Pivoting a Brand During the COVID-19 Pandemic w/ CEO Brenda Mierzejewski of Mizzi Cosmetics

 Hey guys, on this episode of the Radical Marketing Podcast, I sit down with
 Brenda Mershitski, the CEO of Mitsy Cosmetics. We talk about Brenda's path to
 entrepreneurship and her incredible pivot here during the COVID-19 pandemic
 into hand sanitizer. We talk about some of the ups and downs in the organic
 nature with which Brenda and Mitsy has grown using both influencers and just
 the realness of her story to grow a brand and now be helping those at the
 time of need. A really great sit down with Brenda. I hope you enjoy it. Hey guys,
 it's Ryan Alford. Welcome to today's episode of the Radical Company Podcast.
 It's Bizarreland out there Brenda. We're trying to hold it together here, you know,
 and our Zoom follies, you know, which will be on Instagram later, jokes aside.
 I'm real excited to have you on. Brenda, we've been indirectly and directly
 following each other and helping each other, doing different things and you know,
 been an admirer from afar, but Brenda Mershitski, the CEO of Mitsy Cosmetics.
 I had to drill the, again, Bruno and I have been talking for a couple years, but like that
 pronounciation of the last name, I'm just, you know, you got it, but you did good, you
 did good. You did good. I'm proud. Well, it really excited to have you on and you
 know, appreciate you, you know, finding the time. It's an interesting time, obviously,
 you know, being an entrepreneur, running a business, you know, and myself doing that
 as well. It's interesting navigating, but I do want to, you know, dig into some of that,
 but I'd love to just start and give people, again, you run a successful Cosmetics, you
 know, natural beauty cosmetics. Am I saying that right? I stay away from the word organic.
 I've been enough on that to know the natural versus organic. Yeah. So actually, it's,
 so I will tell you, it's a, it's a clean beauty. So there we go. Clean, clean mixes in with
 natural, safe, sustainable, clean products. So, and we, so it's a combination of natural,
 organic, sustainable and safe. So that's where we are, clean beauty. I got another category.
 Let me make a note of this, clean. We've worked with a couple of companies in the,
 in the natural space. And in the, you have to be pretty, the organic is an interesting.
 You've got to be pretty tied up, you know, on a certain, all the ingredients, you know,
 we've gotten, right, had to learn our, take our battle knocks a few times with that on what
 absolutely organic and not. But I'd love to just start with, you know, Brenda, let's,
 let's tell kind of the your background, you know, what, what, what led to midsy and then,
 you know, let's get into, you know, midsy and yeah, absolutely. Where you're at, let's talk about it.
 So we've been in business for six years now. I started midsy soon after my little boy
 had open heart surgery. So prior to that, I worked in big pharma for some big names for over
 16 years. I was a materials manager and I did a lot of the importing and exporting of,
 you know, some of the drugs that you see on the market now from places like Bayer Pharmaceutical,
 Amgen, stuff like that. And then I found myself at home with my kids, which was wonderful.
 And my little boy Brady ended up having a heart condition that we found out about at four
 months old. So when that happens and we realized he has to have open heart surgery, you know,
 our world kind of completely changed. And while we were in the hospital, which is just so strange,
 but while we're in the hospital, seeing your little one there with, you know, all these,
 you know, everything on his face, these tubes everywhere, open mouth breathing, and you see your
 kid in this ICU, cardiac ICU. His mouth was getting very dry. And they were putting what,
 you know, you would call petroleum jelly. And there's other brand names that everybody knows out
 there on his lips. And I, at that time, was still a breastfeeding mother. And I asked the nurse
 because they're putting so much on his face is he going to ingest that? And is it okay? Is it
 okay that he's going to actually, you know, ingest this petroleum? And they didn't really have an
 answer for me. They ended up like wiping it off. And when we got home, everything kind of changed
 for me. At the way that I was feeding him, my daughter, where I was putting on their skin,
 because I don't know where this heart defect came from. And I was worried, did it come from me?
 Did I do something? Was it anything I was using on my skin? Was it anything I was ingesting?
