Campuses and most higher education institutions are built around the traditional college kid dorm life.
What about mature learners with jobs, families, and responsibilities?
In this interview, we chat with Barrett Bogue, An Iraq War veteran who has worked with non-profits, different businesses, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Barrett helped formulate a bill that increased veteran higher education funds from 3-4 billion annually to 100 billion dollars over 10 years, leading to the nation's largest federal program for higher education.
Now his company Evocati provides consulting services to companies with programs geared towards the military community.
Recruiting veterans can help campuses better align higher ed institutions to support adult learners.
Getting down to business, What is the process of identifying business opportunities which are marketable, profitable and scalable?
Is it enough to be on all social media platforms? Publicity VS Impact.
Twelve thousand institutions in America have had to adjust to 100 % online learning in two weeks! How are colleges adjusting during this Covid-19 pandemic? What are the long-term effects?
In this interview we cover :
How to identify business opportunities as an entrepreneur
Approaching entrepreneurship differently by testing, tweaking and chiseling
How are learning institutions adjusting to the pandemic?
What campuses and colleges can do to properly serve mature learners
How recruiting veterans can help campuses better align higher ed institutions to support adult learners.
Why building a referral network as an entrepreneur is gold.
Publicity versus impact. Which one will bring you more clients?
Helpful resources
1) For more live interviews and insights
2) If you’re marketing doesn’t make money…
Interview transcript
Reade Milner (00:00):
Three two, one. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining me for another growth secrets interview. I'm here with Barrett Bogue. Barrett is an Iraq war veteran. I spent a number of years in the nonprofit space and now he is building his business where he is connecting organizations and corporations with the military connected community. He's doing a great job that we had an awesome conversation. Baron's really knowledgeable guy. He's got a lot of great experience that I'm excited for him to share with us today. So Barrett, thank you so much for joining me.
Barrett Bogue (00:35):
Read it. It's my pleasure to be with you and to, to talk with with the, with the group here. And to share my, just a very interesting journey through, through where I find myself today as a, as an entrepreneur.
Reade Milner (00:50):
Awesome. Well, we're excited to hear it. So, so tell us about that background. Tell us about that journey. We'll maybe take it from, you know, as far back as you want to go. I'm, I'm excited to hear that.
Barrett Bogue (01:01):
Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, I'm an Iraq war veteran. And in between my, my bachelor and my masters degree at the university of Tennessee, I took what I, what I call as a, as a gap year and spin it in Iraq. And when I came back to the university of Tennessee, I found a school that was incredibly open to my experience and, and willing to bring me back in. And, but I also noticed that there was a lack of programmatic support for military veterans in higher education. And so that's how my, my, my passion and my interest was born is I was fascinated by the, the veteran experience in higher education and that's where a lot of my master's research focused. And I was able to, to use that passion and that research into a, into a, into a program called the presidential management fellows program. It's run through the office of management and, but at budget. And I found an opportunity at the department of veterans affairs and their GI bill office. And they found me. They found my resume, they reached out to me and they said my background in, in higher ed and also being a veteran was attractive to them. So I took on a role there as an analyst and one of the first things I ever did, this would be 2007,
Barrett Bogue (02:32):
Is I had this piece of legislation, proposed legislation in Congress on my desk and it was from the then Senator Jim Webb from Virginia. And he was a former Marine. His son is a Marine and he had introduced legislation called a new GI bill for a new century.
Barrett Bogue (02:57):
And his objective to significantly increase the amount of money that veterans get coming into higher education. So I had this on my desk and my role was to analyze its impact and its cost. And we worked with the budget team and we came up with a cost estimate, a $100 billion over 10 years. Now, you have to remember at the time the federal government was only paying approximately two and a half, 3 billion annually to go from 3 billion annually to over 10 billion. Dying annually was it was extremely unlikely. And so I remember we all kind of laughed at that and said, there's no way that this is going to happen. And 12 months later it was law and we had this new chat bill program and what, what, what took place over the next year and a half was building out the nation's largest federal entitlement program for higher ed.
