greater part of is how did I not, like, how do I not spend time thinking about this, you know for the past twenty years? You know. And it's definitely guilt basically because I did know, you know, I started off there and it's not like it wouldn't have been rational to assume that the world just changed when I left, And so I was like, you just get lost in your your daily life, um and you don't think about, you know, the greater or beyond yourself. Well and besides just being lost, I also think I don't know if if all this learning and exposure and and proactive choice to you know, embed with other activists and other people who want to change the world, It's actually made me feel so much more tenderness. And I've always been like a pretty tender hearted I was a tenderhearted kid, But I feel so much more tenderness for people because look like, we only have so much bandwidth and we're just these tiny humans trying to figure it out. And you know, you moved to Texas, and you were navigating your life with your great aunt, and you were learning, and you were expanding and diving into the world of all these books and becoming an athlete, and like you deserve to do that. We all deserve to do that. I can't help but think about it, and I wonder why what your thoughts are on it. I can't help but think about how society really does its best to keep us civically unengaged, to keep us not thinking in terms of community. You know how often if we heard like it's every man for himself, it's a rat race. You know, these industries are cutthroat. It's like we use these horrible analogies like to say it's cut throat, like that's literally an analogy from murder, and and we're just like, yeah, sleep when you're dead, and it's like, actually, no, if you don't sleep, you'll die. You know. We glorify really weird ship. And then I think it's only when we get a little further on the road of life where we go, wait, what what are we all doing? And and what I will say is, you know, not everybody sees something at a point in their life and then chooses to tailor their life around addressing it. A lot of people go, oh, that's unfortunate. Well someone's in charge, like there's you know, there's somebody running this. It's like, well, really, if we've learned anything from there, really isn't. So I don't know. I guess I say all of that only to say I hear it. I hear you, but also look what you're doing. And I, I don't know. I think it's awesome. No, I appreciate that. But even so I will say the um. So I started working on back to ninety like it was a it was a function of just this realization and this appreciation for like, you know, man, there's a whole world out there. And and and I did think back to all those little like when I first went to Texas, like I hated it right and and now I I now I can articulate like a genuine appreciation for everything about my grandmother. But while I was there, like a part of me always wanted to get away. Um, And I look back and I'm like, man, I had these things that I didn't appreciate, these little breaks that I got, um and how they're connected and that those that was my chance and it could have been anyone else, right, or I just think if I didn't have any of that, but what I have been And it's personal for me because you know, as much time as I spent in school, I have an older brother and he's probably been incarcerated for that same amount of time. And there was a point in time when our lives were perfectly they were this perfect overlap um and divergence over time has just been painful to to watch and feel and um and there's there's a spectrum between he and I. But had I stayed in South Central, my life would probably be much more like his right and not just cherry picking his story. But you know, have a younger brother who I didn't live with growing up. He's born after I left, but I got really close with him when I came back because he was he was young, dynamic, he's a rapper and he had his clothing line and so everything that he saw me doing he thought was really cool and that we were. He was old enough for me to like enjoy hanging out with him um but also being kind of a parental figure to him. We spent a lot of time together and he worked with me and appreciating so as I got to look at his life and like, how, you know, his kind of the focused growth and learning and and self investment kind of stopped at eighteen for him when he graduated from high school and he didn't go to college, and like that was kind of the after that. He was kind of out in the world trying to figure it out. And so we were working on that together and kind of July he was in a gang. July seventeen, he was murdered, and so I'm sorry, And so it brought home for me again. So when I was like, how is that with him? You know, almost every day for the past year and a half, and I didn't appreciate. I didn't appreciate that how treacherous his life was and the dangers that he faced every day. And had I really been tapped in or focused on that, I certainly could just grabbed him and taken him out of that that situation, right, um, And then it just made me think more fully about his life, you know, compared to mine, because um, being being someone who who was born in South Central when I was and getting to an Ivy League school, it was an outlier and it's probably still an outlier, and I think that thirty years has passed and it's still equally unlikely. But being from South Central and joining a gang back then wasn't an outlier, and you would think thirty years later right now would be. But it's an it's it's exactly the same. It's probably more likely, And then you know you're more likely to be born in one of those in Compton, South Central, Englewood, you know, the south side of Chicago. You pick a city and end up in a gang, as in end up going to the college. And I was like, that's there's something wrong as hey as a society where you know, we're the wealthiest country in the world and we're just okay with this. There are a