Kati Reardon

Gabriel Flores  0:00  

All right, Katie Reardon. Thank you so much for joining me on the shades of entrepreneurship. Very interesting topic tonight because you're not only an owner, but you're also a Chief Operating Officer at a large company. We'll talk about that here shortly. But first, I want to introduce the world to Katie. Let's let's give them a little background. Who is Katie Reardon?

Kati Reardon  0:23  

Ah. Well, thanks for having me, Gabe, super excited to be here. Who is Katie Reardon? It's like a meta question.

I'll give you the short story versus the long winded version of that.

So to your point, I am both a co founder of the company called the knight with society. And I'm also the acting COO for Burgerville. You know, like many entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs, for that matter, my life journey hasn't been all that linear. I would say that, you know, I grew up in Portland, I've got the Pacific Northwest roots. I'm a third generation Oregonian, so very, very, very married to my community, in general, pretty much just every day lover of international travel, culture, and really relationships and relationship building. And those three things are important. And we'll we'll talk more about it as we go. But those three things have really shaped my life and career.

Gabriel Flores  1:28  

Nice. So international travel Where's where's one of your favorite spots? Oh, gosh,

Kati Reardon  1:32  

um, I have been so blessed and lucky to travel the majority of my career. So for 20 years, I've been working abroad, I had the opportunity to live in Japan, arguably one of my most favorite places on the planet. I love from Central America to the Middle East to Sri Lanka, like I honestly don't know if I have a favorite place. But what I will say is, I can be as happy in the deserts of Mexico as I can be on the streets of Rio. So really just drop me anywhere. If there's good food and nice, you know, good people and good music. I'm down. Love it.

Gabriel Flores  2:09  

Nothing, nothing beats good food and good people. Throw in a couple of drinks and on there. So so as you mentioned, right, you're the chief operation Officer of Burgerville. But you also own the night wood society prefers. I want to kind of talk a little bit about Burgerville. Tell me Tell me a little bit about your role at Burgerville.

Kati Reardon  2:28  

Yeah. So you know, I joined the Burgerville team first, actually, as a partnership. So the Nightwood and Burgerville. Were really, we became one through this process. But we, my co founder and I Michel Batista is my co founding partner in the night wood society and myself, were introduced to Burgerville. Through our love of food and community. And part of what ended up happening is we met the Burgerville team, because they had come to a couple of our events. This was about I don't know, gosh, maybe two and a half, almost three years ago, we had been hosting all sorts of different events for predominantly women in politics at the time. And we met a couple of folks from the Burgerville team. We met them really through the lens of conversations around food system, food systems and foreign policy. And what we realized in that really interesting relationship of just getting to know each other was that we provided a service that they were in need of. Michelle and I both have an extensive background in creative strategy, strategic planning and brand building. And Burgerville, which is a 60 year old hometown favorite was, quite honestly really in need of some brand partners to help them with a turnaround. So we started to work with them over two years ago, as consultants. At the time working I was working full time at Nike, Michelle has her own design consultancy in the footwear space. And the two of us were really honestly just hustling after all sorts of interesting projects. We met the Burgerville team and had an amazing opportunity to help them revamp some pieces of their menu and really start to, I would say, kind of turn the brand into where we're headed now, which is a much more modern view and sustainable view of what fast food could

Gabriel Flores  4:22  

be. Oh, wow. And so I think a lot of people at home may not know this, but I believe Burgerville is a limited liability company. Correct? It is. Yes. And it's a locally, you know, kind of small business here locally in Oregon. Correct.

Kati Reardon  4:36  

It's actually founded in Washington, Coover Washington but yes, all of our 40 locations span Oregon and Washington pretty close proximity to Vancouver and Portland with a few outer lying as far as you know, north of Centralia and south as Monmouth and the Dow's

Gabriel Flores  4:51  

Oh, wow. Now, so, you mentioned the night was the night was out of sight it was actually before Burgerville and that's actually how Oh, you you landed that role. So so how did let's let's talk about the creation of the networked society. How did that happen?