Barrett Bogue (03:59):
It was a wonderful, wonderful journey and part of that was realizing, but the GI bill needed a greater media and brand presence. So we did a number of different things. We did we did TV, TV ad buys, a media campaign, radio campaign print, et cetera. And we did a we did a NASCAR race as well. We sponsored a NASCAR race, but one area that I was really kind of, I was social media and so I made this recommendation for placing the GI bill brand with him and fit within Facebook. And this was, this would have been 2000, a 2009 when placing brands on, on Facebook or even in a Facebook page or a group was, was still relatively new. And so we did that. It was extremely effective and that's when I sort of made this connection on the importance of, of, of using media to tell your story and your brand story especially in finding nontraditional ways.
Barrett Bogue (05:06):
And so what followed Reed was a 12 year career of making an impact for veterans in higher education and in that entire time and working with, with partners and, and meeting with, with private companies and nonprofit companies. I always heard the same sort of feedback is we really struggled to reach veterans. And you know, they were coming to me as, as the GMO representative to tell geo students about this product or this service or this school. And they would all say, you know, we really, I have a difficult time reaching the military kinetic community. And so I kind of tucked that away as a potential business and a potential problem to solve for customers. And so about 18 ago, I made the decision to leave the nonprofit space in an executive role and to found my company to help business and nonprofit leaders access at impact military connect to community. So it's something that I've been kind of working on as far as repre as far as identifying a business opportunity for nearly a decade but did not decide to turn it into a, a company or, or a full time business idea until about 18 months ago where we found a Depot Cottey
Reade Milner (06:35):
Okay. So that, that is a really nice segue. I mean, you even use the term, you know, identifying a business opportunity, right? And I talk about this in almost every one of these interviews and, and I really believe that, that what entrepreneurs do is that, okay we identified problems in the marketplace and we fix them for money, right? Yeah. Really clear, maybe people don't like how straightforward that is. But that's what we do. So I love to hear about the process that entrepreneurs and business leaders have gone through and that they went through to identify this is a problem and we can solve this thing and there's a market for. What was that process like? Was that something that throughout your time, you know, working in government, nonprofit, you were like, we got it, someone needs to fix this, someone needs to fix this, or was it something that you kind of decided how I want to get into, I want to be an entrepreneur, let me go find a problem. What was that process like?
Barrett Bogue (07:35):
So I think that's a great question and so I'll explain that. But before I do, just really quick, let me explain it. Evil Cottey is a, is a professional service firm of, of one really. And what we do is we provide one on one consulting services and in some case some operational services for companies that have a program that have a product or they, they want to make they, they want to access into the military, connect to community. So we come on board, we help them do that. We have the ability to scale if we need to hiring independent contractors and other experts. And I'll talk a little bit, I want to talk a little bit more about that later. But you asked like, how did you know, how did I come up with that and what was that process like? So I think it starts with the way that I've seen the entrepreneurial journey and sometimes we were guilty of thinking of it this way is in terms of of how we age. You start out as this, this idea starts out in an infancy and then it's incubated and then it's born and then it grows and then it matures. And you know, that's your, your business, your business idea. And that's, that's how you approach entrepreneurship.
Barrett Bogue (09:03):
I don't think that's true. And that's not been my experience. And so I, the way that I would describe it as like this, I'm a sculptor and my business ideas, there's big like chunk of marble sitting in front of me and I'm just spending time, Mmm. Taking away marble until I've, I've created this business idea that is marketable, profitable and scalable. So it's a great question. Reed. I have been working on that for over a decade, but I didn't really start chiseling in earnest until about 18 months ago. So I'm still in this process. Right. And, and I, I love that. I'm still trying to discover like what is the, what is the one, one thing that I can offer my customers that's going to all my clients that's going to, that's going to satisfy them tomorrow. I've got essentially a menu of things that we can do. But I'm still trying to find like, what is that, you know, one or two ideas or service that we can offer that, that I can make money off of and that I can scale. And what I've learned over the past 18 months is that as long as you're still sculpting,
Reade Milner (10:35):
Right
Barrett Bogue (10:36):
I S I just found that to be incredibly satisfying. There's going to be failures on that, on that road to success. But as long as I'm still trying to chisel out that idea, Mmm. Mmm. I feel very confident about where we are as a company.
