Hilary Abell

Hilary Abell, co-founder of Oakland based startup Project Equity, talks about her organization's mission to help small business owners secure their company's future by transferring ownership to the employees.

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1:You're listening to cake, a l x Berkeley 90.7 Fam, university of California listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calyx celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar. And today we have Hillary [00:00:30] at bell with us. Hi Hillary. How are you? Hi Lee. I'm doing great. And Hillary is the cofounder of project equity. Um, it's a a, is it a startup or as relatively 

Speaker 2:we are a startup. We'll have our third anniversary and a couple of weeks. 

Speaker 1:Third Anniversary. Yeah, based in Oakland. That's right. And a really interesting idea we want to get into. And every, uh, cofounder I have on the show, Hillary, I usually start by asking, uh, the same question, which is, uh, you're someone who started an organization from scratch [00:01:00] because you saw an issue. So can you give us the problem statement? What is project equity trying to solve? 

Speaker 2:We're aiming to address the growing income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor across this country in particular starting in the bay area and in other regions where we're already working. I personally have been working with employee ownership and worker cooperatives for the last 13 years intensively. And, and going back further than that, and I know from my own experience that there are powerful [00:01:30] force for improving job quality and building wealth for low wage workers. And my co founder Alison Lin gain has decades of experience in larger scale social ventures for profit and nonprofit. And we share this passion for addressing the wealth gap, the racial wealth gap and income inequality. And when we realize that my experience in worker cooperative development and employee ownership and her experience with larger scale social ventures, we're a perfect combination. We decided to launch something new to take on this problem. 

Speaker 1:Okay. Well it's a really fascinating [00:02:00] idea. I'm really excited that you're here today. Really speaks to me. And before we get into kind of what it, what project we does and what a work we're cooperative is. Can you, uh, just give us a little bit about your background. How did you and your journey come to looking at and saw seeing this problem that you want to solve? 

Speaker 2:Sure. So, so I started out right after college as a teacher in the inner city and that wasn't something I was able to do for a long time. I wasn't great at classroom management, but I did get to see urban poverty up close, get to see the resilience and the amazing [00:02:30] kids that were in those communities. Um, so that was one of my first, um, influences on why I care about this problem. I then worked for a worker owned company called equal exchange. And I got into that not because I was interested in business to be honest. I wanted to be on the front lines of social change. But I came to equal exchange through some community organizing I had been doing in relation to the wars in Central America. And when the war in El Salvador ended, um, equal exchange approached me and others at organization I was working for [00:03:00] at the time about using coffee and fair trade coffee in particular to help promote peace in El Salvador after the war. 

Speaker 2:And so through that and through the fair trade mission, I got into using business as a tool for social change. And I was in my sort of mid twenties and learned how to be a salesperson, something I never thought I would do. I learned how to work with farmer partners in Latin America who were organized in cooperatives and also got elected to the board of directors of that growing company of equal exchange as a worker [00:03:30] owner. So I also experienced incredible learning. I got to sit next to leaders of larger scale, socially responsible companies on that board and learn about business and how business can be a force for good. So that opened my perspective and helped me see how cooperatives can change the world. And from there I did a bunch of work in the nonprofit sector related to fair trade and other international issues and then found myself working with a local organization in Oakland called wages. 

Speaker 2:And we were building cooperatives and work around businesses [00:04:00] from the ground up here in the bay area. And that's, I was there for eight years and we saw incredible impact from the work we were doing. We built five eco-friendly home cleaning businesses that were owned by about a hundred immigrant women from Mexico and Central America. Wow. How cool. It was really exciting and I saw an incredible change from the time I started there in 2003 to when I left in 2011 when I first got there, we were doing an impact study that one of our foundation funders had helped us set up and we found that one of the cooperatives [00:04:30] was experiencing 40% increases in household income among their members. Wow. And that was very inspiring. That really mattered 

Speaker 1:to cut the middleman basically. Like they, they were getting all the income straight to them, 

Speaker 2:the workers. That's right. And they also built and owned together an infrastructure that would support them growing the company and working full time instead of working part time. Okay. So it was a combination of sort of better hourly pay and full time work and stability instead of just kind of casual variable schedules. And then they [00:05:00] got health insurance as well. And so that inspired us to try to scale up that model. We built a larger cooperative business in Oakland that eventually got to have 35 women [inaudible] owning it and then built a new one in San Francisco as well. And through the one in Oakland, we saw that eventually their household incomes were increasing by 80% wow. So went from 40 to 80 and the good trend. Yeah. Yeah. That was a great, it was a great trend and not all employee on businesses will have, you know, that degree of increase in, in [00:05:30] household income. But in general they do create better quality jobs. And so when I saw that [inaudible] I just knew that I wanted to do more of it and wanted to make the business model of employee ownership more accessible to to more low wage workers. 