lot of things like that, homelessness, whatever, but we're we either tacitly or kind of overtly we're like, well, it's every man for himself. But we make the decision that these things are okay. And so at that point, you know, I was already working on vector ninety and I was already you know, really focused on stuff in in South Central and thinking about broader impact. But when he got killed his name was Sean, I was like, now I have to shift my life, like you spend most of your time, it's unfortunately most of your time working. So I was like, I have to find a way that the thing that I'm doing with most of my time is addressing you know, the part of the world that I understand and I know, um that I can try to make an impact. And then at that point it was kind of went all in on you know whatever it is that you don't even know how to describe everything that I'm doing at times, but just very um, very direct, high impact ways to touch people at the community level. Yeah, So it's all been personal experience that's led me, not some grand planner or a scheme. But it strikes me, look, personal experience is what can change everything for us. Like you think back to the Supreme Court battle over gay marriage, and the data showed that overwhelmingly, if people knew one gay person, they would support gay marriage, no matter where they were from, their religious background, no matter what. So, whether it's that data point or any other, if we have a touch point to something that personalizes an issue, you it doesn't feel like an issue anymore. It feels real and and I think that's part of the problem. As as you mentioned, when we think about homelessness in a state like California. You you you've kind of been taught to look and think, oh, that's horrible, but it isn't personal. You don't know what to do, and then there's all of this sort of subconscious layer of bias or representation, and you think, well, those people did something wrong, or they're all drug addict or we're not looking at the system. We're not looking at a feedback loop, which, as you mentioned, means that over a thirty year period, the the likelihood of kids winding up in gangs is not decreasing. That's a that's a big fat red flag that society is doing something wrong, that we're not investing properly, we're not supporting communities properly. I think when when there's when there's a feedback loop like that, it's a hamster wheel. It's impossible to get off. Something has to intervene and stop the wheel. And that's why I think what you guys are do wing when you say like, I don't even know how to explain all of this, it's because it's monumental. Like I look at what you're doing with Vector ninety and with our community and with all of these initiatives as this enormous spherical like. It's not a it's not a pitch on a piece of paper. You've built something that functions like a globe like and it's all interconnected and it's all working, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and its impact and you've you've put a wrench in the wheel and now you get to do something else. For the people who have been on it, it's pretty incredible. And then when you I should let you describe it for me when I go talk to people, But everything you were saying prior to that point, I mean that speaks to to me. It speaks in the heart of a lot of the issues that we have. I mean talking about homelessness, or talking about kind of wealth and income gaps and how some people you know, just lift tough lives their entire life. We've been conditioned as part of the American ethos right capitalism and ability to build yourself up, put yourself up by the bootstrap. And I think at the core of it, it's a good thing, right, because it's supposed to be anything is possible. But to integrate that so we don't feel this this dissonance. When we see people who don't have or who who you know, homeless or underprivileged, we process it like it's whatever the situation is, it's the outcome of some set of decisions that they made or things they didn't do. But it was a it was a fair and rational process that got them there. So that makes it okay. Otherwise you would hurt, you would you had hurt a lot all the time if you saw homeless kids or you know, there are people who were in hunger in every city and every you know a lot of neighborhoods in this country, and you would feel compelled to do something right. And so I think it's just a collective it's a collective coping mechanism to think that whenever you see someone that their life is, you know, based on the decisions they made, and you don't think that they're unfair systems or structures that impact people differently. Right, I'm not addressing the reality that some people have boots to pull the straps ub on and some people have never gotten them. It's not a level playing field, and it's um and so then realizing that right, and it's and it's a process of un learning because you're taught that as a kid. You're taught that. Um. I remember so like when I was younger, like anyone who wants to have a job has a job, and you know, yeah, just um. I had an uncle in Texas and he was like, well, people pull their pants up and didn't and stop listening to that wrap and you know, didn't you slang? But that's that's kind of the mentality that you embrace. And so you look at someone and you're like, well, no, if they just did these things differently then, But now that I spent years trying to understand finance and economics and business like it's inescapable that they're are. Just when you're born on the downside, the advantage in a world like ours, it's self perpetuating. When you're born on the upside, it's it's self perpetuating, and you're kind of born within you know, kind of a bandwidth that you can go up or down a little bit. But it's really hard to break through unless you have some like me. It took six improbable things to happen, you know, for me to like charter course. It's very different than you know, a lot of my immedia