Reade Milner (10:55):
So Barrett, you have hit on something that comes up in so many of these conversations, the idea of testing, tweaking you, you described it differently. I love the way that you put that, right? This, it starts as this big piece of marble or this big, big piece of rock and you're, you're chiseling away until it is. And I, and I have a, a friend who's a sculptor and he says, look, I start with this big block of whatever, and I keep taking stuff away that doesn't look like the final product to have in my head. Right? And that I think is what we do as business owners and as business leaders. But you hit on. And another thing that comes up a ton is you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna embarrass yourself here, there, and then there's an opportunity to say, well, that doesn't work. Right? So that's another one of those things we're not to do
Barrett Bogue (11:54):
Any more. And that is an invaluable part of growing a business. Yeah, I, I completely agree. And if we, if we use that analogy, you've just, you've found the vein in the marble that, that doesn't align with your final product. So you just, you just choose a little way [inaudible] there. It started there, but it's perfectly fine. It's not going to be part of that, that final product. And so that's where I am today. I will tell you that with, with evil Kati, we were open to any company that wants to make an impact of a military connected community. It could be a, a company that wants to hire more veterans. It could be a company that wants to start a veteran employee group, an internal veteran employee group. You may have a program or an event, et cetera, that you want to do within the military connected community.
Barrett Bogue (12:49):
And that's where we're able Kati comes in. What I have found is that there's a lot of opportunity within the higher education space and primarily that's for one reason. That's because that's my background. But also because of the, the significant growth of the number of veterans enrolling in higher education since 2009, a lot of schools have not been built around that, that adult learning experience. They're built around the traditional, you know, 18 year old dorm, et cetera experience. And they're great at that. You know, as, as veterans where we're nontraditional, students were more likely to be older, married [inaudible] have a full or part time job and be living or diagnosed with a disability. And we're coming into the higher ed environment. And so schools are simply, they're, they're motivated to bring more veterans onto, onto campus, but they're, they don't know how.
Barrett Bogue (13:47):
And so I'm, I'm seeing business opportunities in that area, areas as well. All that to say is even I, at 18 months into this, I don't have everything solved. I'm still trying to find out where our marketplaces as well. And that's, you know, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. So you, you mentioned something at the risk of going down a little bit of a, I have a rabbit hole here, but I'm just so interested by this. So I have to ask you, you talk about higher education and, and I, I think that, and you may agree, the higher education is, is going to see a lot of change over the next decade. We'll call it for so many reasons. Obviously we are, if you're watching this guys and you don't, if you haven't seen the news, there's some stuff happening in the world. So that is going to change it, right? Yeah. And then this idea of ah, more military veterans going into higher education,
Reade Milner (14:52):
All of those things are going to drastically change this very traditional 20th century model of college being for 18 to 22 year olds who are figuring life out. And if you've been to college and the least the last, you know, 10 or 15 years, you probably didn't learn a whole lot and you got an expensive piece of paper, right. That model is likely to change. I'm so curious to know what you think about like what does it look like when it becomes, for lack of a better word, a more professional setting where people who are going home to their wife and kids and maybe are working more on a job during their time in college more often than then. The typical 18 to 22 year old had Jessica out of high school.