 You know, really going back to what do I need to do to make it safe going forward? So,
 you know, I had a background in essential oils. And from my mother, my mother is the reason why we
 named the company, Mitzi. That's her maiden name. She's from Sicily. And she has a big background
 with essential oils taught me and my sisters. And, you know, I used that to try to do some,
 you know, safer things within my house, whether it was cleaning, whether if it was, you know,
 my kids had a fever or an ailment, I used these essential oils. And because he kept on having
 chapped lips thereafter because of the drugs that he was on to keep up with this heart surgery,
 I wanted to put something on his lips to not keep him from getting chapped. And everything over
 the counter had petroleum in it. And after doing some research, I found out that petroleum is not
 okay to ingest. It is something that can't metabolize in any human being's body. So,
 after all the uses of the chapsticks and everything, Carmex, all these things that everybody's been
 using that is over the counter for years and years and years, a typical human being will ingest
 about 10 pounds of petroleum in their lifetime. And after finding this out from several studies
 and finding that this can lead to different types of lung issues, lung cancer, breast cancer,
 esophageal cancer, you know, my mind was blown. And, you know, working in the pharmaceutical
 industry, I called some of the people that I used to work with to find out, you know,
 is there something else that I can use besides petroleum? So, they sent me all this stuff and
 my husband came home from work one day and was like, Brenda, what is happening in our kitchen?
 I had... It was like a science fair. Oh my god, I had so many deliveries of all this stuff I had,
 all these different essential oils from all over the world. I had, you know, all these different
 bases that I can use, all these different amoliance, and I just got cracking. So, I just started
 making all this stuff. And what I ended up with was what we now call lip lux. And I started to
 use it on my kids. It was working. It was working for all sorts of stuff besides the lips.
 And I found myself with like literally hundreds of these little packs that I would buy from like
 Michaels. And I gave them out to everybody. And then what happened was kind of crazy, you know,
 weeks after people were coming back, Brenda, can I buy some of this? Can you make more? It's working.
 My husband need it. My wife needs it. My kids need it. My grandparents need it. I want this
 in the salon. I want this here. And I'm like, I have no idea what's happening right now. But okay,
 cool. I'm going to make some more stuff. This is fun. Let me make it. And at that time, my kids were
 about to start kindergarten. And I was ready to go back to work. And my husband's like, you know,
 I think you got something here. Why don't you try to sell this and see what you can do. So
 six years ago, I named it lip lux. You know, it was called Mitzi Cosmetics. And I started to sell
 to local salons in my area. I created my own website on, you know, that wicks.com. And I started
 selling. I got out there with all these coupons, all these moms everywhere. And it
 literally took off from there. We had a family friend that lived near where we lived and moved
 to Beverly Hills. And he's like, let me take it out to some surf shops out here. So he did, but his
 sister was a publicist. And she's like, Hey, I want to get this in the ask her swag bags. Would
 you want to do that? And I was like, no, I was like, I can't do that. Like I don't have like,
 I'm using like a little eight ounce pyrex dish. How am I going to do this for for the askers?
 But my family's like, Brenda, you got to do this. If you're going to make this into something,
 you got to do it. So we did it. And, you know, needless to say, I got bigger dishes. And,
 you know, I was melting this stuff down in my kitchen. And it really just really took off from
 there. And that's when I realized, you know, I have a business here. And, you know, we made something
 out of it. And here we are six weeks later with a 3500 square foot facility where we do all of our
 production. We have, you know, maybe about 50 or so skews were in over 450 retailers, including
 Neiman Marcus, most of them being medical spies and esthetician facilities. And it's just been
 boom and ever since that's how we, that's how we met you guys. I know. We'll talk a little bit
 about that. But it's, you know, it's, it's like the great American business story. I mean, like,
 this is the entrepreneur like story right here. Like starts in the kitchen with a science
 experiment and, but a, but a reason, you know, a heartfelt reason. And then you grow it into a,
 you know, a successful business. I mean, it's like 101, the American dream. And I think, right?
 In some ways. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Like when I'm able to tell that story over again, I'm like,
 oh, my God, we did that. And, you know, the first year, it's like, oh, I've been doing it for a year.