Speaker 1:Yeah. What a, what a fascinating journey that you've been on. And thanks for sharing. Uh, we're talking to Hillary Ebell. She's a cofounder of project equity here on method to the madness on KLX Berkeley. Um, and before we go further into what project equity [00:06:00] does, I'd love to just take a step back and have you define for us what is a worker owned cooperative 

Speaker 2:project? Equity works with employee on businesses in different forms. And the one that we've started with and work most closely with is the worker owned cooperative. The definition of a Co op is a business that's owned and controlled by its members. So in the case of an employee owned cooperative, it's the people who work there who own the business and control it democratically by having the majority of seats on [00:06:30] the board of directors. So that's kind of the fundamental definition. There are actually seven cooperative principles that govern consumer cooperatives, farmer cooperatives, credit unions, and other kinds of cooperatives that are actually much more prevalent than worker owned cooperatives in this country. So there are seven common principles 

Speaker 1:and what, what is the, is there a governing body for cooperators? What are those seven principles? Who, who owns those? 

Speaker 2:There's something called the international cooperative alliance, which is global and does have kind of regional networks [00:07:00] through different parts of the world and has, you know, subsets for the different types of cooperatives. Um, and then there's also the model of employee stock ownership plans, also known as Aesop's, which is a u s specific model that is more commonly practiced than worker cooperatives. And we also see that as having a great role to play in this movement. And it's something that we're looking forward to working with directly as well. 

Speaker 1:So, um, let's talk a little bit more about the aim of project equity. Um, so you've given us some generalities around, um, your background and, and, uh, [00:07:30] the power that you've seen of unlocking business for, for, uh, for good. But it seems when I was doing some research on your company or your organization, you guys are, um, really focused on transferring, uh, companies and who are currently owned by an owner and a different ownership structure and, uh, having them go through a transition as opposed to starting something from scratch. That's right. You tell, tell me more about why that's the strategy you guys pursued. 

Speaker 2:That was a very explicit decision [00:08:00] for us in our first year. Um, 2014, we were fortunate enough to have a grant that allowed us to research different pathways to scale as we like to refer to them. So we looked at doing scale oriented startups and we looked at converting successful existing businesses to employee ownership. And we did choose the ladder. We were one of the first movers and an early champion of this strategy, which is actually now, um, being, uh, uh, uptaken has been taken up by, um, actors around the country and we're part of a national [00:08:30] collaborative and a growing movement that's supporting transitioning successful businesses. And there's two reasons that project equity saw this opportunity. One is that demographically the huge shift that we're going through as a country and as a world actually with baby boomer retirements is incredibly significant. We tend to hear a lot about it in terms of the impact on health care and the impact on social security and things like that. It also is already having a big impact on our small business community, about [00:09:00] 50% actually a little bit more nationally of privately held businesses are owned by baby boomers here in the bay area. Project equity has just done some original research that we released back in February that shows that 45% of privately held businesses that employ people in the bay area are owned by baby boomers. 45% 45% 

Speaker 1:present of, of jobs. Overall jobs are small businesses that provide jobs, 

Speaker 2:small businesses that provide jobs. Okay. That's right. And it's actually 63,600 [00:09:30] businesses in the nine bay area counties. Wow. And it accounts for about 626,000 employees and almost 150 billion in total sales. 626,000 

Speaker 1:employees and there's about six or 7 million people in the bay area. That's right. So 10% of the area is employed by baby boomer businesses that are, that are going to end at some point unless they figure out what to do. 

Speaker 2:Absolutely. So, so we've been [00:10:00] asking ourselves the question and asking dozens, hundreds of other people this question for the last two years, what's going to happen to these businesses? So it's been known for some time. The SBA actually did a study back in 2004 that showed that only 15% of family owned businesses will pass on to the next generation. And it goes down to about 5% when you go to the third generation. So this classic concept that we have of a business being handed on to a son or a daughter just isn't happening for the vast majority of businesses. So what happened? 