family so yeah, so that appreciating that and understanding it. Yeah, it's it's informed the things that we're doing where we're really trying to Like, it sounds weird that we're trying to be so direct in grassroots that we want to have a large scale impact, but that's how I think things work because there are a lot of impressionistic ideas about change that never kind of trickle down. So it was important for for us and we were doing it to go and kind of be in the community and be present and started off with reaching just people came in our space, right, and the kind of planning seeds that could change mindsets and then hopefully change our broader kind of culture and inner cities if we took it from inner city inner city. I love that. I read something in a lot of the research I've done about the work you guys are doing, I read something that said it's not for the people, it's with two people, And I was like, Oh, that gives me chills, because it also makes me think of how we as a country could move forward. This this whole by the people for the people. It's like, well, it's not really working, so what if it was with the people and it's it's it was an acknowledgment on our part that we didn't have it all figured out. Like I mean, that's um, it's very presumptive. We're like, hey, we're gonna go and do this. We're gonna go and give this thing to you, do it for you, because that presumes that we know what it should be when really, you know, arriving at starting a coworking space and small business incubator in an industrial warehouse in the Crunchhall district, that wasn't a linear process of it was like literally were like, we have to do something that's sustainable, right, So something that can keep going even if you know, Nipsey got busy and took off as a superstar and couldn't come. It's frequently if my life changed, Let's not start something that can be taken away, right, So how do we start a business that has impact? And all we really cared about not even making money, but if it could pay for itself and pay for the staff, etcetera. So something self like sustainable impact. Can you walk to people listening who maybe don't know about Vector ninety and about the initiative, Can you kind of give us an overview of what it is because you mentioned that you took over this warehouse, how do you make the decision and what's it meant to be? So one that was kind of connecting threads of my life. So I'm focused on real estate, and so I wanted to be something that could really be hands on and involved with and passionate about. So I wanted to find something real estate related that had the intersection of like community impact, and so I went down had a few different ideas, but I figured to make an impact in the community had to be something had to be a physical space in the community. Is having a physical space and being present, I think just means a lot. It's embolic, but it it really Yeah, it really touches people. And community is about gathering and that's not just in inner cities anywhere. Like being fully present and having something having a place where people can go and feel secure and they know it's there. It's a comforting thing. So arrived at real estate and I was like, Okay, what's something that we can do in real estate? And I wanted it to be So we started off with these impressionistic and we wanted to be like a cultural hub and a social hub and intellectual hub people can come and learn and share. So literally, yeah, like I was like, we'll start out basically what we work, but in place based and not place based because it's just for the community. It's it's open anyone who will come there. But I had to be placed there because people in are in the community aren't going to go to Santa Monica or West Hollywood to go to we work. One. It's economically prohibitive, geographically prohibitive, and then kind of culturally and socially, it doesn't feel um as inclusive. And I'm not saying it's by design or intent, but to the community we were talking to, they didn't think those spaces were for them. It's like, we're going to create a space here for everyone, but you know it's for you because it's in your own backyard. So we started with the concept of coworking and then with the plan to incubate you know, entrepreneurs and small businesses that came to the space. And how does that work the incubation part, because let's say, just for easy math for me, there's ten offices and you get you know, and then ten desks, so you've got like ten companies and a rotating group of anywhere from ten to twenty local entrepreneurs in the community. So you've got twenty to thirty businesses. Let's say, how do you determine who you're going to incubate out of those businesses? Does everyone have the opportunity to apply or request mentorship? How does that work? Aren't so we pivoted. So our initial conception was that we would um, we're partnered with, were partner with an established incubator that would help us with the filtering process and the structure, but the Nipsey and I would go and raise capital from kind of our sphere of influence. So people similar to Nipsey that were you know, had the hearts of the community. And so we have a traditional incubator where we take sixty ten companies and and expose them to a systematic process of education, growth, opening up networks, and helping with capital. What we discovered, you know, in the first six months was that one we had to educate the community about what coworking was and what it wasn't. And then a lot of the entrepreneurs or companies that came there were some kind of gaps, kind of gaps in where they were relative to where you know, a a start up or an entrepreneur who's going to we work in Santa Monica where they would be in terms of their process. And so we spent the first six months to a year being very hands on at the human level with the people who came in and so it wasn't as scalable as we thought, and so we were like, you know what we need to uh, we