Barrett Bogue (15:39):
So I, it's a, it's a great question. It's something it's an area that I've explored professionally as a, as a researcher. It's an area that I've talked with with lawmakers and policymakers. And then finally it's an area that I work in as a, as an entrepreneur. So while we're recording this video, we're in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. My family in particular, we're in week seven of of lockdown in our home and you know, five weeks ago, well, six weeks ago, the entire higher education industry in America, so we're talking 10 to 12,000 institutions completely changed their business model in two weeks. They all went to online unprecedented scale and impact. And I think what I'm more interested in learning and knowing as a result of that is, is that going to result in this preference cascade amongst learners for online learning or are students going to say, you know what, I tried on, on learning and I didn't, I didn't like it.
Barrett Bogue (16:54):
But I will say this is leading to some very difficult conversations in higher education over how it's structured and who it's built to serve. So we know that by 2025, approximately a quarter of all learners in higher ed will be adult learners. We know that the, the population of prospective students, high school students going into higher education is going to, Deek has been decreasing by about 5% annually. And that's not because of grades or anything, it's just because it's demographics. So there's going to be a smaller recruitable population. And then the third thing is you've got these institutions that are, that are over leveraged. They have older buildings. They've, they've taken on too much debt et cetera. So will there be a cascade, a preference cascade for online learning? If there is, then there's a lot less need for admin and staff overhead and buildings.
Barrett Bogue (18:06):
So what the trends were before the coronavirus pandemic was that higher education was in the process of slowly turning around like a massive ship in the sea to address the needs of adult learners. And what makes veterans interesting and in that role is we are the tip of the sphere in that respects. So when you think of a of an adult learner they're over the age of 24. They have a part time or full time job. They have children and they're, they're married. They have obligations outside of higher education. They're much less likely to stay on campus. Their preference is going to be ideally to take a combination of online and in person learning. And they're going to, they may not go to the same school throughout their entire higher ed career that may start in community college. They made a transfer over, et cetera.
Barrett Bogue (19:10):
So if you're not building your learning environment, if you're not building your campus around the needs of an adult learner, for example, do you have a combination of online and in person classes? Do you offer childcare on campus? Do you have open open enrollment periods? One of the biggest complaints that I hear from military veterans is they can go to this for profit school that may not actually have very good outcomes. And you may not be placed in a job. But I can enroll in this for-profit school tomorrow. But if I qualify for a, a nonprofit or a public school, you know, they're going to say that's great. Come back in March when the application season is open. But that's not very helpful for an adult learner. So what I found and what my company has found is there are institutions of higher education that want to recruit more military veterans as a way to better align their entire institution to support the adult learner population.
Barrett Bogue (20:27):
And so what we've done for a couple of clients is we've gone, gone in and we've done market opportunity research to look at the number of military veterans in your state and your surrounding States. We've done onsite interviews and quantitative research with your student population. And we've identified some of the needs of those students on campus. So we've built out a a recommended program to not only attract more military connected students, but also to better support them on campus. So it's a, I, I suspect that this is only going to accelerate especially if, if, if, you know, the trend lines that we see in the economy historically, as the economy has slowed down, more people have gone into higher education, they can enter the workforce, they can't find a job but they can enroll in their local college, their local community college. They can, they can go to get another degree, they can retrain, et cetera. Well they can qualify for, for federal Pell grants, federal loans or the GI bill. So as, as the economy slows down or gets worse, what we generally see is an increase in enrollment in higher education and that's going to present more opportunities to align your mission around the needs of adult learners. And that's where eval Cottey can help do that with, with schools that want to increase the number of veterans on campus.
Reade Milner (22:00):
Okay. That's, I love that insight because I, number one, I think that there's this false, I guess dichotomy is that we're going from a hundred percent traditional, you know, on campus school to a 100% digital. And that's never really how it works in practice. Right? We never go from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other. I think it's almost definitely a mix of the two. And, and those numbers are really interesting. I did not, I did not realize some of those statistics that you threw out and I did not know that it was that it was that, you know, plain to see that you know, that the, that it was changing for higher ed. So that is super interesting to see and, and yeah, I'm just, I'm really curious to see what it looks like and how this recent event has accelerated that because I'm curious how many people are going to go back and say, you know, that worked just fine for me, you know, that, that doing things digitally because I could still do my job.
Reade Milner (23:12):
I could, I could still, you know, take care of my kids. I could still attend to my family needs and that worked fine. And I don't know. And I would hope that that institutions will not push back too hard to try to preserve some dogmatic approach to education. Right. And I think some will certainly, but some won't. And I think those that adapt and change will do well. So let's transition then because you mentioned how Eva Kati can help. What is, and this is the other part of that entrepreneurial journey, right? It's, it's, we have to find a problem in the marketplace, create a system and a process and a business around fixing it. And then we've got to get it into the hands of people that will give us money for it. Right? So that's sales and marketing. So what is your process look like today for even Connie?
Barrett Bogue (24:05):
So you know, like I said at the beginning is we've, we've been in business for 18 months. So that, that process is evolving and I've enjoyed the, the challenge of discovery and what works well and what doesn't. I can tell you read aye. Aye.
Barrett Bogue (24:31):
I recall vividly when I left my role in the nonprofit space in the next week, I was sitting at my desk and I was like, well, what now I knew I wanted to do this, but I honestly, there was a moment there where I felt completely overwhelmed by the prospect of not having a salary and being responsible for my own income and this and that. At the time. I had just had an idea in my head. So I started where I think a lot of of you all can relate is I was like wanting a website. So the very first thing I did was I, I designed a brand around my identity and background. Evo Cottey is Latin for reservist. Which is what I was in the military, the, the evil caught time. We're, we're actually the, the Legionnaires who served 16 years and agreed to be a, a, a foursome reserve for then Cesar Augusta. So they were the first concept of a professional reserve force. I liked that. I liked the military background. I did not want the company branding to be overt military. I, I wanted it to look and be more aligned with academia. So that's why I chose a Latin name. So I did that. And yeah.
Reade Milner (26:05):
Can I say Barrett, this is another one of those things in common. I mentioned that I've interviewed five or six different military veterans are now entrepreneurs, probably four out of five or five out of six. Their business name is, is some variation or some play on a Latin word. So there has to be something that they just that, that they ingrained in you guys is all of the Latin words and the uses of, of Latin. I just think that like when you, when you think about it, I,
Barrett Bogue (26:38):
I didn't want red, white, blue. I didn't want Eagles or stars. So you kind of, you kind of get limit yourself and what else is available. And I was like, well, I don't want to name an app or something in the military. So I was like, I'll just go, I'll go lad. And but I think that, I think that's great. Great. Great minds think alike. So we, we did a website. The best piece of advice I got read when I started in this journey was, was this start out and do the best pro bono work that you can. And I did that. So I did pro bono consulting for a company that, a nonprofit that builds specially desert homes for wounded warriors and helped them with some branding and marketing. And it was also for me to just kind of test the waters.
Barrett Bogue (27:38):
And it, it works so well that they were able to, did they provided referrals and they gave me feedback on my performance, et cetera, and I was able to use that to prospect for other clients. So the first piece of advice I would have is, you know, if you're starting out, if you're starting this out and you can do it and you can afford it, do the best pro bono work with a client that you can to start building out that base to start increasing referrals that can only pay dividends. I did, like I said, I built a website and I had a decision regarding social media. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking if we build it, they will come. And just because you have a Twitter and Insta, Facebook and LinkedIn, if you say, well, we're on all these platforms, I hear that and I, that doesn't actually mean much to me.
Barrett Bogue (28:42):
I'm more interested in where are you having conversations and one of those conversations, like that's why Rita, I really liked your group and what you're trying to do. You have a very tight knit community around a unified experience and around a very interesting subject matter. So I didn't want evil Cottey to be everywhere. And for another reason is because it, it's just me. So we focused in on LinkedIn as the platform for the professional community and we have been advertising and having conversations there exclusively for over a year now. And I have found it to be an incredibly beneficial engaging higher ed, engaging the military, veteran community, et cetera. And then the last thing is simply going to be client referrals. The best thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to, well, besides this problem is to seek feedback from your customers, for your clients over what worked well and what you can improve. And I have generally found that my past clients are the best referral network that I can have right up there with, with LinkedIn. Linkedin is great for driving conversations. It's great for featuring the work that you're doing. This conversation right here. I'm going to put up on LinkedIn and when it's out but the referral network that you can build up through your client base could be a, a big benefit for you.
Reade Milner (30:23):
So I completely agree. And, and for those of you watching, I want to highlight three things that Barrett said. The first thing is, is that he started building a track record of great work by doing stuff for free. And, and that may not be [inaudible] necessarily an option for you to just give away your services straight up, but you can give away your expertise. You can give away your experience in very simple terms using what I do. We call that content marketing, right where you're giving away information or free. Frank Kern says that the best way to show people that you can help them is to actually help them, right? And then and then let that do the talking. So that's the first thing. Figure out what you can do for free to prove that you can do a great job. The second thing he said was that he picked a platform that he knew he could really go all in on and he could really perform well.
Reade Milner (31:28):
And that was LinkedIn for Barrett. It may be a different platform for, for you, right? I would rather see you pick one and really go in and leverage it to the Hill rather than spread yourself so thin that you're not really making an impact anywhere. Right? So if you have the time and you have the a bandwidth for only one, then pick one. That's fine. The third thing was and the third thing, Oh darn the third, they had a great one and now it's gone. A great thing to share there. What was the third thing that you said Barrett helped me out? Mmm.
Barrett Bogue (32:09):
Yeah, I was talking about pro bono work. The referral network, the client referrals.
Reade Milner (32:16):
That's it. All right. I'm going to edit that part out cause that was terrible. So the third thing is that he built a referral network of the past clients that he had done business with and he had gotten great results for. I would pay easily, you know, a few thousand dollars for those testimonials where my clients have said, you know, Reed did this, he took us from this to this, right? I would happily pay for those. Now I've earned those and Barrett has earned those, those are worth their weight in cold. As a marketer, all we really do is show the world what you already are, right? We just helped to get you from where you are to them. We're not, we can't, we can't make you a better business than you actually are. And one of the greatest tools for that is to take those happy customers and get their message of how happy they are for having worked with you out to new potential customers. Right? So people will say things like, well, word of mouth doesn't work. Word of mouth is the greatest tool. But if you just, if you just hope that word of mouth helps you scale your business, I got really bad news for you. That's not how it works. Leveraging word of mouth is a great way to grow and scale your business. So I just wanted to share those three things, those three takeaways that I'm getting from what Barrett's talking about for how he's growing his business. Cause those are excellent, excellent lessons.
Barrett Bogue (33:51):
Yeah. Can I, can I build on that? I, I'm in complete agreement. And I would, the additional perspective that I would offer here for especially for first time entrepreneurs and this is something that you and I learned when we were talking earlier about our background and, and marketing is
Reade Milner (34:13):
Okay.
Barrett Bogue (34:14):
There's a Maxim from been, I think it's been Franklin who said, well done is better than well said.
Reade Milner (34:23):
And too often
Barrett Bogue (34:26):
First time entrepreneurs, and you know what I see this mistake
Reade Milner (34:30):
Within the CEO ranks is they confuse publicity with impact. And publicity has a role, but publicity is not going to translate into clients
Barrett Bogue (34:51):
And business opportunities. If you say, well, I have a, my brand is now exposed on Twitter. We just got a tumbler, which I don't know why he would have a tumbler, but you know, we're on, we're on all these different platforms. You come and tell me that. And what I'm hearing is
Reade Milner (35:07):
We're just throwing stuff out there and see what sticks up on a wall. Publicity like that is not necessarily going to,
Barrett Bogue (35:15):
At least in my experience, has not translated into
Reade Milner (35:18): Customers
Barrett Bogue (35:20):
Paying customers for that matter. And so, you know, Reed, you're absolutely right is to hyper focus on an area or a platform that you're familiar with and
Reade Milner (35:30):
Yeah, engaging conversations
Barrett Bogue (35:33):
That drive the narrative
Reade Milner (35:35):
Forward, whether growth secrets,
Barrett Bogue (35:38):
Whether it's and what, what is this entrepreneur going through? In my case, it's, you know, what's the problem and the military connected community that this client is trying to solve. It's not see us here and look at what we're doing and check out our website and look at our really cool brand. There is so much noise around that within the marketing space that I've actually just become accustomed to tuning that out. I don't know about you read, but I would say that I would double down on what you said is if you find yourself frustrated at all of the marketing that you're doing on across all these channels, scale back, start today and scale back on the channel that you're doing. So thanks for your time. Thanks for letting me share that additional perspective.
Reade Milner (36:32):
Oh yeah. So that, that is, and this is kind of bringing the conversation full circle guys. What we talked about towards the beginning was stripping away all of the pieces of this, this role, you know, stone or this raw marble that is your business until it starts to look like the, the ideal business, right? The business that it can scale. [inaudible] I tell people all the time, there's nothing wrong with just, just killing something that's not working. Barrett and I shared this week during our chat before we went live was that, Mmm, you know, I, I've, I have no qualms about experimenting with something now. Be smart about it. Take data, you know, collect, collect some data, learn stuff from it. But if it's not working, just kill it. There's nothing, in fact, I encourage it. A lot of times I'll come in to a client situation and I'm like, you're doing way too much. Like we, you don't even have a funnel that works, like any part of this works. Right? Let's figure out one piece of this and let's get it all the way from customers to, to paying you money. Right? Which let's get that figured out. Then we'll introduce some other channels or we'll bring back some of these other channels. We got to kill some of this stuff. So that's, that's, that's great insight and that's great advice.
Barrett Bogue (37:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
Reade Milner (37:52): Well, Barrett, I could keep you forever, I think. But I've used up enough of your time and I want to be sensitive to that. But I really want people to be able to continue to follow you. And your story, how can they, it connected with you? How can they learn more about you and Abel? Cottey
Barrett Bogue (38:09):
Yeah, absolutely. So Eva Kati LLC dot com go visit our website. You can learn a little bit more about our founding some of the folks that work with us and then our, our current and past clients. And then like I said before, we are exclusively on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn group. Join the LinkedIn group, just search vivo, Kati. I'll see and then
Reade Milner (38:35): Send me a connection request on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to. I, for me, part of the entrepreneurial journey is having these conversations and mentoring other folks who are in the same position. I'm more than happy to connect in and chat on. I'm on LinkedIn as well. Yeah, that's great. And folks, we'll make sure to leave the links to those things into to Barrett's LinkedIn profile if you want to send them a connection request. We'll leave the links here in the comments. If you're watching later on on YouTube it will be in the description. If you listen to the podcast, it will be in the show notes. And if you're seeing the smoke signal go by, then you should get a computer and listen or a phone and listen to this thing for real. That's my dad joke of the day.
Reade Milner (39:25): I love it. So guys, thank you so much for being a part of this today and bear, thank you so much for sitting down with me and having this great conversation. Folks, give me some feedback. Mmm. Let me know what your thoughts are on this interview, on this interview series. I'd love to hear it. I'm always looking to, I figure out how we can make this better and more valuable to you, the audience. So leave a comment, send me a note, shoot me a text message. I want to hear it, but until next time, thank you all so much for joining me and we'll see you on the next one. Okay.