Kati Reardon  5:06  

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny when I was organizing my thoughts for today, I was taken back in time, because so much has gone on in the last four years of having an iPad. So back in, let's see, 2016. Yeah, right before the election, Michelle and I had really come together to start talking about what a partnership could be, actually, to be fair, she was not interested in having a partner I was interested in being her partner. She's a very dynamic and dimensional talent. And at the time, I was working at Nike getting my MBA kind of doing double duty anyway, and I have loved the career I've had in apparel and accessory product management, design and strategic planning. And I knew that at the time, I really wanted to take that skill set combined with getting my MBA, and start to focus more on what being a purpose driven leader could look like. Not that you can't do that at Nike, I love the brand, love the people, but it's a different caliber of lift there than it is in going out into your community or starting something on your own. So I fully propositioned Michelle and basically begged her to take me on as a partner. She had been working in her own design consultancy on her own for 20 years. So having a partner she was like, no, no, but we'll give it a shot. And so the two of us just started to put together an idea of what could it be to take our skill set, especially in you know, strategic planning and brand building and, and really this comprehensive creative strategy and putting that towards something we were both super passionate about, which was fifth. At the time, that's all we knew. Then you roll into the 2016 election. And we were so upset, disappointed, angry, frustrated, trapped. Coming out of the results of the election, that we knew that we wanted to put our partnership in whatever way we could to use. We're both community builders by nature. And we decided to just say, basically, sorry, Effat, we're going to try some stuff. And through that lens of literally trying stuff, which to us really meant engaging in community, standing up for women standing up for the bipoc, community, etc, especially with the start of a new administration, we didn't actually know what we were going to be doing. We thought it was going to be in the design, consultancy space, sort of long term. What we realized was that, through the lens of food, and breaking bread and building community, we decided that we thought one of the things that we could do for the Portland community in particular was to create a physical space. And we thought at the time, it would just be pop ups, where we would bring especially women and food together to create really unique and curated experiences that highlighted the region, but also could create really interesting conversation. We started doing pop ups and the next thing we knew two months in, we signed a lease on a space and all of a sudden we had an events business. The two of us still had full time jobs. I literally had just finished my MBA and had no idea what I wanted to do with it. And here we have this beginning kernel of a new business.

Gabriel Flores  8:27  

Wow. Wow. So we're, let's let's talk about education. Where do we go to school.

Kati Reardon  8:32  

So again, grew up here in Portland, I had kind of what again, remember I opened with not linear. I was one of those kids who grew up in sport my entire life. So always had a purpose, right. And when I graduated high school, my parents were like, you're going to college and I My father's a professor, so it was never, you know, there was never a negotiation about what education was going to be. And I wanted to follow the Grateful Dead. Just those two things are not the same. So I totally said to my parents, I was like, Fine, I'll go to school. I mean, what, uh, you know, I look back on what a brat that I was like, I don't want to go to college, like who's anyway who says that, but at the time, this is the 90s. And I was coming off of having a very rigorous and sportsfield life and all of a sudden, I had what I thought was going to be a gap year. That was not the case. I ended up going to college at the University of Montana. And I had one of those first year flunk outs, to be honest, which I am actually, I always like to share because I think there's a misconception that along the way, every step you make has to be perfect. So when I talk to my friends who have high school kids or college aged kids, and they want to hear about my journey, I always own the fact that my first year into college was a total Dare I say dumpster fire? Um, it was it was off the rails. So I got kicked out of school. Oh, and didn't know what I was going to do. And came back to Portland and started taking coursework at Portland State, during which is where my father was a professor. And during that time period found out subsequently that my mom had fallen, she was ill. And so my current my college journey was not traditional, my mother ended up having cancer and passing away when I was a sophomore in college. And, you know, it's interesting when you go from being really rigorous to having all this free time to getting kicked out of school, to being back in your hometown to caring and nurturing for a dying parent, you get to learn really quickly what you care about what you don't. So here I was, in my early 20s, embarking on a journey that I had no idea what it was going to look like, but I got serious pretty fast. So when ended up finishing my education at Portland State, and then launched into a career, that is so funny that I think about it now, because it really was the foundation for what I do. But it was so not correlated to what I do now. I went and got my master's degree at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, and focused honestly, at the time, I was headed to Washington to work in international relations in the Foreign Service. That was where I was going. And about, I was thinking about this today, about four months shy of graduating, which I ended up graduating, but about four months shy of graduating decided I didn't want to work for the government. I didn't want to be in politics. And instead, I at the time was writing what now sounds like a really complex thesis. And at the time, I was like, Oh, this is just my world. It's kind of weird. But realized, I really wanted to go stay the international route, but I was more inclined to move towards business. So while all my current, you know, college, friends from my master's program, decided to either go back to their host country or go to work for the government, I went to work for Banana Republic in San Francisco. And not a single advisor, I knew what to do with any of that. And it's probably a reason they have yet to reach out to me. They're like, so

Gabriel Flores  12:12  

waiting for that LinkedIn invite. Come on. Yeah, totally.