need to step back and be more broad based and just start with programming and educational curriculum that fills some of those gaps so that you know, we can ultimately have entrepreneurs and small businesses coming out of our space that have a complete deck. They have, you know, a crystallized vision of what their product is and they can articulate it. Yeah, so we had to abstract a little bit and start at a more foundational level than incubation, and so programming and content is our focus now, um educational inputs into the business process. That's very cool because again, when you talk about when you were talking about the difference between people from the community having to travel as it's prohibitive, but having to travel to West Hollywood or Santa Monica. One of the things that it makes me think about is how in the sprawl of America, and certainly in the microcosm of California, l A. You have these deserts. We and you hear a lot about food deserts, but there are opportunity deserts there. There are there are spaces in our cities that have not been supported with the resources, and then these gaps come up, and it's really cool to hear about you guys being light enough on your feet that you could pivot to then say, oh, before we do this big goal, what we're gonna do is actually just turn on an access tap to information and support so that we can start filling in some of the holes in in what has been a desert in this arena. And without knowing it, you've kind of touched up on kind of one of the biggest learnings. What we got started so because because Nipsey was a big draw, so people from outside the community would come to the space, which was great because we wanted that kind of cross pollination. Um people would come and once they got to the space, there's just there wasn't a lot around the space, right, So people need a third place between home and work, and we all have things during the day, we go to the gym, we go to our favorite coffee shop or cafe to kind of break up the monotony in the field. But they were just little around us, and so they were people who were were dynamic entrepreneurs and startups that would come, but it wasn't practical for them to base themselves there because it would be hard to take meetings or attract other people to come and spend a lot of time. The food desert thing is real, just you know, day to day feedback. You know, I want, I want to go to go to the gym, and it's hard for me to go to the gym here, so unfortunately, I'm going to go work out of a different space. So then we were like, we're just gonna create the ecosystem, like of a self supporting ecosystem kind of in this compound. And so a gym concept was always something we we thought about and talked about, but we decided to go with a social space first that during the day would act as the juice bar and coffee shop, but then at night could be more social. So you could go and you can watch a Lakers game or in a you know, in an environment where you felt comfortable with everyone that was around you. You could have you know, drinks and just kind of relax and be outside of work. And so we had this so whole house concept and I hate appropriating, like soho house and we work, but it's a but it's good to have something relative. So it's um, it's a it's a social membership club. It's we're doing at a really high level right in in in the neighborhood adjacent to to Vector ninety. Um, we're excited about it. So a lot of plans got put on old after Nipsey died, unfortunately, and we would shut the space down for a few months. We opened back up into summer, middle of the summer, and you know, we've finally kind of gotten back on track and executing some of the vision that we had. And so I'll be happy to walk you around the space, um at the end of this month when the social concept is complete and I'm really proud of what we're doing there. And then after that we're gonna transition onto the gym concept. UM, so we'll have the coworking space and go ahead. So we had a coworking space, we did open up. We open the podcast studio before um, before starting on the social club concept, and after that we'll do a gym and then UM, I think we'll probably take a break and and see how it's all working together to get feedback, and then um really building on content um and programming. And that's so cool too, because so many startups, so many businesses don't give themselves, whether it's the founders not thinking about it or them feeling too pressured by their investors. So many companies that are being berthed don't have the bandwidth or the leeway to test and then adjust and to add in order to service the bigger final vision. And it's so cool that you guys are able to do that. Can you talk to me a little bit about you know, there's a couple of initiatives that I want to get into for people listening. I want you to tell people about our opportunity, the concept of own our own, and a little bit about opportunity zones. So I'd say a few casual things for sure, So I'd say Vector ninety and our opportunity and even own our own, they're all part of the same concept. Um, it's a big under one big we just had to have a it's a nebulous impressionist at being. We're trying to do and like I keep saying the same things, we want to find, you know, we want to find things at work, like at the community level, and then the ones that are working to have an impact, then replicating scale. So we had to have a start, right, And so I was like, we can't just go and say we're going to be an impact oriented thing. So let's start with a coworking space and created will react well, react to the reactions, and then we'll learn and grow from there. But it was always with this you know, more grandiose vision, and so we started with the space, and then after opening Vector ninety, we had the chance to to buy the Marathon store um, which you know was symbolically important, but it was just really meaningful because they've been tenants in that space for