Speaker 1:It's to them [00:10:30] first. It's only 15% goes to the first or second generation. The other 85% do they die? What happened? 

Speaker 2:Yes. Um, they, many of them do die. And that's what we're concerned about is there a lot of really healthy, vibrant businesses that contribute so much to our local economies and to the unique nature of our communities that that could actually close. Um, and many are closing already. We're hearing about it every day in the bay area. Um, some many will also get bought out and often that'll be by a large corporation or by an out-of-state buyer and out of area buyer. And usually when there is [00:11:00] an acquisition like that, there's a lot of change that happens. So some people will get jobs in the parent company, but there are always a lot of layoffs and sometimes the companies are even shut down. And you know, just the parts are the like you're like, you would take parts of an old car, you know, they'll take the assets of the business and the client list, but not maintain the role in the community. Sure. 

Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we're talking to Hillary Ebell. She's the, uh, Co founder of project equity, a startup based in Oakland that is helping companies transform themselves to uh, uh, [00:11:30] an employee owned cooperatives. Um, so I wanted to ask you about something I like to ask a lot of entrepreneurs like yourself. Um, once you had the idea, it sounds like you have a lot of experience that's led you to see this problem and really and passion around solving a major kind of social issue that we have. Um, but there's a big leap between seeing the issue and then actually starting something. So can you [00:12:00] take us through that process of how you had the spark of like, I got this idea, you and your partner, but then how did you actually get this thing off the ground? You mentioned a grant, like how did you get to that point? 

Speaker 2:Yeah. Um, so Alison Lynn gain and I spent probably two years meeting weekly or biweekly developing the idea, thinking about who we wanted to talk to about it, where we could potentially get some funding to get going, what we would want the program to look like, what we would actually do, how we would contribute to scale, which really was our [00:12:30] guiding guiding principle. The reason to do something together was this combination of scale and the value of employee ownership and really trying to scale that up for the benefit of, of low wage workers. So we spent a couple of years meeting casually and planning and there were two things that helped us turn it into something that we could pay ourselves a little bit to do and really start focusing our time on. One was that we had a first investors, so there's nothing like a seed investor. Um, my can again of give something back office products, which is an Oakland based, [00:13:00] um, national company, one of the original certified B Corp's and socially responsible businesses. 

Speaker 2:I'm sure in the country. We buy all our products from them and my work, they're terrific. They're a great company and Mike is a real visionary, has been involved in workforce development locally and also in, in socially responsible business. And we knew Mike and we sat down with him one day and told him what we wanted to do and asked if he would support us with a seed grant. And when he said yes, that was a big boost to our confidence and to our, just our gut [00:13:30] sense that this was something that others were gonna want to support. And then there was a unique program called one bay area. Uh, it was, and they had an economic prosperity pilot program that they did, um, back in 2014 and to be honest, we got very lucky because this was a very unique grant opportunity, one time only as part of this five year initiative called Plan Bay area. 

Speaker 2:And as a startup, we never would've been able to get it, but we were able to partner with an established organization, [00:14:00] the East Bay Community Law Center and with another partner called the sustainable economies law center. And we designed a program to start, um, an initial community-based training program for worker cooperatives that we called the worker co-op academy. And then also to do research on strategies for scale. So when I talk about Alison and I having looked really closely at what industries we would work in, what would it take to do larger scale startups versus this conversion strategy that grant funded us to do that research. [00:14:30] And when we looked at the conversion strategy, we found that there was a lot of interest. There was a lot of curiosity among business owners. We had a lot of conversations, did some focus groups, and we also did some research on companies that had between 20 and 200 employees in Oakland in particular. And found that there were a handful of industries where there were a good number of, at that size, employing the workforce that we wanted to support. Um, so we could see that there were a lot of opportunities even just in the city of Oakland for businesses that would [00:15:00] potentially benefit from employee ownership. 

Speaker 1:[inaudible] well, so it sounds like it was a very measured kind of process. Right. We're definitely the sort of, um, logical types of entrepreneurs. And I know a lot of people just go more by Guy, but yeah. Yeah, we got very lucky with that first name later. That's not your style. Not as much as most entrepreneurs. Well, um, you know, one thing I wanted to ask you about, which is, so why I'm very passionate about the topic is I believe in a very, I think it's a very American concept of [00:15:30] ownership and the power of ownership. And I think that's one of the central thesis that you're, uh, basing your organization on. So tell, tell me a little bit about your take on how important ownership is for workers. 