Kati Reardon  12:16  

And so off, I went, looking for a new opportunity in international business and join the team at Banana Republic, who was launching a startup within a company called Banana Republic, Japan. And now it's sort of how it all began, was from that one moment of just realization of, I love what I'm doing. I love all the international pieces. I don't think I'm set for the government. And I think I'm going to try something else.

Gabriel Flores  12:43  

Yes. What was the moment kind of similar to that like a pivotal moment, at your career at Nike, that you were like, you know, I need to, I need to pivot again and start my own company.

Kati Reardon  12:54  

Yeah. So it's interesting that we're having this conversation today. Because four years ago, next week, I you know, I had been at Nike had gotten my MBA, Michelle and I were starting our business, things were humming. And it was a beautiful spring day, you know, around here, cherry blossoms, we're gonna love it. The most beautiful time of year, we had events stacked at the Nightwood. And I'm, uh, I've pretty much been doing double duty my entire career in some fashion, right work and schoolwork in school. And I was out for a run, which is another, you know, kind of how I cope with all of that. And on my run, oddly enough, slipped and fell. And when I fell, I ended up severing my hamstring and tearing every muscle in my right leg. Wow. Why that's important is that from that moment to today, my entire life changed as a result of that injury. And I share that story because it's a little bit like getting kicked out of school or your mother being ill and passing. It was a pivotal moment where I mean, I was on the couch for four months, working at Nike used to being a high performer, a charger traveling constantly and being fully sidelined and immobilized. And what happened during that time period was that's where my pivot started to gain momentum. And I had loved what I was doing there and I was on a trajectory of career progression and had a lot of support. But I realized in that moment that my purpose for being there wasn't strong enough. And I got very clear and very in touch with my purpose while laying on the couch for four months and while being on crutches for six and while trying to integrate back into the company, because you have an injury like that you're in recovery from I mean, I'm I was in recovery two and a half full years. And during that time, I got very clear about what I didn't want to do and even more clear about what I did.

Gabriel Flores  14:58  

You know, this this part Cast is, you know all about education. And so I would love to kind of think about, you know, your your world and corporate America. How, how has that helped build the night with society?

Kati Reardon  15:12  

So, you know, I've started thinking a lot about this. And I appreciate that question. Because I think that's something that gets mined often, when you're an entrepreneur, you know, success in quotations can't see that, but in success, quote,

Gabriel Flores  15:27  

just quoting it, trust me air quotes.

Kati Reardon  15:30  

But what's really interesting about that formation of who one is, as an entrepreneur is really the whole host of experiences that came before that. And what corporate taught me is that you can have both an intrapreneur experience and an acumen and develop that in a big company full of support, as well and learn some of the early entrepreneurship skills by having those opportunities and by seeking those opportunities. So for me, at Nike, and really, whether it was banana, or it was Columbia Sportswear, it was working at Nike, I always sought out emerging opportunities turn around parts of the business, parts of the business that had opportunity, but no, but they weren't sexy, right? Nobody wanted to take them on. So at Nike, when you volunteer for that, you get that because that's not what folks are there to do, right? They're there to be in basketball footwear, or to meet the athletes of x, especially when you work on the product side. And I always wanted to take the down and dirty like, give me the big nest egg, the one that will deliver results, but is the hardest one to move. And so I had those opportunities at Nike. And that's where it really taught me about intrapreneurship, which is to say you can work in a 35 $40 billion company and still be in a burgeoning business like that with very few resources. Few, you know, it's all relative, right? It's Nike. So it's still more than most. And that's where I really learned the idea of skill set development, of strategic planning, of how to take a concept all the way through to the marketplace, how to grow an E commerce business from scratch, how to work cross functionally, with a ton of partners, some of whom, who don't want to see or hear you, because again, you don't have a sexy product. Right? So for me that intrapreneurial part of corporate America taught me so much whether it was launching Banana Republic, Japan, whether it was in the turnaround of when I joined Colombia, and they were really starting to refine what design meant in their culture, or going to Nike, and really taking product types that weren't the sexiest, but delivered a ton to the bottom line.