ten years and they started with funds, they started selling T shirts outside of the store and then got a stall and then took over the entire thing, and they were they were incredible tenants. And then it's funny we bought it from the cellar. It was like, you know, you guys are never late. He was like, you guys changed this entire kind of intersection based on what you've done. So seeing how important I mean, it was really important to nip Um and it was profound for me to be a heart of that because it was such a big part of his brand. But seeing how it reverbated with everyone around, we were like, owning the land under something is important in the communities like this where you know, I said, you have kids who were born enjoying gangs and they die for these blocks that they don't even own. I was like, we have to. We wanted to teach and encourage people to to start, you know, owning part of their communities. Um. And so it just became this bigger thing that we were talking and thinking about where you know, us doing in South Central it's great, but that doesn't make the kind of universal shift that we want to achieve and kind of inner city culture. So we're like, we have to get the Nipsey of Philadelphia, in Chicago and in Miami to partner with and do the same thing. That's still not gonna be enough investment just this group, but it's a model or it's something that people can replicate and model themselves after. Yes, and you can begin to get peop well thinking differently. I spent four years living in Chicago and I moved into a neighborhood there right when I got there, and people were like, you can't live there, You're crazy, what are you doing. I was in the West Loop and I was on the west side of the west Loop, and it was really crazy in the past seven years to see my neighborhood turnover. The so house moved in, all these things started to happen. I mean they were like restaurants. I think there's a virginal tale near the west Yeah there is. Yeah, it's more River North, but it's close. And Stephanie Izzard, who's like a big female chef who won one of the cooking shows. This is embarrassing that I don't know this. Don't judge me. Um, this is where my dyslexia comes in. And I'm like chopped or iron cheffer. I don't know if she cuts things. She's amazing. But she had moved her restaurant in there, and she started buying up the neighborhood and she opened her restaurant, and then she opened a dinner and then she bought the spot next door and opened a bakery, and then she bought three blocks away and opened another place. She's amazing. Stephanie's a ratic, she's she's a baller and for a female chef, I was just like, you go. But the neighborhood is really transitioned. And all my local spots like Olympia Meets and all all these little places that were like I used to go to this produced spot next to the lack Home Coffee and all of them got priced out. But there's one family these and like they speak to my mom's side of the family. They're they're this great Italian deli. JP Grazianos makes my favorite sub sandwich in Chicago. And the Grazianos bought their building back and I think the eighties, and they are the only local family business that hasn't been priced out of the neighborhood. And it's so it was a wild thing to watch everything change, and it is it. It's made me think about how I wish I had started learning about this stuff when I was twenty two. And if you can start moving into spaces and and encourage a whole new version of what it means to be in a neighborhood, what it means to to wrap your neighborhood. And you think about how so many of the city's l A Chicago, Philly that you talk about their city pride, and part of loving your block is for it to be yours. And so yeah, I mean again, I couldn't say it better. So it's having people connected through ownership and and even if it wasn't direct ownership, but knowing. So the reason why the all of l A loving it, But the reason why in South Central he's so beloved is because as he became a superstar, you know, he kept the Marathon store there. He and he employed people directly from the neighborhood. The people came to the store, you know, they were treated with respect and they were served. I mean the store was really cool. You know, it was very um I think he always said he created the first smart store, which he did without a cool um tech elements to it. But he created something that you know, if you throw a rock in any direction around the store, it's like fried chicken, fast food, pawn shops, paid Alan places. So he created something that was out of place in the neighborhood. And we were like, this shouldn't be out of place because if you would do it, and I would do it. Um, there are other people that would do it. We just have to make them know that it's possible and offered them support and here and the crazy thing was he so the marathon clothing is it's premium priced, right, and people were glad to come and pay it. And when they weren't shopping there, they were going to you know, fair Fax the shop or going downtown or to the west side of the shop. And so there's the demand on the side of on the part of the community. And so we're like, look, we have to demonstrate that you know, these businesses will work or quality thoughtful things will work here, and um, we're not seeing it. And again, I don't think it's malicious on the part of the people who own and developing inner cities, right. I think it's you have some guy who buys a building. He's a doctor, and you know he's a doctor in Calabasas, and he gets shown an investment and you know it's in a retail center. He's gonna get a check every month. He's not proactively making a statement about what he wants to see in the neighborhood, right, He's not cultivating his experience. And that's not even that's not even the onus of an investor, right, But it's just that in these neighborhoods where the legacy of development has been so poor, it it sustains inertia, and it's a bad inertia, right, And