Speaker 2:It's a game changing concept. Um, and I can talk first maybe from my own experience. I mentioned that when I went to work at equal exchange as a 22 or 23 year old, I wasn't interested in business. It wasn't [00:16:00] anything that was on my mind. Um, and I didn't think of myself as entrepreneurial in any way, but when I got inside of this business that was co owned by all of the worker owners, I started to be able to, to build muscles and get exposed to business concepts and um, business experiences that inspired me and that built my skills. And then getting to work on strategy and financial management and analysis and things like that by being on the board and not just being a front line sales and producer relations person, which [00:16:30] was my day job. Um, I got very passionate about it and learn so much. 

Speaker 2:So I saw the, how one can build skills through shared ownership and at that time I never would have started something. Um, and in fact, in, in my previous role at wages, I was, was part of the startup team for the two worker cooperatives that we started during my time there. But until project equity never started something on my own. And of course I didn't do it on my own. It was having a great co-founder that I think has been a secret to success for us. And actually for most startups they say that [00:17:00] it's much better to co-found than to found on your own. Yeah. Um, so, so that was my own experience that through shared ownership I was able to become an entrepreneur and I do see that with low wage workers as well. So if you think of, um, women from Mexico and Central America that I worked with in the green home cleaning businesses, uh, this woman named Clementine F for example, who when she started with the cooperative, she was working two jobs and was having to have her older son feed her other three kids, [00:17:30] you know, hamburgers that she would pick up at McDonald's before she ran off to the second job. 

Speaker 2:Just a very, very hard life. She was a single mom and when the cooperative got going, she was able to leave one of those jobs, go full time with the co op and eventually it became just a really awesome skilled, cleaner using green techniques, very cutting edge. At the time, this was in the mid 1990s, there were green cleaning companies. Um, and then she got trained to, to train other women and served on the board of the cooperative and had that sense of ownership. She, she actually shared literally in the ownership [00:18:00] financially, but she also developed that sense of ownership and leadership roles through being a co owner of a business. So that's another example and I do see it even with the companies that we're working with right now. So for example, there's a pizzeria in San Jose with 33 workers that is about to complete their transition to become a worker cooperative. 

Speaker 2:We've been working with them for a year and we work most closely with a core team of the two owners and five of the employees who will become co-owners. And as we've taught them about how to read financial statements, [00:18:30] how to understand the finances of this actual business that many of them have been working in for five or 10 years, believe it or not, in a high turnover industry. So this is a company that is much beloved by its employees already, but they go that extra step of taking that ownership perspective. And the owner, Kirk Vartan has actually told us that his conversations with as employees, he's always gotten their input on hiring for example. And he's found that people are starting to have a different conversation with him when we asked when he asked for that input. So they'll say, you know, [00:19:00] this person seems really cool, nice person. But when I think like an owner, I'm not sure I would hire them to work here for x and y reason. So already we're seeing, they haven't even become a cooperative yet, but already that sense of ownership is coming in. Yeah. 

Speaker 1:Which creates value for the company because people care more. So that's a great example is if you hire the wrong person, it sets a company back in so many different ways. So if you have the actual employees care about who you're hiring because they feel like it's going to hurt their pocketbook, [00:19:30] then it's a very powerful motivating force to do good for the company. Yeah. Um, so you know, we're talking to Hillary Bell. She is the cofounder of project equity, a startup based in Oakland, and it helps companies transition, um, to being worker owned. Tell us, talk a little bit about the actual process of transition. What does, what does that mean? What, how does it work and where do they, where does point a, where are they start or when did they end up at point B? What, what, what changes [inaudible] 

Speaker 2:it's a really interesting process. I'm, I'm finding [00:20:00] it fascinating and really exciting to, to work on multiple layers with these companies. The first thing we do with a company is to help them assess the, the fit for their company of employee ownership and also what kind of employee ownership. So would a employee on cooperative be the best fit for them? Would an aesop be a better fit? And the way that we look at that is, is through conversation of course, primarily with the owners and also through financial analysis. So we'll, we'll look at the numbers. We'll look at the expected future cash flow of the business. And [00:20:30] we always get asked how can the workers afford to buy the business that they work in. And most of them can't, especially since we focus on on low and moderate wage workers, what happens, many of these transactions have been financed primarily by debt and there are a number of other as well creative forms of equity that can be used. And in fact project equity, we'll be publishing next month a an investor's guide to worker cooperatives. So how can impact investors, for example, play a role in [00:21:00] helping companies transition to become employee owned? 

Speaker 1:Interesting. A lot. Why? Where does the deck, who would loan the workers that the, the money to buy the company? Is there a community banks or something like that? 

Speaker 2:It is mostly community development, financial institutions or CDFIs at this point. And there are handful of them around the country that are actually focused on cooperative businesses. So they are the ones, some of them are national, so they're the ones that are stepping up to do some of these early deals and have done the historic deals. So historically [00:21:30] about 40% of today's worker cooperatives were created through the conversion of a successful existing business. But until the last couple of years, there has never been a proactive initiative to encourage and support these transitions. So right now it is these CDFIs that are supporting the Tra the conversions. We have done a lot of work and in fact published a FAQ, if you will, for lenders about this. It's available on project equity's website and we've talked to a lot of community banks as well as more [00:22:00] mainstream banks in the bay area and around the country who are interested in this and trying to figure out how they can make it work. So there's some immediate barriers that they come up against. But some of that is just perception. So education can go a long way and somebody is thinking maybe a little bit differently about underwriting, although of course the businesses would have to meet the normal criteria for being able to pay back loans. 

Speaker 1:Part of the, the kind of value proposition of project equity is to have the know how but also bring the capital to the table for the right deal. 

Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. We're not ourselves a capital [00:22:30] provider at this point, but we do have partnerships with capital providers. So that is something that we do bring. Um, and once the feasibility has been established then there is a deeper conversation with some of the employees to just to see if there is a there, there on the other side. Once the owners have said, we think we'd like to do this, then we'll help them gauge the interest among the employees. And if that's a go ahead, we'll bring them formerly in as a longer term project equity client and work with them to create a roadmap for the transition. And that has several layers to it. So first there is that [00:23:00] financial layer and that involves, we know that it's feasible, but what do we think the right prices for the business? Well, we'll recommend an outside formal evaluation that doesn't always happen, but it can be a helpful ingredient in the process, will help the owners. And the employees make an agreement about the price and help them structure the deal. So will it be seller financed at all? Will it be outside finance? Will there be any equity? How much will worker owners put in and how much of that is up front versus paid over time? 

Speaker 1:Is it, uh, is there a, uh, stipulation [00:23:30] that there must be a majority transfer of, of shares or are you doing somewhere the workers get a minority of ownership and the the owners actually retained control? Like is that a cause it sounds like for you, for this to work they have to have board seats and they have to really have a lot of control in some ways. Is that, is there a percentage that makes, makes it work or is it doesn't matter? Yeah, 

Speaker 2:we, we support the kind of standard definition of a worker. Unemploy on cooperative would have the majority [00:24:00] of board seats filled by worker owners. Um, but we're also very supportive of phased transitions. Right now. The ones that we're working on are there actually seller financed so that the transition formerly happens in one moment in time. But the, the debt is paid off over about five years. Okay. So the owner, we're right at the point where we're designing in the transitional control and figuring out exactly what that might look like. Okay. But with the owners staying in, in these particular cases, they do play a role that's sort [00:24:30] of akin to a general manager. So they still have a very strong leadership role while they, you know, start to work with a board of directors and, and share, share the um, governance level decision making. 

Speaker 1:What an exciting project. I'm so thrilled to hear about what you're doing and excited to see what kind of things you guys do. You know, we talked a lot about the, um, the workers and their motivations, but let's talk about the owners for a second. And you know, when I was reading your website, a lot of it is geared towards the owners as you're trying to convince them. And it sounds like you've [00:25:00] got a lot of great owners who want to do the right thing and that's why they're doing it. And the word that Kinda came up for me was legacy. That seems to be like the overarching reason. Why is that? Would you say that that's accurate? 