Gabriel Flores  17:45  

Yeah. And so what what was the difficult piece going from product? Right, you know, going through the stages of creating a product development, right, versus food, where you're not creating a product, you're creating a dish or a space for dish

Kati Reardon  18:01  

to live? Yeah, that's an excellent question. So similar Lee, they actually have similar principles. So whether you're creating a product or service, the idea of getting really clear about what your concept is, and how you're going to execute that, and how you plan your way through that are quite similar. So for me, because I knew that I wanted to focus on what I was most passionate about, which is food and food systems. The purpose of that really started to shape the concepts, right. And what I would say is moving from a product, a tangible product type, like you're making, you know, T shirts, outerwear, accessories, whatever the thing may be, you always have to start with an insight first, right? You have to home the reason and the prot, like the problems that you're solving, but even sometimes, more importantly, why do you even care, because if you don't care about it, is going to be a drag. And people can see that when it's a drag, right? You can't fill that with passion. So for me and for Michelle, and for our team at the Nightwood it really was about bringing product and service together and doing it from a place of ultimate purpose and passion. So for us at the Nightwood everything we did I mean, we're lady owned lady ran. And we have the same team from the beginning all the way through current state. Why that's important is that we grew that those nuances of bringing products and services to life together. And from a totally different background to I mean, when we launched the night wood, we were really focused. And this is around the time period of me too, as well. And there was a ton of conversation about women in the kitchen, and the really strong, very toxic locker room vibes of female chefs in the kitchen. Michelle and I have a ton of friends that are both male and female in the food space. And so we had been seeing this firsthand for quite some time. We knew we wanted to be a safe space for women to come and work And we knew that we wanted to create it in our own way, without having to follow some of the like, very traditional nuances of a lot of kitchens, you know, hierarchy. Again, I go to aggressive locker room vibes, and not typically designed for or catered to women. So for us at the very beginning, because we were so aligned on being lady owned and ran, we could put women first. And that was part of our service. The product was really partnering with our local farmer friends, and supporting our food systems throughout the Pacific Northwest, you put those two things together, home run with what you can create out of those ingredients. Yeah,

Gabriel Flores  20:40  

did you? Did you ever feel like, you know, being a woman owned business? Did you ever feel like you ran into any resistance or roadblocks or challenges? And what did what did you learn from those?

Kati Reardon  20:51  

Yeah, we definitely did. So we have the luxury. Michelle and I, when we put our business together of really having conversation about how we wanted to fund it, there is very minimal funding for women in business, especially in the entrepreneurship space, and especially if you're a woman of color. So for us, we knew that those challenges were gonna show up as women just starting a business, and you can't really draw from, it's quite hard to go to a bank, right? When you don't have a ton of assets to back you up. It's hard to go to a bank when you don't have a product to sell, and when you're just getting started. And so what Michelle and I really focused on was that we self funded a lot of what we did, we took very little amount of startup money. And part of the reason for that was that both of us have learned through our careers to mitigate risk as best best you possibly can, can always not and not all the way. But it was really important for us to not be so tied down financially, that we could still be nimble and explore, because we didn't actually know what we were doing or what it was going to look like over you know, year 123, and four, so the women and funding is a major conversation that needs to be had. And what we're seeing now in particular is, you know, with a lot of women leaving the workforce, especially during the pandemic, and COVID. So many women are starting small businesses, but they're doing it with very little to no access to funding. And so we wanted to support them as best we could, we used all of our resources to also pay it forward. Because we knew that we were starting on a straight out a shoestring budget, and it would just meant we had to build as we went. So it couldn't always be as beautiful or as stellar as we wanted it to be right we had to be really comfortable with, Hey, this is in construction. And it's going to be in construction for as many moons as we can see.

Gabriel Flores  22:43  

Yeah. And so for the listeners at home that may not know the the venture capital process, you know, and really kind of spilling your guts in front of somebody, can you kind of give us a little synopsis of kind of the process for your team and how it felt?

Kati Reardon  22:57  

Yeah. So because Michelle and I had the collet experience of building brands for other companies, we could see how you could tell the story. We're both storyteller, obsessed with story, honestly, and storytellers by nature. So we always knew that at least whatever we were building had to come back to vision and mission and purpose first. So when you lead from that place, right, you can tell a really compelling and put together a really compelling plan and strategy and brand deck and all of those things. The challenge with all of that, though, is when you're in the events, business, right, you are forecasting into the future, a demand that may not show up. So we built pretty smart what we felt like we're pretty conservative plans. And when you put together a strong story, a strong vision, mission and purpose, and at least some basic assumptions for what you're going to deliver on without a ton of debt. The way it turns out, it's pretty compelling. Now, no one's going to show up at your door and give you millions of dollars for that, you know, which now in hindsight, I'm really thankful they didn't. But the process around attracting capital is really one where you have to build your network. Our early funding sources were ourselves were crowd sourced. And then we had two really amazing kind of founding partners that we really, really respect and partnered with up until this day, the combination of those things gave us enough seed capital to sign a lease, buy some furniture, buy our first amount of food, and at least try our you know, our hands at a extenuating beyond a couple of popups

Gabriel Flores  24:36  

was there any ever a moment of self doubt, either with the company or yourself when you're going through that process of like, did I make Am I making the right decision?

Kati Reardon  24:45  

Pretty much every day? Yeah, huh. You know, the thing. The thing that was really interesting is because again, I've always been a corporate employee, right. I've been a leader of people, a leader of teams. I hadn't been my own entre. You're, and when you're building a partnership, you have a lot of conversations to have, it's a little bit like being in a relationship, right? I mean, it very much is like being a real in a relationship. And the conversations you need to have will guide you on how you want to establish yourselves as partners, but also, what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do. Michelle and I both aligned early on, we were not willing to honestly sink our financial ships over our business. So we built an exit strategy day one. And it wasn't that we didn't believe that we would be able to achieve what we wanted, it was more of if we can't, we know when we need to call it. That gave us a sense of alignment and security that we can see coming. Now, we didn't know that it was going to come in the form of a pandemic. But at least it gave us a roadmap to follow.

Gabriel Flores  25:52  

Yeah. And now, you you're still managing these two careers. Right? How do you manage these two careers?

Kati Reardon  26:00  

Well, um, you know, for me, again, I, I have a love of work, and I have a love of education. So I constantly am in two of those things happening simultaneously. So the minute we stepped into having our own space, like the night would, and really starting our business, we realized it was all about the team. If you didn't put together a great team to help you execute on that, there's no way Michelle and I could have done it, just I mean, full stop. So it was all about the team. So investing in them became our number one priority. In addition to that having a big kind of corporate job right is really about leveraging your skill set, and both. So they were close enough that we could leverage what we were learning in one and apply it to the other. So it almost became quite fluid in applying our energy and focus and skill set equally. Now what I will say is where the challenges would come up would be things like, when I was traveling a ton, especially at Nike, that became really hard, because I couldn't be physically present. And then you know, you're dealing with time zones, and things of that, like that. But in reality, what we both discovered is that we have strengths and weaknesses in different places. So where Michelle is Uber creative and can build these amazing brand platform around social and what we wanted our story to look like in our vibe, I'm I love to nerd out on strategy and Future Planning, and what is this going to look like? And what could it become? So you put that type of skill set together, you balance each out, you balance, balance, pardon me each other out enough? That you can still be an active participant in both, but you can't do it all on your own. Yeah, so it was critical that we had a strong team. And it was critical that our skill sets complemented one another.

Gabriel Flores  27:53  

Yeah. You know, that's I think that was very important, because you know, talking about not only building your team, but making sure we talked about it in a previous episode about the culture, right, and the importance of the culture, because that really creates your brand. Absolutely. Now looking back on everything, what advice would you have for, you know, men, women or other trying to start their own business?

Kati Reardon  28:18  

It's a great question. You know, I think, Well, again, I would go to get really clear on what you're there to do. And if it doesn't align, and you know, it's like, you hear that all the time, like, Oh, I'm passionate about x. So I'm going to turn it into a business great. If you're passionate about X, but you hate y. And y is a big part of what you do. It doesn't matter how passionate you're going to be, you'll always run up against these things that you don't necessarily want to do don't know how to do and can't do. So the piece of that that was clear to us, again, going back to the team and the complementary skill set was also farm out the things you don't want to do. And that is a piece of the puzzle, I think of entrepreneurship that doesn't get talked about enough because I think we assume we have to do it all. And you have to be capable of doing it all the reality is you can't and when you try to do it all you don't do any of it great. And you know, we all kind of know that in varying degrees or have experienced that whether you're an employee of somebody else, or you and you're overextended or you're an entrepreneur. The other thing I would say and I didn't learn this fast enough, but I'm seeing it now in hindsight, figure out a way to pay yourself early on. Okay, yeah. And the reason I say that is we are in our mid to late 40s and started a business in the beginning of our 40s. At that point in time. You've got lifestyle expectations, Michelle's got two kids, right, like you're established. It's very hard. And again, I'm talking about it from a very luxury. Right, I'm coming to this from a place of luxury. We both had jobs, right? We had support systems, etc. But the reality of it is, if we had figured out a way to pay ourselves earlier on, we could have potentially gotten to a place where we only had the one job called the night with society. Gotcha. And so that's the part where, what I mean, where I mean, and what I mean, when I say, you know, find those that team find somebody who has a complementary skill set, or a variety of people who do and figure out a way to compensate yourself. Because if you do, you will, at least in my experience, you can pivot that much faster. And in addition to that, as women in particular, you got to get paid. Yeah, because no one was coming to our rescue, no one was showing up with blank checks for us. And we still had a ton of life's life's obligations to pay for. So that would be something I think, you know, at times, you hear founder stories, and people are like, I didn't pay myself for five years or 10 years. That's awesome. If you can make that work. But I recommend women in business, you figure out a way to get paid.