so it takes someone who is connected and who does Karen wants to see them different, to like create that new that new thing, and that's what we're trying to start um and so that's what our opportunity was. It became the real estate under everything being so important. So you know, our strategy and structure was to start each of these cities with a vector ninety and then invest and acquire around it so we actually have you know, we're actually have roots planted in the community and they see that we're going to be there and it's going to be a real enduring relationship partnering with people from you know, they're fifteen kind of core inner cities in this country that if you could impact all of them like you would really have ubiquity and kind of the culture that we're trying to impact. So that was a strategy and it was dual fold. One is figuring out how do we educate and share and teach you know, the things that I learned through you know, going to three schools and a lifetime of working in finance and the things that had learned by radical entrepreneurship UM. And then there had to be a a skin in the game component where we're not just talking and saying and we don't just have a nonprofit. We want to be frontline kind of active in this. And so that's what On our Own was, where we were raising a fund to go and actually do this and to give people. And I think one cool, one cool aspect of On our Own is we're crowdfunding from these communities so that whatever investing in the intent was to let them and invest alongside us. So again that doing it with the community UM. And that's the most extreme version of it. So our opportunity, I think is the is the umbrella concept and then Vector ninety is a specific manifestation of it, and On our Own is a manifestation of it. But you know, feed planet, shoulder to shoulder with the community, finding ways to create economic opportunity and in these cities and letting people buy into that investment fund for dollar amounts that normally would not be taken by a bank. You know, if you if you take a check from someone in the community for a thousand dollars to let them buy into a real estate endeavor, that's not an opportunity people generally have. It's harder, it's more work, and it's and I'd say it's just the way the it's actually the way that every kind of every investment body that protects investors to set up. It's more scrutiny, it's more compliance, it's more reporting if you have smaller investors in it. So it's like even people who would typically want to I don't think most people would care whether they're taking mom and pop dollars or not if it wasn't more work and ultimately more money to like support that. But it is just, you know, they're more hurdles to it. But with everything they were trying to do, it wouldn't make sense. If we didn't do that, it wouldn't be we'll be straying slightly from the mission if we didn't say no coming home part of this. We're telling you to go and buy back the blog. But if you don't give you a chance to do it with us, it's a missed opportunity. And again It may not be easy, but it's right, and I think we have to start moving into an era where all business shifts that way. We're the way we each operate in the world shifts that way. And maybe it requires a little more work or a little more thought, but it has the potential to change the world around us, not just our world as an individual. That feels exciting to me. And when you said a precedent, you prove that it's possible. And that's I mean, I'm optimistic about because I see that in so many different verticals and so many different parts of life where people are awakening too. We have to find new modes of thinking, in new ways of even doing business. I think the Larry Fink was the CEO of of Black Rock. He came out and he, you know, he had a pretty radical message for corporate American. He's like, you know, we have a responsibility to the greater good into communities and not just the shareholders, not just the bottom line. And going forward. I mean, they're one of the they're the largest asset manager in the world. We're going to invest with that mind. And so it's telling that, you know, a titen of capital because there's always been E s G investors and impact investors and green investors who have been fighting a good fight. So to have someone who at the margin, you know, is a difference maker, UM, it's it's very it's hardening to see that the world is I think the next twenty years is going to be you know, people incorporating impact and everything they do. And I am excited that we're in a very specific part of We're an inter city focused or initiaty based and whenever we we share what we're doing and we would talk to people. Now I go city to city and talking people. It's awesome to get the feedback to people wanted this. They wanted to participate in improving their communities, investing in it and making an impact in difference not just for themselves but for people around them. So it's uh, it's very um heartening for people listening who might be in a community that you're not coming to next but who want to build something. Is there advice that you would give them to get started? Yes? So I think that the few things that um, I've taken away from our experience is you don't have to have it all figured out. UM, you don't have to know everything to make change because we didn't have it all figured out. Do not have it all figured out. Um. And this isn't being cute because I'm on your show, but it's very much a work in progress eything we're doing. And anyone who doesn't think that about what they're doing, UM, it's a limiting view to think you know, you're at the the be all end all or the the fullest evolution of whatever it could be. So not starting and welcoming and putting feedback from others, um and seeking out help are some of the main things because we we just learned a lot. We learned a lot from really engaging with the community and and and incorporating