Impact Hospitality: How Hotels Can Build Community & Drive Change - Donte Johnson & Jason Bass

Josiah: In this episode, I'm excited to bring back on the show Donte Johnson and Jason Bass, who you might remember from a series we did a couple of years ago about how they think about community and how they think about running their hotel in a way that's really different from most others in the industry. At that time, they were working at Hotel Revival in Baltimore. They have since moved to Atlanta to the Thompson Atlanta Buckhead. And in this episode, I want you to hear what they've been up to over the past couple of years because it's impressive. Among other things, they've produced a textbook teaching others, teaching us all about the opportunity here, something they call impact hospitality. So stay tuned to hear what this is, how it got started, what the potential is, and how anyone can apply this to their hotel or hospitality business. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Donte and Jason.

Josiah: Donte, I'd love to get your perspective. You know, we had a great conversation a couple of years ago. people loved. We did a whole series about everything from community to driving impact to running a hotel in a different sort of way. I enjoyed that. So many of our listeners did. A couple of years have passed, and I want to get into what you're doing now, but I do want to give people a little bit of context around what you and Jason created at Revival that maybe laid the groundwork for the work in impact hospitality you're doing now.

Donte: Yeah, I think, you know, just to kind of give a little backstory, and this is really Jason's sort of industry origin story, if you will. Jason had done a number of events in Baltimore, specifically at Hotel Revival, and I was the new kid on the block, just got into the city. I might have been 10 minutes into that role before I got my first email from Jason saying, hey, welcome to the city, but also I'd love to continue my relationship with the hotel. And apart from being really impressed that whoever this guy was, he knew who the new GM was before a press release had gone out, before anybody had really gotten word, I was also curious as to what types of events he'd done at the hotel. So I go down the social media rabbit hole, find the events, they look great, it looks like the kinds of things that honestly I'd enjoy attending, let alone hosting. And so we had a couple conversations, did one of those events in October of 2019. By December of 2019, funny thing, we hadn't paid him yet for his compensation for the event. Jason pops up at the hotel and goes, hey, I'd like to show you something outside. And so my Spidey senses start going off and I go, well, first of all, like you'll be paid soon, but also it's December and I'm not going outside in December because that's just not something that I'm into. And he goes, listen, give me five minutes. And I took him up on it and I'm really glad I did. He had created a mobile beverage experience for the Monument Lighting Ceremony, which is a massive, massive deal in the Malverna neighborhood in Baltimore. And so it was huge. I go out, I see that, I'm blown away by it. For first of all, I have an entire beverage team at the hotel, and I could not understand how we had gotten outmaneuvered by just a dude in the city with an idea and creativity, because we should be doing the beverages for the Monument Lighting Ceremony. So I go out, I check it out, I'm really impressed by it. And in that moment I go, hey, have you ever considered consulting for a hotel? And he goes, no, but what would that look like? We had a quick five minute conversation. I asked him if he could put together a deck that would just capture the spirit of what we had talked about. And he goes, sure. How soon do you need it? The answer typically for me is always yesterday. So he put it together. I presented it to all the hotel stakeholders. And of all the ideas that we presented at our annual meeting that year, that was the one thing that people walked out of the room saying, we should absolutely do that. But where would you find such a guy? It was like, I'm glad you asked. He's right outside. Everyone meets Jason, falls in love, and off we go. You know, really, I mean, we've been doing really, really interesting, really meaningful work ever since.

Josiah: It's amazing, Jason. I am going to link to some of our past conversations in the show notes, because one of the things I appreciate about your work, Jason, is you don't have a whole kind of career in hospitality. You're more in kind of the culture and events and programming. But for me, that is such an important part of hospitality. Right. And I think that's what so many people miss. And so I'm curious from your perspective, Jason, what was what was going through your head as you were thinking about this? You clearly got Donte's attention.

Jason: Yeah, I. It's so funny, hearing this story again, it just reminds me of the decision he had to make when I asked him to come outside, right? Not being paid, a guy from D.C. being invited out by a guy from Baltimore. We didn't build a relationship yet, so anything could have happened, so I'm glad he did trust me ultimately. But I wasn't really certain as to what the journey was going to look like purely from a hospitality perspective. I've always been adjacent to hospitality because most of the events that I would create or offer to my community are going to be at restaurants, lounges, bars, clubs, places like that. So I always had to interact with other hospitality professionals. I was still removed, you know, just far enough that I wasn't impacted by the daily life of a hospitality professional or the daily experience of a hospitality professional. I could choose to jump in and out of that role anytime I wanted to, right, where they were more dedicated to that. That was their career. So I had a limited view into what that would look like. In fact, I had always heard stories that people started their hotel or hospitality journey thinking it was going to be temporary. Right. And I did the exact same thing. You know, I'm like, oh, this would be great. You know, we'll we'll try something out. I was transitioning from owning a company and leaving that company to try to figure out, you know, what was next for me. So this opportunity, I thought, was appealing. I thought it would be challenging to do something different from all the different things I've done in the past, which would be, you know, tech, working in textiles, in the entrepreneurial space, events, you know, things like that. So why not add a hospitality badge to my, to my sash or whatever, whatever those bad mistakes are called. So to me, it was just something to try and I had no clue that this would lead to a five-year friendship, five years of a professional passion project within the hospitality industry, you know, an opportunity to travel and meet so many amazing people and go to a lot of incredible cities, a textbook Right. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Impact Hospitality Handbook. We are authors of a textbook. Can you imagine that, Josiah? You were one of the first people to interview us. And here we are talking about a textbook.

Josiah: It's remarkable, but I can't imagine it given kind of the amount of thought and more than thought the actions that you have done from the hotels that you've been running. And after just kind of one follow up to that, Jason, I'm curious when you talk about running these events across so many different areas, what you both have done over the years now is use the hotel as much more than a place with just rooms and beds, but really as a platform and a catalyst for building community. Did you see that out of the gates, Jason? Or is that something that you've kind of built awareness of over time as you've been rolling out different programs?

Jason: Absolutely. I didn't know what I was signing up for, Josiah. I just knew that in a time where I needed to figure something out for myself, I needed to challenge myself professionally and creatively, this seemed like a great opportunity to explore. What really sold me on it wasn't just the hotel wasn't just the industry, but it was the vision that Donte expressed to me as how he saw that hotel operating, how he believed that, you know, we could create a space together, you know, him and I, plus all our other colleagues, that would be a hotel without walls. And really what he was drawing out there, I bought, you know, in retail, you know, And that's okay, because I got the value out of that. And I think that, I think we all have, because what he was saying was not only very believable, and I think incredibly interesting, that's why we're, it's why we're here, to kind of explore what that looked like, but also he conveyed a level of confidence and knowledge and experience that made it trustworthy, right? That if we were to do this, you know, he would be the person to create the space to get the other people above us to invest in what we wanted to create.

Donte: Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, you make it sound so cool. And I'm honored hearing it. And Josiah, it's interesting because we both told the story a million times, but we don't often get to hear the other person tell it from their perspective. But I think the key sort of theme in those early days was it was a leap of faith. And we really went down this path on a handshake, which is for a number of reasons kind of counterintuitive. But I think the other thing is we were six months into building before COVID really fully took hold of the travel industry and of the world. And so this was an orientation that we had set before we were compelled to do it anyway. And I think in a lot of ways, because we were already going down the path, you know, when a global pandemic struck, we were uniquely positioned to be able to recalibrate and really convert the hotel into a community hub.

Josiah: Well, Donte, I want to stay with that notion a moment longer and talk about how it's changed because you both built something incredible at Revival in Baltimore. And then since we last spoke, you took on a new role, a new city. I wonder if you could share with our listeners a little bit about that transition, because what I've seen is that these ideas didn't just work in Baltimore. You've been able to bring them to a new place as well.

Donte: I think Baltimore and Atlanta are very different, but Atlanta was always a city, for as long as I've been in the industry, that I thought if ever the right opportunity presented itself, it's a place that I would pack up and move for. And that's something that most people in my immediate orbit have always known. And so when Thompson Atlanta Buckhead became a topic of conversation, Jason was one of the first people that I spoke to. You know, he denies this, but Jason was very cold to me my last week in Baltimore. I think he was trying to just distance himself a bit to prepare for the blow of my departure. But I think, you know, one of the last things he said to me was, listen, you know, if we had an opportunity to get the gang back together again, I'd be open to that. And that rang in the back of my mind. I got to the hotel and certainly saw opportunity for Jason's, you know, unique skills and talents to add value. And it was actually brought to me by one of the senior stakeholders on the team. You know, hey, this seems like a job for a Jason. And do you think he'd be interested? And I was able to speak confidently that he would. And I want to say I was here for maybe six weeks before Jason arrived. And so we were able to kind of keep some of that momentum. But one of the things that's really critical in the way that we've approached this work is that we start with, you know, a bit of an informal listening tour. And so, you know, we did the same thing in Baltimore. And Jason being from Baltimore and me being from D.C. is a bit of an advantage in that city, but it doesn't mean that we know all the answers to the test.

Josiah: Donte, can I just jump in there? Because what you just mentioned, I think I want to get to the listening tour. But what you just mentioned is an important point, I think, for our listeners to understand, because people move around a lot in hospitality, right? And I'm fascinated by how do you take these strong working relationships and bring them around. And sometimes it feels that if you just immediately moved into a new role, and kind of fire who's there and bring in people you've worked with in the past. I've seen in organizations I've worked in, it isn't the best outcome. It's even what you described, even as close as you are as working partners, it sounds like there was still, there was still some weeks of listening that you did personally in that role. Is that, is that a fair, did I hear you right there?

Donte: Absolutely. And I think the great thing about having a role that almost doesn't exist anywhere is that no one ever has to get fired for you to show up. We just have to kind of build alignment around the idea that it's valuable to have. But I think for us, you know, we just don't want to be the guy showing up from out of town with a bunch of bright ideas. And so I think there's two things that we've done here that were very intentional and very unique and done differently than we did them in Baltimore. Number one, the formality around the listening tour. We were very intentional not to jump into anything, and especially things that we had done a thousand miles away, assuming that they would work. The other thing that we did was we started to build out community in a more formal way around the hotel. And so one of the things that we did at Thompson is we built an advisory board. And so, you know, these are nine movers and shakers across Atlanta, across sectors, across industries, who are people who can, number one, be a gut check for ideas that we have, but also hold us accountable to the things that we say we're here to do. And so if we say that, you know, we believe very deeply that building community while building business is a better outcome on both sides, then they're the ones who can challenge us and say, hey, how is this good for the business? Or, you know, how is this good for Atlanta?

Josiah: of what's going on here, Donte. And if I think about most general managers, even good ones, I don't hear them thinking and operating on this level. I've never heard of abortive advisors for a hotel operator. So you're thinking on a bigger level. I actually would like to change tracks just slightly and talk directly about impact hospitality, because I think we've talked about many elements of it here. I really want to showcase kind of what you've written here, which I find remarkable. Include links in the show notes so people can learn more. But I guess if you had to define impact hospitality, how would you describe it?

Donte: Yeah, I'd describe it as leveraging the tools, resources, and talents of the hospitality industry to drive positive impact into the communities where we do business. And we talked about a little bit of this before we hit record. I think we have to start with alignment around the idea that having healthy businesses in unhealthy communities is not an acceptable outcome. And also that with a little intention and a lot of creativity, we can actually do something about that. And it doesn't require us to twist and contort the business in unnatural ways. We can just make some different decisions and make a huge difference.

Josiah: I love that. Why write about this? I think it's one thing to operate in this way. Sometimes people come up with a great way of operating. They keep this very, you know, sort of close to themselves. It's their special sauce. You're talking about these ideas broadly. Why share this? And why specifically write about this?

Donte: Yeah, it's a good question. We very early on started down the path with the thought of, you know, this is meant to be an open source conversation. And we don't have all the answers. We have tons of questions and lots of, you know, what we believe to be bright ideas. But, you know, we're not the end all be all of social impact and certainly aren't the end all be all of business. And so we've done this with the intention of building something that was meant to be replicated to the point where we would challenge ourselves midstream as we were, you know, planning and plotting out the execution of an idea and say, yes, but can we build this in a way that you don't have to care as much as we do in order to do it and get behind it? And we knew that if we built the thing that passed the smell test with people who were purely capitalists, and all we care about is the bottom line, then we did it correctly. Because at some point, all of it will have to pass through the lens of knowing that these are for-profit enterprises. And if we can't convert, you know, all of this intention and creativity to outcomes for the business, then we're just doing cool stuff that's not sustainable.

Josiah: Interesting. So the premise here is that you're not asking necessarily people just do this based on good feelings or doing something good. You say, hey, there's what I've seen here across the places I've led is you can do this in a way that's driving financial performance.

Donte: Not just financial performance, in every way that we measure success, all the KPIs. So recruitment expense, retention, speed to fill open positions, group pays, profitability, rev car index. Satisfaction surveys. Yeah, I mean, it's across the board, but I think all of those things ramp at different speeds. So, you know, one of the things that Jason and I talk about is, you know, all the great outcomes can't be in the future. Like some stuff has to have an impact right now. But we do know and understand, because we've been through the full cycle of this before, that there are some things that ramp more quickly, which is great. And I think, you know, part of the reason for capturing it in a book And we were doing everything we possibly could. And a lot of this started with conversations like the one we had with you. And really being heavily supported and amplified by all the various different types of media. But we still would meet people in our own city, in our backyard, who weren't fully versed on what we were doing and how we were doing it. Or they might be really, really deeply familiar with one part, but not with all the other elements. And so, you know, we would always say, you know, in five years, we'd love to have to find a new way to be special. And, you know, a number of times it's documented, both of us in a conversation where I go, anybody could do this if they wanted to. And then Jason would right behind me go, no, they can't. And this was an ongoing debate that we had. And the thought behind actually publishing the book or writing the book, we didn't, we didn't necessarily decide that it would be published right away, was this is now an accountability piece. We are the industry that says you can walk in off the street, not know anything, and we will give you all the tools and access and resources that you need to be a success story. And if we can now put this out in front of the industry, and particularly industry leaders, especially early in their careers, well now those people can leverage this to hold us accountable as an industry, to who we say we want to be for our colleagues, for our investors, for our guests, and ultimately for the fourth stakeholder, which is our communities.

Josiah: That's great, Donte. Jason, I'd love to get your perspective on this, because you create media across channels. You're always teaching people, showing, you know, giving people new, fresh ideas. So you're very plugged into the modern media landscape. And I'm curious if you have other thoughts around, you know, kind of why share these ideas in this written format. And if you can, I'd love to hear a little bit behind the scenes on how you thought about structuring the book.

Jason: Absolutely. I think there's one key point that I want to go back to, and that's Donte might be Maybe tell a little bit of a, of a, of a fib here. I threw him the best going away party when he left Baltimore to go to Atlanta. We had, it was a huge celebration at a restaurant, you know, friends were there, the few people he, you know, he cares about and you know, bottles of champagne and there was all types of music. It was a whole celebration. That's rare.

Josiah: Let the record show.

Jason: I want to make sure that this is recorded. Let the record show. And also, you know, I want some money back because we're still together. So. Acknowledged. So, and now to the other part of this, which is, you know, what this podcast is really about. You know, I think that, you know, who we published a book through, Kendall Hunt, they create content, they create books for HBCUs, right? So I think it was really important to both of us to be able to share the stories, not prescribe the way to operate, but instead provide stories and some guidance instead of being like that guru to the up-and-coming hospitality professionals that are going to enter the industry within the next two or so years and know that you can speak community and capitalism at the same time. You can be passionate about these different causes and you can also drive profit at the same time. And figuring out the right way to discuss it where you're not You're not misusing or misappropriating that kind of mindset in a way that is taking advantage of a community or an organization in order to drive revenue. I think it's incredibly important. This is something that I think Donte has mentioned quite a few times just in this interview, that this is something that we just did authentically, just genuinely. You know, we came together in a way that was organic. You know, he had an idea and a thought about how hospitality could be executed within this, you know, small hundred room hotel in midtown Baltimore. And we were able to collaborate in a way where it made sense. And we had outcomes, right? And those outcomes were what we could point to and say, we need to keep doing this. We need to keep exploring this in ways that, you know, that came from either some of the surveys that he was talking about through people applying for jobs and saying they heard about us because we were on local news or somebody in the community said, hey, there's this interesting hotel that is doing all of this good stuff around East and West Baltimore. Go check them out and just go support, see what's going on with these guys. I think it was important to capture a lot of those moments. And we did that through blog posts, through recordings of our own podcast that we were doing at the hotel. You know, we have a great friend and partner on this book by the name of Ryan Rhodes, aka DJ Impulse, which took up photography and videography during the pandemic as an alternative to DJing. And, you know, he had that time to build out his skill set with this new medium. And he was capturing all of this stuff with no idea that it would eventually be used in this way. I think for a lot of those reasons, it just was the perfect blend of everything that needed to happen in order to culminate into a textbook, which is still, I keep saying it that way, because even in my mind, like, you know, Josiah, you leave, You're touching on some of the things that people know me for, like the events, the parties, the nightlife, the getting people together for joyous occasions and creating moments and being this host. And then all of a sudden, a guy like that has a textbook on hospitality. You know, it's even funny to me.

Josiah: Yeah, I mean, the issue I feel like that sometimes I have with academia is it feels a little detached from the realities of operating and running a business. And I think what I love about impact hospitality, I mean, this stuff has been tried and proven, not just in one place, multiple places, you brought this to different hotels, different cities. And as you pointed out earlier, Donte, you're seeing these results across the board. And it takes a while to move the needle, depending on the metric. But You know, sometimes when you have these conversations and explore this idea, it might just be about supply chain or one of these specific elements of operation. But, you know, you're saying you're seeing benefits across the board from people, culture, you know, within your organization to recruiting, to all this kind of stuff, which is really exciting. And I think also really important and timely, because I feel like so many in the industry are faced with these challenges. And what you both are presenting here is a solution to these challenges.

Donte: Yeah, and I think, you know, it's a couple of things. You know, to your point, different versions of this will be applicable in different environments, different segments in the industry. We would approach this differently in a luxury space than we would in a select service hotel, differently in an urban market versus a resort market. But there is a version of this that I feel like can touch and impact every corner of the industry. And I think, you know, Jason brings up a great point with the publisher. We've had this content for probably three and a half years, and we're willing to, you know, let it sit until we found the right situation from a partner perspective. You know, we thought about self-publishing it and what the advantages and disadvantages of that were. And much like many of the things that we've talked about, kind of organically, we were introduced to a guy named Curtis Ross from Kendall Hunt. And he's been with that publisher for 25 plus years and was the person who led the creation of the HBCU division at Kendall Hunt. And so specifically wanting to create, you know, textbook content for historically Black colleges and universities. And so when we met, I was five minutes into explaining the idea and the concept of the book, and he was like, no, absolutely, we have to put this out. And I think one of the things that we know about those schools is that historically they're under-resourced, they're underfunded, they're under-supported, but they're critical for the communities and the audiences that they serve. And so to have that be the entry point for content that we plan to push out into every corner of the industry. Because I truly believe that this as an idea, and to your point, as an idea that's backed up with data, it might be one of the most important conversations in this moment that our industry could be having.

Josiah: Amazing. So I'm going to include some links in the show notes for people who can learn more. I just want to give it a shout out, though, as we're talking here for people that are listening, where would you point people to learn more about impact hospitality?

Donte: We're going to push out, you know, not just the links to purchase the book, but also the links for all of the events that we'll do around the book. And a lot of those will be social in nature. As Jason mentioned, you know, there's a personal brand there, and there's a way that we engage with people. We will not be, you know, sitting at six-foot tables with stacks of books around us and signing them. We'll be engaging with people in the way that we always have. And so I think LinkedIn, Instagram are great places to follow along for the journey.

Josiah: Before we go, I would love to hear both of your thoughts around if there's an element of impact hospitality that you're especially excited and kind of fired up by now. I think in our conversation, we've touched on some themes of the textbook. People, I want them to check out the book, right? But I'm curious, you know, now today as we're recording this, is there an element to this that you're intrigued by or find yourself thinking about a lot?

Donte: The one that jumps out at me, there's a chapter about HR, and we've seen this sort of culture journey, not just in the two hotels we've worked at together, but in all the spaces that we've been, we've kind of compared notes. And you can see people start to, over time, open up from an authenticity perspective. You know, people start to, you know, wear their favorite sneakers to work, and that's a moment for them. People start to, I had a conversation with A few of the ladies who we work with at the hotel now about what vacation hair means. And there's a couple of ladies at the hotel who have braids and they talked about how in their previous jobs they would only get their hair braided if they were going on vacation. Because in many spaces in the industry, still to this day, the employee handbook, the image guidelines preclude people from being able to wear their hair in the way that it naturally grows out of their scalp. Like you, like Jason, like me. So when we got to a point where we were widely known in the city for doing great things in the community, but then we started to challenge ourselves and say, well, how much of that that we brought into the building. And we talked about this idea of running a business without walls. So blurring the line between where the community begins and where the business ends. And all of these people who we've directed all this programming toward are now in our lobby, working from our spaces, in the cafe, having coffee. You know, we have to make sure that we don't forget about, you know, the colleagues who've locked arms with us to charge across that battlefield.

Jason: Yeah, just to add to that, I think that we really have a deep understanding of the communities that we exist in personally and professionally. You know, a lot of my challenges or where I think the opportunities lie when it comes to you know, where I look to impact or create a difference. They're all internal, you know, to the business. And I'm no longer new. I don't get the opportunity to say, you know, I'm not a hotel guy. I'm new to hospitality. And I'm kind of sad about that because that was that was something I really, I really enjoyed doing. I could just excuse a lot of you know, the behaviors that go along with a curious, challenging, you know, mindset by saying that I'm just new to this. So, you know, whatever. Let's just, let's just figure this out. Now that I've gotten an opportunity to really see, to work in multiple properties, not just between Baltimore and Atlanta, but I'm also the Director of Culture and Programming at Dallas. And I may, you know, just do some task forcing at different properties. And I can see that, you know, I mean, this industry has been around for thousands, thousands of years. This version of it, you know, there's cultures that have been crafted in, let's say, I give an example between like sales and operations, where, you know, they just naturally sometimes have friction as to, you know, who's going to do what and in which spaces. Once you add somebody like me to the pot, since that hasn't necessarily been solved, it's just going to create more heat. So I look at that interaction and I'm like, how do we solve this? And then throw me in the mix so that we can all work in a harmonious way to drive revenue, to strengthen the brand, to create amazing experiences, to do it in ways that challenge the traditional thinking of both departments. Luckily, Donte, as a GM, as a leader, continues to be a shield of sorts, not as much as he was before, because before, he had to adamantly protect the idea, this new thing that he was betting on as he threw it into the mix. Now, I can hold my own. I have enough experience within the industry. I can pull on a lot of the things that I've done in the past from different industries and just cross-utilize that along with all the different ways that I educate myself on trends that I see within the industry to say, hey, let's just give this a chance. Let's give this new idea, this new method a run for the next 60, 90 days, or at least let's just discuss it. You know, and when the time is right, I think we can come back to it and implement it in a way that, you know, we could benefit from, you know, because there's so many ways that this thing is we're going to we're going to be forced to change, right? Technology is going to be one of the one of the most driving forces in what's going to force us to do something differently. Also, the generation, this new generation that's coming up, you know, they work and do things completely different than the previous three or four generations that are currently within the building. So there are a lot of factors that I think we're paying attention to from just an overall business operating perspective that I see is going to be a lot of fun for the next volume, the next Impact Hospitality Handbook Part 2. There you go.

Josiah: I mean, I think what you said, Jason, is true. Technology is going to be a huge driver of change. And I talk about it a lot on the show. I think it's absolutely true. But I think innovation doesn't only come through technology. And I think what you both have lived and led with of operating differently and coming up with fresh ideas to run a profitable, engaging hotel business is also innovation, equally important or more important, right? And so I think this is really key as people think about, you know, how do I prepare, you know, my own career as I think about my business this year and moving forward. But I also want to underscore one thing that you also mentioned about your work, Donte. As a leader, this is how you make change happen is being, I think you said, a shield or a bit of air cover. for fresh ideas, because that takes courage. It takes risk. You're putting yourself out there and giving some support for your team to innovate. And without that, innovation doesn't happen, right? And so I think, I like getting into the details of how do you actually drive change. And I think the working relationship you both have built across hotels is a really important lesson in that.

Jason: Thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely.

Josiah: Awesome. I feel like you both shared a ton here, and I'm thinking, you know, kind of from from the background to kind of the book, to the writing, the strategy. Was there other things you were hoping to cover in this conversation or questions I should have asked?

Jason: I love that we're highlighting his personal and professional relationship, but there's a there's a con to this, too. We cannot be separated now. This is. It's always a Donte and Jason thing, you know, no matter what. I've told my partner, she knows it very well. Like it's, he stuck with us, you know, him and his family, we're, we're bonded together in this way. So, uh, you know, let's just get the best out of it while we can. And luckily we're doing really positive work out here. Otherwise it would probably drive everybody insane.

Josiah: Well, thank you both for taking the time to talk.

Donte: Thank you. I was just gonna say thank you to you for for now twice Helping us to tell you know, what we believe is a very important story and and one that we're incredibly passionate about Well, I'm really proud of you both for putting this out there in the world I'm delighted that you took time to speak with me about this