Speaker 2:That's exactly the word I would choose and I'm delighted that that's what came across to you because that is our goal with a website is to communicate that that owners who are concerned about their legacy and want to leave a legacy should really consider employee ownership. We had an interesting experience when we did that focus group in Oakland back in 2014 with local business owners and we started [00:25:30] by talking to them about employee ownership and asking what they knew about it, if they'd heard of any employee owned companies, what their impressions were, and then we transitioned to them what they wanted when they left their business or when they retired. And that was when the conversation started to click cause what they said was we want our customers to be taken care of. We want our employees to be taken care of. We want our business to live on this thing that we've put our blood, sweat and tears over years into creating. 

Speaker 2:We want it to continue to be an important presence in the community. And those three things [00:26:00] are things that employee ownership is uniquely positioned to do. So it is really all about legacy and we think that the companies that we're working with right now are kind of the cutting edge. Maybe you could call it for up from our purposes, the low hanging fruit, the sort of first movers and what we're working towards for the future is getting in conversation with the more mainstream business sellers. And they don't have to be, have any particular attitude for this to be a fit. They don't have to be staying in, they could be leaving, [00:26:30] but if they are concerned about leaving a strong company for the future and their legacy, it could very well be a good fit. 

Speaker 1:Well I wanted to ask you about, um, like one of the big buzz words around the bay area is liquidity. You know, start companies to get rid of the company a lot of times to sell it or go public and lose control. And is that concept exists and once you've converted over to becoming a worker owned cooperative is how you get money from your equity. Basically just distributions of the profits. [00:27:00] And there's, there's really never a big check that comes from selling it. 

Speaker 2:That is generally true with worker cooperatives. Um, Aesop's can be different. Um, so ESOPs are created initially with evaluation and then evaluation is done every year and they're owned through a trust. Employees on stock through a trust. And that trust does appreciate or depreciate according to the valuation every year and employees retirement accounts, you know, go up if the company valuation goes up. Um, 

Speaker 1:and there's a set valuation methodology [00:27:30] every year. That's how, yes. Okay. Yeah. That would take a big controversial how, how'd that happened? 

Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's a key factor. Yeah. Yeah. And in worker cooperatives, it's a, it's a little bit different in that the cooperative businesses are generally built for longevity. So often there is a provision in the bylaws of the cooperative that would incentivize at staying as a cooperative and not de mu de mutualizing, if you will. So if you go to a place like northern Italy or Spain where the Mondo Ground Cooperative Corporation is the largest worker cooperative in the world [00:28:00] with 100,000, um, workers, you'll, you'll find that they, the workers there will talk about their, um, the next generation in their family working in this company and seeing it as, as part of the community, part of the economy for the longterm. So in, in general, most cooperatives look to maintain being a cooperative in the future and are not valued based on a share price. Yeah, 

Speaker 1:it's really, it's really great work. A really excited, like I said, to see where you guys go. I always asked, uh, we're talking to Hillary of Bell, she's a cofounder of project equity here [00:28:30] on methods of the Madison KLX Berkeley. And I always, this is my last question. I always ask an entrepreneur like yourself, so you started this journey, you created this thing out of scratch. You have a lot of passion for it. You see a problem in society, you're trying to solve really important one. Um, if everything goes right for you five years from now, what will project equity look like? 

Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to seeing us with an expanded team. I don't think project equity itself will ever get huge, but maybe we'll be a team of 10 [00:29:00] or 20 people and being a thriving part of an ecosystem in the bay area and in maybe five or 10 other regions around the country where we have a project equity sister organization or a branch of project equity that is doing the same kind of place based employee ownership scaling that we're piloting here in the bay area. And we're also getting started in the twin cities in western North Carolina this year. And I hope that we'll have really strong relationships with everyone from the city economic development [00:29:30] officials to the wealth advisors, to the business brokers, to the boutique investment banks. Um, so that everybody in those regions will have seen enough about employee 

Speaker 1:ownership have, it will become normalized as an idea and we'll be talking to the businesses that they provide services to. You know, whether you're a CPA or a lawyer or whatever it may be about this business model. Great. Well, good luck on that vision. It sounds like you're on a good path to, to realizing that. [00:30:00] Um, we've been talking to Hillary Bell, she's the Cofounder Project Equity Hillary. How do people get in touch with you guys or learn more if they want to get in contact? Um, please visit our website. It's project hyphen equity.org and um, you can contact us@infoatprojecthyphenequity.org. We would love to hear from you. Great. Okay, well thanks everybody for listening today. This has been method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. I'm your host is our, thanks for tuning in. Thanks Hillary for joining and have [00:30:30] a great Friday. Everybody.