that. So one starting wherever you are. It's been my experience that almost anyone when you ask for help, they will try to help in some way. UM. And I think a lot of people don't like to ask for help if you as a sign of maybe not weakness, but um, maybe it's a fear that people won't help. Maybe they think it's a sign of of weakness, but a combination of things. But most people will help, especially if they see your genuine and whatever you're doing and that it it could do good for others around you. So those are some of the things that highlight pretty one who wants to do something in their community and hope fully what we're doing conserved as a model for other people to and wherever they are to copy some element of it. And can you tell me about the investor Challenge? Sure? So I used to do this thing on social media called market Monday's where people would send me questions and I try to respond to as many other than as possible, and that it went from being I'd have a couple of dozen questions, um every Monday too, it got to a point where I had, you know, hundreds, and so it just showed me the demand to to really understand investing economics capital markets from you know, people had no exposure and people who you wouldn't typically think of as being investors or caring. It was overwhelming and I was like, wow, there's there's an opportunity here to to kind of teach. And so it was supposed to be this kind of one off thing I did. So I said, the first hundred people who go and open an investment account, we're gonna seed it with a hundred bucks to take your first trade. The intent and the hope being that of that hundred people, some fraction to them will get into the idea of following the markets and the concept of consistently saving whatever they could and seeing it grow over time. So we did that and then we gave away a hundred bucks a hundred people and it happened in twenty four hours. And then it was very cool that once we did at other people started reaching out saying that, hey, how you know how much did it cost to fund you know, a hundred accounts And it was like twelve thousand, hundred bucks after wire fees were included, and so we got so many incoming inquiries were like, well, now we have to stop and figure out a responsible way to take money from other people to do this UM. And so we set up a five of ones E three just geared towards this. But you know, it's the idea was always expanding the curriculum and financial literacy and basics of finance programming. But did I'm started right? And so we had to stop and set up structures and systems and now we're working with UM. There's a large asset manager in l A that reached out and they're like, well, how can we support We want to get money, but can we be more additive And we were like, actually, yeah, They're like, there's a lot of educational curriculum and content that will be helpful for you know, someone else to do, so we can focus on the core we're doing. So now it's become it's become this this thing that can be scaled, and it will be scaled. It will reach a lot of people. Uh, how do people listening who want to download or access that curriculum? Where did they go? I would say, go to our opportunity dot com and leave your email address and once, um, we're a few weeks away from from our kind of finance one on one course and then it's going to be layers on top of that. So providing their information there will we'll remain connected. That's exciting going forward. You know, you've got so much you're working on in so many incredible initiatives, and everything is so centered on community and empowerment. But there's obviously this big gaping hole with the loss of Nipsey. How how moving forward do you look at the impact and figure out where to put that emotion to keep driving the marathon along. Yeah, you know, what we um So I've been thinking a lot about that recently because we as we were as we were completing the acquisition of the Marathon Store, and we were, you know, beginning to launch our opportunity and this is the end of actually interesting story. So we shot a documentary around the concept um so, not just the act of us acquiring the Marathon Store, but we really shot you know, end up being a really moving piece because a lot of us about what Nip's life meant to meant to the community, like how he was um a symbol of opportunity and inspiration, and then kind of sharing you know, our plans moving forward when we wanted this to be a call to action. So we were starting this the beginning of last year. We actually got the rough cut of the documentary on March fift and so I was traveling through the end of the month, and then obviously he died, so we never got to connect and kind of go over it. But everything I put on hold after he died. I mean, it's just the one was thinking about, you know, business as usual, and like I said, we should down Vector nine D. We didn't even look at the documentary. We put plans for the on our own fund on hold, the opportunity launch. We put it on hold, and the people who were close to obviously his family, his lifelong friends, will helped build his businesses. The hurts never gonna go away, and I think it will be years and years before it's not acute and they don't feel it every day. Especially being in l A. That was a really tough thing and the immediate aftermath. Just being in l A. I think anyone who knew him or who was a fan of him from Afar felt it, but being in this city it was twenty times over because you couldn't escape images, sound like just everything about him. It was a looming thing. So there was a period where is kind of a moratorium, a natural moratorium on anything that we were doing, because it was impossible to think about how we pick up the pieces because he was, you know, legitimately a part of everything, and his d n A wasn't everything. So things definitely aren't back to normal, but and really honoring that marathon continues. You know, we are starting to pick up the