 I've been doing it for four years. And now it's like six years later, here we are still, you know,
 pumping this out. And we've learned a lot. It's been quite the journey with the people that we've
 met and what we've done with, with Mixie. I will say this. So, and this is true story, you know,
 we, and I'll, I'll talk about how the samples and why they were here to this day. The Cadmara,
 the men's Cadmara version is in my wife's. Now she uses the men's Cadmara because and she's
 kind of frugal and safe things or whatever. And so we had those samples or whatever to this day,
 she keeps that in her little thing. She won't let anyone else use it. Like, and now with everything
 going on, it, you know, probably smart move. But anyway, she is like protective of it because it's
 her absolute favorite. Oh, my God. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's so funny. Yeah, she's,
 she's a believer. But and and I was actually looking on your website because I need to order
 some some of the women stuff. I don't she needs to upgrade from the men's Cadmara. Yeah,
 she's got to get stuff with the box and the bow. She needs, she needs the, the luxury, you know,
 lip lugs. Yes. So talk about like from a marketing perspective. Obviously, you know, having worked
 with clients, this is a crowded space, cosmetics and beauty. It's a really competitive space,
 you know, all of that. What are some of the things, you know, some of the pillars that you look
 back on, obviously doing the Oscar things was a good launching pad. What are there other
 things that you feel like, you know, maybe some of the influencers and things like that are
 other things that have been part of your secret to success or just reality of success.
 Yeah, you know, before I knew too much about, you know, digital marketing, you know,
 I was kind of doing my own thing, created my own Facebook page, created my own Instagram page,
 Twitter page, you know, updated it, put sales on there, like I didn't know what I was doing myself,
 like I don't have that marketing digital background. Right. So, you know, learning about the Oscars
 and how these celebrities kind of got their hands on it, I started to reach out to other,
 I guess you would call them influencers at the time. And I went on some different websites to
 get their contacts, people that I really liked, people that I followed, different celebrities
 that I followed. And I found their contacts and I wrote to them. I mean, hard on my sleeve,
 I wasn't really asking for anything. I think that's the big thing. Everybody's always asking for
 something. But I wrote to them saying, you know, this is my story. I'm a fan of yours and I want to
 share my product with you. I'm not asking you to post or do anything. I just want to share my
 product with you and share my story with you. And I ended up getting people to respond to that
 because I wasn't trying. I was just being myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just
 writing a letter to this person, pouring my heart out. This is who I am. This is what I made.
 You know, you're somebody I love watching your movies or I love watching your makeup tutorials.
 And I'd love to share my product with you. Can I? And because I wasn't asking for anything but to
 share it. And they got to know me. They they saw my Facebook page. They read my story.
 These people ended up posting about me or wanting to write about me or, you know, these
 editors and beauty editors. And one of them being Kylie Jenner, you know, I reached out to her
 publicist, which I had no idea at the time was a cousin of theirs who I am great friends with
 to today that I talk to every month. And we have a wonderful relationship. And you know,
 I wrote her a letter saying I you know, I see this girl at the time, which was in like 2015,
 who was getting flooded by the media because her lips look different. And you know, here's this girl
 who's very popular. You know, her sisters are very popular. These celebrities, they have their
 own reality show. And here's this girl coming into her, you know, 18, 19 years old. And she,
 you know, everybody was ridiculing her for her lips. And I felt bad, you know, she's like, you
 know, my sister, like a little sister, you know, I felt bad. And I said, I just want to share my
 product with her. And she loved my email. She told me that she gets emails every day for people asking,
 asking, asking. And I wasn't asking. And she then asked me to send everything to all of the
 K girls. So all of the genders and all of the Kardashians. And seven weeks later, on bonones to me,
 I was going to pick up my kids at the bus stop. I was stuffing my face with a chicken palm from
 a local pizzeria. And my cell phones started going off that Kylie Jenner just posted a video about
 us. And sure enough, it was this big, fat video, you know, what's in her travel bag? And all of a
 sudden, I'm in people magazine. I'm in Alure magazine, Cosmopolitan everywhere. Beauty editors are
 calling me, interviewing me. Local places are trying to get me on. And then all of a sudden, I'm on
 TV every every six weeks. I'm going on my local news. So I wasn't expecting any any of that.
 And we were able to keep up with the orders, but that really got us out there. And I was just
 trying to be true to who I was. I wasn't trying to do anything, but be Brenda at that time. And
 it worked. And it still works for me to this day, because I, you know, I'm not trying to ask for
 these things. I'm just putting myself out there. And I want to share my stuff. And if they want
 to share it, they will. And they are. And they, and they keep doing it. So, you know, taking anything
 from that digital, you know, I didn't have any digital people working for me at that point. You
 know, I know that you know, Mary shoots, you know, our digital manager. And, you know, we've grown
 very organically. And I like to keep it that way. You know, the followers that we have are organic
 followers through influencers and and cut and consumers and Kylie and whomever like they're
 following us because they heard about us, not because of anything else that we did. So it's,
 it's been, it's, it's, it's been organically growing, I should say. But I think, you know, we,
 we counsel clients all the time. And, you know, I've used this phrase for a while, be to age,
 with this business to human. People want real. And that rings so true. People try to manufacture
 things. And, you know, they think that they have to put on an air or act a certain way or do
 certain thing. But if you do it, if you're a good person and you're, you're just trying to run a
 business, you've got a good product. Look, hey, proofs in the pudding, you have a great product
 that you've, you've put out there. And it, it takes care of itself once you get it in people's
 hands. But at the same time, the realness of your story, what you've been through and being
 transparent about getting that out there, people sometimes get so locked into the self awareness
 and like not being real. And, you know, like it all comes back to more being scared of not being
 accepted, I think in some way. And, but I think you, that is a home run story for exactly that
 realness that really resonates with people. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, people want like,
 you know, I see a lot of products out there that are, that are great. But what, but I, I always
 look like at the about page or who, who, who started this and some of them are really good.
 It's just an idea, which ideas are great because people need products. But when I see somebody
 behind it, and I see their story, it just resonates more with me as a consumer, whether I'm buying
 stuff for myself or my kids or my husband or my friends. When I see that story, it's just, it
 means something. It just for me, it means something, you know. Yeah. So let's talk, um, you know,
 you've, you've been pivoting here a little bit. Um, everything going on. You know, so I,
 I do want to get into that, you know, like the world's changed. I don't know if it's ever going to be
 what it was in some ways. You know, we both taught a pre episode, you know, about, you know,
 your kids, your minutes at my, you know, like, hey, what have you been through? There's no
 reference point for what's going on. But I do think the brands back to both the story, the
 realness and the reality of this, you know, your ability to pivot or to have the idea to pivot,
 um, is how we're counseling clients now. So different than, you know, the, the easiest
 example is, you know, a restaurant going and doing delivery, you know, or take out in some ways,
 things they probably should have been doing already. Right. But, but this is definitely a pivot
 for you guys. So let's talk about what you've been doing to kind of help serve a need with what's
 going on. Right. Well, I think, um, what I've learned over the past six years is, um, sometimes I've
 been afraid to do certain things because I'm like, oh, no, we can't do that. But, but why? And,
 you know, we have a fantastic, um, uh, marketing, uh, manager that works with us, that really helps us
 think outside of the box. Um, and, you know, for years, like, even before I started this,
 I was making hand sanitizer for my kid, like, I make everything at home. So I have, we have a
 whole other line that nobody else have seen because we're just not ready to release it to the world,
 we're hyper focused on lip care. Um, so, you know, when, when this whole corona thing started,
 and we heard that it, you know, came to the US, I, it was literally on a Wednesday night. My
 daughter was done with her piano lessons, and I, her name is Leana. And I was like, yeah,
 let's, let's go to the lab. Let's go make some hand sanitizers. Let's pass them out to daddy's
 school, to your school, to the teachers. And let's have some for ourselves. You know, you could
 put like a little one in your book bag. So we got into the lab and we made some stuff. And, you
 know, um, even though it's clean beauty, when it comes down to bacteria and germs, you need,
 you can only use four different things. And an essential oil is not going to kill that. So you
 would need either isopropyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, bleach, or some other type of toxin that
 nobody wants to actually use on, on themselves, but it's like for surface spray. So we use a lot of
 isopropyl alcohol here to sanitize our facility. So, you know, and I mix that with essential oils
 and aloe and whatnot to make it as close to our brand as we possibly can. And to make it work,
 you know, through the CDC and what the CDC says to use, especially for this coronavirus,
 very hard to kill without using specific ingredients. So, you know, I took a picture of that. I took
 the picture of Leana with a tray with all his hand sanitizer. And, you know, after talking to
 my team, they're like Brenda, you know, it started to get very serious around. I think it was the
 second week of March where, you know, schools were closing and, you know, everybody needed either
 masks or gloves or hand sanitizer. And knowing that we have a facility here, we just opened up our
 new production facility in November. We have the capability and we have the vendors to provide to us,
 you know, very, very quickly before anything happened. I reached out to those vendors and I said,
 can you provide such and such per week if we were to order this in bulk? And I think we did that
 at the right time before everybody started to buy hand sanitizer. And we, I just spoke with my team,
 I said, we got to do this. I don't know what we got to do. We got to buy dispensers. You know,
 we have to, you know, buy gallons of lavender. We need to get the aloe in here. And these are all
 things that we were already procuring, not in this type of bulk, but we were already procuring it.
 So we were already a customer for these people. And once they heard what we were doing for the state
 of Connecticut, providing, you know, donating to our town to first responders, you know, nurses,
 doctors, providing to the hospitals and then going outside of Connecticut, you know, these vendors
 wanted to help us. And we just literally like the hat that you got on just looked at. And we
 just started doing it. And even though we have other orders coming in, we have another team that's
 able to handle the, the lip orders. And then we have another team that comes in and we work in pods.
 So that no one isn't like, you know, if I'm with Rebecca, who's here with me today,
 it's just me and her right now working in a pod here in the office, you know, 30 feet apart from
 each other. Then the production team will come in and make, you know, the hand sanitizers. And
 it wasn't even a question. It was just imperative for us to do it. And we just jumped on it at
 the right time. We were able to get the stuff in because if you go and try to beam a manufacturer
 of the stuff, now you couldn't get your hands on anything right now. And you know, even the type
 of products like the sprays, like you can't get that right now. It's almost impossible. So
 we just had to do what we had to do and we're working, we are actually working day and night
 and on the weekends to get stuff out to the people that need it the most and to the consumers.
 You know, it's kind of hard to have that conversation with some people that are calling that
 need it, but aren't going anywhere. We're like, you know, do you have access to running water
 and soap? Because if you do, I need to send this hand sanitizer to the nurse that needs it as
 opposed to you right now, but we'll get it to you. Right. You know, so we're trying to prioritize
 everything and we're catching up and it's we're serving everybody right now, which is great.
 That's great. Is it throughout the state of Canada? It's throughout the, it's the U.S. now.
 So we are providing, you know, we're helping everybody from, you know, we got called in the Navy
 called about the U.S.N. It's the mercy and the comfort ships. So we're trying to see if we're
 going to be working with them to help provide them. You know, even the New York hospitals,
 Columbian Presbyterian, they're calling us local hospitals. A lot of the smaller urgent care
 places, the labs and then now a lot of the people that are dealing with with customers. So like you
 just said, like these restaurants that are doing delivery, these people need hand sanitizer because
 not that they're essential, but they're open and they're helping automotive places, places that
 you wouldn't think of need it because they're dealing with consumers. Yeah. I noticed it's it looks
 like at least from a consumer standpoint, you're sold out on the website. I was going through the
 site. I mean, is it like soon as you turn it on, it fills it sells out. It does, but we,
 we have so what we're trying to do is really be able to manage the flow. So there's two different
 flows. There's the e-commerce flow and then there's the flow to the first responders. So there's
 two different teams right now. So right now I'm managing a lot of the distribution for the e-commerce
 and then we have another team doing the first responders, but we manage it because we are delivering
 to all of Connecticut. We have a delivery service through Mitzi that's delivering through all of
 Connecticut. And then the rest has to go UPS. And that's been a little bit hard for some of our
 consumers or just new consumers because what people don't understand, I think people take
 take things for granted before this is that when when the demand is there and you have Amazon,
 all these other places, you can get things for like, you know, you pay no shipping. But now,
 you know, this is a flammable good. It's a dangerous good. I can't ship it normal. It's expensive
 to ship. So we're actually eating some of the cost and offering a flat rate because somebody
 from Arizona that's ordering three, it's going to be $17. So we're just charging a flat rate of
 eight bucks. So it's hard all the way around, but if we can, I don't know, help,
 and this might sound stupid, but we say this to help save the world one hand out of time by doing
 this hand sanitizer, we're going to do it. However, however we can to make it feasible for everybody
 to get their hands on it, you know. But we lot, we release in batches. So we have it and we just
 release it in batches so that we can handle the flow that's coming in.
 Well, if you need some help telling this story in the future, I see a really nice brand video
 of coming together. What's all the social distancing come because this is a great story. I mean,
 you know, karma, I believe in karma and you know, you take care of others and they take care of you
 as they're kind of living that day by day. So as we kind of, you know, close out a little bit here,
 I'd love for, you know, just maybe some value for people listening if you have it, you know,
 I know you do, but like thinking about like entrepreneurs or people, and I know everyone's a
 little bit, it's a weird time, you know. So like, no one's, I think people should be thinking
 about these things, but knowing that there's some limitations on the ability to activate the ideas,
 but are there any like tips or like things that you would say, you know, what you've done with
 mid, midsy and like the growth is an entrepreneur. Are there any learning lessons or tips for someone
 that's trying or thinking about this that might be hitting roadblocks or, you know, are there any
 just guiding principles for you as far as what's gotten you where you are? You know, I think you're
 hat kind of says it all. So your hat says don't quit. And that's a very big thing for me. I'm a very
 passionate person. And if you're very passionate about something that you really believe in that you
 know that is going to work, you know, you need to do your due diligence. So just because you have a
 great idea, and I'm not saying that it's not a great idea, but you want to do that little bit of
 research. Find out who is going to buy it or, you know, get it out there to people. Do those
 samples. Get those things out there and see what the result would be. And if you get a good result
 back, then you then you go for it. I'm a big risk taker. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are risk
 takers, but you got to do it with some, you know, some mindfulness, you know, in the background,
 you need to know what you're doing. You need to be safe. You know, I work in cosmetics. I'm a
 cosmetic chemist. I have to be very careful with what I'm putting out there and making sure that
 it's safe for everybody. But once I have that, and I could put that out there, I'm going to go and do
 it. I don't, I don't wait anymore. And it's almost like you need to come out of your own skin and
 get out of your own way and just get out there and do it because if you have that great idea,
 and you've been thinking about it for a while, and you know that it's going to help impact
 people and impact yourself. I think, you know, you have to be able to be that risk taker,
 but you have to have a really good team around you as well. And it's hard to find the right people,
 but once you do, you know, you got to hang on to those people because those people are going to
 help you grow your business and you need to be able to feed off of other people and talk to
 other people about your ideas and what other people may think. Because, you know, I've had really
 great ideas over the last six years that I thought were great and, you know, talking to my staff
 or my consumers and doing surveys and they're like, oh, no, you know, we would never buy that.
 And I'm like, okay, I need to go back to the drawing board, but it's all, you know, excuse me,
 sorry about that. It's all, you know, trial and error. And I really think people need to go for it
 because you only got one life to live and, you know, time, life is short. And if you don't try to
 do something that you're dreaming about or that you're passionate about, you know, you're going to
 always wonder and you will regret that. So that's, that's my, that's my advice, I guess I should say.
 I love the risk-taker part. If you show me a successful, successful self-made entrepreneur
 and they aren't a risk-taker, I want to see their inheritance because I don't know many
 self-made entrepreneurs that whether or not they're billionaires or millionaires or not,
 is not really the point. More like you've made it on some level. You can pay your own bills and
 you can have a staff and do and run a business. There's a, there's an inherent risk, I'm a risk-taker
 and, you know, I mean, I have a family and I don't like, you know, jump off buildings or anything
 like that or like risk the farm on every decision. But, you know, I just think that's an inherent
 characteristic of self-made entrepreneurs that, and if you're not, and that's sometimes self-awareness,
 if you're not that person, I'm not saying that you can't be it, but you're going to have to have
 someone that's with you or involved that's going to have to help push you towards that. Push you.
 Yeah, absolutely. Just the ones I know that are truly self-made, that's been a really guiding
 principle. But, hey, Brenda, I really appreciate it. I want to do this again. I, um, you know, I think,
 you know, just given the time period, I wanted to delve more into kind of where you're pivoting
 and things like that. I'd love to get and dive more into some of your products and some of the
 informers side and a little bit more of the business. So let's do this again soon. Yeah, absolutely.
 I love to and I know our listeners and watchers and all that are going to love hearing your story
 and I think there's going to be some some great lessons as well as just motivation for them. So
 I can't wait to do it again and let's stay in touch as we move forward. And if you need
 it, we're here. So yeah, thank you so much for having me on Ryan. It's always a pleasure.
 All right, Brenda. Thank you so much. We'll talk soon. Thank you.