Gabriel Flores  31:01  

Yeah. Now what would you say to a young Katie? What advice would maybe not get kicked out of school? get kicked out? I love it that's talking about maybe get

Kati Reardon  31:12  

kicked out again? Yeah, great. What would I do? Yeah, what

Gabriel Flores  31:17  

advice would you give a young Katie?

Kati Reardon  31:20  

Do it all over again, the same exact way? Yes, um, don't be an asshole. But that's always something that I learned day one and carried with me. So don't show up, it'd be a jerk and great words of advice. Yeah, just don't. Um, and, you know, I would say, for me stay as curious and open and adventurous as possible, because that really was what helped me not only overcome some of life's earlier hurdles, but it also helped me build confidence because I had tried a lot of different things. And I think that's really important. You know, I had this amazing boss, when I first started it at br At Banana Republic in Japan. And he said to me, because I had started my career quite late as an eight, by nature of, you know, having family obligations, and then going to graduate school. And, you know, of course, correcting that and figuring out what I wanted to do. And he said, You know, there's going to come a point in time as choose your own adventure in your career. And you're either going to be asked to go deep, and build a subject matter expertise, or you're going to be asked to learn a little about a lot and become more of a generalist. And for you, you're going to have to figure out which of those two things you want, and where you build competence from, what becomes your most beneficial platform to launch from. And that piece of advice was absolutely essential for me, I don't think I realized it at the moment, he was giving it to me, but I quickly realized it a couple of years into that, because what I discovered about myself was I was far too curious about too much to to build a deep, deep, deep subject matter expertise and stay in one function for my entire career. So I would say to the young Katie, keep being curious, keep failing, keep moving forward, and sooner or later your passion is going to get and your purpose is going to get you where you want to

Gabriel Flores  33:16  

go. Nice. Now, last question, although I think you may have already answered this. Would you do it all again?

Kati Reardon  33:22  

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I, gosh, I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine. Because she asked me the other day, she's like, aren't you tired by now? Like, you know, we're coming out of, you know, pandemic, she's like, aren't you just exhausted? And I said, No, because I haven't done the same thing twice. And that gives me so much energy and so much momentum to keep building on into the future.

Gabriel Flores  33:48  

So tell the people at home, how do they get contact the night with society, where how can they schedule things and things.

Kati Reardon  33:54  

So what's interesting is we're in the midst of a shift, and that shift actually happened this week. So what I will say is the Nightwood will no longer have a physical home. We are taking our show on a more, I don't know call it now local, national Global Road. And the reason I say that is because we have no idea or defects. But what we do know is that we won't be tethered to a physical space anymore. We have actually transitioned during the last six months of COVID and pandemic, we started to build a joint venture and a partnership with another event space in town. And we were looking for some like minded partners that we really wanted to come together so that our businesses both could survive. So we built an a pretty interesting and dynamic team and leveraged our resources. What that created was a joint venture with Cooper's hall here in Portland, and Cooper's Hall is actually going to take over our physical space now and run it as a Cooper's Hall northeast. But what the Nightwood is going to do is still partner with them around bring and building curating events. And then we're also going to figure out what's next for us and some of that might be keeping our events business alive here in Portland, it might be taking it on the road. One thing we are going to push more on to is our creative strategy consulting. So we're getting that back in in motion and both Michelle and I still show up and go to work every day brookeville so love it. Yeah,

Gabriel Flores  35:23  

love it. hodgepodge hodgepodge. Katie, we are in thank you so much for your time, the Chief Operating Officer of Burgerville in the owner of the night wood society. Thank you for joining my show, ladies and gentlemen at home. Thank you and have a good night.