thread. So a year later we are. We did start sharing information about our opportunity UM, we did start structuring the fund to roll it out and just we did start working with Ectmindy again, and you know, everything is a year delayed, but it wouldn't be true to his ethos, it wouldn't be true to you know, what's become a universal kind of chance for people who were committed to, you know, feel like working passionately towards your dreams no matter how long it takes in to spite ups and downs, if we didn't keep the marathon going. And so I think now we're just resuming the work that we the things that we are aligned on prior to his death. And then in my own specific way, that's how you know, we're keeping the marathon going and then broader anything, any and everything I do from this point, people are always gonna associated with Nipsey, and so that is a m that's a responsibility, you know, to make sure that everything that I do. So, like we were talking about the fund, it would be much easier to do it a different way and and just go and raise a fund from institutions or high network and investors, but that connection to his legacy will always kind of be a road map, um. And so as I'm making decisions, the things that I filter through, like is this aligned with you know what, I know that we both understood and agreed and wanted to see in ourselves in our community. So everything I do from this point, you know, we'll tie into his legacy in my narrow part of the world. That's beautiful for for people listening who are inspired, who want to be a part of uplifting the movement. Is there a way to be involved, a way to contribute. Yeah, look for people in l A. So this goes back to doing things shoulder and shoulder. We're at a place now where like anyone who who wants to be a part of Vector ninety or our opportunity or on our own one, we have a physical space and so we were we're trying to be as radical as possible to make it so we're creating it together. And so we're rolling out actually office hours with mental health experts to address trauma in the neighborhood. We have tons of incredible people with really um strong backgrounds or are coming to teach financial literacy and basic real estate investing in our physical spaces. So we started in South Central we were launching Vector nineties in Chica. I go in Baltimore imminently and it's gonna be the same there where you know, our approach is going to be we're gonna go into the community and we're gonna open up kind of what we're doing and let the community come build with us. UM. In terms of the investment side, we're crowdfundings. Were raising money from anyone who wants to invest, you know, in inner cities, and our focus is affordable housing, which that's a whole separate conversation because I've learned so much about housing in this country over the past affordable housing over the past three years, and I really think besides the environment, it's one of the it's a civil rights issue, and it's one of the most pressing issues UM in this country that I think people aren't going to get it for another few years, but we're kind of running towards it right now. So yeah, you know, going to opportunity dot Com, they can learn about the fund and we'll be sharing ways that people can get in touch. We try to be responsive people have questions or if they have suggestions, or if there are ways that they want to help. But apart from capital, were crowdfund we're crowdfunding building our community. Sow you touched on it earlier. But it is a question I like to ask everybody. And I know that you said it in terms of the business, so maybe the answer for you personally is different. But the podcast is called work in progress. And when you hear that phrase, what what comes to mind for you in your life? That's a work in progress right now? Ah, just like business, I'd say, um, so so much. And and actually, let me step back from that question and say something that I meet people all the time actually in either in the Crunchhall district or you know, in Englewood or in any go to different cities in the gap, and their perception of me and my perception I want to know it myself, is that you're this um fully evolved, perfect complete body of work and that everything is like perfectly in place. Like now, there's a there's a lot of this is chance, happenstance. I make mistakes on a regular basis, and I was just trying to repeat the same mistakes and it's effort and it's work, you know. So I don't know if actually I think I'll always be work in progress. I think one specific thing I'm trying to figure out now is balanced and it's kind of a buzz word, but it really is. I have let things get imbalanced in terms the balance between work and then family or work and just taking time to focus on my health or my mental well being. So that's something I'm focused on. Yeah, But there's so many different ways, so many different things. Like we talked about reading when I was younger, and that was probably the defining one of the defining attributes in my childhood and things, and I sit with allowing me to to to go to the schools and I went to have the opportunities to have like I can't tell you when the last time was that I read a book for pleasure leisure, and I think about stuff like that. Those are small things that you know we shouldn't I shouldn't let get lost. And then focusing on my kids. It's in my family. It's good stuff. I'm trying to figure out how to get more books on my list. So it's hard. You are not alone there, my friend. I'm embarrassed at times at how I'm out of it. I am, well, it's a work in progress. What else can we do? Thank you so much? Excellent. This show is executive produced by me, Sophia Bush, and sim Sarna. Our supervising producer is Alison Bresnick. Our associate producer is Cate Linlee. This episode was edited by Matt Sasaki and our music was written by Jack Garrett and produced by Mark Foster. This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy